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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>When her parents are killed by an earthquake, 5-year-old Ayla wanders through the forest completely alone. Cold, hungry, and badly injured by a cave lion, the little girl is as good as gone until she is discovered by a group who call themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear. This clan, left homeless by the same disaster, have little interest in the helpless girl who comes from the tribe they refer to as the "Others." Only their medicine woman sees in Ayla a fellow human, worthy of care. She painstakingly nurses her back to health--a decision that will forever alter the physical and emotional structure of the clan. Although this story takes place roughly 35,000 years ago, its cast of characters could easily slide into any modern tale. The members of the Neanderthal clan, ruled by traditions and taboos, find themselves challenged by this outsider, who represents the physically modern Cro-Magnons. And as Ayla begins to grow and mature, her natural tendencies emerge, putting her in the middle of a brutal and dangerous power struggle.</p><p>Although <em>--Sara Nickerson</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Imaginative, exciting."<br>--_The New York Times Book Review  </p><p>_"Jean Auel has performed a minor miracle."<br>--_San Francisco Chronicle<br>_  </p><p><em>From the Trade Paperback edition.</em> -- <em>Review</em></p>

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<div><meta charset="utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; "><h3 class="productDescriptionSource" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 1.23em; font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.375em; margin-left: -15px; clear: both; ">Product Description</h3><div class="productDescriptionWrapper" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">This Halcyon Classics ebook collection contains fifty science fiction short stories by more than forty different authors. Many of the stories in this collection were published during the heyday of popular science fiction magazines from the 1930s to the 1960s.<br><br>Included within this work are stories by Phillip K. Dick, Randall Garrett, H. Beam Piper,Paul Ernst, Fredric Brown, Randall Garrett, Fritz Leiber, Robert Silverberg, Stephen Marlowe, Harl Vincent, and many others.<br><br>This collection is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.<br><br>Contents:<br><br>HAPPY ENDING by Mack Reynolds and Fredric Brown<br>TEETHING RING by James Causey<br>MILLENNIUM by Everett B. Cole<br>BEYOND THE DOOR by Philip K. Dick<br>THE SILK AND THE SONG by Charles L. Fontenay<br>FLAMEDOWN by H. B. Fyfe<br>ANCHORITE by Randall Garrett<br>THE AFFAIR OF THE BRAINS by Anthony Gilmore<br>WE'RE FRIENDS, NOW by Henry Hasse<br>CHARLEY de MILO by Laurence Mark Janifer<br>THE FIRST ONE by Herbert D. Kastle<br>IT COULD BE ANYTHING by Keith Laumer<br>WHAT'S HE DOING IN THERE? By Fritz Leiber<br>EVIDENCE by Murray Leinster<br>THE MAN THE MARTIANS MADE by Frank Belknap Long<br>MY SHIPMATE—COLUMBUS by Stephen Marlowe<br>COLD LIGHT by S. P. Meek<br>CIRCUS by Alan E. Nourse<br>FLIGHT FROM TOMORROW by H. Beam Piper<br>EXPEDITER by Mack Reynolds<br>HAM SANDWICH by James H. Schmitz<br>THE HELPFUL ROBOTS by Robert J. Shea<br>BESIDE STILL WATERS by Robert Sheckley<br>THE HUNTED HEROES by Robert Silverberg<br>THE SPACE ROVER by Edwin K. Sloat<br>BENEFACTOR by George H. Smith<br>THE MARTIAN CABAL by R. F. Starzl<br>THE REAL HARD SELL by William W. Stuart<br>THE BLUE GERM by Martin Swayne<br>FAITHFULLY YOURS by Lou Tabakow<br>VALLEY OF THE CROEN by Lee Tarbell<br>CEREBRUM by Albert Teichner<br>THE MAN WHO ROCKED THE EARTH by Arthur Train <br>WANTED: 7 FEARLESS ENGINEERS! by Frederick Orlin Tremaine<br>EQUATION OF DOOM by Gerald Vance<br>THE OBSERVERS by G. L. Vandenburg<br>GROVE OF THE UNBORN by Lyn Venable<br>GRAY DENIM by Harl Vincent<br>WANDERER OF INFINITY by Harl Vincent<br>SHOCK ABSORBER by E. G. Von Wald<br>The 4-D DOODLER by Graph Waldeyer<br>A MATTER OF PROPORTION by Anne Walker<br>BOLDEN'S PETS by F. L. Wallace<br>RAIDERS OF THE UNIVERSES by Donald Wandrei<br>ATTRITION by Jim Wannamaker<br>THE HEADS OF APEX by George Henry Weiss<br>THE INHABITED by Richard Wilson<br>LONGEVITY by Therese Windser<br>THE MINUS WOMAN by Russ Winterbotham<br>THE SERVANT PROBLEM by Robert J. Young</div></span></div>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In his well-intentioned but impersonal memoirs, Winters tells the tales left untold by Stephen Ambrose, whose Band of Brothers was the inspiration for the HBO miniseries, but Winters's memoir is disappointingly sparse on details unrelated to troop position. It is in the battles and tactical maneuvers of Easy Company that Winters is most at home: on D-Day, when Easy Company's commanding officer is killed, Winters takes charge minutes after landing deep in German territory and leads an assault against a German battery. He carefully explicates the reasoning behind his strategy, leading the reader along as the Company attacks German machine gun and mortar outposts. The narrative is laced with Winters's soldierly exaltations of pride in his comrades' bravery: "My God, it's beautiful when you think of a guy who was so dedicated to his company that he apologizes for getting hit." Although the intrepidness of the group induces more than a tinge of pride, the memoir is devoid of powerful reflections. In the last, sluggish chapters, Winters devotes an excessive amount of time to letters he has received and to expositions on leadership. Winters is too humble for a genre that requires a little bit of conceit.<br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Stephen Ambrose's <em>Band of Brothers</em> (1992) and the HBO miniseries based on it made Easy Company--the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, which fought from D-Day to the end of World War II, with 150 percent casualties--well known to more than -military-history buffs. After both publication and broadcast, Winters, Easy Company's commanding officer, received many requests for more information. Feeling that much of the material Ambrose didn't use deserved an audience, he chose to air it and satisfy all those requests in his memoirs. For those to whom the story is familiar, the major and his collaborator developed an excellent narrative voice to recount Winters' experiences, actions, and thoughts during everything from training to deployment to battle to subsequent occupation. Winters has been praised as an exemplar of leadership, and here he shows what he did to earn that praise and how he did it. Very well done, book as well as war service. <em>Frieda Murray</em><br><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>

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<h3>Review</h3><p>"Even porn stars have romantic illusions. Just take a stroll through the new <em>Sinner Takes All</em> by Tera Patrick. The fast-reading memoir whips from knowing to naive and back as it tracks its plucky protagonist from ugly-duckling school days to international adult superstardom." <br />-_Dallas Morning News_   </p><p>"_Sinner Takes All_ lets fans and interested parties alike get the down and dirty details on the personal and professional life of one of the biggest names in a multi-billion dollar industry." <br />-Seattlest   </p><p>"I can think of no one more fascinating than Tera Patrick-porn star, model, and businesswoman-as readers of this book are certain to agree. It's all here-her passions, triumphs, and defeats-in more detail than we have any right to expect." <br />-Larry Flynt   </p><p>"This book is an inspirational read with a clear message: There are no limits when one is determined, motivated, and driven." <br />-Dave Navarro   </p><p>"Orgasms, like laughter, can be faked, but it's better when they're not. Tera doesn't fake anything in this revealing and inspiring book." <br />-Margaret Cho   </p><p>"She's a girl who knows what she wants and gets it. That's what's cool about Tera Patrick." <br />-Carmen Electra </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>How does a girl go from being a shy, awkward bookworm to the biggest porn star in the world? In <em>Sinner Takes All</em>, Tera Patrick reveals all, including: her career as an international model; losing her virginity at fourteen to a thirtysomething photographer; learning oral sex techniques backstage at a Guns N' Roses concert; having an orgy with a team of firefighters; her unglamorous job in a nursing home; her first forays into the adult movie business; and how, with her husband's help, she launched her own multimillion-dollar empire.   </p><p>Along the way, she dishes on the emotional side of being Tera Patrick, writing candidly about her battles with depression and anxiety. She also discusses finding true love and building a healthy marriage, achievements that many consider to be impossible in the world of porn. Featuring hundreds of photos, plus diary pages and scintillating sidebars, <em>Sinner Takes All</em> takes the tell-all to raunchy new heights.   </p>


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Pilot, navigator, engineer, doctor, scientist—ship's cat? All are essential to the well-staffed space vessel. Since the early days of interstellar travel, when Tuxedo Thomas, a Maine coon cat, showed what a cat could do for a ship and its crew, the so-called Barque Cats have become highly prized crew members. Thomas's carefully bred progeny, ably assisted by humans—Cat Persons—with whom they share a deep and loving bond, now travel the galaxy, responsible for keeping spacecraft free of vermin, for alerting human crews to potential environmental hazards, and for acting as morale officers.Even among Barque Cats, Chessie is something special. Her pedigree, skills, and intelligence, as well as the close rapport she has with her human, Janina, make her the most valuable crew member aboard the Molly Daise. And the litter of kittens in her belly only adds to her value.Then the unthinkable happens. Chessie is kidnapped—er, catnapped—from Dr. Jared Vlast's vet clinic at Hood Station by a grizzled spacer named Carl Poindexter. But Chessie's newborn kittens turn out to be even more extraordinary than their mother. For while Chessie's connection to Janina is close and intuitive, the bond that the kitten Chester forms with Carl's son, Jubal, is downright telepathic. And when Chester is sent into space to learn his trade, neither he nor Jubal will rest until they're reunited.    But the announcement of a widespread epidemic affecting livestock on numerous planets throws their future into doubt. Suddenly the galactic government announces a plan to impound and possibly destroy all exposed animals. Not even the Barque Cats will be spared.    With the clock racing against them, Janina, Jubal, Dr. Vlast, and a handful of very special kittens will join forces with the mysterious Pshaw-Ra—an alien-looking cat with a hidden agenda—to save the Barque Cats, other animals, and quite possibly the universe as they know it from total destruction.


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<h3>Review</h3><p>"Park is truly a funny writer. Although Junie B. is a kindergartner, she's sure to make middle graders laugh out loud." -- <em>School Library Journal</em> -- <em>Review</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>There's going to be a Pet Day at school--only the rule is No Dogs! And  </p><p>that's the only kind of pet Junie B. has! If Mother won't let her get a new  </p><p>pet, then Junie B. will have to take matters into her own hands. Maybe a jar of  </p><p>ants? Or a wiggly worm? Or--could it be--something even better? The world's  </p><p>funniest kindergartner is back in her twelfth book!   </p>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>The Daily Show with Jon Stewart</em> and <em>The Colbert Report</em>, and co-author and co-editor of <em>Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me</em>. Ben's own mom kicks things off with "I Think My Son Is a Catch," but read on to enjoy contributions from Andy Richter ("Girls Don't Make Passes at Boys with Fat Asses"), Stephen Colbert ("The Heart Is a Choking Hazard"), Jason Nash ("Don't Enter a Karaoke Contest Near Smith College; You Will Lose to Lesbians"), Dan Savage ("I Am a Gay Man"), and David Rees ("Get Dumped Before It Matters"). Filled with <em>--Brad Thomas Parsons</em></p><hr><p><strong>Our Moment with Ben </strong><br>Ben Karlin is a man who holds a virtual PhD in Modern American Comedy. Karlin's career kicked off as the editor of <em>The Onion</em> and he is the former executive producer of the award-winning <em>The Daily Show with Jon Stewart</em> and co-creator and former executive producer of <em>The Colbert Report</em>. He was also a co-author and co-editor of the bestselling <em>America (The Book)</em> and his latest project takes him back to the book world as the editor of the anthology <em>Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me</em>, 212 pages of semi-insightful and mostly hilarious life lessons from a lineup of writers and comedians. Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons caught up with Karlin to talk about his new book, the writers' strike, the serious job of writing comedy, and what makes him laugh (hint: it isn't <em>America's Funniest Home Videos</em>). You can   </p><hr><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Karlin, coauthor of Jon Stewart's <em>America</em>, establishes that if there is one thing men have in common, it is their lack of understanding and the misguided information they have acquired about women. With miniessays from famous comedians and writers, including Nick Hornby, Stephen Colbert and Bruce Jay Friedman, this book is organized into short chapters of truth, testimonies and realizations about the women that got away and, sadly, the women that they never had to begin with. Some of the essays offer advice, such as Bob Odenkirk's bitter nine-year plan, where he discusses why nine years is the perfect amount of time to be in a bad relationship (by year nine you [had] tried everything, including depression and deep boredom). Some of the men's experiences proved to be valuable lessons such as Dan Savage's essay I Am a Gay Man, where he finds that women can be detestable, and learns that he doesn't have to fake being straight or join the priesthood and can instead just be a gay man; or Patton Oswalt's realization that his crazy, stripper ex-girlfriend helped him appreciate his wife. Whether the men pathetically recall their failed dating attempts or are celebrating their record number of dumps as learned experiences, these witty, comical approaches to being dumped are sure to entertain anyone who has entered the world of dating. <em>(Feb.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>

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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>#1 New York Times bestselling author Brad Meltzer returns with a pulse-pounding new novel of lies and deception at the highest levels of government. There are stories no one knows. Hidden stories. I love those stories. And since I work in the National Archives, I find those stories for a living.So says Benjamin January, a young archivist who spends his days working with the most important documents of the U.S. government. When Clementine Kaye, his first childhood crush, shows up at the Archives asking for his help tracking down her long-lost father, Benjy tries to impress her by showing her the secret vault where the President of the United States privately reviews classified documents. It is also where Benjy and Clementine accidentally happen upon a priceless artifact-a 200-year-old dictionary that once belonged to George Washington-hidden inside a desk chair. Eager to discover why the President is hiding this important national treasure, the two soon find themselves entangled in a web of deception, conspiracy, and murder that will reveal the most well kept secret of the U.S. Presidency.</p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In this alternately chilling and hilarious sequel to <em>The Atrocity Archives</em> (2004) from Hugo-winner Stross, Bob Howard is a computer übergeek employed by the Laundry, a secret British agency assigned to clean up incursions from other realities caused by the inadvertent manipulation of complex mathematical equations: in other words, magic. In 1975, the CIA used Howard Hughes's <em>Glomar Explorer</em> in a bungled attempt to raise a sunken Soviet submarine in order to access the Jennifer Morgue, an occult device that allows communication with the dead. Now a ruthless billionaire intends to try again, even if by doing so he awakens the Great Old Ones, who thwarted the earlier expedition. It's up to Bob and a collection of British eccentrics even Monty Python would consider odd to stop the bad guy and save the world, while getting receipts for all expenditures or else face the most dreaded menace of all: the Laundry's own auditors. Stross has a marvelous time making eldritch horror appear commonplace in the face of bureaucracy. <em>(Dec.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Stross packs this new novel full of hilarious in-jokes and frenetic set pieces."<br />-_San Francisco Chronicle_  </p><p>"One of the most enjoyable novels of the year... Stross steps carefully through all of the archetypes of a classic Bond adventure without ever becoming predictable. The resolution is as perfect as it is unexpected."<br />-Jonathan Strahan, editor of the annual <em>Best Short Novels</em> anthology series  </p><p>"Some writers play with archetypes. In <em>The Jennifer Morgue</em>, Charlie Stross makes them sing, dance, and do the dishes for him." <br />-S. M. Stirling, national bestselling author of <em>The Scourge of God</em>  </p><p>"_The Jennifer Morgue_ is Stross's most entertaining novel to date...Astonishing." <br />- <em>Locus</em>  </p><p>"Alternately chilling and hilarious." <br />-_Publishers Weekly_</p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Thomas Bolden, successful 32-year-old investment banker and Harlem Boys Club Foundation trustee, has come a long way from his turbulent childhood on the mean streets of Chicago. But his street smarts surface at the start of Reich's action-packed but convoluted latest (after <em>Numbered Account</em>), when Bolden chases a pair of muggers through Manhattan's financial district after they rob his girlfriend, Jenny Dance. They abduct him at gunpoint, but after a perplexing interrogation by members of a mysterious clan, a narrow escape reunites him with Jenny. Bolden already knows too much, though, and the organization of the novel's title—a centuries-old secretive order of powerful lawyers, businessmen and politicians convened to preserve political special interest initiatives that the country's founding fathers defended—soon systematically dismantle Bolden's life. He and a newly pregnant Jenny run for their lives, tracked at every turn by the well-connected "club," which is headed by retired detective Francois Guilfoyle. While they each investigate the clandestine group, a flurry of politically fueled machinations unfolds, setting the stage for the obligatory showdown. Reich's conspiracy thriller eventually loses the momentum needed to deliver on the tight suspense it promises. <em>(July)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Who would have thought that Thomas Bolden would become a successful Wall Street businessman, living the high life and about to become engaged to the perfect woman? Having grown up as "Tommy B from the wrong side of the tracks," Bolden is a bootstraps guy who managed to leave the past behind and carve out a nice life for himself--or so he thought. His world turns upside down when he is inexplicably kidnapped. His captors apparently think he has valuable information about something--but Bolden has no idea what. He's released, but his problems are far from over. Soon he becomes mired in a manhunt that forces him to tap into the street skills he learned as an orphan. As he runs for his life--literally--he uncovers secrets involving a bizarre club of corrupt politicos with roots extending back to the Founding Fathers. Bolden makes a captivating hero, as Reich uses the ordinary-man premise to good effect, engendering sympathy for a financier who never forgets his past. A first-rate, high-concept thriller that will leave readers breathless and cheering for Bolden to pull through. <em>Mary Frances Wilkens</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Set against the backdrop of post-World War II Germany, <em>The Runner</em> is the story of Devlin Judge, an ex-New York City detective turned lawyer on the hunt for Nazi SS soldier Erich Seyss, recently escaped from an American POW camp. Seyss, a former Olympic track star known as "The White Lion," is responsible for myriad heinous war crimes, including the murder of a platoon of unarmed American prisoners--one of whom was Judge's own brother. Initially a member of the International Legal Tribunal, set to try former Nazis for crimes against humanity, Judge begs for the opportunity to track Seyss down. With only a week in which to do so, his hunt for the cold-blooded killer leads Judge to a race not only for his own life but for the future of Europe itself. Judge is pursuing a killer, but he is also chasing the ghosts of guilt, having decided not to enlist in the hopes of advancing his legal career: "Erich Seyss was his confession and his penance, his expiation and absolution, all tucked into a black-and-silver uniform with a death's-head embroidered on its collar and his brother's blood on its cuff."</p><p><em>The Runner</em> lacks the crackling tension of __, Christopher Reich's first novel. Even the moments of crucial conflict, or of bloody disaster, seem wan and pallid. The novel is, paradoxically, handicapped by Reich's respect for historical detail: his interest in presenting the grim realities of postwar existence leads him into extensive descriptions of place and time that fail to merge with the story he spins. These "set pieces" stand awkwardly apart, like dour history professors coaxed into supervising the machinations of rambunctious students. Reich's general fidelity to detail also means that the moments in which he temporarily throws accuracy to the wind are painfully apparent: how on earth would Judge, a well-fed and well-dressed American, manage to look as if he belonged in a German work-group detail? And when would any three-star general ever tolerate the gum-cracking insouciance of Judge's driver Darren Honey, a sergeant with no regard for military hierarchy? Oddly enough, the authorial liberties Reich takes with General George Patton, saddling him with a megalomaniac's hatred of the Russians and a schemer's plot to redraw the boundaries of postwar Europe, are largely successful and add a welcome note of barely contained evil.</p><p><em>The Runner</em> works best as a moving meditation on personal and social disjunction: Judge, Seyss, Patton, and the rest are desperately engaged in deciphering the proper place for prewar rules in the postwar chaos--and in confronting the uneasy suspicion that perhaps, after all, there is no place for them or for their beliefs. Judge must move past his easy assumption that the Allied victory was not "just a symbol of superior might but of superior morality": "Overnight, he'd become the hunted, not the hunter.... At some point during the last twenty-four hours, he'd crossed over an interior median into unknown waters. He'd abandoned the rigid structure of his previous life, renounced his worship of authority, and forsworn his devotion to rules and regulation. He'd tossed Hoyle to the wind, and he didn't care." <em>--Kelly Flynn</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Reich's first novel, Numbered Account, did remarkably well for a debut. Unfortunately, Reich has hit upon a stale notion for his follow-up, and although the book moves along smartly, it feels mechanical in both plot and characters. Set in Germany just after the WWII surrender, it stars ace Nazi Olympic runner Erich Seyss, who as an SS man has performed untold atrocities--including the murder, in a massacre of unarmed American soldiers, of hero Devlin Judge's brother. That motivates Judge, a lawyer who is supposed to be prosecuting G?ring at the War Crimes Tribunal, to drop everything and set off in hot pursuit of Seyss when he escapes from a POW camp. Seyss is no ordinary escapee, but is being groomed by a band of German arms industrialists who want to revive their shattered country by turning the Americans against the Russians. How better to do it than by having an apparent Russian assassinate Churchill, Truman and possibly Eisenhower as well at Potsdam? Seyss throws himself into the role with vigor, energy and an amazing number of hairbreadth escapes. Meanwhile, Judge's pursuit is hampered by devious OSS operatives who want just what the Nazis want, for their own reasons; even General George Patton is involved, with apparent tacit support from Field Marshal Montgomery. Seyss's beautiful former lover, Ingrid, further complicates matters. The only remotely believable part of all this is the despairing postwar atmosphere of Germany in smoking ruins, which Reich brings to life with many sharply observant touches. But there's more to bestsellerdom than swift action and a long man-on-man chase against the clock, and most of The Runner is likely to strike fans of Ludlum and Forsyth as overly familiar. Agent, Richard Pine. (Mar.) <br />Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Inspired by his Eisner Award–winning Queen &amp; Country graphic novel series, the author of the adrenaline-charged Atticus Kodiac thrillers (_Critical Space_) offers up this British cloak-and-dagger hardcover introducing Tara Chace, an intrepid, relentless female assassin. In a coolly orchestrated terrorist raid chillingly reminiscent of September 11, a well-trained trio of al Qaeda–linked fanatics bomb London subway trains at three major stations, killing 372. In retaliation, Minder One (the head assassin of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligent Service) Tara Chace is given the assignment of killing Dr. Faud bin Abdullah al-Shimmari, a Saudi Arabian religious leader. She can't undertake an operation inside Faud's high-security Saudi homeland, but when the Mossad gets involved on a mission of its own, the hit is scheduled to take place on Yemeni soil. In a bit of bad luck, Chace completes her primary mission with a daring hit on Faud inside the Great Mosque, but ignites international outrage when she blows away a Saudi prince, too. As a result, her queen and countrymen betray her, and she is forced to flee with one final chance to avoid being sacrificed as a pawn in a worldwide political chess game. Though a trifle muddled by bureaucratese, the novel's superb pacing, offbeat characters, wry plot twists and damning insight into oily schizoid Middle Eastern diplomacy add up to an engrossing read. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>This is a little tricky, so pay attention. This novel is based on Rucka's comic-book series, <em>Queen &amp; Country</em>, which was in turn inspired by (or perhaps directly based on) a 25-year-old British television series called <em>The Sandbaggers</em>. The comic-book series chronicles the adventures of Tara Chace, a Special Intelligence Service agent (otherwise known as a minder or a sandbagger) who takes on dangerous missions for the British government. In the novel, she is tasked with the assassination of the mastermind behind a series of terrorist attacks that took the lives of more than 300 British citizens. The relationships between some of Rucka's characters mirror the relationships between similar characters in the TV series, and there are even scenes in the novel that are very much like scenes in episodes of the series. Also like the series, the novel is as much about the political machinations behind a mission as it is about the mission itself, and Rucka does an excellent job of building the tension and suspense. It's a story about people whose lives are controlled--and often sacrificed--by government officials whose decisions are always politically motivated. There are echoes of le Carre here, to be sure, although the tone is less cerebral. Those who know <em>The Sandbaggers</em> will be intrigued, but the novel will also interest anyone with a taste for classic British espionage. A sequel would be most welcome. <em>David Pitt</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Jance's third suspense thriller to feature ex-sheriff Brandon Walker and his family (after <em>Hour of the Hunter</em> and <em>Kiss of the Bees</em>) deftly mixes Native American mythology with a harrowing plot. An old Tohono O'odham woman, Emma Orozco, asks Walker for help in solving the brutal murder of her daughter, Roseanne, who was slain in 1970. Walker is able to take on the challenge because of his membership in TLC, The Last Chance, a privately funded agency that looks into old, unsolved crimes. This ingenious arrangement allows for great flexibility in the action of the story. As Walker searches for clues in Roseanne's death, he comes across similar murders—each with no leads, each involving a dismembered body left alongside a road in the Southwest. The reader learns more and more about the killers, the sexually voracious, utterly amoral Gayle Stryker and her husband, Larry, a truly effective pair of monsters. Meanwhile, Walker's dear friend Fat Crack Ortiz, a Tohono O'odham man, is dying of complications from diabetes. Most of Walker's friends, in fact, are Indians, as is his adopted daughter, Lani. He draws not so much knowledge as strength and perspective from them—no mumbo-jumbo here, only believable sensitivity. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Resting both her regular series sleuths, Joanna Brady and J. P. Beaumont, this latest Jance mystery returns to Arizona's Tohono O'Odham reservation, also the setting for two earlier nonseries novels, <em>Hour of the Hunter</em> (1991) and <em>Kiss of the Bees</em> (2000). Retired cop Brandon Walker sets out to investigate a cold case, the mutilation murder of a 15-year-old Tohono O'Odham girl. Suspense builds gradually in the multilayered novel, which is filtered through multiple perspectives, each person adding a piece to a textured puzzle that tracks a pair of serial killers whose crimes extend backward across three decades. As in Jance's two series, the action is intermixed with well-placed social commentary, this time regarding the unconscionable ill use of reservation peoples by vicious <em>mil-ghan</em> (whites), even in the recent past. Although the Indian cultural backdrop is not as integral to the story as it is in Hillerman's novels, this will still appeal to Hillerman devotees as well as to thriller fans accustomed to a sheen of blood spatter and sex with their suspense. <em>Stephanie Zvirin</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Adult/High School-Sheriff Joanna Brady investigates the murder of Carol Mossman, who lived alone in the desert and was shot with an antique gun. Her 17 dogs died, too, due to an intense buildup of heat in the trailer. The investigation leads to the deceased woman's siblings, grandmother, and father, and two murdered female reporters. As the facts come together, it becomes apparent that the victim's father raped his daughters, impregnating at least two. While working on the case, Brady deals with the local animal activist group and illegal immigrants, all while running for reelection. While none of the scenes depict details of the incestuous relationships, the lasting effect of abuse becomes a major point of the story. The human abuse in turn leads back to the topic of animal abuse, painting a sad picture of the horrors of both. But Jance manages to keep the atmosphere positive, with lots of action, energy, and realism along the way, and Brady's personal thoughts and beliefs give a perspective to the events. This 10th in the series offers topics for thought and a rousing plot.<br /><em>Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA</em><br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From</h3><p>No need to have read previous books to enjoy this Joanna Brady mystery. Jance slips in enough background to bring readers quickly up to speed. Before that, however, comes a whopper of a setup. Loner Carol Mossman is found brutally murdered, her 17 dogs dead beside her in her blistering hot trailer. Soon after, two more women turn up dead--all three shot with bullets more than a quarter-century old. That single clue eventually leads Sheriff Brady to a horrifying secret that nearly destroys an entire family. The dramatic opening will suck readers in, and the pacing is a satisfying balance between Joanna's struggles to be a good sheriff, wife, and mother and her dealing with her reelection and newly discovered pregnancy. Joanna's compassion and insecurity--and her sometimes cranky determination--make her a particularly realistic and appealing protagonist. As in <em>Partner in Crime</em> (2002), Jance builds her story around a real-life contemporary social concern, in this case the psychological disorder known as hoarding. Brady fans won't want to put this one down, which may itself be a form of hoarding. <em>Stephanie Zvirin</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Carcaterra, author of a powerful, best-selling memoir, Sleepers (Ballantine, 1995), here weighs in with his first novel. Although information on the plot is a bit sketchy, the story centers around a group of controversial New York City cops.<br />Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Remember these names: Boomer. Dead-Eye. Pins. Geronimo. Reverend Jim. Mrs. Columbo. They were great cops. The best cops. But they are cops no more.              </p><p>Now they are apaches--a renegade unit working on their own.                       </p><p>With this novel, the author of the stunning #1 bestseller <strong>Sleepers</strong> returns to the mean streets he knows so well. And in doing so, he has written his most explosive, electrifying, and startling book yet.                      It is the early 1980s. Crack cocaine has made its devastating appearance. Violence is escalating and so is an unnerving lack of morality. Things are happening that have never happened before.   </p><p>One of those things is the brutal kidnapping of an innocent 12-year-old girl. But the kidnapper has made a deadly mistake. He has brought Boomer Frontierie back to life, back to the streets. And back into action. A New York City detective forced to retire after being wounded in a drug bust, Boomer thirsts to return to the life he loved--the life of a cop. When an old friend turns to him for help, Boomer has the excuse he needs. And when the simple kidnapping turns into something more, something much more evil, even more horrifying, Boomer realizes that he can once again find a way to serve justice.   </p><p>There are others like Boomer. Cops who can no longer be cops. He brings them together, bringing them back to life as well. Even as they face almost certain death.   </p><p><strong>Apaches</strong> is the story of an extraordinary band of cops. Some might call them criminals. Some might call them heroes. But theirs is a world where good is always shadowed by bad, where right is almost indecipherable from wrong, and where the living can, within mere moments, cross over to the world of the dead.          </p><p>Lorenzo Carcaterra has written the most exciting novel of the year. Like <strong>Sleepers</strong>, it is a book that will never be forgotten.  </p><p><em>From the Hardcover edition.</em></p>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>The story of Don Vito Corleone, the head of a New York Mafia family, inspired some of the most successful movies ever. It is in Mario Puzo's <em>The Godfather</em> that Corleone first appears. As Corleone's desperate struggle to control the Mafia underworld unfolds, so does the story of his family. The novel is full of exquisitely detailed characters who, despite leading unconventional lifestyles within a notorious crime family, experience the triumphs and failures of the human condition. Filled with the requisite valor, love, and rancor of a great epic, <em>The Godfather</em> is the definitive gangster novel. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Though not out of print, this 1969 gangster potboiler here makes the leap to trade paperback. Thanks to Francis Coppola's brilliant film adaptation, this story has achieved cult status with millions of fans, who continue to read it. In addition to its larger size, this incarnation offers a new introduction and afterword. How could you refuse? <br>Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>A spoiled brat finds her backbone when fate kicks her to the curb in tabloid staple Richie's decent follow-up to The Truth About Diamonds. Charlotte Williams goes from pampered princess to outcast after her adored father pleads guilty to a massive Wall Street fraud. To escape the wrath of cheated investors, an Internet smear campaign, and a creepy stalker, Charlotte heads to the New Orleans home of Millie, her beloved former nanny and the only mom she's known. What Charlotte finds, however, is far more than a safe harbor: a best friend in fashion maven Kat (their friendship may give readers Simple Life flashbacks); a handsome love interest in Millie's musician son, Jackson; and a chance to unleash the sensational singing voice inherited from a mom she only knows from a heartbreaking home movie. Richie, no stranger to celebrity and tabloid gossip, proves she's been there/done that in this celeb-savvy and disarmingly charming defense of the power of love and good genes. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>The protagonist of celebrity author Richie’s follow-up to The Truth about Diamonds (2006) is New York socialite Charlotte Williams, whose life is ruined when her father is sent to federal prison for embezzlement. She escapes the media and public’s prying eyes in New Orleans, where Miss Millie, the woman who raised her after her mother’s death, takes her in. Charlotte then meets Kat, the daughter of an influential New Orleans family, takes a job in her father’s restaurant, and learns to live under the radar. She even finds romance with Miss Millie’s son Jackson, and fulfillment singing in his jazz band. But her sweet new life is disrupted by a stalker who has set up a disturbing Web site about her. Things soon take a dangerous turn when Charlotte lets her stalker get too close. What skills Richie lacks in her attempt at suspense is balanced by her fluency in romance and fashion. --Aleksandra Walker </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Private investigator John Taylor returns in the 12th novel (after 2010's The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny) of the Nightside, "the dark, secret, brooding heart of London." Having killed the former Walker, the voice of the Authorities, Taylor's now the closet thing the Nightside has to a leader. When the sword Excalibur shows up in the mail, he must return to London Proper to consult with the descendants of the Knights of the Round Table. The blood runs red (and golden) as he teams up with King Arthur and tangles with Merlin, elven royalty, traitor knights, sons of the devil, the Lady of the Lake, and various creatively named denizens of the Nightside. Taylor's irrepressible sarcasm and a twisted take on quotidian scenes compensate for a few too many solemn, self-important pronouncements and evil-overlord lectures. (Jan.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>John Taylor is a P.I. with a special talent for finding lost things in the dark and secret center of London known as the Nightside. He's also the reluctant owner of a very special-and dangerous-weapon. Excalibur, the legendary sword. To find out why he was chosen to wield it, John must consult the Last Defenders of Camelot, a group of knights who dwell in a place that some find more frightening than the Nightside.   </p><p>London Proper. It's been years since John's been back-and there are good reasons for that. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Set in a near future in which "the Christian Congregation, one of the most powerful lobbies in the country... helped put the last three Presidents in office," Bernhardt's 15th political thriller (after <em>Capitol Murder</em>) to feature Oklahoma attorney Ben Kincaid opens with an intriguing premise, but rapidly devolves into a series of improbable twists and turns. Thaddeus Roush, the Supreme Court nominee of Republican President Blake, confounds his natural base on the right by coming out of the closet ("Ladies and gentlemen, I am a gay American") during the Rose Garden ceremony announcing his selection. The reverberations from this shock wave are still being felt when Roush finds an unknown woman's corpse in his home during a televised press conference. The Democratic Party leadership turns to Kincaid, newly appointed to complete the term of a former Oklahoma senator, for help in saving Roush's nomination. Unfortunately, the book lacks the credible insider information that might offset the unlikely plot developments, while too many supporting details (tokens in the D.C. Metro?) ring false. <em>(Feb.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Ben Kincaid is now a U.S. senator, but he barely has time to settle into his office before he has another murder to solve. Thaddeus Roush, Supreme Court nominee, has just revealed he is gay, and when the body of a woman is discovered during Roush's press conference--and Roush's partner is implicated in her death--Ben comes to the man's defense. Bernhardt has his formula down pat by now (the first Kincaid novel, <em>Primary Justice</em>, appeared in 1992), and those familiar with the series won't encounter many surprises. This one will feel either tired or comfortable, depending on whether readers think of Kincaid as an old friend. <em>David Pitt</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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In her first novel since 2002, Nebula and Hugo award-winning author Connie Willis returns with a stunning, enormously entertaining novel of time travel, war, and the deeds-great and small-of ordinary people who shape history. In the hands of this acclaimed storyteller, the past and future collide-and the result is at once intriguing, elusive, and frightening. Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place. Scores of time-traveling historians are being sent into the past, to destinations including the American Civil War and the attack on the World Trade Center. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser, Mr. Dunworthy, into letting her go to VE Day. Polly Churchill's next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London's Blitz. And seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who has a major crush on Polly, is determined to go to the Crusades so that he can "catch up" to her in age. But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments for no apparent reason and switching around everyone's schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history-to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past. From the people sheltering in the tube stations of London to the retired sailors who set off across the Channel to rescue the stranded British Army from Dunkirk, from shopgirls to ambulance drivers, from spies to hospital nurses to Shakespearean actors, Blackout reveals a side of World War II seldom seen before: a dangerous, desperate world in which there are no civilians and in which everybody-from the Queen down to the lowliest barmaid-is determined to do their bit to help a beleaguered nation survive.


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SUMMARY:
Winner of six Nebula and five Hugo awards, Connie Willis is one of the most acclaimed and imaginative authors of our time.  Her startling and powerful works have redefined the boundaries of contemporary science fiction.  Here in one volume are twelve of her greatest stories, including double award-winner "Fire Watch," set in the universe of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, in which a time-traveling student learns one of history's hardest lessons.  In "A Letter from the Clearys," a routine message from distant friends shatters the fragile world of a beleaguered family.  In "The Sidon in the Mirror," a mutant with the unconscious urge to become other people finds himself becoming both killer and victim.  Disturbing, revealing, and provocative, this remarkable collection of short fiction brings together some of the best work of an incomparable writer whose ability to amaze, confound, and enlighten never fails.


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>As a researcher for a popular historical novelist, Jeff Johnston finds himself immersed in the minutiae of the Civil War, tracking down the name of a general's favorite horse or the spot where Lincoln's son was buried. His meeting with Annie, the patient of old friend Dr. Richard Madison, changes his perspective. While the novelist contemplates a book on Lincoln's prophetic dreams and consults sleep specialist Madison, Jeff discovers that Annie is having vivid, horrible dreams of the Civil War containing details she couldn't possibly know. The point of view is unmistakably that of defeated Confederate leader Robert E. Lee. Jeff tries to shield Annie from the opportunistic reach of both novelist and doctor, but he can't protect her from herself, for she feels duty bound to refight the war if it will finally allow Lee some measure of peace. This charming, unpredictable book, with its unforced subtext of more recent wars and their veterans' lingering bad dreams, is an impressive first novel from a talented writer whose short stories have already won acclaim. <br />Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Haunted by the nightmares of Annie, a young woman he has just met, historical researcher Jeff Johnston leads Annie on an emotional odyssey through the heartland of the Civil War in search of a cure for her troubles. Reissue. <em>NYT. </em></p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Willis's short novel could hardly be more different from her last, the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Doomsday Book , which dealt with a time-travelling jaunt from the 21st-century back to Europe during the days of the Black Plague. On a rather nondescript alien planet, two hardy planetary surveyors (Findriddy and Carson), a visiting "socioexozoologist" (Evelyn Parker) and their alien guide (Bult) embark on a mapping expedition. To avoid any appearance of imperialistic insensitivity, the government has imposed strict rules on the surveyors and allows indigenous guides to fine them. Willis plays it mainly as a farce: Bult takes full advantage of the situation, coming up with creative fines and spending the proceeds on umbrellas, shower curtains, slot machines and the like. Parker prattles on about the bizarre mating habits of various species, while Fin and Carson bicker like an old married couple. It's all fairan old married couple. It's all fairly amusing, though by the end the story hasn't really gone anywhere--Willis ties up the loose ends and returns to the beginning with Fin and Carson resuming the spat over a lost pair of binoculars which they were having on page one. A pleasant diversion, but there's little for the reader to take away when she's done. <br />Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Planetary surveyors Fin and Carson battle hostile terrain, bureaucratic red tape, and renegade "planet crashers" in this latest novella by the talented author of Doomsday Book (LJ 5/15/92). Willis continues to demonstrate her endless versatility in this archly written satire, which is both a love story and a shameless expose of the dark side of political correctness. A first-rate purchase for sf collections.<br />Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>Product Description</strong></p><p><strong>An Italian antiquities squad discovers a woman's preserved corpse inside an ancient column. Pages torn from priceless manuscripts litter the floor of an abandoned warehouse. An illegal excavation burrows beneath Jerusalem's Dome of the rock, ground sacred to three religions.</strong></p><p>Jonathan Marcus a young American lawyer and a former doctoral student in classics, has become a sought-after commodity among antiguities dealers. But when he is summoned to Rome to examine a client's fragment of an ancient stone map, he stumbles across a startling secert: a hidden message carved inside the stone itself. The discovery propels him on a perilous journey from the labyrinth beneath the Colosseum to the biblical-era tunnels of Jerusalem in search of a hidden 2,000-year-old artifact sought by empires throughout the ages. As MArcus and a passionate UN preservationist, Dr. Emili Travia, dig more deeply into the past, they're stunned to discover not only an anicent intelligence operation to protect the artifact, but also a ruthless modern plot to destroy all trace of it by a mysterious radical bent on erasing every remnant of Jewish and Christian presence from the Temple Mount. With a cutting-edge plot as intricately layered as the ancient sites it explores, <em>The Last Ember</em> is a gripping thriller spanning the high-stakes worlds of archaeology, politics, and terrorism in its portrayal of the modern struggle to define--and redefine--history itself. </p><p><strong>Steve Berry and Daniel Levin on The Last Ember</strong>   </p><p><strong> Interview conducted by </strong></p><p><strong>Steve Berry:</strong> Let me say that <em>The Last Ember</em> is a winner. Secrets, history, conspiracies, adventures. Great stuff. Where did the idea come from? </p><p><strong>Daniel Levin: </strong> First of all, thanks – it’s an honor to hear that from someone like you. As for the story, the level of espionage in Rome and Greece has always fascinated me. I was a classics student and was surprised to discover loads of intrigue around every corner. So I thought, what if some of that came with modern consequences? </p><p><strong>SB: </strong> Worked for me. You really brought the ancient world alive. What about that corpse you describe in the opening pages of the novel? The one the Italian antiquities squad finds floating inside an ancient column. Great scene. Is that level of preservation possible? </p><p><strong>DL: </strong> Amazingly, it is. Embalming techniques in the ancient Roman world used amber and preservative oils. What got my imagination stirring was when I read a historical report that some 15th-century Roman masons once found a perfectly preserved ancient woman floating in an oil-filled sarcophagus. Now that’s a powerful image. </p><p><strong>SB: </strong> The illicit antiquities trade couldn’t be a timelier topic, especially with many museums currently investigating what artifacts in their collections may have been illegally obtained. Did current events affect your writing? </p><p><strong>DL: </strong> Absolutely. While I was researching in Rome, there was a case brought against the former curator of the Getty museum, which has one of the finest antiquities collections in the world. I attended the trial and listened to the Italian prosecutor’s opening arguments as to why many of the artifacts should be returned. Fascinating stuff to me, both as a writer and a lawyer. I ended up working much of that Italian courtroom atmosphere into the novel. </p><p><strong>SB: </strong> Did you actually research some illegal excavations? </p><p><strong>DL: </strong> I did, and the more I researched illegal excavations around the world, the more I started to see a pattern: some of the largest sites of archaeological destruction were damaged for purely political purposes – simply as a way to erase the past. That's when one of the novel’s themes began to take shape. What if someone was politically motivated to control not the future, but the past? </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p><em>Da Vinci Code</em> addicts will enjoy Levin's debut, a dense, complicated novel of religious suspense. Jonathan Marcus, classics scholar–turned–lawyer, is sucked back into his former life in archeology after becoming involved in an antiquities theft case his law firm is handling. A few minutes in the presence of a chunk of the ancient Roman Forum and a reunion with an old girlfriend from his student days, Dr. Emili Travia, and Jonathan is ready to cast off his three-piece suit and return to unearthing ancient subterranean mysteries. The prize this time is the 2,000-year-old Tabernacle menorah, eight feet of solid gold stolen from Herod's Temple in Jerusalem and hidden somewhere in Rome. The forces of evil are represented by Sheik Salah ad-Din, who seeks to find and destroy the menorah. The fevered pace slows only to deliver a multitude, perhaps too much of a multitude, of interesting historical factoids. <em>(Aug.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>John Grisham tackles nonfiction for the first time with <em>The Innocent Man</em>, a true tale about murder and injustice in a small town (that reads like one of his own bestselling novels). <em>The Innocent Man</em> chronicles the story of Ron Williamson, how he was arrested and charged with a crime he did not commit, how his case was (mis)handled and how an innocent man was sent to death row. Grisham's first work of nonfiction is shocking, disturbing, and enthralling--a must read for fiction and nonfiction fans. We had the opportunity to talk with John Grisham about the case and the book, read his responses below. <em>--Daphne Durham</em></p><hr /><p><strong> 20 Second Interview: A Few Words with John Grisham</strong>  </p><p><strong>Q:</strong> After almost two decades of writing fiction, what compelled you to write non-fiction, particularly investigative journalism?<br /><strong>A:</strong> I was never tempted to write non-fiction, primarily because it's too much work. However, obviously, I love a good legal thriller, and the story of Ron Williamson has all the elements of a great suspenseful story.  </p><p><strong>Q:</strong> Why this case?<br /><strong>A:</strong> Ron Williamson and I are about the same age and we both grew up in small towns in the south. We both dreamed of being major league baseball players. Ron had the talent, I did not. When he left a small town in 1971 to pursue his dreams of major league glory, many thought he would be the next Mickey Mantle, the next great one from the state of Oklahoma. The story of Ron ending up on Death Row and almost being executed for a murder he did not commit was simply too good to pass up.  </p><p><strong>Q:</strong> How did you go about your research?<br /><strong>A:</strong> I started with his family. Ron is survived by two sisters who took care of him for most of his life. They gave me complete access to the family records, photographs, Ron's mental health records, and so on. There was also a truckload of trial transcripts, depositions, appeals, etc., that took about 18 months to organize and review. Many of the characters in the story are still alive and I traveled to Oklahoma countless times to interview them.  </p><p><strong>Q:</strong> Did your training as a lawyer help you?<br /><strong>A:</strong> Very much so. It enabled me to understand the legal issues involved in Ron's trial and his appeals. It also allowed me, as it always does, to be able to speak the language with lawyers and judges.  </p><p><strong>Q:</strong> Throughout your book you mention, <em>The Innocent Man</em>?<br /><strong>A:</strong> Several of the people in Oklahoma I met mentioned <em>The Dreams of Ada</em> to me, and I read it early on in the process. It is an astounding book, a great example of true crime writing, and I relied upon it heavily during my research. Robert Mayer, the author, was completely cooperative, and kept meticulous notes from his research 20 years earlier. Many of the same characters are involved in his story and mine.  </p><p><strong>Q:</strong> You take on some pretty controversial and heated topics in your book--the death penalty, prisoner’s rights, DNA analysis, police conduct, and more--were any of your own beliefs challenged by this story and its outcome?<br /><strong>A:</strong> None were challenged, but my eyes were open to the world of wrongful convictions. Even as a former criminal defense attorney, I had never spent much time worrying about wrongful convictions. But, unfortunately, they happen all the time in this country, and with increasing frequency.  </p><p><strong>Q:</strong> So many of the key players in this case are either still in office or practicing attorneys. Many family members and friends still live in the same small town. How do you think <em>The Innocent Man</em> will impact this community and other small rural towns as they struggle with the realities of the justice system? <br /><strong>A:</strong> Exonerations seem to be happening weekly. And with each one of them, the question is asked--how can an innocent man be convicted and kept in prison for 20 years? My book is the story of only one man, but it is a good example of how things can go terribly wrong with our judicial system. I have no idea how the book will be received in the small town of Ada, Oklahoma, or any other town.  </p><p><strong>Q:</strong> What do you hope your readers will take away from <em>The Innocent Man</em>?<br /><strong>A:</strong> A better understanding of how innocent people can be convicted, and a greater concern for the need to reimburse and rehabilitate innocent men after they have been released.  </p><hr /><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Grisham's first work of nonfiction focuses on the tragedy of Ron Williamson, a baseball hero from a small town in Oklahoma who winds up a dissolute, mentally unstable Major League washout railroaded onto death row for a hometown rape and murder he did not commit. Judging by this author-approved abridgment, Grisham has chosen to present Williamson's painful story (and that of his equally innocent "co-conspirator," Dennis Fritz) as straightforward journalism, eschewing the more familiar "nonfiction novel" approach with its reconstructed dialogues and other adjustments for dramatic purpose. This has resulted in a book that, while it includes such intriguing elements as murder, rape, detection and judicial injustice, consists primarily of objective reportage, albeit shaded by the now-proven fact of Williamson's innocence. The absence of dialogue or character point of view could make for a rather bland audio. Boutsikaris avoids that by reverting to what might be called old-fashioned round-the-campfire storytelling, treating the lengthy exposition to vocal interpretations, subtle and substantial. He narrates the events leading up to the 1982 rape and murder of a young cocktail waitress with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity, moving on to astonishment at the prosecution's use of deceit and false testimony to convict Williamson and Fritz and, eventually, elation at the exoneration of the two innocent men. Throughout, he maintains an appealing conversational tone, an effect made all the more remarkable by the book's nearly total absence of conversation. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>The Real Story</em> is a short but intense tale set in a future in which humans travel between the stars using "gap drives," controllable brain implants are punishable by death, and a private company called the United Mining Company runs law enforcement for all of known space. Ensign Morn Hyland lives aboard a police ship with most of her family, chasing down pirates and other illegals who prey on the weak or smuggle goods into forbidden space. </p><p>Through a strange turn of events, one particularly nasty perpetrator ends up with Morn as his companion--or at least that's the way it appears to the folks at the space station's bar. Why would a young, strong, beautiful police officer associate with a crusty, murdering pirate? People watch with interest as Morn appears to fall in lust with another racy illegal, Captain Nick Succorso. Morn and Nick must have plotted together to frame Angus and escape together, right? But the <em>real</em> story was quite different. </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Donaldson ( The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant ) launches his new five-book series with a short futurist novel of almost no substance. The plot is presented in its entirety in the first chapter: Robin Hoodish space pirate Nick Succorso cleverly steals the beautiful female prisoner Morn Hyland from the brute space pirate Angus Thermopyle, and has him thrown in jail. The rest of the book retells the same story in more detail. But it is mightily dull detail--Donaldson imparts neither warmth or humanity to his characters; it is all but impossible to care what befalls them. Information about their backgrounds serves as mere padding; their pasts rarely bear a relationship to their current actions, which often seem rash or out-of-character. Nor does the author delve far into the technology or culture of the society in which faster-than-light travel afflicts some with irreparable brain damage. A Zone Implant can turn such a person into a zombie, to protect his shipmates, but is otherwise illegal. From high technicalities to simple human truths, Donaldson has much to develop in sequels. <br />Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<div><p class="description">Murder at Mansfield Park is a witty and clever reimagining of Jane Austen's much-loved novel Mansfield Park. But in this Mansfield Park, things have changed ... Formerly Austen's meekest heroine, Fanny Price has become not only an heiress to an extensive fortune but also a heartless, scheming minx. Hiding her true character behind a demure facade, Fanny is indeed betrothed to Edmund, now Mrs Norris's stepson; but do the couple really love each other? Henry and Mary Crawford arrive in the country ready to wreak havoc with their fast city ways, but this time Henry Crawford is troubled by a suspicious past while his sister, Mary, steps forward in the best Austen style to become an unexpected heroine. Meanwhile, tragedy strikes the safe and solid grand house as it becomes the scene of violence. Every member of the family falls under suspicion and the race begins to halt a ruthless murderer. Funny and sharp, Murder at Mansfield Park is simply a delight to read.</p>
<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Mary Crawford, a minor character in Mansfield Park, takes center stage in Shepherd's debut, a clever reworking of the Austen novel that's strong on plot, character, and historical accuracy. Shepherd has altered Austen's characters, some beyond recognition. Most notably, meek and unassuming Fanny Price has become "a monster of complacency and pride" in Kingsley Amis's phrase borrowed from his essay on Jane Austen. Mary, whose cheerful disposition and wit ensure her acceptance at Mansfield Park, suffers much at Fanny's hands. When Fanny turns up dead in a trench on the park grounds, an apparent victim of foul play, a horrified Mary winds up playing detective. While mystery fans will find much to like, it is Austenites who will be most gratified, particularly by how well Shepherd has captured the tone of Austen's original. For anyone who thought Henry Crawford deserved Fanny or who has a problem with vampires and ghouls invading Jane Austen's world, this will be a delight. <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"[Fanny Price is] a monster of complacency and pride...under a cloak of cringing self-abasement." --Kingsley Amis, author of _What Became of Jane Austen? And Other Questions<br>_</p>

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Meet Stevie Duveen: striking, brilliant, gifted in seven languages and all kinds of combat - and strategic analyst for Hazard Ltd, an international trouble-shooting outfit specialising in discreet and very dangerous missions. Surprise is her most effective weapon, apart from her fierce intellect, unflagging determination and razor-sharp intuition. And something even the most battle-scarred operative lacks: she cares, sometimes too much. Which is why she is nursing a broken heart and telling herself she will never fall in love again. Called to Moscow by an old friend to assess the security risk to the head of the Russian Central Bank, she arrives to find the find the bank regulator's teenage daughter has been kidnapped. Valery Kozcov has been a fearless crusader against widespread corruption in Russia and organised crime's infiltration of the government - and now his enemies are retaliating with deadly force. What they are demanding of him is unthinkable - but they have his beloved Anya. And they will stop at nothing to silence him. Stevie uncovers unspeakable evil as she penetrates the very heart of the Russian mafia and finds herself caught up in the terrifying world of people trafficking and sex slavery. From the murky alleys of Moscow to forests blanketed in mid-winter snow to Switzerland's exclusive alpine resorts, Stevie tries to stay one step ahead of danger as she edges ever closer to Anya and the terrible fate awaiting her.


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>A complex, smart mystery filled with intrigue, drama, and more than a little danger awaits in Stephen L. Carter's engaging debut novel, <em>The Emperor of Ocean Park</em>. After the funeral of his powerful father (a federal judge whose nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court became a public scandal), Talcott Garland, an African American law professor at an Ivy League university, is left to unravel the meaning of a cryptic note and carry out "the arrangements" his father left behind. Armed with fortitude and familial devotion--though paranoid of his wife's fidelity--Talcott soon finds himself in an investigation that entangles him with a number of questionable Washington, D.C., denizens, including attorneys and government officials, law professors, the FBI, shady underworld figures, chess masters, and friends and family. All the while Talcott tries not to hurt his attorney wife's chance for a judicial nomination--and their fragile marriage--but the closer he comes to unraveling his father's dark secrets, the more dangerous things become. </p><p>Clocking in at over 650 pages, the novel could easily have been streamlined; many of Talcott's thoughts are unnecessarily repeated. But Carter's storytelling skills are adept: tension builds, surprises are genuine, clues are not handed out freely. The prose, while somewhat meandering, can be crisp and insightful, as demonstrated in Carter's description of the misguided paths of young attorneys who sacrifice </p><blockquote><p>all on the altar of career... at last arriving... at their cherished career goals, partnerships, professorships, judgeships, whatever kind of ships they dream of sailing, and then looking around at the angry, empty waters and realizing that they have arrived with nothing, absolutely nothing, and wondering what to do with the rest of their wretched lives.</p></blockquote><p><em>--Michael Ferch</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Carter, a Yale law professor and distinguished conservative African-American intellectual known for his nonfiction (The Culture of Disbelief), has written a first-rate legal thriller guaranteed to broaden his audience. The narrator, Talcott Garland, is a law professor at Elm Harbor University whose occasional Carteresque editorializing about politics and justice are saved from didacticism by his abiding existential loneliness. The mystery at the heart of the novel stems from Tal's father's disgrace: Judge Oliver Garland (a Robert Bork meets Clarence Thomas type) was nominated by Ronald Reagan for a Supreme Court seat, but brought down in the Senate hearings when it was revealed that he had a friendship with Jack Ziegler, a wild-card former CIA agent now rumored to be an organized crime kingpin. When the judge dies of what looks like a heart attack and Ziegler turns up at his funeral, Tal is initiated into a quest to uncover mysterious "arrangements" his father made in the event of his untimely demise. Various shady entities observe Tal chasing down the judge's clues, which include a cryptic note ("you have little time.... Excelsior! It begins!") and derive from chess strategy. Meanwhile, Talcott is going through a rough patch: his wife, Kimmer, a high-powered attorney, is probably cheating on him, his Elm Harbor law school colleagues are suspicious of him and a fake FBI man is following him around. As Talcott digs deeper, he uncovers a vein of corruption that runs all the way to the top, and his own life becomes threatened. This thriller, which touches electrically on our sexual, racial and religious anxieties, will be the talk of the political in-crowd this summer. <br />Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>In this tight, suspenseful tale of a race against the clock to get a confession out of the chief suspect in the death of young Cathy Lake, every cop has his own private burden, his own reason for wanting to crack Albert Jay Smalls wide open and confirm him as the killer. Jack Pierce has the memory of his own murdered daughter and the promise he made to Cathy's mother. Norman Cohen has the vision of the terrible things he saw at the liberation of a concentration camp, the certain knowledge of the presence of evil in the world. Thomas Burke, the chief of police, has a dying son who's been dead to him for a long time.</p><p>Cook weaves the tragedies of all their lives almost seamlessly into the last 12 hours of their interrogation of the suspect; when it's over, if there's no confession, they must let Smalls go. This suspenseful thriller showcases Cook's skill at interpreting the psychological complexities of his well-drawn characters and his ability to turn an otherwise ordinary police procedural into a tense, haunting, and resonant novel. <em>--Jane Adams</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Did Albert Jay Smalls strangle eight-year-old Cathy Lake to death on a rainy afternoon in 1952? Two police detectives have 11 hours to find out before Smalls is released. The Edgar-winning Cook makes the most of that brief period of time, not only braiding the intricate elements of the crime but laying open the secretive, troubled lives of at least half a dozen characters. The case against Smalls is thin no witnesses, no physical evidence. A homeless vagrant who lived in a tunnel not far from where Cathy's body was found, he's been in custody for more than a week. No one has been able to crack his denial of the murder, but detectives Jack Pierce and Norman Cohen sense he's hiding something. Employing flashbacks and parallel action while in the interrogation frame, Cook adroitly weaves back and forth between the crime itself, the subsequent investigation and the halting questioning of the suspect. More compelling, however, is his portrayal of how the crime affects Pierce and Cohen, as well as several secondary characters. Pierce, for example, is a man driven by rage: his own daughter was murdered six years earlier and her case went unsolved. Cohen, who conducts most of the questioning while Pierce plows into Smalls's past, is still numb from what he saw in Germany as a soldier. Down to the cleverly hatched, melancholy ending, Cook (The Chatham School Affair; Places in the Dark) again takes readers down a dark, treacherous road into the heart of human fallibility and struggle. <br />Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Christian Gillette's second outing in financial thrillerland finds Chris heading Manhattan-based investment firm Everest Capitol after his boss was murdered in the series debut, <em>The Chairman</em>. Everest is a huge success, as is Chris, though disaster looms from early on as Chris's right-hand-man, David Wright (the title protégé), has accidentally killed a prostitute in the course of a heavy session: "He kept replaying that awful scene in the bondage chamber in his mind. His foot hitting the block of wood, the awful sound of her neck snapping like a brand new Ticonderoga pencil between two thumbs." As the chapters march by, readers will find themselves swamped with questions: Why do government spies want to involve Chris in a secret nanotechnology scheme? What really happened when his father died in a plane crash? Will the Mafia infiltrate Chris's new Las Vegas NFL franchise operation? Will his romance with superstar pop singer Faith Cassidy fail? And many, far too many, more, though it is to Frey's credit that he is able to hold all these plots together and knit the tangled threads into coherence by the action-packed end. Multibillion-dollar deals and snappy financial jargon help fill things out, but readers looking for more than a quick payoff will have to seek gratification elsewhere. <em>(On sale Dec. 27)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>In Frey's <em>The Chairman</em> (2005),__Christian Gillette took over Everest, a multibillion--dollar private equity firm and brought it to new heights of fame and fortune. Here, Gillette continues his quest for financial domination but, at the same time, begins to consider life outside Everest--especially his love for his pop-star girlfriend--and contemplates the process of choosing an heir-apparent. But just who should his protege be? He settles on David Wright, a young gun with proven talent who always aims to please. What Gillette doesn't know, however, is that Wright has another agenda, one not of his own making but rather a fait accompli set in motion when one night of wild sex goes terribly wrong. Frey tells a fine story, but he dresses it up a bit too much with over-the-top plot twists. Still, when it comes to high-finance intrigue, this series continues to look good on the bottom line. <em>Mary Frances Wilkens</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>A murder in the Philippines, a kidnapping in Thailand, grand theft auto in Singapore: just another day at the office for CF Wong. No, he's not a detective, he's a feng shui master, and he'd much rather just get paid, go home, put his feet up, and leave solving crimes to someone who cares. But that's just not going to happen. CF and his assistant, Joyce, are on a business trip around the Asia Pacific and wherever they go, their unique way of getting to the bottom of the most perplexing cases seems to be needed. Baffling crimes, ingenious schemes, exotic locations and bucket-loads of charm. The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook is Vittachi at his witty, original best.</p>


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After a demanding book tour, superstar mystery novelist Grace McCabe decides to visit her sister, Kathleen, whors"s embroiled in a custody battle after a bitter divorce. Arriving in D.C., Grace is shocked to find Kathleen living in a run-down neighborhood and, hoping to afford a hotshot lawyer, supplementing her meager teacherrs"s salary by moonlighting as a phone sex operator. According to Kathleen, Fantasy, Inc., guarantees its employees ironclad anonymity. But Grace has her doubts-which are confirmed one horrifying cherry-blossom-scented night when one of Fantasy, Inc.rs"s operators is murdered. As Grace is drawn to help solve the crime, her life turns into a scene from one of her own books. Yet as one of her biggest fans, investigator Ed Jackson, warns her: This isnrs"t fiction. Real people die-and Grace could be next. For shers"s setting a trap for a killer more twisted than anything she could imagine. And not even Ed may be able to protect her from a rendezvous with lust and death.


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<p class="description"><meta charset="utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; ">This anthology features some of the most famous authors writing at the peak of their careers! Volume four of Master of Noir has the following ten great stories: THE PICKPOCKET by MICKEY SPILLANE, I DON'T FOOL AROUND by LAWRENCE BLOCK, MAN WITH A SHIV by RICHARD WORMSER, THE FLOATER by JONATHAN CRAIG, SWAMP SEARCH by HARRY WHITTINGTON, FACE OF EVIL by DAVID ALEXANDER, TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF by WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT, THE FAST LINE by ART CROCKETT, CRIME OF PASSION by RICHARD S. PRATHER, and LUST SONG by STUART FRIEDMAN</span></p>


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<p class="description"><meta charset="utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; "><div class="bucket" id="productDescription" style="padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 0em; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0em; "><div class="content" style="padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 15px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-left: 25px; "><h3 class="productDescriptionSource" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 1.23em; font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.375em; margin-left: -15px; clear: both; ">Product Description</h3><div class="productDescriptionWrapper" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">This anthology features some of the most famous authors writing at the peak of their careers! Volume three of Master of Noir has the following ten great stories: THE KILLERS by JOHN D. MACDONALD, ATTACK by ED McBAIN, JUST WINDOW SHOPPING by LAWRENCE BLOCK, SIX FINGERS by HAL ELLSON, STRANGER IN THE HOUSE by THEODORE PRATT, MAY I COME IN? by FLETCHER FLORA, COP FOR A DAY by HENRY SLESAR, PRECISE MOMENT by HENRY KANE, GRAVEYARD SHIFT by STEVE FRAZEE, BAIT FOR THE RED-HEAD by EUGENE PAWLEY<div class="emptyClear" style="clear: both; height: 0px; font-size: 0px; "></div></div><div><br></div></div></div><a name="productDetails" id="productDetails"></a></span></p>


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<p class="description"><meta charset="utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; "><div class="content" style="padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 15px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-left: 25px; "><h3 class="productDescriptionSource" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 1.23em; font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.375em; margin-left: -15px; clear: both; ">Product Description</h3><div class="productDescriptionWrapper" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">Another walk on the wild side! In this series of collections of gritty Noir and Hardboiled stories, you'll find some of the best writers of the craft writing in their prime. The following stories are included in this second volume of Masters of Noir: GREEN EYES by HAL ELLSON, BIG STEAL by FRANK KANE, NECKTIE PARTY by ROBERT TURNER, THE PURPLE COLLAR by JONATHAN CRAIG, I DON'T FOOL AROUND by CHARLES JACKSON, NICE BUNCH OF GUYS by MICHAEL FESSIER, FLOWERS TO THE FAIR by CRAIG RICE, DIE LIKE A DOG by DAVID ALEXANDER, BUILD ANOTHER COFFIN by HAROLD Q. MASUR, SOMEBODY'S GOING TO DIE by TALMAGE POWELL.</div></div></span></p>


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<p class="description"><meta charset="utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; "><h3 class="productDescriptionSource" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 1.23em; font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.375em; margin-left: -15px; clear: both; ">Product Description</h3><div class="productDescriptionWrapper" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">A walk on the wild side! In this series of collections of gritty Noir and Hardboiled stories, you’ll find some of the best writers of the craft writing in their prime. The following stories are included in this first volume of Masters of Noir: IDENTITY UNKNOWN by JONATHAN CRAIG, THE GIRL BEHIND THE HEDGE by MICKEY SPILLANE, CARRERA'S WOMAN by ED McBAIN writing as RICHARD MARSTEN, BUTCHER by RICHARD S. PRATHER, LOOK DEATH IN THE EYE by LAWRENCE BLOCK, ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON by GIL BREWER, FRAME by FRANK KANE, DOUBLE by BRUNO FISCHER, and AS I LIE DEAD by FLETCHER FLORA.</div></span></p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Keeping secrets leads to calamitous consequences in Morris's disturbing domestic thriller. At age 17, Nora Trimble has a dangerous eight-day summer escapade with psycho boyfriend Eddie Hawkins that ends in a violent incident in a bar. Twenty-six years later, Nora is the happy wife of wealthy Kendall Ken Hammond, co-owner of a smalltown Massachusetts newspaper, and the devoted mother of two teens. Her world's turned upside down by Eddie's shocking reappearance and Ken's revelation that he's been having an adulterous relationship for four years with his childhood sweetheart Robin Gendron, his best friend's wife. Nora must contend with not only marital woes but the blackmailing serial killer Eddie, who refuses to leave town because of his new obsession—Robin. Morris (_The Lost Mother_) knocks over a domino chain of events that, while not too surprising, confirm the importance of comprehending past mistakes to avoid future ones. <em>(Apr.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>One assumes that a woman who marries into a family of privilege has the world on a string. Nora Hammond felt that way about her own life. Married with two teenage children, a prominent job at her husband’s family newspaper, socializing with the wealthy and powerful, Nora was living her picture-perfect life—until her husband, Ken, reveals he has been having a “relationship” with one of Nora’s best friends for years. What follows is a wrenching portrait of a family falling apart under the weight and ramifications of the affair and their futile struggle to stay together. As if this wasn’t emotionally compelling enough, Morris, unfortunately, adds a subplot—a man from Nora’s past comes back to haunt her. It is unnecessary, distracting, and at times ruins the psychological arc Morris works to build. In the end, Morris ties the stories together, but it feels forced and unsatisfying. Those who follow this highly regarded author will want to read The Last Secret; those new to Morris should start with an earlier title. --Carolyn Kubisz </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>What happens when a 43-year-old man returns to live in his hometown after serving a 25-year prison sentence for murder? That is the dramatic question at the center of this fifth novel by Morris (Songs in Ordinary Time; A Dangerous Woman). A contemporary Rip Van Winkle, Gordon Loomis returns to the home he left at age 18 to find a deteriorating neighborhood, overrun by drug dealers and mired in poverty. Gordon's brother, Dennis, sister-in-law Lisa and loyal friend Delores can all forgive Gordon for his crime, but he can't forgive himself. Though expertly drawn, Gordon is an enigmatic figure. Is he a bland and dull-witted giant ("three hundred and fifty pounds, six and a half feet tall") who just wants to be left alone or a paragon of virtue? Is Gordon's interference in his brother's marriage wrongheaded meddling or blessed intervention? When he aids Jada, a teenage neighbor whose mother is a junkie, is he asking for trouble or lifting up an oppressed and innocent child? Because he is a known ex-convict, Gordon becomes the neighborhood scapegoat, punished for his good deeds by those he seeks to help and protect. Only besotted Delores believes wholeheartedly in Gordon's goodness. Though Delores does eventually win Gordon's affection, he is alternately repulsed and comforted by her desperate loneliness and overeager attempts to help other people. Once again, Morris scores with her sympathetic portrayals of hard-to-like heroes and hopelessly floundering outcasts, infusing them with humanity. The plot picks up pace toward the end, reaching a fevered pitch as Gordon faces new (and unfounded) accusations, and the novel comes to a redemptive but satisfying and believable conclusion. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Gordon Loomis, 43, imprisoned for 25 years for his participation in a robbery-murder, is released on parole. Instead of starting with a blank slate, he opts to return to his old neighborhood in Dearborn, Massachusetts, which is now decayed and drug-ridden. Gordon's principal edict is to lie low and not get too involved with the police, his family, or Delores, the friend who faithfully visited him all those years. Gordon spurns his brother's attempts to help him get a job, afraid of the inevitable reaction when his identity is discovered. His fears are justified when job offers are suddenly withdrawn, and elderly neighbors cringe at his offers of assistance. Suffocated by dread and lingering guilt, Gordon can barely cope with life outside prison walls, and Delores' intrusive attention and the obvious need of a pathetic neighbor, forced by her mother to deal drugs, are more than he can bear. Morris has previously established her affinity for the misfits of the world. Her empathy for Gordon and his supporting characters in this novel, her fifth, is palpable, leaving the reader in awe of her uncanny ability to capture and convey each personality's unique essence. <em>Deborah Donovan</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>_</p><p>100,000 years ago, the galaxy was populated by a great variety of beings. </p><p>But one species--eons beyond all others in both technology and knowledge--achieved dominance.  </p><p>They ruled in peace but met opposition with quick and brutal effectiveness. </p><p>They were the Forerunners--the keepers of the Mantle, the next stage of life in the Universe’s Living Time.</p><p>And then they vanished. </p><p>This is their story.</p><p>_</p><p>__ </p><p><em>Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting</em> is a young rebellious Forerunner. He is a Manipular, untried--yet to become part of the adult Forerunner society, where vast knowledge and duty waits. He comes from a family of Builders, the Forerunners’ highest and most politically powerful rate. It is the Builders who create the grand technology that facilitates Forerunner dominance over the known universe.  It is the Builders who believe they must shoulder the greatest burden of the Mantle--as shepherds and guardians of all life.</p><p>Bornstellar is marked to become a great Builder just like his father. </p><p>But this Manipular has other plans. </p><p>He is obsessed with lost treasures of the past. His reckless passion to seek out the marvelous artifacts left behind by the Precursors--long-vanished superbeings of unknowable power and intent---forces his father’s hand. </p><p>Bornstellar is sent to live among the Miners, where he must come to terms with where his duty truly lies. </p><p>But powerful forces are at play.  Forerunner society is at a major crux. Past threats are once again proving relentless. Dire solutions--machines and strategies never before contemplated--are being called up, and fissures in Forerunner power are leading to chaos.</p><p>On a Lifeworker’s experimental planet, Bornstellar’s rebellious course crosses the paths of two humans, and the long lifeline of a great military leader, forever changing Bornstellar’s destiny …and the fate of the entire galaxy.</p><p>This is a tale of life, death, intergalactic horror, exile, and maturity. It is a story of overwhelming change--and of human origins.  For the Mantle may not lie upon the shoulders of Forerunners forever.   </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Greg Bear is a multiple Nebula and Hugo award-winning author whose works have been celebrated for their vision, scope, intensity, and sheer drama. His novels include his newest, Moving Mars, Queen of Angels, The Forge of God, Eon, Eternity, and Blood Music. He lives in Washington State. </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>There are some strong entries in this depressing all-original anthology of 17 stories involving the always powerful, often destructive, effects of cocaine use. The editors call cocaine "the scourge of our times" in their introduction, and that judgment is evident whether the story is about a user, a dealer or someone simply caught up in someone else's thrall to the drug. Some tales offer a macabre sense of humor, such as Lee Child's "Ten Keys," in which a drug courier rips off a shipment, and Laura Lippman's "The Crack Cocaine Habit," in which two white girls venture into a bad neighborhood to make a buy. Children are the focus of Kerry E. West's shocking "Shame," about a kid who copes with her mother's habit and the world's indifference. Another child is the victim of her mother's habit in Nina Revoyr's highly effective "Golden Pacific." James Brown's sobering "The Screenwriter" details the rise and cocaine-induced fall of a screenwriter. Other contributors include editors Phillips and Tervalon, Ken Bruen, Bill Moody and Manuel Ramos. None of the stories glamorize cocaine, but some do exhibit what the editors call "scary charms." <em>(Apr.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>NOTHING TO SNORT AT, this ambitious anthology of jaw-grinding criminal behavior is masterfully curated by acclaimed authors Phillips and Tervalon. Cocaine, that most troubling and fascinating of substances is the subject, the subtext, the whys and whereofs in COCAINE CHRONICLES, a collection of original short stories that are funny and harrowing, sad and scary, but at all times riveting. COCAINE CHRONICLES contains tough tales by a cross-section of today's most thought-provoking writers. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>A call to a Peeping Tom incident starts Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman on his strangest case yet in this nicely low-key but compelling page-turner. True, the Iowa lawman encountered Satanists in his debut, Eleven Days (1998), but the perp described hanging in thin air outside the upper story window looks like Bela Lugosi. When a body drained of blood is reported in a rural mansion, Houseman realizes this investigation isn't going to be routine, or easy. More bodies pile up, in Iowa and across the Mississippi in Wisconsin (with a fellow cop noting, "Vampire. Suspect that weird has to be from your side of the river"). Police radio chatter "Ten-four, Comm. 'I'll be ten-seventy-six to the scene'" and details of the manhunt could not be more authentic, since the author (Known Dead; The Big Thaw) spent 26 years in law enforcement. He even includes a glossary of ten codes for the curious. With laconic masterstrokes, Harstad complicates his plot with the arrival on the scene of a professional vampire hunter, problems with a disgruntled subordinate and Houseman's introduction to the sexual underworld of blood sports. Series regulars such as investigator Hester Gorse and Old Knockle do their turns, with officer Sally Wells copping the funniest moments why not bring some garlic on the stake-out, just in case? The suspect is supposed to be a vampire. Harstad has crafted another engrossing entry in one of the best new police procedural series. <br />Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Carl Houseman, primary detective for the Nation County Sheriff's Department, is called out to the apparent suicide of his boss's niece. After a careful crime scene investigation and a thorough autopsy, it is clear that Edie Younger could not have cut her own throat. The wound is very similar to that of a young man found dead in nearby Wisconsin. To complicate matters, the dead man's girlfriend had reported seeing a vampire-like creature outside her window. As Houseman and Iowa State Special Agent Hester Gorse grapple with people who actually believe that one of them is a real vampire, the story becomes a picture-perfect police procedural. Everything is here the painstaking search for evidence, the questioning of suspects and witnesses, the hours spent in the rain on stakeout, and the attention to the rules of law. This fourth book in the series by Harstad, a former deputy sheriff with 26 years of experience, is packed with suspense, heart-stopping action, and haunting scenes. For all fiction collections. Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-Univ. P.L., Ohio<br />Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Donald Harstad was an Iowa deputy sheriff for 26 years, and only retired so that he could pursue his passion for writing. His first book was a well-received police mystery, __. The same solid foundation of experience anchors Harstad's second mystery about Iowa deputy sheriff Carl Houseman, a sharp and likable 50-year-old with weight and blood pressure problems and strong opinions on every aspect of policing.</p><p><em>Known Dead</em> begins with the murder of a state narcotics agent killed on Houseman's Nation County turf while staking out a marijuana patch. Blasts of gunfire from a band of mysterious shooters take out the agent and one local smalltime dealer. Then, while various federal and state agencies wrestle for control of the case, two more Nation County cops are shot down at the farm of a local extremist with links to a large militant group. As the resourceful Houseman tries to connect the shootings and keep some of the investigation in his own office, we learn all sorts of information about guns, bullets, trajectories, stakeouts, interagency rivalries, and the eating habits of cops of all kinds--taken no doubt from the author's lively memory and imagination. <em>--Dick Adler</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>There's a solid core of experience and acquired wisdom in this second mystery (after the well-received Eleven Days) from Harstad, a 26-year veteran of the Clayton County Sheriff's Department in northeastern Iowa. There are also some shortcomings, most notably narrative padding and a tendency toward cuteness. Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman is a sharp, likable 50-year-old Iowan with weight and blood-pressure problems (which get mentioned too often), and strong opinions on every aspect of policingAincluding a hatred for the special prayer called "The Lord Is My Shepherd, He Rides in My Patrol Car" that is recited at cop funerals. Readers first encounter the prayer at the services for an Iowa narcotics agent killed on Houseman's Nation County turf while staking out a marijuana patch in a state park. Blasts of gunfire from mysterious shooters take out the agent and a smalltime dealer. While various federal and state agencies wrestle for control of the case and Harstad overwhelms readers with reams of ballistic evidence, two more Nation County cops are shot down at the farm of a local extremist with links to a large militant group. Between seemingly endless sessions of drinking coffeeAdescribed sip-by-sipAand eating everything from doughnuts to fat-free wieners, Houseman tries to connect the shootings and keep some of the glory for his own office, even as the author provides welcome information on how surveillance helicopters can tell the good guys from the bad guys in the dark (the good guys wear little chemical badges that give off heat). Overall, the novel's a good one and Houseman's an appealing hero, but both book and cop carry excess fat. (July) <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>This is the second and final work of Bruno Schulz, the acclaimed Polish writer killed by the Nazis during World War II. In the words of Isaac Bashevis Singer, "What he did in his short life was enough to make him one of the most remarkable writers who ever lived." Weaving myth, fantasy, and reality, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, is, to quote Schulz, "an attempt at eliciting the history of a certain family . . . by a search for the mythical sense, the essential core of that history." </p><h3>Language Notes</h3><p>Text: English (translation)<br />Original Language: Polish </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Hambly's brilliantly crafted eighth historical (after 2003's <em>Days of the Dead</em>) brings the antebellum South so alive you could swear the author traveled back in time to observe her settings firsthand. One day a week the slaves of New Orleans gather at Circus Square (aka Congo Square): "Those who had garden plots sold their surplus produce: tomatoes and corn… and peaches whose scent turned the thick hot air around them to molten gold." Series hero Benjamin January, a former slave, and his gracious wife Rose own a fine home in which they've begun a school to educate young girls of color. But when the president of the bank where all the Januarys' money has been deposited comes to them and confides that a bank employee has cleaned out the coffers, the pair have only one choice: follow the thief and recover the money before a substantial payment is due on their mortgage. Enlisting the aid of their cultured and charming white ne'er-do-well friend, Hannibal Sefton, the two pose as Hannibal's slaves/servants and board a steamboat heading up the Mississippi River. On the boat, they find themselves amid slave runners, abolitionists and a host of interesting, unsavory and downright terrifying individuals. So when their quarry is transformed into a corpse, it's no wonder the trio have no idea who might be trusted. This riveting novel of suspense is sure to win Hambly many new fans. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>The latest entry in the deservedly popular Benjamin January series finds the amateur sleuth investigating a couple of mysteries. The bank that holds all his money has suddenly and suspiciously collapsed, and someone has apparently put a curse on a former student in the small school operated by January's wife, Rose. Just goes to show: New Orleans, circa 1836, is a wild and dangerous place. The January novels--this is the eighth since 1997--are solid mysteries, but most readers are not tuning in for the plots. Perhaps because she started out writing sf and fantasy novels (and still keeps her hand in the genre), the author has a sure grasp of the art of writing historical fiction, and the novels in this series are clever mixtures of scholarship and imagination. Where many writers of historical mysteries get bogged down in exposition, or in cataloging details that most readers are not interested in, Hambly keeps things moving, always focused on her characters and her story, and not on showing off the quantity of research she's done. Keep 'em coming! <em>David Pitt</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>The Humanx Commonwealth is Alan Dean Foster's signature fictional universe, the setting of, among others, his Adventures of Flinx series (which begins with __) and the Icerigger trilogy. But how did the Commonwealth come to be? How did two seemingly dissimilar races--the gregarious, warm-blooded humans and the reserved, insectile thranx--form a union that would become so strong and prosperous as to eventually dominate our part of the galaxy?</p><p>The actual first contact between the humans and the thranx takes place in the quite exciting __, but you don't have to have read that novel to follow what happens in <em>Phylogenesis</em>. In this book, which takes place soon after the first contact, the races have embarked on a program of slow, careful cultural exchange. If all goes well, the planners feel, in some decades a few tentative agreements might be reached. But they never planned on the chance meeting of a rogue thranx poet and a human thief who's hiding in the Amazon jungle. The events that surround the friendship of these two, each an outcast from his own society, will force scientists and politicians of both races to alter not only their plans but also their beliefs about human/thranx compatibility.</p><p>Foster makes excellent use of his knowledge of Latin American culture to paint a picture of a vibrant yet realistic future South America. The Amazon jungle is presented in such vivid detail it seems almost an alien world itself. Fans of the Commonwealth novels won't want to miss this crucial chapter in its history. <em>--Brooks Peck</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Some centuries in the future come the earliest days of contact between humans and the insect-like thranx. Both species carefully try to keep contact in the hands of approved experts, but the thranx have slipped a covert base into the Amazon rain forest. Desvendapur, a thranx poet obsessed with finding new sources of inspiration through contact with humans, escapes from this base into the jungle. There he encounters Cheelo Montoya, a small-time gangster fleeing a mugging that turned into a murder, a man with no poetry in his soul but abundant street smarts. Their initial misunderstandings and suspicion give way to cooperation, and then to friendship after the two survive an encounter with deadly poachers. The author of more than 40 novels, Foster does a fine job with his misfit heroes and even with his minor characters (such as the reptilian AAnn). He shows his usual mastery of narrative pacing and slips in a great deal of wry wit (the sexiness of a female thranx depends on the slenderness of her ovipositors). The novel will be a treat for those who have followed Foster's tales of the Humanx Commonwealth, to which this is a kind of prelude and which began way back in 1972 with The Tar-Aiym Krang, and can also serve as a splendid introduction to both the Commonwealth and its creator. <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Flinx and his feisty minidrag, Pip, reunite with old friends for one final slam-bang universe rescue in the 14th title of one of science fiction's longest running series. After the devastating events of 2008's <em>Quofum</em>, Flinx is at his most self-destructive. His malaise is compounded by his knowledge of the Great Evil that threatens to destroy all intelligent life, a monster only he can defeat. On his way to that fateful confrontation, dodging dark agents of the Order of Null, Flinx negotiates a temporary peace between the human Commonwealth and the AAnn, reconciles with his one true love, Clarity Held, and reunites with his old mentors Truzenzuzex and the sociologist-soldier Tse-Mallory. Once the story picks up steam, the pace never slows. Flinx fans will delight in seeing familiar faces come together for one last grand adventure. <em>(May)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>In the conclusion of Foster’s long-running series, Flinx finally gets to unleash his mental powers to save the universe. With Pip faithfully at his side, Flinx has challenged himself to visit the AAnn home world, an endeavor that may be suicidal but certainly will be interesting. Unfortunately, a minor slip-up arouses official suspicion; he has to send Teacher (his ship) away and fend for himself. Hiding on AAnn, he is discovered only by a remarkably open-minded AAnn youth. The subsequent adventures are steeped in the over-the-top danger and triumph that series followers expect. When Flinx finally leaves AAnn, he is reassured that sentient life is worth saving and feels ready to find the relics of long-dead civilizations with which he might neutralize the great evil bent on destroying everything in its path. Before the inevitable showdown, he picks up some old friends and his beloved Charity Held. All loose Flinxian ends are tied up before the end of the entertaining trip Foster has led readers on since 1972 (see The Tar-Aiym Krang to start all over again). --Regina Schroeder </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The fantastical Journey of the Catechist series Foster began with Carnivores of Light and Darkness continues, as the plucky herdsman Etjole Ehomba carries on his search for a mysterious woman who has been kidnapped by the necromancer Hymneth the Possessed. In this installment, Ehomba and his two companionsAthe great black half-lion/half cheetah Ahlitah and the itinerant swordsman and treasure-hunter Simna ibn SindAseek a boat that will take them across the infamous Semordria Ocean. In Lybondai, a shifty, cigar-smoking merchant tells them the only place they can find such a ship is in the legendary port city of Hamacassar, far to the north. To get there the trio must cross many strange lands, including a dangerous marsh overrun by wild horses and a place where flowers fight for superiority. In Tethspraih they are arrested for having improper thoughts. In Phan City they barely escape with their lives when attacked by otherworldly spirits after the "witching hour," and in Netherbrae they free an intelligent beast named Hunkapa Aub from his human torturers. Though every obstacle falls a bit too neatly to Ehomba's native wit and his grab bag of enchanted items, the story's swift pace and Foster's boundless imagination deliver something very different from the usual fantasy quest saga. In these magical lands, Foster shows that character and common sense can be as important, and as powerful, as any magic. <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Having passed through the kaleidoscopic landscapes of the Changing Lands, the herdsman Etjole Ehomba and his two companions embark upon the second phase of their quest to fulfill the mission of a dying stranger. Entering the Thinking Lands, Ehomba encounters exotic cultures offering subtle dangers and strange new experiences. Foster's latest series combines elements of epic fantasy with folkloric motifs in an engaging picaresque tale of a simple man's honor-bound journey into adventure. Libraries owning Carnivores of Light and Darkness (LJ 5/15/98) will wish to purchase this sequel.<br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Logan Gyre is king of Cenaria, a country under siege, with a threadbare army and little hope. He has one chance - a desperate gamble, but one that could destroy his kingdom.  </p><p>In the north, the new Godking has a plan. If it comes to fruition, no one will have the power to stop him.   </p><p>Kylar Stern has no choice. To save his friends-and perhaps his enemies-he must accomplish the impossible: assassinate a goddess. <br>_<br>Beyond the Shadows_ is the action-packed conclusion to the Night Angel Trilogy. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Brent Weeks was born and raised in Montana. After getting his paper keys from HillsdaleCollege, Brent had brief stints walking the earth like Caine from <em>Kung Fu</em>, tending bar, and corrupting the youth. (Not at the same time.) He started writing on bar napkins, then on lesson plans, then full time. Eventually, someone paid him for it. Brent lives in Oregon with his wife, Kristi. He doesn't own cats or wear a ponytail. Find more about the author at www.brentweeks.com. </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>Wise Blood</em> is a comedy with a fierce, Old Testament soul. Flannery O'Connor has no truck with such newfangled notions as psychology. Driven by forces outside their control, her characters are as one-dimensional--and mysterious--as figures on a frieze. Hazel Motes, for instance, has the temperament of a martyr, even though he spends most of the book trying to get God to go away. As a child he's convinced that "the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin." When that doesn't work, and when he returns from Korea determined "to be converted to nothing instead of evil," he still can't go anywhere without being mistaken for a preacher. (Not that the hat and shiny glare-blue suit help.) No matter what Hazel does, Jesus moves "from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark..."</p><p>Adrift after four years in the service, Hazel takes a train to the city of Taulkinham, buys himself a "rat-colored car," and sets about preaching on street corners for the Church Without Christ, "where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way." Along the way he meets Enoch Emery, who's only 18 years old but already works for the city, as well the blind preacher Asa Hawks and his illegitimate daughter, Sabbath Lily. (Her letter to an advice column: "Dear Mary, I am a bastard and a bastard shall not enter the kingdom of heaven as we all know, but I have this personality that makes boys follow me. Do you think I should neck or not?") Subsequent events involve a desiccated, centuries-old dwarf--Gonga the Giant Jungle Monarch--and Hazel's nemesis, Hoover Shoats, who starts the rival Church of Christ Without Christ. If you think these events don't end happily, you might be right.</p><p><em>Wise Blood</em> is a savage satire of America's secular, commercial culture, as well as the humanism it holds so dear ("Dear Sabbath," Mary Brittle writes back, "Light necking is acceptable, but I think your real problem is one of adjustment to the modern world. Perhaps you ought to re-examine your religious values to see if they meet your needs in Life.") But the book's ultimate purpose is Religious, with a capital R--no metaphors, no allusions, just the thing itself in all its fierce glory. When Hazel whispers "I'm not clean," for instance, O'Connor thinks he is perfectly right. For readers unaccustomed to holding low comedy and high seriousness in their heads at the same time, all this can come as something of a shock. Who else could offer an allegory about free will, redemption, and original sin right alongside the more elemental pleasure of witnessing Enoch Emery dress up in a gorilla suit? Nobody else, that's who. And that's OK. More than one Flannery O'Connor in this world might show us more truth than we could bear. <em>--Mary Park</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Bronson Pinchot turns in a virtuosic performance of O'Connor's darkly comic classic first novel. After serving a stint in the army, Hazel Motes finds himself adrift, alone, and rent by spiritual confusion. Pinchot's narration is superb: dynamic, well paced, and infused with a perfect Southern drawl. Instead of simply creating voices for the characters, Pinchot embodies them. His Hazel is nasty, nasally, and angry; his Enoch Emery boasts a congested twang; and the entire cast is likewise brought to life by Pinchot's precise and perceptive characterizations and his brilliant evocation of O'Conner's grotesqueries. A Farrar, Straus, and Giroux paperback. (Aug.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p>


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The collected short stories of Garth Nix, including a novella which follows on from the enthralling Old Kingdom fantasy adventures of Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen. Nicholas Sayre will do anything to get across the wall, back to the Old Kingdom. Thoughts of Lirael and Sam haunt his dreams. But here in Ancelstierre the charter is dormant, and before Nick can re-join his friends he must face one of the rarest and most dangerous of the Free Magic creatures: a creature that seems to draw power from Nicholas himself. 'Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case' opens this superb collection of short stories from Garth Nix, that range from classic fantasy to a gritty urban version of Hansel and Gretel, and an unusual take on the role of nature in matters of the heart. Across the Wall displays the depth and versatility that have made Garth Nix one of today's leading fantasy writers, and a New York Times bestseller.Garth Nix is the author of The Old Kingdom trilogy and the Keys to the Kingdom series'The reader's absorption into the intrigue, magic and dazzling richness of the worlds and characters created by Nix is irresistible pleasure '  AUSTRALIAN REVIEW OF BOOKS


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>'The new book takes up the diary where the last left off, and is quite as classic' Financial Times </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>At fourteen, Adrian Mole's life continues to be nothing but a set of tragic circumstances: His tempestuous relationship with an alluring schoolmate tortures him, while his intellectualism continues to be ignored by the British press. Despite it all he remains as agonizingly funny as ever in this, the second of his diaries.</p>

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<h3>Review</h3><p>“Hits the mark! A native speaker of both Chinese and English, Lin adeptly bridges the gap between translation and interpretation ... applying [2,500-year-old teachings] to our modern world. Don’t miss this book if you want ancient knowledge that can change life for the better today.” —Edward Monaghan, UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center “A magnificent presentation of arguably the most perfect and complete spiritual teaching ever published, the Tao Te Ching. An absolute must in any home library, no matter what tradition one follows.” —Rabbi David A. Cooper, author of God is a Verb “Lin’s unique rendering captures the spiritual wisdom, poetic grace and immense practicality of this classic text. Will illuminate your way regardless of the path you follow.” —Philip Goldberg, author of Roadsigns: On the Spiritual Path—Living at the Heart of Paradox “Derek Lin’s fine new translation is as good as any and better than many, and his commentaries help illumine the text.... [The Tao Te Ching’s] sublime little sutras have edified, instructed, encouraged, and entertained millions of people for millennia, and they continue to do so today. Like a veritable treasure trove, this masterful book of wise living and authentic being provides both spiritual sustenance and practical guidance, so necessary for us today and tomorrow.” —from the Foreword by Lama Surya Das </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Reportedly written by a sage named Lao Tzu over 2,500 years ago, the Tao Te Ching is one of the most succinct--and yet among the most profound--spiritual texts ever written. Short enough to read in an afternoon, subtle enough to study for a lifetime, the Tao Te Ching distills into razor-sharp poetry centuries of spiritual inquiry into the Tao--the "Way" of the natural world around us that reveals the ultimate organizing principle of the universe. </p><p>Derek Lin's insightful commentary, along with his new translation from the original Chinese--a translation that sets a whole new standard for accuracy--will inspire your spiritual journey and enrich your everyday life. It highlights the Tao Te Ching's insights on simplicity, balance, and learning from the paradoxical truths you can see all around you: finding strength through flexibility (because bamboo bends, it is tough to break); achieving goals by transcending obstacles (water simply flows around rocks on its way to the sea); believing that small changes bring powerful results (a sapling, in time, grows into a towering tree). </p><p>Now you can experience the wisdom and power of Lao Tzu's words even if you have no previous knowledge of the Tao Te Ching. SkyLight Illuminations provides insightful yet unobtrusive commentary that describes helpful historical background, explains the Tao Te Ching's poetic imagery, and elucidates the ancient Taoist wisdom that will speak to your life today and energize your spiritual quest. </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>1919. Lewis, was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Possibly the greatest satirist of his age, Lewis wrote novels that present a devastating picture of middle-class American life in the 1920s. Although he ridiculed the values, the lifestyles, and even the speech of his characters, there is often affection behind the irony. Lewis began his career as a journalist, editor, and hack writer. He became an important literary figure with the publication of Main Street. His seventh novel, Babbitt, is considered by many critics to be his greatest work. The story follows George Babbitt, a middle-aged realtor who is unimaginative, self-important, and hopelessly middle class. Vaguely dissatisfied with his position, he tries to alter the pattern of his life by flirting with liberalism and by having an affair with an attractive widow, only to find that his dread of ostracism is greater than his desire for escape. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.</p>


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In The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, Greg Keyes has crafted a brilliant saga of magic, adventure, and love set against a backdrop of clashing empires and an ancient, reawakened evil. Now, with The Born Queen, Keyes brings his epic to a masterly close, gathering the strands of plot and character into a stunning climax that both completes and transcends all that has gone before.The Briar King is dead, and the world itself follows him to ruin. Aspar White, wounded and tired, must embark on one last quest to save the forest and the people he loves, but he has little hope of success.Anne Dare at last sits on the throne of Crotheny, but for how long? The Church, now led by the corrupt and powerful Marché Hespero, has declared a holy war against her, giving the king of Hansa the pretext he needs to unleash his vast might on the young queen and her unready army.But Hansa is the least of Anne’s worries. The Hellrune, war seer of Hansa, strikes at her through vision and prophecy. The Kept–last of the elder Skasloi lords–weaves his own dark webs. Anne’s teacher and ally in the sedos world might also be her worst enemy, and Anne’s own mounting strength compels her toward madness.Surviving these dangers and mastering her eldritch abilities are merely prelude to the real struggle. There are many–some with power matching or even exceeding Anne’s own–who are willing to kill in order to seize control. For whoever sits upon the throne will have the ultimate command to bring about the world’s salvation–or its apocalypse.


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Junie B. Jones's kindergarten teacher has some strange ideas about field day: "Field Day is a day to run around in the fresh air and enjoy the sunshine. We came out here to have fun and get some exercise. And we're not going to care one little bit about who wins or who loses." Only what's so fun about losing? That's what Junie B. wants to know. In the great contest between room 8 and room 9, somehow, room 8 keeps winning all the events. As Captain Field Day of room 9, Junie B. is feeling her superpowers--and her good sportsmanship--slipping away. Can <em>anyone</em> save the day?</p><p>For beginning chapter-book readers, Junie B. Jones <em>always</em> saves the day. As in <strong>, </strong>, and the many other titles in Barbara Park's series, Junie B.'s inimitable style wins her friends and fans everywhere. Denise Brunkus's comical, expressive drawings capture all the joys and foibles of kindergarten life. With occasional "big" words (like <em>slumped</em>, <em>sarcastic</em>, and <em>apparently</em>) and Junie B.'s grammatical curiosities, this witty book works best as a classroom read-aloud. (Ages 5 to 8) <em>--Emilie Coulter</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Afternoon kindergarten is having a field day, and Junie B. Jones is team captain! Only, here's the problem. Room Eight keeps on winning too many events. And so how will Room Nine ever become the kindergarten champions? As Captain Field Day, will Junie B. find a way to lead her team to victory? Or will it be up to someone else to save the day? </p>


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<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 2-3?Junie's kindergarten classmates convince her that an invisible monster lives under her bed. Her parents and grandmother are unable to convince her otherwise until Junie hits upon the idea of putting her unflattering school picture under the bed to frighten the monster. In Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook, the little girl discovers that "finders keepers losers weepers" is not an appealing philosophy when she loses the special gloves her grandfather gave her and the child who finds them doesn't take them to the lost and found. Junie's first-person narration is sprinkled with deliberate grammatical errors and misunderstood word usage in an attempt to show a five-year-old's viewpoint ("I runned home," "They got stoled on purpose."). Precocious use of sophisticated language is also used to achieve an intended humorous effect. The black-and-white, full- and half-page illustrations reflect Junie's cockeyed view of the world and will help attract beginning chapter-book readers. The issues the child is dealing with are right on target for the intended age group, but Junie's personality is more annoying than endearing and the humor lacks freshness and spontaneity. Buy where the series is popular.?Lisa Smith, Lindenhurst Memorial Library, NY<br />Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Park is truly a funny writer. Although Junie B. is a kindergartner, she's sure to make middle graders laugh out loud." -- <em>School Library Journal</em> -- <em>Review</em></p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>An after-school stroll leads to a life-altering event for widower Robert Dillon and his 12-year-old daughter, Nicky, in this delicate new novel by acclaimed author Shreve (_All He Ever Wanted_,etc.). In the woods surrounding their secluded home in Shepherd, N.H., Robert and Nicky make a startling discovery—a baby abandoned and left to die in the snow. The infant survives, but the incident leaves its mark. Still recovering from the painful loss of her mother and infant sister two years earlier, and readjusting to the shock of a sudden move from suburban Westchester to rural Shepherd, Nicky struggles to reconcile her innocent notions of adult integrity with the bleak reality of their discovery. The tenuous sense of normalcy Robert manages to sustain is broken with the appearance of Charlotte, the baby's young mother, on his doorstep. Retold 18 years later by an adult Nicky but written in the present tense, the story shifts brilliantly between childlike visions of a simple world and the growing realization of its cruel ambiguities. Aside from a few saccharine moments and a rather pat ending, Shreve does a skilled job of portraying grief, conflict and anger while leaving room for hope, redemption and renewal. Her characters are sympathetic without being pitiable, and her prose remains deceptively simple and eloquent throughout. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Critics agree that <em>Light on Snow</em> is not Shreve’s best work. One called it simplistic, while another complained that the characters’ actions were not believable. Some questioned Shreve’s decision to tell the story from the point of view of an adult Nicky, whose removal from the events deprives the narrative of immediacy. Several readers did find Nicky’s story affecting, and Shreve devotees may enjoy this book as a lesser effort by a favorite author. Those seeking an introduction to her work, however, might look for a different place start—_The Pilot’s Wife_, perhaps. </p><p><em>Copyright © 2004 Phillips &amp; Nelson Media, Inc.</em></p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Hester Prynne never had it so good! The year is 1899, and Olympia Biddeford, the headstrong daughter of a Boston Brahmin family, has decided to test the limits of her cloistered world. Spending the summer at her father's New Hampshire estate, the teenage heroine of <em>Fortune's Rocks</em> is entranced with the visiting salon of artists, writers, and lawyers. She's especially captivated, however, by John Haskell, a charismatic physician who ministers to the blue-collar community in the nearby mill towns. This middle-aged Good Samaritan hires Olympia to assist him as a nurse, and their collaboration soon evolves into a fiery love affair. Alas, it's only a matter of weeks before this passionate exercise in managed care is exposed--with disastrous consequences for the young, impregnated heroine. Even her adoring father now considers her "an overplump sixteen-year-old girl whose judgment can no longer be trusted," and insists that she break off her relationship: </p><blockquote><p>"There is nothing more to be said on this subject," he says. She bites her lip to keep from crying out further. She holds the arms of her chair so tightly she later will have cramps in her fingers. She will refuse to obey him, she thinks. She will accept his implied challenge and set off on her own. But in the next moment, she asks herself: How will she be able to do that? Without her father's support, she cannot hope to survive. And if she herself does not survive, then a child cannot live." </p></blockquote><p>In the end, Anita Shreve's seventh novel is a polished, supremely entertaining variation on __, with Olympia and Haskell sitting in for Catherine and Heathcliff. The author did some meticulous research for her New England background, which gives this study of one particular wayward woman some extra historical heft. Some readers may find the plot twists a bit pat. And despite Olympia's efforts to be an independent woman, she overcomes her trials largely as a result of her family's wealth and station, which takes the edge off Shreve's feminist message. Still, <em>Fortune's Rocks</em> is a romance in the classic sense of the word, and should be enjoyed as such, unless the reader is absolutely allergic to happy endings. <em>--Ted Leventhal</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The time is the turn of the last century, the setting a rocky New Hampshire coastline resort area nicknamed "Fortune's Rocks." Olympia Biddeford, age 15, is walking the beach, feeling the first stirrings of her womanhood. The strong-willed daughter of an upstanding Boston couple, she soon "learns of desire" as she begins a passionate affair with a married writer, John Haskell, three times her age. From the moment they meet (he is a visiting friend of her father's), they experience a sexual sparkAOlympia feels "liquid" in his presence. Soon, they fall into sinful trysting. Shreve (The Pilot's Wife) serves up these opening events with breathless immediacy. Once the plot gets a chance to developAOlympia gets pregnant, gives up child, fights to get child backAit settles down considerably, turning into a modernized The Scarlet Letter, a tale of a woman attaining feminist independence by living outside her period's societal mores. Reading, Brown (of TV's The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd) clearly has the most fun at the beginning, where the story's real heat and flushed excitement pours out. Listeners, too, may grow colder as the plot loses its torrid, forbidden edge. Based on the 1999 Little, Brown hardcover. (Dec.) <br />Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Alan Dean Foster’s brilliant new novel is a near-future thriller that has all the dark humor and edgy morality of an Elmore Leonard mystery, in addition to the masterly world-building and quirky but believable characters readers expect from Foster. This gripping adventure reveals a place where criminals are punished through genetic engineering and bodily manipulation—which poses profound questions about what it means to be human.  </p><p>Given his name because radical surgery and implants have reduced him to preternatural thinness, Whispr is a thug. His partner in crime, Jiminy Cricket, has also been physically altered with nanocarbonic prosthetic legs and high-strength fast-twitch muscle fibers that give him great jumping abilities. In a dark alley in Savannah, Whispr and Jiminy murder what they take to be a random tourist in order to amputate and then fence his sophisticated artificial hand. But the hapless victim also happens to be carrying an unusual silver thread that appears to be some kind of storage medium. Ever quick to scent potential profit, Whispr and Jiminy grab the thread as well.  </p><p>Chance later deposits a wounded Whispr at the clinic of Dr. Ingrid Seastrom. Things have not gone smoothly for Whispr since he acquired the mysterious thread. Powerful forces are searching for him, and Jiminy has vanished. All Whispr wants to do is sell the thread as quickly as he can. When he offers to split the profits with Ingrid in exchange for her medical services, she makes an astonishing discovery.  </p><p>So begins a unique partnership. Unlike Whispr, Ingrid is a natural, with no genetic or bodily alteration. She is also a Harvard-educated physician, while Whispr’s smarts are strictly of the street variety. Yet together they make a formidable team—as long as they can elude the enhanced assassins that are tracking them. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>Alan Dean Foster</strong> has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, Western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of the <em>New York Times </em>bestseller <em>Star Wars: The Approaching Storm</em> and the popular Pip &amp; Flinx novels, as well as novelizations of several films including <em>Transformers, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Star Wars,</em> the first three <em>Alien</em> films, and <em>Alien Nation.</em> His novel_ Cyber Way_ won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first science fiction work ever to do so. Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from an early-twentieth-century miners’ brothel. He is currently at work on several new novels and media projects. </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>"Haygood's book is certainly one of the best biographies of a boxer ever written . . . an important contribution to both sports literature and African American studies."<br />-Gerald Early, <em>Washington Post</em>  </p><p>". . . Thoroughly marvelous . . ."<br />-Tim Rutten, <em>Los Angeles Times</em>  </p><p>"Mr. Haygood captures his grace and power, at many disparate moments, as well as it’s been captured . . . Mr. Haygood . . . is a biographer in his own prime." <br /><em>-</em>Dwight Garner_,_ <em>New York Times</em>  </p><p>". . . an ambitious portrait of an American legend."<br />-Pete Hamill, <em>Sunday Times</em><br /><em> </em><br />". . . insightful, highly readable . . . A wonderful book that deserves a wide audience."<br /><em>-Kirkus Reviews</em>  </p><p>"Haygood's excellent account of Robinson's long, eventful life . . .is packed with anecdotes and lush, pertinent context."<br />-Katherine Dunn, <em>Bookforum</em>  </p><p>"Wil Haygood's new biography of Robinson . . .is about as fine a book about a boxer as you will find . . . Who is, pound for pound, the best fighter of all time? Robinson is always in that conversation. And should the topic ever pivot to the best writers about the sport, Haygood should be, too."<br />-Henry C. Jackson, <em>Associated Press</em>  </p><p>". . . a compelling, often brilliant biography."<br />-Rege Behe, <em>Pittsburg Tribune</em><br /><em> </em><br />"Haygood was born to the task . . . a portrayal that resonates with the guts, glitter and gravitas that his subject merits."<br />-Bijan C. Bayne, <em>The Bay State Banner</em>  </p><p>"This book is a wonderful mix of reporting and grace, inspired by the thunder and speed of a much forgotten champion. Deeply researched, superbly written, thankfully devoid of dripping sentimentality, Wil Haygood takes an old broom to Harlem history and sweeps out the corners. This is the boxer we never knew."<br />-James McBride, author of <strong>The Color of Water</strong>  </p><p>"The best is always fragile, Sugar Ray Robinson once said, and it took a writer of Wil Haygood's magnificence to appreciate what this meant in bringing the great boxer back to life. Sweet Thunder is a jewel from beginning to end."<br />-David Maraniss, author of <em></em>When Pride Still Mattered<strong> and </strong>Rome 1960<br /><em></em><br />"Finally, a biography worthy of a great athlete and social force, Sugar Ray Robinson." <br />-Larry Merchant,_ _<strong>HBO World Championship Boxing</strong></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>From the author of the critically acclaimed <em>In Black and White</em>: <em>The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr.</em>, comes another illuminating socio-historical narrative of the twentieth century, this one spun around one of the most iconic figures of the fight game, Sugar Ray Robinson.  </p><p>Continuing to set himself apart as one of our canniest cultural historians, Wil Haygood grounds the spectacular story of Robinson's rise to greatness within the context of the fighter's life and times. Born Walker Smith, Jr., in 1921, Robinson had an early childhood marked by the seething racial tensions and explosive race riots that infected the Midwest throughout the twenties and thirties. After his mother moved him and his sisters to the relative safety of Harlem, he came of age in the vibrant post-Renaissance years. It was there that—encouraged to box by his mother, who wanted him off the streets—he soon became a rising star, cutting an electrifying, glamorous figure, riding around town in his famous pink Cadillac. Beyond the celebrity, though, Robinson would emerge as a powerful, often controversial black symbol in a rapidly changing America. Haygood also weaves in the stories of Langston Hughes, Lena Horne, and Miles Davis, whose lives not only intersected with Robinson's but also contribute richly to the scope and soul of the book.  </p><p>From Robinson's gruesome six-bout war with Jake "Raging Bull" LaMotta and his lethal meeting with Jimmy Doyle to his Harlem nightclub years and thwarted show-biz dreams, Haygood brings the champion's story, in the ring and out, powerfully to life against a vividly painted backdrop of the world he captivated. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In his 13th book, bestselling Sparks (At First Sight, etc.) limns the far-reaching implications of several seemingly ordinary choices made by Beaufort, N.C. veterinarian Travis Parker and his next-door neighbor Gabrielle Holland, a physician's assistant and recent arrival. After an inauspicious first meeting where Gabby accuses Travis's boxer of impregnating her purebred collie, the two fall hard for each other. Already dating someone else seriously, Gabby is faced with a dilemma: whether to stick with longtime boyfriend Kevin, or get involved with Travis. The first part of the tale paints a vivid picture of her decision-making process and its effects on Travis and Gabby's lives. That sets up Part II, which takes place 11 years later when Travis faces a life and death decision following a car accident. A tender and moving love story and a quick read, Sparks's latest does not disappoint. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>Holter Graham gives a polished performance with his versatile skills and vocal range as he embraces the roles of Travis Parker, local veterinarian, and Gabby Holland, physician's assistant. In Part One, Graham captures the exquisite story of their attraction, love, and marriage with a warmth and rhythm that breathes life into the characters. Ten years later in Part Two, Graham portrays Travis's torment when Gabby falls into a coma after a car accident that is his fault. As Gabby fails to recover, Graham captures Travis's conflict over a decision he must make--a decision based on a promise Gabby extracted from him before her life took its tragic turn. A compelling story. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/ MAY 08] </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Villiren: a city of sin that is being torn apart from the inside. Hybrid creatures shamble through shadows and barely human gangs fight turf wars for control of the streets. Amidst this chaos, Commander Brynd Lathraea, commander of the Night Guard, must plan the defence of Viliren against a race that has broken through from some other realm and already slaughtered hundreds of thousands of the Empire's people. When a Night Guard soldier goes missing, Brynd requests help from the recently arrived Inqusitor Jeryd. He discovers this is not the only disappearance the streets of Villiren. It seems that a serial killer of the most horrific kind is on the loose, taking hundreds of people from their own homes. A killer that cannot possibly be human. The entire population of Villiren must unite to face an impossible surge of violent and unnatural enemies or the city will fall. But how can anyone save a city that is already a ruin? </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Mark Charan Newton was born in 1981, and holds a degree in Environmental Science. After working in bookselling, he moved into editorial positions at imprints covering film and media tie-in fiction, and later, science fiction and fantasy. He currently lives and works in Nottingham. For more information and updates, visit his website www.markcnewton.com </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Newton opens a complex epic fantasy series with this impressive debut. The ancient fortress city of Villjamur is filled with human and nonhuman inhabitants, many of them refugees seeking shelter from a predicted decades-long ice age. The untimely death of the mad emperor Jamur Johynn forces his unworldly elder daughter, Rika, to assume the throne as her sister, Eir, gains a perspective beyond her palace walls and the members of the council make their own power plays. War and religious conflicts as well as more personal matters of desires for power and immortality set the scene for acts of compassion and betrayal. Newton handles his multilayered world and diverse cast of characters with the assurance of an experienced author and balances his fantasy tropes with elements of horror and political commentary in vividly descriptive, compelling prose. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Newton’s debut is the first in an epic fantasy series, Legends of the Red Sun, and it adds a murder mystery to the usual epic-fantasy mix. The inhabitants of the city of Villjamur are preparing for an upcoming ice age when a member of the ruling Council is gruesomely murdered. Jeryd, a nonhuman Rumel, is the city’s senior investigator, and after nearly 200 years, he thinks he has seen it all. Meanwhile, island boy Randur has come to the city in hopes of persuading the magic-wielding cultists to extend his mother’s life. As the ice tightens its grip on the island empire, enemies strike and an unknown force kills most of the Night Guard, an elite force led by Brynd, the king’s most trusted advisor and fighter. Because the mystery isn’t the only plotline, this is best recommended to fantasy fans who also enjoy mysteries; there may be too much fantasy for most mystery readers. Unusual characters, including those from nonhuman races and a compelling gay protagonist, give this genre-bender plenty of appeal for a variety of readers. --Jessica Moyer </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In Armstrong's sharp second mystery to feature former army sniper Mercy Gunderson (after 2010's No Mercy), Mercy stumbles late one night on the shot and slashed body of Maj. Jason "J-Hawk" Hawley, who once saved her life in Indonesia, outside Clementine's, the bar where she's been stuck for months in a dead-end temporary job. When her boyfriend, Eagle River County (S.Dak.) sheriff Mason Dawson, doesn't do enough to investigate, Mercy goes into action. Concerned that J-Hawk's murder may have been related to his job as a front man for Titan Oil's controversial project to run a pipeline through the county, Mercy uncovers some disturbing information about her old army buddy. While the flashbacks to Mercy's military career slow the action in places, an intriguing new character, FBI agent Shay Turnbull of the Indian County Special Crimes Unit, will leave readers eager to see how their relationship plays out in the next installment. (Jan.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>This tough-mouth novel begins with a hymn to the beauties of the outdoors, all primrose and yarrow. Then Mercy Gunderson, belly down, adjusts her rifle and blows away prairie dogs. “Bye-bye, Theodore.” Well, farmers know they’re destructive, and Mercy is a South Dakota farmer. She’s also retired military, back home again. She tends bar, and one night in walks another destroyer, an oil company man. He’s also Mercy’s army buddy—saved her life once. All these contradictions become the vehicle for the great message of crime fiction: things are not as they seem. The baddies seem more sad than bad. The sheriff’s foot-dragging inspires Mercy to go after his job, but he has reasons for his inaction, and we don’t learn them until nearly the end. And the gorgeous man who breaks hearts just by showing up? He’s not what you think, either. This is country-western land, beer and Beam, music by George Strait and Dwight Yoakam. Readers easy with that side of America will enjoy Mercy—tough, funny, and hardly a girl in a guy suit. --Don Crinklaw </p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Thirteen linked tales from Strout (_Abide with Me_, etc.) present a heart-wrenching, penetrating portrait of ordinary coastal Mainers living lives of quiet grief intermingled with flashes of human connection. The opening Pharmacy focuses on terse, dry junior high-school teacher Olive Kitteridge and her gregarious pharmacist husband, Henry, both of whom have survived the loss of a psychologically damaged parent, and both of whom suffer painful attractions to co-workers. Their son, Christopher, takes center stage in A Little Burst, which describes his wedding in humorous, somewhat disturbing detail, and in Security, where Olive, in her 70s, visits Christopher and his family in New York. Strout's fiction showcases her ability to reveal through familiar details—the mother-of-the-groom's wedding dress, a grandmother's disapproving observations of how her grandchildren are raised—the seeds of tragedy. Themes of suicide, depression, bad communication, aging and love, run through these stories, none more vivid or touching than Incoming Tide, where Olive chats with former student Kevin Coulson as they watch waitress Patty Howe by the seashore, all three struggling with their own misgivings about life. Like this story, the collection is easy to read and impossible to forget. Its literary craft and emotional power will surprise readers unfamiliar with Strout. <em>(Apr.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> “Hell. We’re always alone. Born alone. Die alone,” says Olive Kitteridge, redoubtable seventh-grade math teacher in Crosby, Maine. Anyone who gets in Olive’s way had better watch out, for she crashes unapologetically through life like an emotional storm trooper. She forces her husband, Henry, the town pharmacist, into tactical retreat; and she drives her beloved son, Christopher, across the country and into therapy. But appalling though Olive can be, Strout  manages to make her deeply human and even sympathetic, as are all of the characters in this “novel in stories.” Covering a period of 30-odd years, most of the stories (several of which were previously published in the New Yorker and other magazines) feature Olive as  their focus, but in some she is bit player or even a footnote while other characters take center stage to sort through their own fears and insecurities. Though loneliness and loss haunt these pages, Strout also supplies gentle humor and a nourishing dose of hope. People are sustained by the rhythms of ordinary life and the natural wonders of coastal Maine, and even Olive is sometimes caught off guard by life’s baffling beauty. Strout is also the author of the well-received Amy and Isabelle (1999) and Abide with Me (2006). --Mary Ellen Quinn </p>

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<div><p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home of an enclosed order of nuns. A new bell,legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. Dora Greenfield, erring wife, returns to her husband. Michael Mead, leader of the community, is confronted by Nick Fawley, with whom he had disasterous homosexual relations, while the wise old Abbess watches and prays and exercies discreet authority. And everyone, or almost everyone, hopes to be saved whatever that may mean...Iris Murdoch's funny and sad novel is about religion, the fight between good and evil and the terrible accidents of human frailty.</p>
<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home of an enclosed order of nuns. A new bell,legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. Dora Greenfield, erring wife, returns to her husband. Michael Mead, leader of the community, is confronted by Nick Fawley, with whom he had disasterous homosexual relations, while the wise old Abbess watches and prays and exercies discreet authority. And everyone, or almost everyone, hopes to be saved whatever that may mean...Iris Murdoch's funny and sad novel is about religion, the fight between good and evil and the terrible accidents of human frailty.</p></div>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Though a lot of SF writers are more or less efficiently continuing the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein, Scalzi's astonishingly proficient first novel reads like an original work by the late grand master. Seventy-five-year-old John Perry joins the Colonial Defense Force because he has nothing to keep him on Earth. Suddenly installed in a better-than-new young body, he begins developing loyalty toward his comrades in arms as they battle aliens for habitable planets in a crowded galaxy. As bloody combat experiences pile up, Perry begins wondering whether the slaughter is justified; in short, is being a warrior really a good thing, let alone being human? The definition of "human" keeps expanding as Perry is pushed through a series of mind-stretching revelations. The story obviously resembles such novels as <em>Starship Trooper</em> and <em>Time Enough for Love</em>, but Scalzi is not just recycling classic Heinlein. He's working out new twists, variations that startle even as they satisfy. The novel's tone is right on target, too—sentimentality balanced by hardheaded calculation, know-it-all smugness moderated by innocent wonder. This virtuoso debut pays tribute to SF's past while showing that well-worn tropes still can have real zip when they're approached with ingenuity. <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>With his wife dead and buried, and life nearly over at 75, John Perry takes the only logical course of action left him: he joins the army. Now better known as the Colonial Defense Force (CDF), Perry's service-of-choice has extended its reach into interstellar space to pave the way for human colonization of other planets while fending off marauding aliens. The CDF has a trick up its sleeve that makes enlistment especially enticing for seniors: the promise of restoring youth. After bonding with a group of fellow recruits who dub their clique the Old Farts, Perry finds himself in a new body crafted from his original DNA and upgraded for battle, including fast-clotting "smartblood" and a brain-implanted personal computer. All too quickly the Old Farts are separated, and Perry fights for his life on various alien-infested battlegrounds. Scalzi's blending of wry humor and futuristic warfare recalls Joe Haldeman's classic, <em>The Forever War</em> (1974), and strikes the right fan--pleasing chords to probably garner major sf award nominations. <em>Carl Hays</em><br><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>

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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>If there still remains any doubt, this novel confirms Lethem's status as the poet of Brooklyn and of motherless boys. Projected through the prism of race relations, black music and pop art, Lethem's stunning, disturbing and authoritatively observed narrative covers three decades of turbulent events on Dean Street, Brooklyn. When Abraham and Rachel Ebdus arrive there in the early 1970s, they are among the first whites to venture into a mainly black neighborhood that is just beginning to be called Boerum Hill. Abraham is a painter who abandons his craft to construct tiny, virtually indistinguishable movie frames in which nothing happens. Ex-hippie Rachel, a misguided liberal who will soon abandon her family, insists on sending their son, Dylan, to public school, where he stands out like a white flag. Desperately lonely, regularly attacked and abused by the black kids ("yoked," in the parlance), Dylan is saved by his unlikely friendship with his neighbor Mingus Rude, the son of a once-famous black singer, Barnett Rude Jr., who is now into cocaine and rage at the world. The story of Dylan and Mingus, both motherless boys, is one of loyalty and betrayal, and eventually different paths in life. Dylan will become a music journalist, and Mingus, for all his intelligence, kindness, verbal virtuosity and courage, will wind up behind bars. Meanwhile, the plot manages to encompass pop music from punk rock to rap, avant-garde art, graffiti, drug use, gentrification, the New York prison system-and to sing a vibrant, sometimes heartbreaking ballad of Brooklyn throughout. Lethem seems to have devoured the '70s, '80s and '90s-inhaled them whole-and he reproduces them faithfully on the page, in prose as supple as silk and as bright, explosive and illuminating as fireworks. Scary and funny and seriously surreal, the novel hurtles on a trajectory that feels inevitable. By the time Dylan begins to break out of the fortress of solitude that has been his life, readers have shared his pain and understood his dreams.<br>Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Dylan Ebdus is a white kid on a black-and-brown street. As he struggles through public school in 1970s Brooklyn, he is "yoked"--put in a headlock--and frisked for change on a daily basis. Testing into a good Manhattan school, he steps into a long-lasting role: vulnerable among street kids, he's street-smart compared to his new, privileged pals, and loathes himself as a poseur with both crowds. When he finds a ring that grants the power of flight, he's afraid to use it, but his black friend, Mingus, is not. They try their hand at crime fighting, but like many teenage endeavors, the project fizzles out. Lethem is a tremendous writer, and in the first half he uses magnificent language to capture the complexity of a child's worldview. When he jump-cuts to Dylan's adulthood, however, his switch to a more conventional narrative style is disappointing. The story regains momentum when Dylan rediscovers the ring and a new power it offers, then returns to his old street and ponders a sacrifice: whether to give the ring to the boy who yoked him the most. Lethem explores many avenues: the origins of gentrification, the development of soul music, the genealogy of graffiti, the seeds of the crack epidemic. The different concepts converge in the closing pages, but this often-excellent novel labors under the weight of its ambition. <em>Keir Graff</em><br><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>

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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Signature_Reviewed by_ Jonathan SeguraWritten in French by an American, this was the hot book of Frankfurt in 2006 and won two of France's major literary awards. A couple of years and a reported million-dollar advance later, here it is in English. Is it worth the hype and money? In a word, no. Dr. Max Aue, the petulant narrator of this overlong exercise in piling-on, is a rising star in the SS. His career helped along by a slick SS benefactor, Aue watches the wholesale slaughter of Jews in the Ukraine, survives getting shot through the head in Stalingrad, researches and writes dozens of reports, tours Auschwitz and Birkenau, and finds himself in Hitler's bunker in the Reich's final days. He kills people, too, and is secretly gay—a catcher—and tormented by his love for his twin sister, Una, who now rebuffs his lusty advances. He also hates his mother and stepfather. As he claims, If you ever managed to make me cry, my tears would sear your face. But after nearly 1,000 pages, Herr Doktor Aue, for all his alleged coldness and self-hatred and self-indulgent ruminations, amounts to nothing more than a bloodless conduit for boasting the breadth of Littell's research (i.e., a nine-page digression on the history of Caucasian linguistics). The text itself is notable for its towering, imposing paragraphs that often run on for pages. Unfortunately, these paragraphs are loaded with dream sequences marked by various unpleasant bodily functions, a 14-page hallucination where a very Céline-like crackpot cameos as Dr. Sardine and dozens of numbing passages in which SS functionaries debate logistical aspects of the Jewish Question. Also, nary an anus goes by that isn't lovingly described (among the best is one surrounded by a pink halo, gaped open like a sea anemone between two white globes). Most crippling, however, is Aue's inability to narrate outside his one bulldozing, breathless register, and while it may work marvelously early on as he relates the troubles of trying to fit the maximum number of bodies into a pit, the monotone voice quickly loses its luster. In the final 200 or so pages, Berlin is burning, the Russians and Americans are making rapid advances, Hitler is nearly assassinated and SS brass are formulating their personal endgames. But, alas, this massive endeavor grinds to its conclusion on a pulp conceit: two German cops, against all odds, are in hot pursuit of Aue for a crime he may or may not have committed.Littell's strung together many tens of thousands of words, but many tens of thousands of words does not necessarily a novel make. As the French say, <em>tant pis</em>._Jonathan Segura is the deputy reviews editor of_ Publishers Weekly <em>and the author of</em> Occupational Hazards_._ <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Littell opens his Second World War novel, told through the recollections of a German officer named Max Aue, with a breakdown of how many Germans, Soviets, and Jews died, minute by minute, in the conflict. As Aue travels to Stalingrad, Auschwitz, and Hungary to report on morale and efficiency, long sections of bureaucratic analysis alternate with moments of mind-numbing sadism. Aue, a caricature of moral failure (he fantasizes at length about sodomizing his twin sister), encounters a cast of unintentionally comic characters, such as an obese and flatulent proponent of the Final Solution, who surrounds himself with Teutonic beauties. The Holocaust is recast as an extended bout of office politics, with German officials quarrelling over who is responsible for prisoners� hygiene. As the novel draws to a violent close, its story seems nearly as senseless as the horrors it depicts. <br>Copyright ©2008_ Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker_</p>

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<p class="description">Although his work has been restricted to the short story, the essay, and poetry, Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina is recognized all over the world as one of the most original and significant figures in modern literature. In his preface André Maurois writes: "Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention, and their tight, almost mathematical style." Labyrinths is a representative selection of Borges' writing, some forty pieces drawn from various of his books published over the years. The translations are by Harriet de Onís, Anthony Kerrigan, and others, including the editors, who have provided a biographical and critical introduction, as well as an extensive bibliography.</p>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Absolutely one of the funniest, smartest, meanest books I know. John Self, the Rabelaisian narrator of the novel, is an advertising man and director of TV commercials who lurches through London and Manhattan, eating, drinking, drugging and smoking too much, buying too much sex, and caring for little else besides getting the big movie deal that will make him lots of money. Hey, it was the '80s. Most importantly, however, Amis in <strong>Money</strong> musters more sheer entertainment power in any single sentence than most writers are lucky to produce in a career. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Hailed as "a sprawling, fierce, vulgar display" (_The New Republic_) and "exhilarating, skillful, savvy" (_The Times Literary Supplement_) when it made its first appearance in the mid- 1980s, <em>Money</em> is Martin Amis's hilarious portrait of one man's relentless pursuit of pleasure. </p>

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<div><p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>First published in 1972, Richard Adam's extraordinary bestseller Watership Down takes us to a world we have never truly seen:  to the remarkable life that teems in the fields, forests, and riverbanks, far beyond our cities and towns.  It is a powerful saga of courage, leadership, and survival; and epic tale of a hardy band of Berkshire rabbits forced to flee the destruction of their fragile community and their trials and triumphs in the face of extraordinary adversity as they pursue a glorious dream called "home"</p>
<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>Watership Down</em> has been a staple of high-school English classes for years. Despite the fact that it's often a hard sell at first (what teenager wouldn't cringe at the thought of 400-plus pages of talking rabbits?), Richard Adams's bunny-centric epic rarely fails to win the love and respect of anyone who reads it, regardless of age. Like most great novels, <em>Watership Down</em> is a rich story that can be read (and reread) on many different levels. The book is often praised as an allegory, with its analogs between human and rabbit culture (a fact sometimes used to goad skeptical teens, who resent the challenge that they won't "get" it, into reading it), but it's equally praiseworthy as just a corking good adventure.</p><p>The story follows a warren of Berkshire rabbits fleeing the destruction of their home by a land developer. As they search for a safe haven, skirting danger at every turn, we become acquainted with the band and its compelling culture and mythos. Adams has crafted a touching, involving world in the dirt and scrub of the English countryside, complete with its own folk history and language (the book comes with a "lapine" glossary, a guide to rabbitese). As much about freedom, ethics, and human nature as it is about a bunch of bunnies looking for a warm hidey-hole and some mates, <em>Watership Down</em> will continue to make the transition from classroom desk to bedside table for many generations to come. <em>--Paul Hughes</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Quite Marvelous...A Powerful New Vision of the Great Chain of Being." -- <em>--</em><em>The New York Times Book Review</em>  </p><p>"Spellbinding...Marvelous...A Taut Tale of Suspense, Hot Pursuit, and Derring-Do." -- <em>--</em><em>Chicago Tribune</em>  </p><p>"Spellbinding...Marvelous...A taut tale of suspense, hot pursuit, and derring-do." -- <em>--Chicago Tribune</em></p>

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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>One night the stars go out. From that breathtaking "what if," Wilson (_Blind Lake_, etc._) _builds an astonishingly successful mélange of SF thriller, growing-up saga, tender love story, father-son conflict, ecological parable and apocalyptic fable in prose that sings the music of the spheres. The narrative time oscillates effortlessly between Tyler Dupree's early adolescence and his near-future young manhood haunted by the impending death of the sun and the earth. Tyler's best friends, twins Diane and Jason Lawton, take two divergent paths: Diane into a troubling religious cult of the end, Jason into impassioned scientific research to discover the nature of the galactic Hypotheticals whose "Spin" suddenly sealed Earth in a "cosmic baggie," making one of its days equal to a hundred million years in the universe beyond. As convincing as Wilson's scientific hypothesizing is--biological, astrophysical, medical--he excels even more dramatically with the infinitely intricate, minutely nuanced relationships among Jason, Diane and Tyler, whose older self tries to save them both with medicines from Mars, terraformed through Jason's genius into an incubator for new humanity. This brilliant excursion into the deepest inner and farthest outer spaces offers doorways into new worlds--if only humankind strives and seeks and finds and will not yield compassion for our fellow beings. <em>Agent, Shawna McCarthy. (Apr. 14)</em><br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p><em>Spin</em> is not merely a SF thriller. It’s also a coming-of-age tale, a love story, a literary triumph, and an ecological and apocalyptic warning. The award-winning Wilson excels at all aspects of his tale, from the human angle to the political, religious, biological, medical, and astrophysical theorizing. The first part elicited "jaw-dropping amazement" from critics; luckily, the pace slows over the remaining pages to recount the next few decades on Earth (_Emerald City_). If the plot involving the terraforming and colonization of Mars seems farfetched, put it in the context of Wilson’s deep characterization and convincing relationships, and you’ll be OK. After all, <em>Spin</em> is "a book about faith: especially our faith in ourselves" (_Emerald City_).</p><p><em>Copyright © 2004 Phillips &amp; Nelson Media, Inc.</em></p>

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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>2666</em>, the 898-page novel he sprinted to finish before his early death in 2003, again showing Bolaño's mesmerizing ability to spin out tale after tale that balance on the edge between happy-go-lucky hilarity and creeping dread. But where the motion of <em>The Savage Detectives</em> is outward, expanding in wider and wider orbit to collect everything about our lonely world, <em>2666</em>, while every bit as omnivorous, ratchets relentlessly toward a dark center: the hundreds of mostly unsolved murders of women in the desert borderlands of <em>maquiladoras</em> and <em>la migra</em> in northern Mexico. He takes his time getting there--he tells three often charming book-length tales before arriving at the murders--but when he does, in a brutal and quietly strange landscape where neither David Lynch nor Cormac McCarthy's Anton Chigurh would feel out of place, he writes with a horror that is both haunting and deeply humane. <em>--Tom Nissley</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Last year's <em>The Savage Detectives</em> by the late Chilean-Mexican novelist Bolaño (1953–2003) garnered extraordinary sales and critical plaudits for a complex novel in translation, and quickly became the object of a literary cult. This brilliant behemoth is grander in scope, ambition and sheer page count, and translator Wimmer has again done a masterful job. The novel is divided into five parts (Bolaño originally imagined it being published as five books) and begins with the adventures and love affairs of a small group of scholars dedicated to the work of Benno von Archimboldi, a reclusive German novelist. They trace the writer to the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa (read: Juarez), but there the trail runs dry, and it isn't until the final section that readers learn about Benno and why he went to Santa Teresa. The heart of the novel comes in the three middle parts: in The Part About Amalfitano, a professor from Spain moves to Santa Teresa with his beautiful daughter, Rosa, and begins to hear voices. The Part About Fate, the novel's weakest section, concerns Quincy Fate Williams, a black American reporter who is sent to Santa Teresa to cover a prizefight and ends up rescuing Rosa from her gun-toting ex-boyfriend. The Part About the Crimes, the longest and most haunting section, operates on a number of levels: it is a tormented catalogue of women murdered and raped in Santa Teresa; a panorama of the power system that is either covering up for the real criminals with its implausible story that the crimes were all connected to a German national, or too incompetent to find them (or maybe both); and it is a collection of the stories of journalists, cops, murderers, vengeful husbands, prisoners and tourists, among others, presided over by an old woman seer. It is safe to predict that no novel this year will have as powerful an effect on the reader as this one. <em>(Nov.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>

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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>The first book in one of the most remarkable epic fantasies ever written, the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever.<br>He called himself Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever because he dared not believe in the strange alternate world in which he suddenly found himself. Yet he was tempted to believe, to fight for the Land, to be the reincarnation of its greatest hero....<br>THE CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT THE UNBELIEVER<br>Book One: LORD FOUL'S BANE<br>Book Two: THE ILLEARTH WAR<br>Book Three: THE POWER THAT PRESERVES  </p><p><em>From the Paperback edition.</em></p><h3>From the Publisher</h3><p>These books have never received the recognition they deserve. It's one of the most powerful and complex fantasy trilogies since Lord of the Rings, but Donaldson is not just another Tolkien wanabee. Each character-driven book introduces unexpected plots, sub-plots, and a host of magical beings so believably rendered you'd believe you might bump into them on your way to the bookstore.<br>                                                --Alex Klapwald, Director of Production </p>

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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>In the troubled years following the Civil War, the spirit of a murdered child haunts the Ohio home of a former slave. This angry, destructive ghost breaks mirrors, leaves its fingerprints in cake icing, and generally makes life difficult for Sethe and her family; nevertheless, the woman finds the haunting oddly comforting for the spirit is that of her own dead baby, never named, thought of only as Beloved. </p><p>A dead child, a runaway slave, a terrible secret--these are the central concerns of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning <em>Beloved</em>. Morrison, a Nobel laureate, has written many fine novels, including <em>Beloved</em> is arguably her best. To modern readers, antebellum slavery is a subject so familiar that it is almost impossible to render its horrors in a way that seems neither clichéd nor melodramatic. Rapes, beatings, murders, and mutilations are recounted here, but they belong to characters so precisely drawn that the tragedy remains <em>individual</em>, terrifying to us because it is terrifying to the sufferer. And Morrison is master of the telling detail: in the <em>bit</em>, for example, a punishing piece of headgear used to discipline recalcitrant slaves, she manages to encapsulate all of slavery's many cruelties into one apt symbol--a device that deprives its wearer of speech. "Days after it was taken out, goose fat was rubbed on the corners of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the wildness out of the eye." Most importantly, the language here, while often lyrical, is never overheated. Even as she recalls the cruelties visited upon her while a slave, Sethe is evocative without being overemotional: "Add my husband to it, watching, above me in the loft--hiding close by--the one place he thought no one would look for him, looking down on what I couldn't look at at all. And not stopping them--looking and letting it happen.... And if he was that broken then, then he is also and certainly dead now." Even the supernatural is treated as an ordinary fact of life: "Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief. We lucky this ghost is a baby," comments Sethe's mother-in-law. </p><p><em>Beloved</em> is a dense, complex novel that yields up its secrets one by one. As Morrison takes us deeper into Sethe's history and her memories, the horrifying circumstances of her baby's death start to make terrible sense. And as past meets present in the shape of a mysterious young woman about the same age as Sethe's daughter would have been, the narrative builds inexorably to its powerful, painful conclusion. <em>Beloved</em> may well be <em>the</em> defining novel of slavery in America, the one that all others will be measured by. <em>--Alix Wilber</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Mixed with the lyric beauty of the writing, the fury in Morrison's (Song of Solomonp latest book is almost palpable. Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this haunting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath traces the life of a young woman, Sethe, who has kept a terrible memory at bay only by shutting down part of her mind. Juxtaposed with searing descriptions of brutality, gradually revealed in flashbacks, are equally harrowing scenes in which fantasy takes flesh, a device Morrison handles with consummate skill. The narrative concerns Sethe's former life as a slave on Sweet Home Farm, her escape with her children to what seems a safe haven and the tragic events that ensue. The death of Sethe's infant daughter Beloved is the incident on which the plot hinges, and it is obvious to the reader that the sensuous young woman who mysteriously appears one day is Beloved's spirit, come back to claim Sethe's love. Sethe's surviving daughter, Denver, immediately grasps the significance of Beloved's return and so does Paul Dno period after D, another escapee from Sweet Home; but Sethe herself resists comprehension, and, as a result, a certain loss of tension affects the latter part of the narrative. But this is a small flaw in a novel full of insights, both piercing and tender, with distinctive, memorable characters, flowing prose that conveys speech patterns with musical intensity and a brilliantly conceived story. As a record of white brutality mitigated by rare acts of decency and compassion, and as a testament to the courageous lives of a tormented people, this novel is a milestone in the chronicling of the black experience in America. It is Morrison writing at the height of her considerable powers, and it should not be missed. BOMC main selection. <br>Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<div><p class="description">To the Lighthouse (5 May 1927) is a novel by Virginia Woolf. A landmark novel of high modernism, the text, centering on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920, skillfully manipulates temporality and psychological exploration.<br>To the Lighthouse follows and extends the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, where the plot is secondary to philosophical introspection, and the prose can be winding and hard to follow. The novel includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The novel recalls the power of childhood emotions and highlights the impermanence of adult relationships. One of the book's several themes is the ubiquity of transience.</p>
<h3>Review</h3><p>'Together these ten volumes make an attractive and reasonably priced (the volumes vary between L3.99 and L4.99) working edition of Virginia Woolf's best-known writing. One can only hope that their success will prompt World's Classics to add her other essays to the series in due course.' Elisabeth Jay, Westminster College, Oxford, Review of English Studies, Vol. XLV, No. 178, May '94 </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>'I am making up "To the Lighthouse" - the sea is to be heard all through it' Inspired by the lost bliss of her childhood summers in Cornwall, Virginia Woolf produced one of the masterworks of English literature in To the Lighthouse. It concerns the Ramsay family and their summer guests on the Isle of Skye before and after the First World War. As children play and adults paint, talk, muse and explore, relationships shift and mutate. A captivating fusion of elegy, autobiography, socio-political critique and visionary thrust, it is the most accomplished of all Woolf's novels. On completing it, she thought she had exorcised the ghosts of her imposing parents, but she had also brought form to a book every bit as vivid and intense as the work of Lily Briscoe, the indomitable artist at the centre of the novel. </p>

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EDITORIAL REVIEW: 33,000 pages 44 million words 10 billion years of history 1 obsessed man Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), The Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A.J. Jacobs's hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z. To fill the ever-widening gaps in his Ivy League education, A.J. Jacobs sets for himself the daunting task of reading all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His wife, Julie, tells him it's a waste of time, his friends believe he is losing his mind, and his father, a brilliant attorney who had once attempted the same feat and quit somewhere around Borneo, is encouraging but, shall we say, unconvinced. With self-deprecating wit and a disarming frankness, The Know-It-All recounts the unexpected and comically disruptive effects Operation Encyclopedia has on every part of Jacobs's life -- from his newly minted marriage to his complicated relationship with his father and the rest of his charmingly eccentric New York family to his day job as an editor at Esquire. Jacobs's project tests the outer limits of his stamina and forces him to explore the real meaning of intelligence as he endeavors to join Mensa, win a spot on Jeopardy!, and absorb 33,000 pages of learning. On his journey he stumbles upon some of the strangest, funniest, and most profound facts about every topic under the sun, all while battling fatigue, ridicule, and the paralyzing fear that attends his first real-life responsibility -- the impending birth of his first child. The Know-It-All is an ingenious, mightily entertaining memoir of one man's intellect, neuroses, and obsessions and a soul-searching, ultimately touching struggle between the all-consuming quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-won wisdom.


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>In psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's definition of leadership, the personal is political. The best-selling author of __ interviewed several dozen exemplary CEOs whose wisdom provides the radical job description of the book’s premise: "Leaders must make it possible for employees to work with joy, to their heart’s content, while responding to the needs of society." Csikszentmihalyi leverages his definition of "flow"—-the capacity for full engagement in an activity—-to create a blueprint for a workplace in which bringing out the best in workers comes before products and profit. When leaders select and reward employees who find satisfaction at work, they can create an upwardly moral organization.</p><p>In this view, leadership is a privilege that requires checking ego in the coatroom and peering into the mirror to ask tough questions. For example, "How do I determine if something is right or wrong?" Or, "What is my business doing to benefit human well being?" He offers some inspiring stories from leaders who engage employees to go with the flow, including Body Shop CEO Anita Roddick, Patagonia crown prince Yvon Chouinard, and media mogul Ted Turner. Some of Csikszentmihalyi’s advice will sound familiar. Yet he creates a compellingly fresh vision of good business in both a material and spiritual sense. Ultimately, the success of this book lies in its powerful, non-flaky ability to define corporate soul in terms of a company becoming a stakeholder in an entity larger than itself.--_Barbara Mackoff_</p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Asking business leaders to turn a profit in this climate is tough enough, but psychologist Csikszentmihalyi challenges them to do something even tougher: make people happy. The author first explored flow, the enjoyment felt when an individual is focused on a complex task, in 1991's bestselling Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, and he has often returned to the subject (The Evolving Self; Creativity; etc.). Now he wants to show business leaders how to foster flow and use their psychic energy to enhance the happiness of their employees, customers and even themselves. The advice book offers predictable but sound guidance to business leaders: know oneself, set clear goals for employees and consider the consequences of business decisions. Insightful quotes from figures like Aristotle, Dante Alighieri and John Locke provide some historical grounding, but mostly the author focuses on how modern businesses motivate employees and contribute to the common good. By conducting extensive interviews, the author collects the secrets of successful business leaders, including the Body Shop CEO Anita Roddick; McDonald's chairman and CEO Jack Greenberg; and AOL Time Warner's Ted Turner. Roddick, for example, says that looking at company's lavatories and cafeteria can reveal a lot about a firm's corporate culture and the happiness of its employees. If a firm fails to create a clean, healthy environment for its workers, it probably isn't doing much good. Csikszentmihalyi shows how moral responsibility, respect for the environment and clean bathrooms can make a business good and the whole world better.<br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>“Comedians have a reputation for being dark, bitter and angry. And that’s exactly why their advice . . . is so entertaining to read. . . . <em>Good</em> advice? No. Fun reading material? Yes.” —_The Observer_’s Very Short List   </p><p>“An apt hipster bathroom book.” —_Details  _<br /><em> </em><br />“Funny-funny.”—_The Onion’_s A.V. Club   </p><p>“For a swift, re-motivating kick to the rear, I’ve never read anything like the gems dished out [in] <em>You’re a Horrible Person, But I Like You</em>.” —Caitlin Donohue, <em>San Francisco Bay Guardian</em>   </p><p>“A smart, fun addition to any literary enthusiast’s artfully cluttered bedside table.” —_Marie Claire _<br /><em> </em><br />“Dark, offensive and insulting. And really, really funny. By the end of David Cross’s introduction, you’ll be ROFL. And yes, that inane Internet lingo is righteously ridiculed in here.” —_All Headline News_</p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>A compendium of advice from the producers, writers, and actors of <em>The Office, Saturday Night Live, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Knocked Up, Flight of the Conchords, The Daily Show, Arrested Development, Reno 911!, </em>and <em>The Hangover </em>along with other people who should really never give advice.</strong>  </p><p>In these pages Fred Armisen offers help telling your dad you’re a lesbian—give him the phone number and he’ll do it for you. Mindy Kaling provides guidance on ending things with your mistress—dude, you totally have to kill her. Rainn Wilson offers insight on contacting that girl you dreamed about last night—he has created all-purpose web portal for such interactions. Amy Sedaris identifies the best way to a man’s heart—bone saw through the chest cavity.   </p><p>Aziz Ansari, Judd Apatow, Fred Armisen, Maria Bamford, Todd Barry, Samantha Bee, Michael Ian Black, Andy Borowitz, Michael Cera, Vernon Chatman, Rob Corddry, David Cross, Larry Doyle, Paul Feig, Jim Gaffigan, Zach Galifianakis, Janeane Garofalo, Daniel Handler, Todd Hanson, Tim Heidecker, Ed Helms, Buck Henry, Mindy Kaling, John Lee, Thomas Lennon, Al Madrigal, Aasif Mandvi, Marc Maron, Adam McKay, Eugene Mirman, Morgan Murphy, Bob Odenkirk, John Oliver, Patton Oswalt, Martha Plimpton, Harold Ramis, Amy Sedaris, Michael Showalter, Sarah Silverman, Paul F. Tompkins, Sarah Vowell, David Wain, Eric Wareheim, Rainn Wilson, Lizz Winstead </p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>A philosophical exploration of the entire seven-book <em>Harry Potter</em> series</p><p><em>Harry Potter</em> has been heralded as one of the most popular book series of all time and the philosophical nature of Harry, Hermione, and Ron's quest to rid the world of its ultimate evil is one of the many things that make this series special. _The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy <em>covers all seven titles in J.K. Rowling's groundbreaking</em> _series and takes fans back to Godric's Hollow to discuss life after death, to consider what moral reasoning drove Harry to choose death, and to debate whether Sirius Black is a man or a dog. </p><p>With publication timed to coincide with the release of the movie <em>Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1), </em>this book will be the definitive guide for all fans looking to appreciate the series on a deeper level. </p><ul><li>     Covers a range of intriguing topics such as the redemption of Severus Snape, the power of love, and destiny in the wizarding world </li> <li>     Gives you a new perspective on <em>Harry Potter</em> characters, plot lines, and themes </li> <li>     Makes a perfect companion to the <em>Harry Potter </em>books and movies </li></ul><p>Packed with interesting ideas and insights, <em>The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy </em>is an ideal companion for anyone interested in unraveling the subtext and exploring the greater issues at work in the story. </p><h3>From the Back Cover</h3><p><strong>Is it always wrong to use a love potion?</strong></p><p><strong>Is death something to be feared . . . or "mastered"?</strong></p><p><strong>What can Severus Snape teach us about the possibility of redemption?</strong></p><p><strong>Is love the most powerful magic of all?</strong></p><p>J. K. Rowling's wildly popular Harry Potter books may appear to be simple children's tales on the surface, but like Hogwarts, they conceal many hidden chambers, trapdoors, and perplexing secrets. Drawing on all seven books in the Harry Potter series, <em>The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy</em> offers a powerful brew of insights about good and evil, love, death, power, sacrifice, and hope. Is it true, as Dumbledore says, that our choices reveal far more about us than our abilities do? Is there an afterlife, and what might it be like? Here's a Pensieve for your thoughts. So take a healthy slug of Baruffio's Brain Elixir and join Bassham's Army of talented philosophers in exploring the mind-stretching deeper questions of the Potter books and films. </p><p>To learn more about the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, visit www.andphilosophy.com </p><p>BLACKWELL PHILOSOPHY AND POP CULTURE SERIES </p><p>This book has not been approved, licensed, or sponsored by any entity or person involved in creating or producing Harry Potter, the book series, or films. </p>

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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>"Block's fiction is tense and energetic. His stories unfold smoothly and elegantly, with plenty of detail and rich characterization."-Houston Chronicle </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>Lawrence Block weaves his spell in this suspenseful tale of a man haunted by murders he hopes he hasnÂ¹t committed . . . </strong></p><p>It was all too frighteningly familiar. For the second time in his life, Alex Penn wakes up in an alcoholic daze in a cheap hotel room off Times Square and finds himself lying next to the savagely mutilated body of a young woman. After the first death, he was convicted of murder and imprisoned, then released on a technicality. But this time he has to find out what happened during the blackout and why? before the police do. </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Healing, be it psychological, physiological or spiritual, informs this humane but too-familiar novel from veteran writer Chamberlain (The Courage Tree, etc.). The daughter of '60s free spirits, Joelle D'Angelo is a recently divorced, naturally empathetic social worker at a coastal California hospital. Unfortunately, she's madly in love with co-worker Liam Sommers, who just happens to be married to her best friend, Mara. Things are particularly tricky because Mara, once a brilliant psychiatrist, suffered brain damage caused by an aneurysm while giving birth to her son, Sam. Liam has remained a dutiful husband to his near-comatose wife, visiting her every opportunity he gets, but that doesn't stop him from sleeping with (and impregnating) Joelle in a moment of weakness. Into this tangled thicket of guilt, misery and self-abnegation comes Carlynn Shire, an elderly doctor with "mystical" healing powers, whose aid Joelle enlists to resuscitate Mara, for Liam's sake. Carlynn's past is revealed through a series of flashbacks: her initial discovery of her preternatural abilities, her romance with husband-to-be Alan Shire and her troubled but loving relationship with her insecure twin sister, Lisbeth. The novel's two narrative threads, Carlynn's past and Joelle's present, flow inexorably toward a "twist" ending that feels contrived and predictable. It's difficult to dislike Chamberlain's well-paced tale, especially since its protagonists are such an inherently sympathetic, good-hearted lot. Still, there are few surprises and fewer original insights into love, loss and self-sacrifice to be found here. Agent, Ginger Barber. National advertising; teaser chapter in January paperback edition of The Courage Tree. </p><p>Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</p><h3>From</h3><p>Life and death seem to go hand in hand in Joelle's life. When she was born while her parents were living at a commune in Big Sur, California, the cord was wrapped around her neck, and Carolynn, a famous healer, saved her. Thirty-four years later, she's contemplating asking Carolynn for help again. While giving birth more than a year ago, Joelle's best friend, Mara, suffered a brain aneurysm and has been left in a semi-vegetative state. As Mara's husband, Liam, and Joelle visit her in a nursing home, they end up romantically involved until guilt destroys their friendship, leaving Joelle to face the consequences when she discovers that she's pregnant. Driven by her desire to see Liam and Mara happy, Joelle decides to contact Carolynn and find out if she truly is a healer and will be willing to help. As Chamberlain examines myriad forms of love, her complicated novel will bring tears to her readers, but they won't regret the experience. <em>Patty Engelmann</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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SUMMARY:
300 years in the future, biotechnology has altered the shape and substance of what it means to be a man. Only the 250-year-old "Dragon Man" can give Sara an understanding of what "e-mortality" might mean--for herself and for the entire human world.


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Madoc Tamlin is a man with an unusual problem. He wakes to find himself a thousand years in the future, in a space station on the far side of the sun. Or so he is told by the mysterious, sexless human who greets him. Madoc assures himself that he's still in his own time, trapped in advanced virtual reality by one of his foes, because if he isn't, he has no idea why he was cryogenically frozen--which would mean that he was a dangerous criminal. And he doesn't remember that either! Plus, the notorious serial killer Christine Caine has been defrosted to join him, and they, along with their strange rescuer, have just been captured in an impossible space battle by an unknown enemy.</p><p><em>The Omega Expedition</em> is the sixth and concluding volume of Brian Stableford's grand future history, which explores the possibilities and perils of emortality (near-immortality). This is one of the most thoughtful, complex, and ambitious series ever produced in science fiction, and its final novel, a standalone work, masterfully orchestrates the numerous characters, themes, plot lines, and ideas to a bold conclusion. But newcomers to the series really shouldn't start with <em>The Omega Expedition</em>. Read the novels of this future history in the author's intended order, detailed in his informative introduction to <em>The Omega Expedition</em>. Start with <em>--Cynthia Ward</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In this cerebral novel, the capstone to British author Stableford's (Inherit the Earth, etc.) much praised six-volume future history concerning the search for "emortality" (technologically assisted near-immortality), Madoc Tamlin, a 22nd-century shyster with a heart of gold, is defrosted after more than 1,000 years in suspended animation, only to discover that his awakening has been nothing more than a trial run for a more important revival. The posthuman emortals of the 35th century are preparing to bring back Adam Zimmerman, aka the Man Who Stole the World. Zimmerman, whose takeover of Earth actually saved the planet from environmental collapse in the 21st century, is the near-mythic founder of the movement that led to the emortal, posthuman culture that now inhabits our solar system. As Tamlin learns more about the society into which he has newly awakened, he discovers that it contains a number of rival factions, each of which espouses a different sort of emortality. Stableford does a fine job of pulling together an enormous number of loose threads. If his characters are sometimes flat, his presentation of the possible marvels of posthumanity is quite compelling, as is his thoughtful examination of the potential involved in near immortality. Readers who stick with this complex, intellectually challenging series to the end will find their tenacity well rewarded.<br />Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<p>Credibly written but lacking in emotional range, this third installment in 
Stableford's Living in the Future series imagines a time when most 
humans--nearly immortal--aren't much preoccupied with the subject of death. Born 
more than five centuries ago, in 2520, Mortimer Gray is an emortal, a sturdy 
genetic composite who was raised in the Himalayas by the standard group of eight 
adults. These days, unlike most of his contemporaries, Gray--who long ago 
discovered his potential mortality when he barely survived a massive underwater 
volcanic eruption--is obsessed with death, and in fact has undertaken a massive 
study of how human's ideas about it have affected history. Well before 
completing the work, several centuries and nine volumes later, he became both 
famous as a popular scholar and notorious as an influence on the Thanaticists, 
militant believers in keeping death a part of the human condition to the point 
of organizing ritual suicides and creating "recreational diseases." (Meanwhile, 
Gray's world has remained in flux--experiments are turning humans into cyborgs 
or genetically altered beings with four hands; interstellar probes have 
encountered intelligent aliens.) Gray is in some ways a fine narrator, able to 
reflect on the events circling around him with a historian's critical eye--but 
because he's rather detached, it's hard to get involved in his story. Moreover, 
Stableford has written much of this book as if he was composing a literary essay 
(complete with excessive foreshadowing)--which makes reading it a bit of a 
chore.</p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>British author and critic Stableford adds a fifth novel to his Emortality series (Inherit the Earth, etc.) with this heavily speculative tale that puts the "science" in science fiction. Expanding on the episode of humanity's first extrasolar colony from The Fountains of Youth (2000), he devises an entire biosystem based on a dual coding genome rather than Earth's sole replicator molecule, DNA. That changes everything, as the colonists learn, from reproductive strategies and lifecycles to the basic taste (mildly unpleasant) of native food. Cultural as well as scientific conflicts afflict the passengers of the colony ship Hope, whose crew members seek to expand their mission to include other stars so that they can declare the colony self-sufficient. Unfrozen from suspended animation, Matthew Fleury, an ecologist and televangelist, must solve both the mystery of a murder and the mystery of life itself down on the planet called Ararat. Weaving the two plot lines together is the suggestion that the murder was committed by intelligent humanoid natives, builders of the abandoned city in which the crime took place. After talking with every faction on ship and planet, Matt travels by boat to the unexplored great plains downriver, and the novel picks up speed as his team adventures among the native flora and the very lively fauna. Despite his reputation as "an arrogant son of a bitch" and an "egomaniac," Matt is ultimately a sympathetic hero, whose intellectual and emotional leaps of faith justify the reader's belief in him. <br />Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>In the 29th century, the generation ship Hope reaches its destination, a habitable planet suitable for colonization. Awakened out of cryonic sleep, ecologist Matthew Fleury discovers that serious problems face a successful seeding of the new world with human colonists. As Fleury tries to solve the murder of one of the planet's early explorers, he confronts the possibility that the new world still contains an intelligent species and that a conspiracy exists to prevent the new colonists from building the world of their dreams. The fifth installment in Stableford's epic future history (e.g., Inherit the Earth) brings humanity to the stars and tells, in the process, a story of one man's singular dedication to the dream of populating the galaxy. Combining the best of hard science and visionary speculation, this sf drama belongs in most libraries. <br />Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>All Damon Hart wanted was to be his own man. Being the son of Conrad "Savior of Humanity" Helier didn't leave a lot of room for Hart's own life, so he abandoned his family, his heritage, and his money. But when the past starts catching up with him, and the people he loves start getting hurt, Hart has no alternative but to accept the responsibility of his ancestry. Was his father, the inventor of the artificial womb, a savior or an evil madman? And who is the self-appointed judge executing retribution on everyone related to Helier?</p><p><em>Inherit the Earth</em> begins with a good solid mystery that gets more involved and more involving as the complexities of the story pile one atop the next. Unfortunately, Brian Stableford is reworking ground that Bruce Sterling handled better in <strong>. Moreover, the plot is often lost in lengthy explications of future history that seem derivative, either of Sterling's work, or Neal Stephenson's </strong>. </p><p>With the exception of Hart's pain-in-the-ass ex-girlfriend Diana (who is a pleasure from start to finish), the characters fail to evoke much interest. It is a testament to the strength of the plot that the book carries through to the end, which unfortunately fails to deliver on the strong buildup. For the most part it's a good gripping story, with gems of beautiful language and flashes of brilliance, but it's not the ultimate science fiction book on nanotechnology and longevity. <em>--Blunt Jackson</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Best known in the U.S. for his stylishly written horror novels and alternate histories, Stableford (The Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires; The Carnival of Destruction), who began his career as an SF writer, returns to his roots with a complex, hard-SF tale of nanotechnology and life extension. Having barely survived the Plague Wars of the 21st century, humanity has supposedly entered a Utopian era, one in which the average life span is at least 150 years and immortality may be imminent. Damon Hart, posthumous son of Conrad Helier, the much venerated scientist who saved humanity from extinction during the plagues, wants nothing to do with his father's legacy and has cut himself off from his father's colleagues and their research. Then Damon's life is disrupted by the Eliminators, terrorists who begin to publish Net-based attacks on Helier, proclaiming that the scientist was in fact responsible for the plagues and was therefore an enemy of humankind. They also claim that Helier, supposedly 50 years dead, is still alive; eventually, they insist that Damon is Helier in disguise. Secrets and lies abound in a future where all evidence, even a dead body, can be falsified though the skillful application of computer- and nanotechnology; in time, Damon discovers that virtually nothing he has been told is true. This futuristic thriller, which contains provocative speculations about the effect of extreme life extension on society, isn't Stableford's best, but it's an enjoyable and challenging piece of work nonetheless. <br />Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Veteran British author Stableford's Emortality series of future history novels (Inherit the Earth, Architects of Emortality and Fountains of Youth, which start in the 22nd century and end in the 26th) receives a near-future underpinning in this mid-21st-century puzzle of maneuvers in the face of impending doom. Police forensic scientist Lisa Friemann wakes one night to armed intruders in her highly secure dwelling. Nothing in all the information storage media the thieves steal seems important, or even work related. Events are hardly clarified by the news that prominent geneticist Morgan Miller, her graduate supervisor and longtime colleague, is missing. Does someone think Miller made a discovery that, contrary to usual practice, he had shared with no one in his field? And why would anyone want to bomb Mouseworld, the half-million-strong genetic library of rodent strains? Lisa's cityplex police and university colleagues enter the story one by one, followed by a confusing (to all concerned) array of other agencies and factions. Could there be a secret that will avert or postpone the expected world catastrophe, or at least give some people advantages over others? Stableford's background in biological and social sciences makes for convincing behavior and dialogue among the scientists, while long practice in the novelist's trade ensures a smooth and involving read. This series should remain more visible in the U.S. than his large stable of unjustly neglected past work. </p><p>Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>As the world hovers on the brink of a biotech war and social breakdown, an attack on forensic researcher Lisa Frieman, along with the disappearance of scientist Jordan Miller, leads to a search for a dangerous secret that could determine humanity's future. The author of Architects of Emortality and The Fountains of Youth continues to explore his vision of the future with this latest tale of technology gone awry and the efforts of ordinary heroes to put things right. Stableford balances issue-oriented sf with suspense-filled action to create a story that belongs in most sf collections. <br />Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In McLoughlin's entertaining if uneven anthology of 19 brand new hard-boiled and twisted tales, each set in a different Brooklyn neighborhood, the best way to get to know New York City's most diverse borough is either to be dead or to cause someone else to assume that state in as grisly a manner as possible. This might be achieved via the old school method—for instance, with a nickel-plated revolver and a heart full of malice, as in "The Book Signing," Pete Hamill's lyrical opener about a Park Slope "ex-pat" writer who revisits his now-gentrified neighborhood only to step inadvertently into a past he'd long thought buried and forgotten. Or death might arrive in a new-fangled mode, with a scalpel and an Internet connection, as in Arthur Nersesian's compelling "Hunter/ Trapper," in which a Brooklyn Heights Web stalker makes the serious mistake of failing to secure his stalkee securely before ravishment. If a few weaker entries exploit the borough as an arbitrary setting for standard cops-and-robbers fare, the best stories concern people in the present coming to terms with the past. In McLoughlin's evocative "When All This Was Bay Ridge," a Sunset Park cop's son struggles with his dead father's secret history, while Maggie Estep's "Triple Harrison," depicting a squatter who tends a broken-down race horse in the abandoned wastes of East New York, takes the prize as the book's weirdest tale. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>It's all Brooklyn--Bensonhurst and Brighton Beach, Red Hook and Crown Heights--in this atmospheric collection of noir tales. The sound is right, too, from the understated staccato of old lost souls to the jiving rap of younger ones. Abraham Pearl manages a Jewish gumshoe in "Hasidic Noir," and Neal Pollack makes a carousel ride and a scavenger hunt as sinister as midnight. Thomas Morrissey does a weird tale of vampire cookies in "Can't Catch Me." The language is richly foul, and so is much of the sex in these 19 stories, divided into four sections from "Old School Brooklyn" to "Cops &amp; Robbers." Brooklyn's Italian and Irish belly up to the bar with Russians, Puerto Ricans, and Rastas. Pete Hamill, probably the biggest name here, opens with a signature tale for both himself and the genre, deceptively called "The Book Signing." <em>GraceAnne DeCandido</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>“Moore’s most hysterical ‘love story’ to date.” (Booklist )  </p><p>“I can’t emphasize enough how funny BITE ME is.” (Bookreporter.com )  </p><p>“Moore’s twisted take on the undead comes as a welcome respite from the recent spate of TV, film and book offerings to bombard us.” (Edmonton Journal on BITE ME )  </p><p>“Moore proves he has few rivals on the humour-opus front with this high-larious romp that just might have driven the final nail into old Nosferatu’s coffin.” (Ottawa Citizen on BITE ME )  </p><p>“Moore carved a niche in the horror-comedy genre, and anyone with a fiendish sense of humor will love his writing.” (Florida Times-Union on BITE ME ) </p><h3>Product Description</h3><blockquote><p>The city of San Francisco is being stalked by a huge shaved vampyre cat named Chet, and only I, Abby Normal, emergency backup mistress of the Greater Bay Area night, and my manga-haired love monkey, Foo Dog, stand between the ravenous monster and a bloody massacre of the general public. </p></blockquote><p>Whoa. And this is a love story? Yup. 'Cept there's no whining. See, while some lovers were born to run, Jody and Tommy were born to bite. Well, reborn, that is, now that they're vampires. Good thing theirs is an undying love, since their Goth Girl Friday, Abby Normal, imprisoned them in a bronze statue. </p><p>Abby wants to be a bloodsucking fiend, too, but right now she's really busy with other stuff, like breaking in a pair of red vinyl thigh-high Skankenstein® platform boots and wrangling her Ph.D.-candidate boyfriend, Steve (the love monkey). And then there's that vampire cat Chet, who's getting bigger and smarter—and thirstier—by the minute. Abby thought she and Steve could handle the kitty cat on their own, <em>mais non</em> . . . </p><p>Before you can say "OMG! WTF?" Tommy and Jody are sprung from captivity, and join forces with Abby, Steve, the frozen-turkey-bowling Safeway crew, the Emperor of San Francisco and his trusty dogs Lazarus and Bummer, Abby's gay Goth friend Jared, and SF's finest Cavuto and Rivera to hunt big cat and save the city. And that's when the fun really begins. </p>

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<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Gr 7 Up–Renée Winters, after being inexplicably called into California's Redwood forest, walks right up to the spot where both of her parents lay dead after suffering apparent heart attacks. Stranger still, their mouths are stuffed with gauze and coins are scattered about their bodies. The teen is put under the care of her estranged grandfather, who sends her to Gottfried Academy, a boarding school devoted to Latin, philosophy, and a strange mix of sciences, located across the country in Northern Maine. There, she meets fellow student Dante and is intensely drawn to him–and he to her. A series of suspicious events occurs throughout the first semester as Renée and Dante grow closer and students mysteriously die. Woon slowly–yet suspensefully–reveals that children who die and are left unburied for 10 days wake up part alive and part deceased. Undead. Gottfried Academy exists to teach both the living and the Undead about this transformation and the rules concerning it. Dead Beautiful could be described as Twilight at Hogwarts. Despite numerous parallels to Stephenie Meyer's saga, Woon pulls off some interesting twists and captures readers with the romantic connection between Renée and Dante. This novel will be an easy sell to readers who are still dying for more paranormal, forbidden, chaste romance. Woon sprinkles in some philosophical ideas that set the story apart from others in the same genre. Riveting and different, it is a real page-turner._Emily Chornomaz, West Orange Public Library, NJ_<br />© Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Darkly handsome Dante Berlin is the object of every girl’s desire at gothic Gottfried Academy, but he seems unreachable until new girl Renée Winters crosses his path. They discover a mutual attraction, complicated by the fact that Dante is undead and Renée is very much alive. A string of murders that create more undead causes Dante and Renée to start an investigation that reveals the true purpose of Gottfried Academy as well as the potentially fatal connection between the two teens. Boarding-school story meets Murder, She Wrote meets the Twilight series in this nifty title, which also offers an attention-grabbing take on zombies. Detailed world building and setting contribute as much to the story as character and plot. Atmospheric touches such as school rituals, classes like Imaginary Arithmetic, and the use of Latin as the “insider” language all add to the ambience. This lacks the sassy humor of many zombie books—not a failing, just a fact—so give this to the earnest Twilight crowd but also to teens who like impossible love stories with supernatural flavor. Grades 8-11. --Cindy Welch </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Looking out over the city, imagining its once-coal-blackened spires, he knew that he did it to keep his distance, that he set his books back in time because it was only in that vanished place, where the smell of ginger nuts hung in the air and horse-drawn water wagons sprayed the cobblestone streets, that he felt truly safe.It was nearly dawn, and from the narrow terrace of his apartment, Graves could see a faint light building in the east. He'd been up all night, typing furiously, following Detective Slovak through the spectral back streets of gaslight New York, the two of them--hero and creator--relentlessly pursuing Kessler from one seedy haunt to the next, the groggeries of Five Points, the whorehouses of the Tenderloin, its boy bars and child brothels, watching as Kessler's black coat slipped around a jagged brick corner or disappeared into a thick, concealing bank of nineteenth-century fog. Together, they'd questioned bill stickers and news hawkers and a noisy gaggle of hot-corn girls. They'd dodged rubberneck buses and hansom cabs and crouched in the steamy darkness of the Black Maria. For a time they'd even lingered with a "model artist" who'd just come from posing nude for a roomful of gawking strangers, Slovak mournfully aware of the woman's fate, his dark eyes watching silently as her youth and beauty dripped away, her life a melting candle. They'd finally ended up on the rooftop of a five-story tenement near the river. Slovak teetered at the brink of it as he searched the empty fire escape, the deserted street below, amazed that Kessler had done it again, disappeared without a trace. It was as if he'd found some slit in the air, slipped through it into a world behind this world, where he reveled in the terror he created.Graves glanced back into his apartment. The chaos that had accumulated during the night was spread throughout the room, small white cartons of Chinese food, dirty cups and glasses, a desk strewn with papers, his ancient manual typewriter resting heavily at the eye of it all. Compared to the sleek computer screens and ergonomic keyboards most other writers now used, the typewriter looked like a perverse relic of the Inquisition, a mechanical thumbscrew or some other infinitely refined instrument of medieval torture. Once, at an exhibition of such artifacts, Graves had seen a dagger made in the form of a crucifix, its handle cut in the shape of Christ's body to provide a better grip. Years later he'd written a scene in which Kessler had pressed an identical weapon into Sykes' trembling hand, forced him to draw it slowly across the sagging folds of an old woman's throat. Sykes. Kessler's cowering sidekick. The shivering, panicked instrument of Kessler's will.Graves took a sip of coffee and let his eyes drift out over the East River, the bridges that spanned its gray waters, cars moving back and forth on them like ants along a narrow twig. Within an hour traffic would become an unbroken stream, the noise of the city steadily increasing down below, so that even from his high aerie, perched like an eagle's nest on the fortieth floor, he'd have to close the windows to keep it out.It was nearly five hours before he had to catch a bus upstate, to the Riverwood Colony, where he'd been invited to spend the weekend. He'd need to get a little rest before then, since his mind was too easily alarmed by changing scenes, distant voices, unfamiliar smells for him ever to sleep in transit. Instead, he'd stare out the bus window, alert and edgy, as towns and villages flashed by, inventing tales as he went along. Passing an empty field, he might suddenly envision the moldering bones of some once-desperate girl, a runaway who'd knocked at the wrong door a hundred years before, young and vulnerable, pale and hungry, wrapped in a threadbare woolen shawl, snowflakes clinging to her lustrous hair, her small, childlike voice barely audible above the howl of the wind: I'm so sorry to disturb you, sir, but might I warm myself beside your fire? He could see the man beyond the door, imagine what he imagined, her quivering white breasts, the cold-stiffened nipples, feel his fingers probing the latch as he drew back to let her in, his voice, sweet, unthreatening, Of course, my dear, come in.It was always the isolated farmhouses that called up the most dreadful scenes. Graves knew firsthand the horror that could befall them, how vulnerable they were to sudden violence and death. Once, edging close to the forbidden, he'd actually described a young woman's murder in such a place, Kessler, the arch villain in all of Graves' books, directing Sykes through the brutal ritual while Slovak, Graves' tireless hero, knowing where Kessler was, what he was doing, and desperate to stop him, had pounded up the flickering, smoke-filled aisles of a stranded snowbound train, panting heavily by the time he'd finally reached the engine. But once there, he'd found the engineer too terrified by the storm to press onward, so that once again Kessler had escaped due to some unexpected cowardice, fear the servant upon which evil could most confidently rely. It was a circumstance often repeated in Graves' books, one of his abiding themes.Graves drew in a breath and felt a wave of exhaustion settle over him. He knew where the weariness had come from and why it was so heavy. He and Slovak had just trudged up five flights of stairs, slammed through a thick wooden door, and raced across a wide black roof, arriving breathless and exhausted at its edge.Now, looking out over the city, it seemed strange to Graves that within an instant he had transported himself to this quiet terrace where he stood, calmly sipping tepid coffee in the early morning light while in the world of his creation, Slovak remained on the other side of town, thirty blocks away in space and more than a century distant in time, staring out over the same enigmatic web of streets and rooftops as Kessler crept up from the rear, grinning as he drew the little silver derringer from beneath his coat, good and evil about to face each other squarely in the dawning light.From the Paperback edition.</p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Richard North Patterson, whose legal thrillers have won him legions of devoted mystery fans, shows off his superb pacing and narrative gifts as well as his ability to create vividly realized characters in this compelling novel of late-term abortion, parental consent, and the battle over a nominee for chief justice of the Supreme Court. Unlike Patterson's typical courtroom dramas, the name of this game isn't murder; it's the body politic that's bleeding. When newly elected Democratic president Kerry Kilcannon nominates appeals court judge Caroline Masters to the top spot on the court, he knows he'll have a fight on his hands. Leading the opposition is his political rival, MacDonald Gage, the GOP majority leader who owes his soul and career to the Christian right wing. They're suspicious of Masters even before a politically charged case involving a teenager whose parents refuse to allow her to terminate a disastrous pregnancy ends up in her court. More principled than Gage, but equally adamant, is Republican senator Chad Palmer, who, like Masters, harbors his own potentially career-destroying secret. </p><p>Masters is an intriguing character, a woman whose judicial integrity, personal privacy, and political ambitions collide when she casts a tie-breaking vote on the constitutionality of the recently enacted Protection of Life bill. Not only young Mary Anne Tierney's future is at stake: so are the reproductive rights of all women, the resilience of the judicial system, and the personal lives of innocent bystanders who will be sacrificed on the altar of the First Amendment--the public's right to know, and the media's right to tell. Moving swiftly between the courts of public opinion and the federal judiciary, from San Francisco to the nation's capital, Patterson tells a mesmerizing story that's been praised by political and legal luminaries such as Mario Cuomo, Barbara Boxer, and Alan Dershowitz. But don't let that stop you. This up-to-date version of <em>Advise and Consent</em> is a provocative read that will resonate with political junkies as well as those who've made bestsellers out of Patterson's more typical genre thrillers. <em>--Jane Adams</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>U.S. President Kerry Kilcannon, introduced by Patterson in 1998's No Safe Place, returns for another political dogfight in this meticulously researched, sharply observed tension builder about a Supreme Court nominee mired in the abortion debate. Kilcannon, seeking to counter the court's conservative leanings, has nominated another Patterson heroine, Caroline Masters (Degree of Guilt; The Final Judgment), an appellate court judge of impeccable legal pedigree, yet one vulnerable to attack from the right. The single San Francisco judge harbors a secret: she had a child out of wedlock 27 years ago, a painful ordeal that her critics soon uncover. Masters's struggle for confirmation by the U.S. Senate plays out against the backdrop of another court caseDthat of Mary Ann Tierney, a 15-year-old six months pregnant with a hydrocephalic baby. Citing a new federal law, Tierney's parents, both prolife activists, refuse to allow their daughter to abort. When Tierney's suit seeking to overturn the law reaches the appellate court, Masters's foes work out a backroom deal that requires Masters to hear the case and issue an opinion that could doom her nomination and possibly Kilcannon's presidency. Excelling as both a political novel and a tale of suspense, Patterson's latest takes a provocative look at the ethics of abortion and the power plays endemic to American politics, skewering the Christian Right, the gun lobby and campaign financing along the way. In lesser hands, the book's exhaustive recitation of abortion pros and cons might have spelled polemical tedium, but Patterson's strong characterizations and sensitivity to both sides (though he leans prochoice) illuminate one of society's most bitter and divisive issues. Agent, Fred Hill. (Dec.) Forecast: With the future of the Supreme Court at stake in this last election, the reach of this perfectly timed novel could extend beyond Patterson's usual fans. A 500,000-copy first printing has been announced; the book is also a dual main selection of the Literary Guild, a featured alternate selection of BOMC and a selection of the Doubleday Book Club and the Mystery Guild, and will be a simultaneous Random House Audiobook and available in a large print edition from Random. We're talking major bestseller here. <br />Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Rune, the shrewd and spunky heroine of Manhattan Is My Beat , returns with a new job as a camerawoman for a local TV news station, but she still believes in magic and lives by her own rules. Rune thinks that Randy Boggs, convicted killer of network news head Lance Hopper, is innocent, and she persuades network dragon lady Piper Sutton, the country's top news anchor, to let her investigate and produce a segment on the murder. Endearing, with lots of moxie but no experience, Rune learns the hard way as she blunders through the world of big-time investigative reporting, making mistakes and trusting the wrong people. She also has to act as a mother to her flaky friend Claire's three-year-old, Ophelia, when Claire runs off to Boston in search of a better life. Deaver's background as a journalist helps him to vivify the competitive, even back-stabbing caste system of network news and to successfully depict the tedium as well as the excitement a reporter experiences when breaking a major story. He writes with clarity, compassion and intelligence, and with a decidedly human and contemporary slant. <br />Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>After viewing a video of a convicted murderer, houseboat dwelling Rune ( Death of a Blue Movie Star , Bantam, 1990) decides the man is innocent; she then convinces her employer, Network News, to sponsor her investigation. Why Rune believes what she does remains inexplicable, which necessitates a great deal of persuasion on her (and the author's) part. Ultimately, Rune finds herself mixed up with the convict, her bosses, and a cute three-year-old. Despite its extended exposition, this tale of a news scoop gone wrong should appeal to fans.<br />Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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The shadowy side of the Sunshine State, where blood runs cold even in the tropical heat, is the tantalizing, terrifying territory few know better than James Swain. His razor-sharp tales of criminals, cops, and South Florida--style suspense bite like a hungry gator and never let go. The past has come back to haunt P.I. Jack Carpenter, former head of the Broward County Missing Persons Unit. As a young cop he failed to stop the kidnapping of a college coed by a shockingly large assailant-and neither of them was ever seen again. The abduction has remained Carpenter's most chilling cold case, and even now the mystery of the missing girl lurks in his darkest dreams. But after eighteen years, it's about to become terrifying reality once more. When his daughter, Jessie, asks him to bird-dog a camera-toting creep who's been shadowing her college basketball team, Carpenter's hot pursuit of the video voyeur leads him smack into another run-in with his old hulking nemesis, who abducts one of Jessie's teammates. While the Broward County cops are determined to pin the rap on a convenient suspect, Carpenter isn't about to let grim history repeat itself-especially when he discovers a pattern of unsolved kidnappings involving the same massive perp. With the eager assistance of the kidnap victim's high-powered tycoon father, the uneasy cooperation of his old unit's new commander, and precious little time before the trail goes cold, Jack and his trusty dog, Buster, hit the ground running. And they'll need all the help they can get-including backup from an FBI man with a personal stake in the hunt-as they follow a twisted trail from the ruins of a shuttered mental asylum with an infamous past to the streets of a sinister small town with a ghastly secret. With smooth-talking, uncompromising hero Jack Carpenter as guide, The Night Monster is an exhilarating journey into the heart of the American underworld. Bestselling author James Swain's fiendish plotting and energetic pacing will keep you electrified straight through till morning.


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>What crime fiction fan can resist a guy who isn't afraid to knock a few slime-bag heads when no one is watching? In Swain's fine second suspense novel to feature South Florida PI Jack Carpenter (after <em>Midnight Rambler</em>), imprisoned serial killer Abb Grimes hires the tough, unrelenting ex-cop to find his kidnapped grandson, Sampson Grimes. The chief suspect is the child's father, Jed Grimes, but Jack thinks Jed is innocent, even though the evidence suggests otherwise. There's plenty of action and intelligent sleuthing, but it's Jack's uncompromising character and Swain's equally uncompromising writing that will keep readers turning pages and eager for the next installment: I'd visited many prisons, and the smell was always the same: a choking mixture of piss, shit, fear, and desperation, wiped down by harsh antiseptics. The winner of France's Prix Calibre 38, Swain is also the author of <em>Deadman's Bluff</em> and six other books in his Tony Valentine gambling series. <em>(Oct.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"What crime fiction fan can resist a guy who isn't afraid to knock a few slime-bag heads when no one is watching? In Swain's fine second suspense novel to feature South Florida PI Jack Carpenter (after <em>Midnight Rambler</em>), imprisoned serial killer Abb Grimes hires the tough, unrelenting ex-cop to find his kidnapped grandson, Sampson Grimes. The chief suspect is the child's father, Jed Grimes, but Jack thinks Jed is innocent, even though the evidence suggests otherwise. There's plenty of action and intelligent sleuthing, but it's Jack's uncompromising character and Swain's equally uncompromising writing that will keep readers turning pages and eager for the next installment: “I'd visited many prisons, and the smell was always the same: a choking mixture of piss, shit, fear, and desperation, wiped down by harsh antiseptics.” The winner of France's Prix Calibre 38, Swain is also the author of <em>Deadman's Bluff</em> and six other books in his Tony Valentine gambling series." _ - Publishers Weekly_  </p><p>Praise for James Swain’s Midnight Rambler  </p><p>“Midnight Rambler kept me up all night long. . . . The only problem with Swain’s riveting thrillers is they end.”<br />–Tess Gerritsen, author of The Keepsake  </p><p>“A sturdy thriller . . . [Swain] uses language with such blunt force he could be hammering in nails.”<br />–The New York Times Book Review  </p><p>“Immensely satisfying . . . [Hero Jack Carpenter evokes] memories of Will Graham, the FBI profiler in Thomas Harris’ brilliant Red Dragon.”<br />–The Providence Journal  </p><p>“Easily one of the best thrillers of the year, Swain’s tense, gritty tale is virtually impossible to put down.”<br />–Lansing State Journal  </p><p>“Moves like a bullet train on overdrive.”<br />–Michael Connelly </p>


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<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 7–10—Senior Hailey Kendrick is student government vice-president at her exclusive boarding school and she dates the most popular boy at Evesham. All about impressing her high-powered doctor father, she's a straight-A student and follows every rule to the letter. One night after her aloof father changes their plans to spend the summer together yet again, she sneaks out of her dorm room after curfew, kisses a boy who is not her boyfriend, and gets caught vandalizing the school statue. As punishment, Hailey is assigned janitorial duty, and the entire school is put on lock down until she agrees to to tell who was with her. Mitigating circumstances make it impossible for her to reveal his identity. But now that Hailey has fallen from her perch of perfection, she begins to see things a little differently. She learns, with the help of the good-looking janitor she's assigned to help, that rules shouldn't always be followed...even when you're the one making them. Hailey is a likable character, and the events leading up to and away from her episode of vandalism are believable. Her emotions ring true as well, whether it's anger at her father or frustration at the restrictions she's placed on herself. The plot develops quickly, and readers will be madly flipping pages to find out what happens next.—_Heather Miller Cover, Homewood Public Library, AL_ <br />(c) Copyright 2011.  Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Cook effectively builds both Hailey's (justified) feelings of rebellion and the social dynamics of her ostracism, especially in her growing friendship with a challenging townie, Drew, who supervises her punishment working with the janitorial staff....Cook coaxes considerable empathy for the otherwise privileged Hailey as she abandons the achievement treadmill to explore her independence." --_Publishers Weekly_  </p><ul> <li>     "Hailey may be an A student headed to the Ivy League, but when it comes to taking a chance on life, she’s clueless. She’s also enormously appealing and great company throughout this breezy read. Yes, it’s chick lit, but of the highest quality—like a gourmet truffle. Cook has whipped up a real treat.” --Kirkus starred review  </li></ul>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>" Park is truly a funny writer. Although Junie B. is a kindergartner, she's sure to make middle graders laugh out loud." -- <em>School Library Journal</em> -- <em>Review</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Junie B. is a very grown-up little lady. So how come everyone treats her like a baby? It's not fair. But Junie B. knows just how to fix the situation. Her aunt Flo is getting married. What a perfect chance for Junie B. to show everyone how grown-up she is! Too bad she wasn't picked to be the flower girl in the wedding so she could really show off. But surely Junie B. can still find <em>some</em> way to get everyone's attention. </p>


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<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Gr 9 Up–When in a rush of uncommon bravado high school senior Piper offers to manage Dumb, her school's most popular student rock band, her family thinks it must be a joke. A retiring student and member of the chess team, Piper is neither the stereotypical band manager nor a typical teen: she is profoundly hearing impaired. After she discovers that her parents have spent the majority of her college money to treat her infant sister's deafness with cochlear implants, Piper's quest to get Dumb a paying gig leads her to consider her managerial role as a potential source of income. John's novel is written with a reverence for popular music–particularly the work of Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain–and a respect for its ambitious teen characters. Although Piper's hearing is a characterizing detail that could have been used solely to add a type of politically incorrect and screwball humor to the story, her abilities are seen as assets: while lip reading allows her access to public conversation, she is not above using sign language to obscure her intentions. The parallel attention to Piper's hearing family and the strain her parents' decision to treat her sister with cochlear implants adds to the greater story and informs the novel's direction and ending in a satisfying way. Set in the Pacific Northwest, this rock-and-roll novel joins the ranks of Randy Powell's equally thoughtful Tribute to Another Dead Rock Star (Farrar, 2003) and Blake Nelson's Rock Star Superstar (Viking, 2004).–Amy S. Pattee, Simmons College, Boston. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"I loved it and laughed out loud. Hilarious and so smart. Dumb proves that everyone, no matter what, deserves to be heard." ÑCatherine Gilbert Murdoch, author of <em>Dairy Queen</em></p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The futuristic biotech world of Stableford's acclaimed SF novella Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil), expanded upon in last year's novel Inherit the Earth, provides the foundation for this sequel. After an ecological collapse brought on by biological warfare and a runaway greenhouse effect, nanotechnology is regrowing lost forests as well as offering near-immortality to those who can afford it. Although the United Nations calls itself a World Government, the true power rests with the MegaMall, a company produced by generations of multinational mergers and buyouts. On this cusp of a new world, someone is murdering the pioneering scientists of the New Human Race, and it's up to Detective Sgt. Charlotte Holmes and Inspector Hal Watson, of the U.N. Police, to stop the killing. Charlotte and Hal are assisted by Michael Lowenthal, a "special investigator" from the MegaMall, and Oscar Wilde, a legendary bioengineer of specialty flowers. Evidence indicates that the murderer, a mysterious young woman, is somehow related to a genetic engineer who calls himself Rappaccini (after a character in a Hawthorne story). As the team investigates the murders, they realize that Rappaccini's taut game of hide-and-seek is leading them to the truth behind a much darker secret. Stableford's skill at creating technologically overwhelmed future worlds is evident here. His narrative teems with vivid, believable descriptions of man-eating flowers, hundred-year-old artists and rampant genetic engineering. His talent for mystery is less sure, featuring characters whose roles blur unconvincingly as the plot picks up speed. Although the novel's ending is weakened by premature revelations of Rappaccini's motives, the scale and audacity of Stableford's vision is a wonder. (Sept.) <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>The bizarre murder of a prominent architect of the new Decivilization of the world draws New York investigator Charlotte Holmes into a complicated web of murderous intrigue involving death by genetically altered flowers. Aided by a brilliant and occasionally maddening "expert witness" with the unlikely name of Oscar Wilde, Holmes seeks solutions to a series of puzzles rooted in the poets and authors of the 19th century. Set in the same distant future as Inherit the Earth, this literary sf mystery, based on the short story "Flowers of Evil," belongs in most sf collections. <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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This is how it began... It is the year 2524.  Harvest is a peaceful, prosperous farming colony on the very edge of human-controlled space.  But we have trespassed on holy ground--strayed into the path of an aggressive alien empire known as the Covenant.  What begins as a chance encounter between an alien privateer and a human freighter catapults mankind into a struggle for its very existence. But humanity is also locked in a bitter civil war known as the Insurrection.  So the survival of Harvest's citizens falls to a squad of battle-weary UNSC Marines and their inexperienced colonial militia trainees.  In this unlikely group of heroes, one stands above the rest...a young Marine staff sergeant named Avery Johnson.


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When humanity expanded beyond the safety of Earth to new stars and horizons, they never dreamed what dangers they would encounter there.  When the alien juggernaut known as the Covenant declared holy war upon the fragile human empire, millions of lives were lost—but, millions of heroes rose to the challenge.  In such a far-reaching conflict, not many of the stories of these heroes, both human and alien, have a chance to become legend.  This collection holds eleven stories that dive into the depths of the vast Halo universe, not only from the perspective of those who fought and died to save humanity, but also those who vowed to wipe humanity out of existence.


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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

***The Human-Covenant war rages on as the alien juggernaut sweeps inexorably toward its final goal: destruction of all human life!***Halo has been destroyed, and the threat it posed to sentient life, neutralized. But victory has come at a terrible cost for the UNSC. Thousands of valiant soldiers fell in the battle to prevent the alien construct from falling into the enemy’s clutches. Now, everything depends on the Spartan known as the “Master Chief.” Yet even with the aid of the artificial intelligence Cortana, the Master Chief will be hard-pressed to rescue survivors and evade the Covenant ships patrolling the remains of Halo in debris-strewn space. Ahead lies a dangerous voyage home, through a gauntlet of Covenant forces. For the sake of all, the Master Chief and his war-torn squad must not only survive, but take the fight to the enemy with a decisive first strike.**This novel is based on a Mature-rated video game.****Bungie, Halo, Xbox, the Microsoft Game Studios logo and the Xbox Logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Used under license. © 2003 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.**


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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Continuing the saga of the award-winning Xbox™ game! 

 

The Spartan-II program has gone public. Tales of super-soldiers fending off thousands of Covenant attacks have become the stuff of legend. 

But just how many Spartans are left?

While the Master Chief defends a besieged Earth, and the myriad factions of the Covenant continue their crusade to eliminate humanity, an ultrasecret cell of the Office of Naval Intelligence known as “Section Three” devises a plan to buy the UNSC vital time. They’re going to need hundreds of willing soldiers, though . . . and one more Spartan to get the job done.

The planet Onyx is virtually abandoned and the perfect place to set this new plan in motion. But when the Master Chief destroys Halo, something is triggered deep within Onyx: Ancient Forerunner technology stirs, and fleets of UNSC and Covenant race to claim it to change the course of the Human-Covenant War.

But this reawakened and ancient force may have plans of its own  . . . 



This novel is based on a mature-rated game.    

 



Microsoft, the Microsoft Game Studios Logo, Bungie, the Bungie Logo, Halo, the Halo logo, Xbox, and the Xbox logos are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries and are used under license from owner.


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In the first, desperate days of the Human-Covenant War, the UNSC has enacted the Cole Protocol to safeguard Earth and its Inner Colonies from discovery by a merciless alien foe. Many are called upon to rid the universe of lingering navigation data that would reveal the location of Earth. Among them is Navy Lieutenant Jacob Keyes. Thrust back into action after being sidelined, Keyes is saddled with a top secret mission by ONI. One that will take him deep behind enemy lines, to a corner of the universe where nothing is as it seems. Out beyond the Outer Colonies lies the planet Hesiod, a gas giant surrounded by a vast asteroid belt. As the Covenant continues to glass the human occupied planets near Hesiod, many of the survivors, helped by a stronghold of human Insurrectionists, are fleeing to the asteroid belt for refuge. They have transformed the tumbling satellites into a tenuous, yet ingenious, settlement known as the Rubble--and have come face-to-face with a Covenant settlement of Kig-Yar . . . yet somehow survived. News of this unlikely treaty has spread to the warring sides. Luckily for the UNSC, this uneasy alliance is in the path of the Spartan Gray Team, a three-man renegade squad whose simple task is to wreak havoc from behind enemy lines in any way they see fit. But the Prophets have also sent their best---an ambitious and ruthless Elite, whose quest for nobility and rank is matched only by his brutality . . . and who will do anything to secure his Ascendancy and walk the Path.


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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

***The Definitive Edition to the First and Bestselling Halo Novel, Including Twenty-seven Pages of New Material***

***

**Legends are not simply born...they are willed into existence.**  



Humanity has expanded beyond the Sol System. There are hundreds of planets we now call "home."

The United Nations Space Command now struggles to control this vast empire. 

After exhausting all strategies to keep seething insurrections from exploding into interplanetary civil war, the UNSC has one last hope.

At the Office of Naval Intelligence, Dr. Catherine Halsey has been hard at work on a top secret program that could bring an end to all this conflict...and it starts with seventy-five children, among them a six year old boy named John.

Halsey never guessed that this little boy would become humanity's final hope against a vast alien force hell-bent on wiping us out.

This is the story of John, Spartan-117…the Master Chief, and of the battles that brought humanity face to face with its possible extinction.

***



This new Tor edition will serve as the definitive version of the novel that started Halo fans reading the series, and features brand-new material, including: ****

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The Human-Covenant War, a desperate struggle for humankind’s very survival, has reached its boiling point on the mysterious, ring world called Halo. But the fierce Covenant warriors, the mightiest alien military force known, are not the only peril lying in wait.As the fortress world of Reach and its brave defenders were bombarded to rubble, a single cruiser fled the carnage with the battle’s only human survivors—Captain Keyes, his crew of a few hundred Marines, and the last remaining SPARTAN super-soldier, the Master Chief.With the cruiser’s artificial intelligence, Cortana, concealed in his battle armor, the Master Chief crash lands on Halo in the midst of a massive Covenant occupation. Curiously, the alien soldiers appear to be searching for something hidden on the ring. Built by a long-dead race, Halo harbors many deadly secrets, but one overshadows them all. Now the Master Chief must lead the scattered troops in a brutal race to unravel Halo’s darkest mystery—and unleash its greatest source of power. . . .This novel is based on a Mature-rated video game.


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>From the author of the New York Times bestsellers </p><p>How Full Is Your Bucket? (Gallup Press, 2004, <strong>Strengths Based Leadership</strong> (Gallup Press, 2009), and <strong>Wellbeing</strong> (Gallup Press, 2010) a book that features the new <strong>Wellbeing Finder</strong> assessment.   </p><p>STRENGTHSFINDER 2.0   </p><p>Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?   </p><p>Chances are, you don't. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths.   </p><p>To help people uncover their talents, Gallup introduced the first version of its online assessment, StrengthsFinder, in 2001 which ignited a global conversation and helped millions to discover their top five talents.   </p><p>In its latest national bestseller, StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more (see below for details). While you can read this book in one sitting, you'll use it as a reference for decades.   </p><p>Loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, this new book and accompanying website will change the way you look at yourself -- and the world around you -- forever.   </p><p>AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY IN STRENGTHSFINDER 2.0 <br>(using the unique access code included with each book)   </p><ul><li><p>A new and upgraded edition of the StrengthsFinder assessment   </p> </li> <li><p>A personalized Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide for applying your strengths in the next week, month, and year   </p> </li> <li><p>A more customized version of your top five theme report   </p> </li> <li><p>50 Ideas for Action (10 strategies for building on each of your top five themes)   </p> </li></ul><h3>From the Publisher</h3><p>STRENGTHS: THE NEXT GENERATION </p><p>Q&amp;A with author Tom Rath </p><p>(From the Gallup Management Journal; interviewed by Jennifer Robison) </p><p>Last month, StrengthsFinder 2.0 hit the bookstores. Book browsers, no doubt, had many questions, and among them was probably "Didn't I already read a book about this?" </p><p>Well, actually, yes. But the topic was worth revisiting for two reasons. In the six years since the release of Now, Discover Your Strengths, more than 2 million people have taken the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment, which means billions of people have not yet had the opportunity. The second reason is that Gallup researchers just haven't been able to let the topic rest. Over the past decade, they've done more surveys, more interviews, and more studies; they've prodded and poked and analyzed. And they realized that there's a lot more to understanding human talent than most people know. Those who are familiar with the StrengthsFinder assessment know that it is designed to uncover certain key talents -- patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that can be productively applied. These patterns are categorized into 34 broad themes -- such as Achiever, Ideation, and Relator -- and those themes indicate and predict one's innate and unique talents. Those talents, when multiplied by the investment of time spent practicing, developing skills, and building knowledge, can become strengths. Some of this is just common sense; it seems intuitive that your performance will be better if you're doing what you naturally do well. But some of it seems counterintuitive and runs directly against conventional wisdom: No amount of training will help you excel in your areas of weakness. You can't do anything you want to do -- or be anything you want to be -- because you're just not going to be good at everything. But if you work with your talents, you can be extraordinary. StrengthsFinder has resonated with the business community because there's a direct link between talent development and performance. In this interview, Tom Rath, author of StrengthsFinder 2.0, discusses what Gallup scientists have learned since the publication of the first book, what more there is to discover about your talents, and why it's bad to focus on your employees' weaknesses, but simply cruel to ignore them completely. GMJ: Why the new book? </p><p>Tom Rath: StrengthsFinder 2.0 is an effort to get the core message and language out to a much broader audience. We had no idea how well received the first strengths book would be by general readers -- it was oriented more toward managers -- or that the energy and excitement would continue to grow. More than two million people have taken the StrengthsFinder assessment, and each month, the number of people learning about their talents goes up. But readers keep asking us: "Now that I know about my strengths, what do I do next?" So we went back and surveyed hundreds of them and asked them how they apply their talents. Then we whittled their suggestions down to the ten best ideas for each theme. We also added more than five thousand Strengths Insights to version 2.0 that allow us to offer more individualized theme descriptions than we could before. So, instead of general descriptions of your top five talent themes, in 2.0, you get a talent profile so unique that you're unlikely to share even a sentence with someone else. And as I said, the first book was really written for a business audience. People have had trouble retrofitting the theme descriptions if they are in non-management roles, but they've tried. This book helps readers apply strengths theory to any type of role and gives them ideas to help them apply their talents in their daily life. GMJ: It's been six years since the first book was published, and Gallup has done hundreds of thousands more interviews. Have you discovered anything new about talents and strengths? Have you altered your original premise? </p><p>Rath: No, but we've seen more and more evidence that demonstrates that focusing on your talents is important. We did a survey in 2004 that examined what happens when your manager ignores you, focuses on your strengths, or focuses on your weaknesses. We found that if your manager focuses on your strengths, your chances of being actively disengaged go down to one in one hundred. However, if your manager primarily focuses on your weaknesses, your chances of being actively disengaged are 22%, and if your manager ignores you, that percentage rises to 40%. GMJ: Why such a high rate of disengagement among those who are ignored? </p><p>Rath: It basically mirrors the psychology of raising kids -- being completely ignored is the worst possible psychological state. You would actually feel better if your manager went from ignoring you to focusing on what you do wrong all the time, because then at least she's paying attention to you. GMJ: Did your new research turn up anything that surprised you? </p><p>Rath: We've talked a lot about how strengths can help you be more of who you are, and you get more out of your best players, and all of that. But in the last ten years, we've also found that it's a good strategy just to wipe out the extreme negativity in the workplace. I get this question almost every time I talk to a group: "What do I do about that one person who just drags everyone down every day?" My glib answer was to get rid of the person. I always thought there were some people who were just destined to be disengaged in their jobs because that was their personality, and no matter how hard managers tried, there wasn't much they could do with some of those people. But the data from the last five years would suggest that much of that epidemic of disengagement is fixable. More than I ever would have guessed, it helps tremendously if a manager starts by focusing on someone's strengths. You may not take someone who's actively disengaged and make him into your most engaged employee, but it will help get him out of that mindset where he's scaring off colleagues and customers. GMJ: So is that the business case to be made for putting people in roles that play to their strengths? Rath: I think it's the secondary business case. The main business case is that people have a lot more fun and get a lot more done if they're able to spend time in areas where they have some natural talent. I think that's a fundamental principle that hasn't changed much at all. The one thing that we were clear about in StrengthsFinder 2.0 is that the American dream ideal that "You can be anything you want if you just try hard enough" is detrimental. This is especially true when people buy into it hook, line, and sinker. You may not be able to be anything you want to be, but you can be a lot more of who you already are. [Taking] StrengthsFinder is just a starting point; it's step one of a hundred in figuring out the areas where you have the most potential for growth. GMJ: What is the most challenging aspect of your ongoing strengths research? </p><p>Rath: While hundreds of people in our organization continue to research this topic each year, our greatest challenge might be incorporating the new research while making the message even more succinct and applicable to a wider audience. So while we have hundreds of new case studies and meta-analyses about strengths -- and about employee engagement and business outcomes -- we tried to stay as close as we could to the basics. GMJ: The Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment has always categorized talents into thirty-four themes. Have you ever considered adding or subtracting any, or refining them further? </p><p>Rath: Yes, we looked at that extensively as we started to review our plan for the updated version of the assessment. We found that so far, the thirty-four themes have done a good job of describing much of what we've learned since releasing the first version of the assessment. If enough people had made a case about a specific theme that didn't exist, we were open to adding that theme. I think we probably will continue to investigate whether there are themes that emerge that we haven't yet picked up on. But there wasn't a real strong case for any additions at this time. GMJ: What would you most like to accomplish with StrengthsFinder 2.0? </p><p>Rath: Our big goal and mission as a company is to help people do more of what they do well. We've topped two million completed StrengthsFinder assessments, and it's not too hard to imagine that number getting to twenty million soon. An organization that exists to help people has a responsibility to get better and better. By reaching beyond our initial audience, we help people get the latest and greatest research. But we also hope it helps people live better lives. </p>

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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>The tenth anniversary edition of the international bestseller with an updated introduction by Naomi Klein. In the last decadeNo Logohas become an international phenomenon. Equal parts journalistic expose, mall-rat memoir, and political and cultural analysis, it vividly documents the invasive economic practices and damaging social effects of the ruthless corporatism that characterizes many of our powerful institutions. As the world faces another depression, Naomi Klein's analysis of the branded world we all live in proves not only astonishingly prescient but more vital and timely than ever. No Logobecame "the movement bible" that put the new grassroots resistance to corporate manipulation into clear perspective. It tells a story of rebellious rage and self-determination in the face of our branded world, calling for a more just, sustainable economic model and a new kind of proactive internationalism. Since her bookThe Shock Doctrinewas published last year, Klein, now thirty-eight, has become the most visible and influential figure on the American left-what Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky were thirty years ago.</p>


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<div><p class="description">"This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending," writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the birth of her first child. This book is about what happened next. In her ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that her baby boy had died. How do you deal with and recover from this kind of loss? Of course you don't--but you go on. And if you have ever experienced loss or love someone who has, the company of this remarkable book will help you go on. With humor and warmth and unfailing generosity, McCracken considers the nature of love and grief. She opens her heart and leaves all of ours the richer for it.</p>
<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. McCracken tells her own story in this touching and often unexpectedly funny memoir about her life before and after losing her first child in the ninth month of pregnancy. As difficult as it must have been to read aloud, McCrackens delivery is courageous and never self-pitying. McCracken is forthright about the tragedy, telling the listener early on that a baby dies in this book, but that another one is born. McCrackens reading is enthralling and deeply moving, as if she is relating this intimate journey directly to each listener individually from a dark, candle-lit room, in an unforgettable performance. <em>A Little, Brown hardcover (reviewed online). (Sept.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>In Elizabeth McCracken’s heartrending memoir—a love letter to the child she lost and the devoted husband who suffered alongside her—McCracken displays her many talents. Her warmth, candor, crystalline prose, lovely imagery, and attention to detail bring her painful story to life. McCracken’s dark sense of humor ensnares unwitting readers, belying the sadness with which she writes, and she shows very little patience for self-pity and sentimentality. Critics praised her clear-eyed account in a genre replete with syrupy, self-aggrandizing books, though some expressed doubts that its subject matter would have wide appeal. “I’m not ready for my first child to fade into history,” explains McCracken. With this heartbreaking account of his life, there’s little chance of that.<br>Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC </p>

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<h3>From</h3><p>Christopher Hitchens stands alone among 20th- and 21st-century pundits for his enthusiastic enmity and political flip-flopping, but while he makes no apologies for his beliefs, he does acknowledge their intrinsic contradictions. Critics praised Hitchens's frankness in sharing the details of his mother's suicide and of his breezy bisexuality, but they simultaneously balked at his decision to omit significant people and events (i.e., his wives, his children, and his role in Bill Clinton's impeachment). They also objected to his relentless name-dropping and some overly dense prose, and a few were appalled that Hitchens would continue to insist that Saddam Hussein did indeed possess WMDs. Despite these complaints, <em>Hitch-22</em> is a sharp, rebellious, and sometimes bawdy account of the making of a modern mastermind. </p><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> Hitchens, who, in his earlier books, has expressed contempt for both God and Mother Teresa (although not in that order), is often described as a contrarian. In fact, in his book Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001), he himself noted that he “can appear insufferable and annoying,” albeit without intending to. This memoir, bracing, droll, and very revealing, gives him yet another description: storyteller. He writes with a voice you can hear clearly, warmed by smoke and whiskey, and draws readers into his story, which proves as personal as it is political. As with many memoirs, it is not the public moments that are so fascinating, though there are plenty of those. Hitchens takes readers with him to Havana and Prague, Afghanistan and Iraq; tests himself by being waterboarded (he was disappointed in his early capitulation); and hobnobs with politicians and poets. He almost gets himself beaten up by defacing a poster in Iraq with a Hitler mustache. But the most intriguing stories are the personal ones, both from his early days, at home and at boarding school, and from his later life, when he learns that his mother was Jewish, which, if only technically, makes him Jewish as well. This revelation leads Hitchens on a quest to learn the story of his family, many of whom died in the Holocaust. How this new identity squares with his oft-proclaimed atheism sheds a different light on the meaning of religious identity. (He struggles mightily with his political identity as well.) Few authors can rile as easily as Hitchens does, but even his detractors might find it difficult to put down a book so witty, so piercing, so spoiling for a fight. He makes you want to be as good a reader as he is a writer. --Ilene Cooper </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>In the world of contemporary travel writing, Bill Bryson, the bestselling author of </p><p>Happily, <em>I'm a Stranger Here Myself</em> unleashes a new Bryson, more contemplative and less likely to toss daggers. After two decades in England, he's relocated to Hanover, New Hampshire. In this collection (drawn from dispatches for London's <em>Night &amp; Day</em> magazine), he's writing from home, in close proximity to wife and family. We find a happy marriage between humor and reflection as he assesses life both in New England and in the contemporary United States. With the telescopic perspective of one who's stepped out of the American mainstream and come back after 20 years, Bryson aptly holds the mirror up to U.S. culture, capturing its absurdities--such as hotlines for dental floss, the cult of the lawsuit, and strange American injuries such as those sustained from pillows and beds. "In the time it takes you to read this," he writes, "four of my fellow citizens will somehow manage to be wounded by their bedding." </p><p>The book also reflects the sweet side of small-town USA, with columns about post-office parties, dining at diners, and Thanksgiving--when the only goal is to "get your stomach into the approximate shape of a beach ball" and be grateful. And grateful we are that the previously peripatetic Bryson has returned to the U.S., turning his eye to this land--while living at home and near his wife. Under her benevolent influence, he entertains through thoughtful insights, not sarcastic stabs. <em>--Melissa Rossi</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Ex-expatriate Bryson, who chronicled one effort at American reentry in his bestselling A Walk in the Woods, collects another: the whimsical columns on America he wrote weekly, while living in New Hampshire in the mid-to-late 1990s, for a British Sunday newspaper. Although he happily describes himself as dazzled by American ease, friendliness and abundance, Bryson has no trouble finding comic targets, among them fast food, computer efficiency and, ironically, American friendliness and putative convenience. As he edges into Dave Barry-style hyperbole, Bryson sometimes strains for yuks, but he's deft when he compares the two cultures, as in their different treatment of Christmas, pointing out how the British "pack all their festive excesses" into that single holiday. Bryson also nudges into domestic territory with regular references to his own British wife, the resolutely sensible Mrs. B. In a few columns, Bryson adopts a sentimental tone, writing about his family and his new hometown of Hanover. In others, he's more sober, criticizing anti-immigration activists, environmental depredation and drug laws (though he draws out the humor in these as well). Not all the columns hit their mark, and they are best read in small groupings, but this collection should sell well enough, although not likely to the heights of A Walk in the Woods. Agent, Jed Mattes. Author tour; BDD audio. <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In this volume, Puleo, a contributor to American History magazine, sets out to determine whether the collapse of a molasses tank that sent a tidal wave of 2.3 million gallons of the sticky liquid through Boston's North End and killed 21 people was the work of Italian anarchists or due to negligence by the tank's owner, United States Industrial Alcohol. Getting into the minds of the major players in the disaster-USIA suits, victims, witnesses, North End residents, politicians-he re-creates not only the scene but also the social, political and economic environments of the time that made the disaster more than just an industrial accident. While the collapse's aftermath is tragic, the story itself is not exactly gripping. More interesting are the tidbits of Boston's and America's history, such as the importance of molasses to all U.S. war efforts up to and including WWI, which Puleo uses to put the tank collapse in the context of a very complex time in U.S. history. The most striking aspect of this tale is the timeliness of the topics it touches on. Describing Americans being persecuted because of their ethnicity, a sagging economy boosted by war, and terrorism on U.S. soil that results in anti-immigration laws and deportations, Puleo could just as easily be writing about current events as about events in 1919. Overall, this is another piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is Boston's long and rich history. Photos. <br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From</h3><p>In January, 1919, a fifty-foot tank filled with molasses exploded, sending waves of viscous goo through waterfront Boston and killing twenty-one people. Were Italian anarchists to blame or was it negligence by the tank's owner, the United States Industrial Alcohol company? Such matters form the crux of Puleo's account, which is narrated with gusto (and sometimes too much gusto: one victim has molasses "clinging to his private parts, like an army of insects that just keep coming"). Molasses was a vital commodity at the time, used in rum manufacture (the tank was full to the brim to cash in on pre-Prohibition demand), and it had been important in the production of First World War munitions. Puleo overreaches in claiming the story of the flood as a "microcosm of America"—an almost obligatory conclusion in this sort of history—but his enthusiasm for a little-known catastrophe is infectious. <br />Copyright © 2005 </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The Goldstones, bibliophiles and authors of <em>Out of the Flames</em> and other books, offer a witty biography of controversial 13th-century Dominican friar Roger Bacon, whose <em>Opus Majus</em> "presented a way of thinking, of approaching science, that is virtually unsurpassed in the thousand years since its creation." According to the Goldstones, by challenging the accepted view of the Bible as the source of literal truth, it opened a schism between religion and science. The Church's response, recounted here, was filled with political intrigue, heroes and villains, and enough twists and turns to keep readers immersed. But this book's highlight is the story of a mysterious book discovered in 1912 and named for its owner, Wilfrid Voynich. The manuscript has a coded text enhanced by hundreds of illustrations depicting exotic plants, astronomical phenomena and strange "strings of tiny naked women cavorting in a variety of fountains, waterfalls, and pools." Various experts have attributed the manuscript to Bacon—but as it has kept its secrets from some of the world's greatest cryptanalysts, including some in the CIA and England's MI-8, as well as the largest supercomputers in the world, the attribution remains speculative. But these efforts make a compelling story for readers of the history of science and of code breaking. B&amp;w illus. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>In 1919, the discovery of the phrase "To me, Roger Bacon" in a centuries-old manuscript startled the antiquarian book trade. The world of cryptography also took notice, for the manuscript was in a still-unsolved cipher. Therein lies the historical detective story that the Goldstones tell. Essentially, the authors wrap the provenance of the Voynich manuscript, as it is called, around a biography of Roger Bacon, an English scholar of the 1200s. The Goldstones dynamically render the medieval time, describing the intellectual ferment--especially the implications of Aristotle's findings for Catholic doctrine--in which Bacon lived. Regarding Bacon as a pioneer of empiricism in science, the authors' contrast him with logician Thomas Aquinas, champion of biblical revelation as the way to truth. Were Bacon's ideas too hot, hence the cipher? Leaving the question open, the Goldstones then relate a rather rambunctious chain of possession that links John Dee, the Elizabethan magus who might have found the manuscript, with its present owner, Yale University. In engaging, entertaining fashion, the Goldstones offer history readers an intriguing mystery. <em>Gilbert Taylor</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>As Green thoroughly documents, the bloody Haymarket riot of May 4, 1886, changed the history of American labor and created a panic among Americans about (often foreign-born) "radicals and reformers" and union activists. The Haymarket demonstration, to protest police brutality during labor unrest in Chicago, remained peaceful until police moved in, whereupon a bomb was thrown by an individual never positively identified, killing seven policemen and wounding 60 others. Shortly after, labor leaders August Spies and Albert Parsons, along with six more alleged anarchists, stood convicted of murder on sparse evidence. Four of them went to the gallows in 1887; another committed suicide. The surviving three received pardons in 1893. The Knights of Labor, at that time America's largest and most energetic union, received the blame for the riot, despite a lack of conclusive evidence , and many Knights locals migrated to the less radical American Federation of Labor. Labor historian Green (_Taking History to Heart_) eloquently chronicles all this, producing what will surely be the definitive word on the Haymarket affair for this generation. Green is particularly strong in documenting the episode's long aftermath, especially the decades-long efforts of the white Parsons's black wife to exonerate her husband. B&amp;w illus. <em>(Mar. 7)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Green, an academic, offers a narrative history of Chicago's Haymarket bombing in 1886, the infamous trial that followed, and the hanging of subsequently determined innocent men. Chicago was then at the heart of the labor struggle for the eight-hour day, and we learn that "workers' struggles had often been met with shocking repression, and that when violence bred violence, when powerless laboring people struck back in anger, they often paid with their lives." The Haymarket episode became a seminal moment for the American labor movement, and Green takes us inside the personal, social, and cultural elements of this tragic event. Evaluation of Haymarket includes the contention that a conservative bias against radicals, labor organizers, immigrants, and minorities was fundamental to the conflict as well as the view that execution of the anarchists saved the country from anarchy and was a moral and political victory for law and order. The author notes that after Haymarket, social peace among the various classes in Chicago was impossible, and grudges continued for decades. <em>Mary Whaley</em><br><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>

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<h3>From</h3><p>A descendant of the Cadbury family of chocolatiers, author Cadbury is also an award-winning documentary producer for the BBC and has seven other books to her credit. The history of chocolate, from its origins as an exotic Aztec beverage to the most prized confectionery in the world, is told here through the eyes of the British Quaker family that transformed a gritty, oily brew into one of the most sought-after delectable treats on the planet. In doing so, the Cadbury brothers turned their father’s humble and nearly bankrupt business into a globally dominant corporation in the span of two generations. The path to success was not easy, and Cadbury tells the story of fierce competition from names like Fry, Nestlé, Hershey, and Mars, as well as the Dutch and Swiss entrepreneurs who were so crucial in cracking the food chemistry of the cacao bean. Cadbury chronicles 150 years of chocolate wars that only heated up further into a global-merger competition, which saw the venerated Cadbury brand get swallowed up by the food giant Kraft in 2009. This tale of capitalist rivalry mixed with Quaker values makes for a very sweet journey. --David Siegfried </p><h3>Review</h3><p><strong><em>Booklist</em>, October 1, 2010</strong><br />“This tale of capitalist rivalry mixed with Quaker values makes for a very sweet journey.”</p><p>_<strong>Washington Post</strong>_<br />“This is a delicious book, seductive as a tray of bonbons, a Fancy Box in every way.”</p><p>_<strong>The New Yorker Book Bench</strong>_<br />“For chocolate lovers and Roald Dahl fans, some heartening news: Willy Wonka’s factory – or at least something that sounds very much like it – was a real place... Though Cadbury begins with teasingly enviable childhood recollections... the story she tells is really about Quakers, and one family’s continuous struggle to reconcile religious values – pacifism, austerity, sobriety – with the indulgent nature of their product and the ruthlessly competitive capitalism of the world in which they made their fortune... It’s hard not to root for these guys and the story is all the more bittersweet because we know how it ends.”</p><p>_<strong>The Daily Telegraph</strong>_<br />“Engaging and scholarly, confident and compassionate, <em>Chocolate Wars</em> is less a family biography than an impressively thought provoking parable for our times... A vibrant history.”   </p><p>_<strong>Business Times</strong>_<br />“Fascinating..._Chocolate Wars_ presents narrative history at its most absorbing, peopled by colourful characters: the true story of the chocolate pioneers, the visions and ideals that inspired them and the mouth-watering concoctions they created... Deborah gives readers an insider look, fleshing out the stories around her family with her familiar competence as a bestselling historian and award winning documentary maker.”  </p><p>_<strong>Kirkus</strong>_<br /> “A fine pocket history of corporate confectionery... Cadbury has a knack for capturing the driven personalities who launched these [chocolate] empires.”   </p><p>_<strong>Library Journal</strong>_<br />“Although written by proud Cadbury kin, the narrative is balanced and fair. This is a well written and well researched look at chocolate and the Quaker business tradition that any food or history buff will enjoy.”</p><p>_<strong>Sunday Times</strong>_<br />“_Chocolate Wars_ – clear, readable and richly detailed – is at least as much about Quakers as it is about chocolate... enjoyable.”</p><p><strong><em>Financial Times</em>, November 15, 2010</strong><br />“Deborah Cadbury’s branch of the Cadbury family wasn’t involved in the chocolate business but she garnered a deep impression from a childhood visit to her cousins’ company and the reader of _Chocolate Wars_ feels they are getting an insider’s view. Her own background as a historian and TV documentary maker means that this book communicates in an episodic and visual style, making what risks being a dull subject gripping as it flips back and forth around the world documenting parallel events in the emergence of the chocolate industry.”</p><p><strong>Examiner.com, November 14, 2010</strong><br />“The 150-year rivalry among the world’s greatest chocolate making families, is told by a descendant of one of the families. Just think what sweetness came out of these families' rivalries, depicted deliciously in this new book.”</p><p><strong><em>Boston Globe</em>, November 14, 2010</strong><br />“Deborah Cadbury begins with a brief description of Quaker aims and humane business practices before moving on through the history of the family business. This takes in the truly exciting race to put Cadbury’s chocolate candy in every mouth, to the exclusion of that made by rival English Quaker firms, Rowntree and Fry, to say nothing of the Swiss Lindt and Nestlé. Her many faceted account takes in technology, distribution, and industrial espionage, advertising and packaging, labor relations and model housing for workers, the role of the firm and its owners in wartime and international expansion.”</p><p><strong>Gulfnews.com, November 26, 2010</strong><br />“Engaging and scholarly, Chocolate Wars is less a family biography than an impressively thought-provoking parable for our times.”</p><p><strong><em>Los Angeles Times</em>, November 28, 2010</strong><br />“Fascinating…Read this excellent book.”</p><p><strong><em>Philadelphia Inquirer</em>, November 28, 2010</strong><br />“The inside story of the 150-year rivalry among Cadbury, Hershey, Nestlé, and Mars is a fascinating and luscious tale. Deborah Cadbury, great-great-great-granddaughter of 19th-century chocolate maker John Cadbury, tells it eloquently in _Chocolate Wars_, drawing the reader into her epic of family and industry with clear love for her subject.”</p><p><strong><em>Christian Science Monitor</em>, December 1, 2010</strong><br />“[_Chocolate Wars_] pits idealism against capitalism, religious piety against the forces of greed and cutthroat competition. Though, like great fiction, it defies belief, it’s the true story of our favorite guilty pleasure. Cadbury’s book, like her namesake’s famous sampler, is full of surprises and delights.”</p><p><strong>Bnreview.com, December 2010</strong><br />“This engaging history of the 150-year rivalry among the world's greatest chocolate makers—the English firms Fry, Rowntree, and Cadbury (to which the author, Deborah Cadbury, is an heiress), their European competitors Lindt and Nestlé, and the American upstarts Hershey and Mars—is delightful, especially for its fascinating portrait of the 19th-century success of Quaker capitalism, built quite remuneratively on the ideal that wealth creation entails responsibilities beyond personal gain.”</p>


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<h3>From</h3><p>Under different circumstances, North Korea could be the subject of a Marx Brothers satire, with the elements of a pompous, ego-driven patriarch, a worshipful population, and a general aura of fantasy and illusion. But North Korea has a superbly equipped million-man army and an expanding nuclear weapons program. So this comprehensive examination of this totalitarian society and the two men who have dominated it is often terrifying. For a quarter century, Martin has covered North Korea while working for the <em>Baltimore Sun</em>, the <em>Asian Wall Street Journal</em>, and <em>Newsweek</em>. Using newly available material from Russian and Chinese sources, Martin offers surprising insights into the career and character of both Kim Il-Sung and his son, Kim Jong-Il. He strives, albeit with moderate success, to unveil the reality from the mounds of myth and distortions with which both men have surrounded themselves. But Martin's account is most chilling in his descriptions of contemporary North Korean society. And yet, as Martin eloquently illustrates in this important book, the control of the Kim dynasty may well be tenuous. <em>Jay Freeman</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>"_Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader_ is, from all I have read, simply the best book ever written about North Korea. Relying largely on extensive interviews with defectors, Martin portrays North Korean life with a clarity that is stunning, and he captures the paradoxes in North Korean public opinion."--Nicholas D. Kristof, <em>The New York Review of Books</em>  </p><p>"Martin's massive book provides as useful a set of insights into life in North Korea as can be found anywhere."<br />- <em>L.A. Times Review</em>  </p><p>"As an AP correspondent covering South Korea in the 1970s, I learned quickly how difficult it was to discover any reliable information about that secretive, threatening regime to the north. Brad Martin's book is testimony to the thoroughness of his work, and the high level of his ability as a journalist and researcher.  </p><p>" North Korea is one of the least known, least understood countries in the world. Its leaders have always been enigmas, both frightening and fascinating, but almost impossible to decipher. Again today, it becomes vitally important that we do both, yet there is almost nothing of importance being written about the subject. <em>Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader</em> is important, as well as fascinating. The research is impeccable, the writing excellent. This is a major and timely contribution, and essential to anyone who hopes to deal sensibly with a vital region of the world." <br />-Terry Anderson, former AP correspondent and author of <em>Den of Lions</em>  </p><p>"Brad Martin's <em>Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader</em>, a careful, penetrating analysis of North Korea, is more than just a book. Given the levels of secrecy which surround the Pyongyang regime and the danger it poses to its neighbors, Martin has rendered a considerable service to us all." <br />-bestselling author, David Halbertstam  </p><p>"Brad Martin's book on North Korea is at once enlightening and frightening. It is lucid in writing, balanced in analysis, and comprehensive in its meticulous research and anecdotal evidence. The detailed exposition of the narrow life of luxury and the devious character of the 'Dear Leader,' Kim Jong-il, is scary. So is the description of North Korea as a corrupt, secretive, stagnant fief of the Kim family. Brad Martin, with his long years as a Pyongyang-watcher, is eminently qualified to write a book that should strip away any illusions America and the West have about Kim's dangerous regime."<br />-Richard Halloran, former correspondent for <em>The New York Times</em> in Asia and Washington, D.C.</p>


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The definitive story of Hollywood's most famous couple   He was a tough-guy Welshman softened by the affections of a breathtakingly beautiful woman; she was a modern-day Cleopatra madly in love with her own Mark Antony. For nearly a quarter of a century, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were Hollywood royalty, and their fiery romance—often called "the marriage of the century"—was the most notorious, publicized, and celebrated love affair of its day.   For the first time, Vanity Fair contributing editor Sam Kashner and acclaimed biographer Nancy Schoenberger tell the complete story of this larger-than-life couple, showing how their romance and two marriages commanded the attention of the world. Also for the first time, in exclusive access given to the authors, Elizabeth Taylor herself gives never-revealed details and firsthand accounts of her life with Burton.   Drawing upon brand-new information and interviews—and on Burton's private, passionate, and heartbreaking letters to Taylor—Furious Love sheds new light on the movies, the sex, the scandal, the fame, the brawls, the booze, the bitter separations, and, of course, the fabled jewels. It offers an intimate glimpse into Elizabeth and Richard's privileged world and their elite circle of friends, among them Princess Grace, Montgomery Clift, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Peter O'Toole, Michael Caine, Marlon Brando, Rex Harrison, Mike Nichols, Laurence Olivier, Robert Kennedy, Tennessee Williams, NoËl Coward, John Huston, Ava Gardner, the Rothschilds, Maria Callas, and Aristotle Onassis. It provides an entertaining, eye-opening look at their films, their wildly lucrative reign in Europe and in Hollywood—and the price they paid for their extravagant lives.   Shocking and unsparing in its honesty, Furious Love explores the very public marriage of "Liz and Dick" as well as the private struggles of Elizabeth and Richard, including Le Scandale, their affair on the set of the notorious epic Cleopatra that earned them condemnation from the Vatican; Burton's hardscrabble youth in Wales; the crippling alcoholism that nearly destroyed his career and contributed to his early death; the medical issues that plagued both him and Elizabeth; and the failed aspirations and shame that haunted him throughout their relationship. As Kashner and Schoenberger illuminate the events and choices that shaped this illustrious couple's story, they demonstrate how the legendary pair presaged America's changing attitudes toward sex, marriage, morality, and celebrity. Yet ultimately, as the authors show, Elizabeth and Richard shared something priceless beyond the drama: enduring love.   Addictive and entertaining, Furious Love is more than a celebrity biography; it's an honest yet sympathetic portrait of a man, a woman, and a passion that shocked and mesmerized the world.


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Jason Strider, the slacker-hero of former ad-man and MTV series creator Rosen's screwball debut novel, is a recent Cornell grad more interested in marijuana, booze and quick lays than his boring job or romantic relationships. The carnal drought he's been experiencing is mercifully ended early in the book with a bout of athletic sex involving his refrigerator and a bar pickup named Jane, who departs after a second hook-up wearing his favorite pair of Dickies. His quest, then, to retrieve the pants occupies the bulk of the book. Along the way, Jason gets assists in the process of personal growth from his ailing next-door neighbor, Patty, and old Cornell buds Eric and Stacey, who ask Jason to perform their wedding ceremony. By the end of the tale, Jason has begun to mature and comes back into contact with his beloved pants in an unexpected yet appropriate fashion. Rosen deftly keeps the exploits of a shallow hero moving along-and more impressively, makes readers care what happens to his caddish narrator. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Here's another in the long line of novels devoted to the mishaps of feckless young males struggling to get serious about life and love. The familiar story line is freshened up by its contemporary references, including conversations rendered via IMs and apt references to songs both old (Ray Davies) and new (White Stripes). Recent college graduate Jason Strider moves to New York City, where he works a day job answering phones and hits the bars every night after work. Alcohol and sex are at the forefront of his agenda until he is faced with two more serious issues. His best friends at college have asked him to officiate their wedding, and his next-door neighbor, Patty, who has partied away the best years of her life, is dying from lung cancer, alone though unafraid. Jason beds one girl after another, loses his job, and increases his already prodigious intake of drugs and alcohol before being jolted into sobriety by Patty's death. Their touching relationship and Jason's sharp sense of humor give this debut novel an edge in a crowded field, though it's not on a par with such classics as Bright Lights, Big City (1984) and High Fidelity (1995). Wilkinson, Joanne </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>As one of the greatest presidents of the twentieth century, Ronald Wilson Reagan succeeded in renewing pride in America, strengthening the principles of family, faith, and freedom on which this nation was founded, and restoring our hope for the future. President Reagan endeared himself even to his political opponents with his self-effacing wit and irrepressible optimism. Inspiring, thoughtful, and at times downright funny, he had an amazing gift for stirring emotion, sparking debate, and calling a nation to action.</p><p>In In The Words of Ronald Reagan, his oldest son Michael Reagan has gathered a wonderful collection of his father's public and private words, providing a close-up portrait of our fortieth president. From hilarious one-liners to eloquent letters to intimate family moments, these selections depict Ronald Reagan in all his many roles--as world leader, conservative icon, orator, actor, and father. Complemented by Michael Reagan's personal and insightful commentary on his father's life, In The Words of Ronald Reagan will delight you, inspire you, and motivate you to finish the job Ronald Reagan began--the job of rebuilding the American dream.</p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>''Bernadette Dunne is a good match for Rand's voice, delivering the novelist's passionate convictions with a metered cadence. Dunne's clear conveyance of Rand's essays is important because her ideas are quite controversial. Dunne's voice has an empirical and authoritative tone that demands a full and concise hearing. . . a thought-provoking listen. . .'' --AudioFile </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Underlying this treatise is the objectivist philosophy which has placed Ayn Rand in the mainstream of American thought. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>A Letter from Author Mike Brown</strong>   </p><p>My daughter Lilah, now five years old, is mad at me for killing Pluto. When I began a project 13 years ago to chart the slowly-moving objects of the distant outer solar system, my goal was never to pull Pluto off of its cherished planetary pedestal. I wanted to be a planet discoverer, like William Herschel or Clyde Tombaugh before me. I had a strong feeling that somewhere out there something bigger than Pluto was lurking, and I knew that whoever found it would get to claim the mantle as the only living planet discoverer. </p><p>I was right. Something bigger than Pluto <em>was</em> out there (or at least something more massive than Pluto; sizes are a little harder to pin down precisely) and one January morning in 2005, my small team of astronomers and I found it. We announced the discovery of the 10th planet to an unsuspecting world late on the afternoon of Lilah’s 22nd day of life. A little after her first birthday, though, the doors to the planetary club were locked and Pluto and my own discovery were kicked out on the curb. The solar system was down to only eight planets. </p><p>It was hard not to mourn the loss of my now ex-planet, except for the fact that I had to admit that kicking it out was the most scientifically sensible thing to happen to planetary classification since asteroids were also kicked out almost 200 years ago. The solar system is a beautiful and profound place, and it is made <em>richer</em> with the realization that the eight planets are the foundation throughout which countless smaller bodies continuously swirl. </p><p>When Pluto was first demoted, people said to me, “What about the children? How could you do this to them?” But, in fact, children live lives that are always changing. It’s the adults who have had the hardest time reconciling the new understanding of the solar system with what they remember from when they themselves were children. So, it made sense that I used to joke about what would happen the moment when Lilah first learned about the solar system. She would come home, and I would say, “Tell me all about the eight planets,” and when I would try to tell her about the olden times when we used to think there were nine—or even ten!—planets, she would slowly shake her head and exclaim, “Daddy, adults are so <em>stupid</em>.” </p><p>But I was wrong. </p><p>Lilah knows all about Pluto. She has a stuffed dog, a planet lunch box, a solar system place mat at the dinner table. She feels as warmly towards the ice ball as someone ten times her age, and, like many of those older people, she is mad at the person who killed it. Lilah, though, has a solution. She recently told me, “Daddy, I know that you had to kill Pluto, but will you promise me one thing?” </p><p>“Of course,” I said. </p><p>“You have to go find another planet, and when you do, you have to name it Pluto for me, OK?” </p><p>So my search of the skies continues. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Solar system astronomer Brown charted a career course to discover Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), which in the 1990s were only theorized to exist beyond Pluto. Ultimately discovering several such frigid spheres, Brown embeds the science of his search strategies into the project’s personal importance in securing his academic future at Cal Tech and, incidentally, in meeting his future wife. In wry, self-deprecating tones, he writes of science, vocation, romance, and fatherhood, with the science as the selling point for readers because Brown’s success in discovering KBOs set the stage for Pluto’s recent reclassification as a mere KBO. Accounts of finding specific KBOs culminate in an acrimonious engagement Brown had with a Spanish astronomer, whom Brown suspected of stealing data in order to claim priority in discovering one KBO. Scandal! Touching on how media refract such scientific conflicts to the public, Brown concludes with the professional astronomers’ vote to expel Pluto from the club of planets, a decision that has already inspired several other titles (e.g., Barrie Jones’ Pluto, 2010). --Gilbert Taylor </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>Praise for Stephen Hunt: 'Hunt's imagination is probably visible from space. He scatters concepts that other writers would mine for a trilogy like chocolate-bar wrappers. This is Philip Pullman with a dose of benzedrine. Hold on to your hat and let yourself get carried away.' Tom Holt 'A ripping yarn ! the story pounds along ! constant inventiveness keeps the reader hooked ! the finale is a cracking succession of cliffhangers and surprise comebacks. Great fun' SFX 'An inventive, ambitious work, full of wonders and marvels' Lisa Tuttle, The Times 'The characters are convincing and colourful, but the real achievement is the setting, a hellish take on Victorian London ! the depth and complexity of Hunt's vision makes it compulsive reading for all ages' Guardian 'Wonderfully assured ! Hunt knows what his audience like and gives it to them with a sardonic wit and carefully developed tension' Time Out 'All manner of bizarre and fantastical extravagance.' Daily Mail 'Rich and colourful !keeps you engrossed !a confident, audacious novel' SFX 'Like a magpie, Stephen Hunt has plucked colourful events from history and politics and used them for inspiration ! Hunts tells his full-blooded tale with lip-smacking relish, revealing a vivid, often gruesome imagination ! [it] brims with originality and, from the first, its chase-filled plot never lets up' Starburst 'Studded with invention' Independent </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>A tale of high adventure and derring-do set in the same Victorian-style world as the acclaimed The Court of the Air and The Rise of the Iron Moon. The isolated island of Jago is the only place Hannah Conquest has ever known as home. Encircled by the magma ocean of the Fire Sea, it was once the last bastion of freedom when the world struggled under the tyranny of the Chimecan Empire during the age-long winter of the cold-time. But now this once-shining jewel of civilization faces an uncertain future as its inhabitants emigrate to greener climes, leaving the basalt plains and raging steam storms far behind them. For Hannah and her few friends, the streets of the island's last occupied underground city form a vast, near-deserted playground. But Hannah's carefree existence comes to an abrupt halt when her guardian, Archbishop Alice Gray, is brutally murdered in her own cathedral. Someone desperately wants to suppress a secret kept by the archbishop, and if the attempts on Hannah's own life are any indication, the killer believes that Alice passed the knowledge of it onto her ward before her saintly head was separated from her neck. But it soon becomes clear that there is more at stake than the life of one orphan. A deadly power struggle is brewing on Jago, involving rival factions in the senate and the island's most powerful trading partner. And it's beginning to look as if the deaths of Hannah's archaeologist parents shortly after her birth were very far from accidental. Soon the race is on for Hannah and her friends to unravel a chain of hidden riddles and follow them back to their source to save not just her own life, but her island home itself. </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>Praise for THE RISE OF THE IRON MOON: 'All manner of bizarre and fantastical extravagance.' Daily Mail 'Hunt's imagination is probably visible from space. He scatters concepts that other writers would mine for a trilogy like chocolate-bar wrappers. This is Philip Pullman with a dose of benzedrine. Hold on to your hat and let yourself get carried away.' Tom Holt, SFX Praise for Stephen Hunt: 'A ripping yarn ! the story pounds along ! constant inventiveness keeps the reader hooked ! the finale is a cracking succession of cliffhangers and surprise comebacks. Great fun' SFX 'An inventive, ambitious work, full of wonders and marvels' Lisa Tuttle, The Times 'The characters are convincing and colourful, but the real achievement is the setting, a hellish take on Victorian London ! the depth and complexity of Hunt's vision makes it compulsive reading for all ages' Guardian 'Wonderfully assured ! Hunt knows what his audience like and gives it to them with a sardonic wit and carefully developed tension' Time Out 'Studded with invention' Independent 'Rich and colourful !keeps you engrossed !a confident, audacious novel' SFX 'Like a magpie, Stephen Hunt has plucked colourful events from history and politics and used them for inspiration ! Hunts tells his full-blooded tale with lip-smacking relish, revealing a vivid, often gruesome imagination ! [it] brims with originality and, from the first, its chase-filled plot never lets up' Starburst 'To say this book is action packed is almost and understatement ! a wonderful escapist yarn! Definitely a book to take with you on a long flight' Interzone </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>From the author of The Court of the Air and The Kingdom Beyond the Waves comes a thrilling new adventure set in the same Victorian-style world. Perfect for fans of Philip Pullman and Susanna Clarke. Born into captivity as a product of the Royal Breeding House, friendless orphan Purity Drake suddenly finds herself on the run with a foreign vagrant after accidentally killing one of her guards. Her strange rescuer claims he is on the run himself from terrible forces who mean to enslave the Kingdom of Jackals as they conquered his own nation. Purity doubts his story, until reports begin to filter through from Jackals' neighbours of the terrible Army of Shadows, marching across the continent and sweeping all before them. But there's more to Purity than meets the eye. As Jackals girds itself for war against an army of near-unkillable beasts serving an ancient evil with a terrible secret, it soon becomes clear that their only hope is a strange little royalist girl and the last, desperate plan of an escaped slave. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>Punisher</em> is on the run from Billingate Space Station, as well as other predators that follow: UMCP Enforcement Division director Min Donner aboard a crippled <em>Punisher</em>, Nick's archenemy (and slave to the aliens) Sorus Chatelaine aboard <em>Soar</em>, and the mysterious hired gun, <em>Free Lunch</em>. Corrupt cyborg Angus Thermopyle and ruthless Nick Succorso battle for control of the ship and the situation. Their trail leads to Valdor Industrial, where geneticist/engineer Vector Shaheed seeks to redeem himself by manufacturing an antidote to the mutagen used by the alien Amnioni to mutate human beings against their will. Brutalized yet resilient Morn Hyland, her clone/son Davies, tough officer Mikki, Pup, Sib, and the rest continue their suffering and sacrificing. </p><p>Meanwhile, back in Earth space, police and politicians battle for power as UMCP director Dios continues his grim revolution against the Dragon. Assassin kazes, political fears, and provocative bills threaten to paralyze the Governing Council for Earth and Space. </p><p>Ships battling in space? Laboratory space stations developing antimutagen antidotes against the aliens who seek to conquer humankind by mutation? Outrage, brutality, betrayal, and secrets? Donaldson lays it all out with sharp dialogue, tense scenes, and zippy action. </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>This fourth installment of Donaldson's Gap series may at first confuse even those who have read the previous volumes, since there's no summary of what has gone before and the plot is extremely convoluted. Once it gets going, though, the action moves forward like a juggernaut. Pursued by a police battle cruiser, by a bounty hunter and by a ship commanded by human agents of the dreaded Amnion, an alien race, Angus Thermopyle heads his ship, Trumpet , for an illegal lab hidden in a chaotic asteroid belt. There, Thermopyle, once a fearsome pirate, now a cyborg partially controlled by police programming, plans to have the secret "antimutagen," which protects humans against the forced mutation practiced by the Amnion, replicated for mass distribution. Aboard Trumpet are the survivors from the pirate ship Captain's Fancy , including Morn Hyland (the series' long-suffering heroine) and her erstwhile tormentor, Nick Succorso. The larger conflict between Warden Dios, head of the United Mining Companies police, and Holt Fasner, CEO of the powerful megacorporation, moves closer to its climax; but the real excitement comes with the extended chase and battle in the asteroid swarm. Series readers will be glad to see that this installment, which at last begins to resolve the overall plot, offers plenty of thrills and an exciting finish that will leave them eager for the fifth and final volume. <br />Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From</h3><p>Once upon a time was a long time ago in Henry Whelp’s city. Now, the fairies are gone, and with them, their magical fairydust. Corporations manufacture synthetic dust to sell over the counter, while uncut nixiedust gets hawked by shady foxes in dark alleyways. But Henry never touches the stuff since his father went berserk and murdered a red-hooded girl and her granny on behalf of a golden-touch gangster named Skinner. See, dust is the stuff of miracles and fulfills destinies, which is fine if you’re a princess, but can lead to a big bad fate for a wolf like Henry. The premise is fractured fairy tale, but the play is pure noir: Chinatown via the Brothers Grimm. Henry gets in deep with Skinner’s crew to exonerate his dad and trips his way into a scheme to return the animalia (wolves, ravens, and the like) to their primitive state. The ending feels like it’s missing a twist or two, but the clever setup and gutting of fairy-tale tropes will garner plenty of enthusiasm. Grades 7-10. --Ian Chipman </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Weston deftly tucks his fairy-tale tropes into this thought-provoking mystery." --_Kirkus_  </p><p>"Weston has created a tightly paced mystery, a coming of age story, and a vivid fantasy...Dust City is a winner." --_Quill and Quire_  </p><p>"Dust City is so creative...As soon as I read the first page, I was hooked." --Teens Read Too </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>At the start of Jordan's bubbly third sleuth-a-thon to feature Hollywood actress Polly Pepper (after 2008's <em>Final Curtain</em>), Polly becomes a judge on a cheesy reality TV show, <em>I'll Do Anything to Become Famous</em>. When someone plunges a knife into a fellow judge, nasty Brit Thane Cornwall, Polly flips into Miss Marple mode. The prime suspect? Thane's ex-lover, Lisa Marrs, the producer's secretary, found at the crime scene with the murder weapon. Aided by housekeeper Placenta, gay son Tim and her current amour, Beverly Hills detective Randal Archer, Polly uncovers some surprises involving such show contestants as rapper Ped-Xing and Miley Cyrus clone Amy Stout. Dotted with delicious observations on America's obsession with celebrity, this entry should win new fans for Polly, who, as the body count rises, tells the exasperated Archer that she's œa death magnet. And there's nothing you can do about it. Fans of comic whodunits will be rewarded. <em>(June)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>In the latest reality TV show, contestants have to prove that they'll go for one another's jugulars in order to get their names in the headlines. But someone takes the show's theme literally when one of the judges is found stabbed to death. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>The <em>New Yorker</em> review praised Patrick McGrath's "ornate, deadpan style . . . distinguished by its unusual seriousness, its lack of camp," and described <em>Asylum</em> as a "layered, implicating book, whose terrors and malignities aren't quite the ones we expect, and are a matter of mood and viewpoint as well as of plot." McGrath's fourth novel (his other </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>McGrath (Dr. Haggard's Disease) has a mind that revels in the toxic side of things. In this tale of headlong descent into darkness and despair, the toxicity comes from obsessional love. Stella Raphael is the lovely but dissatisfied wife of Max, a resident psychiatrist at an asylum for the criminally insane in the countryside near London. She becomes infatuated with Edgar Stark, a sculptor who murdered and mutilated his wife in a delusionary fit, and the two contrive a passionate affair when Edgar is assigned to work in the Raphaels' garden on the asylum grounds. Stealing Max's clothes, Edgar escapes to London and goes underground, where Stella eventually follows him. When he begins to manifest the same furious jealousies that led to his wife's murder, she flees home again, only to find she has ruined her husband's career. The Raphaels, with their young son, Charlie, are exiled to a remote hospital in rural Wales, where further disaster strikes as Stella drifts into her own desperate delusions. The story is told by another psychiatrist at the asylum, ostensibly through interviews with Stella. Although the doctor's own interpolations are sometimes a relief in the supercharged atmosphere, this seems an unnecessary device, and the intended frisson of his participation in the somber conclusion doesn't come off. In every other respect, however, the book is hypnotizing, with its own strange but darkly convincing pace and style; and the way in which nature and climate are woven into the fabric of the bizarre couple's strange love is masterly. 75,000 first printing; paperback rights to Vintage; rights sold in the U.K. and six European nations; author tour. <br />Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In 1906 Southern China, newborn Li-Xia (Li) is nearly murdered by her elderly father because she is a girl, only to be saved by the specter of a fox fairy. Li lives in a rice shed mostly forgotten, as she wonders about her dead mother, who had been an educated concubine. After Li rebels against attempts to bind her feet, she is sold on her eighth birthday to a silk merchant and finds a temporary family among the female laborers while she dreams of learning to read and write. Capt. Benjamin Jean-Paul Devereaux rescues her by buying her freedom and safe passage on his ship, and she is able to fulfill her dream of literacy. They marry, defying societal norms, but in Hong Kong, Li is assaulted by an enemy of her husband, and fearing for her newborn girl, Siu-Sing, she has the child taken to safety in the mountains. Siu-Sing learns about her lineage and returns to face her own tribulations as WWII is about to begin. Fai's multigenerational tale has predictable elements, but is nonetheless an engaging and entertaining read. <em>(Oct.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>An epic, heart-wrenching story of a mother and daughter’s journey to their destiny.</strong></p><hr /><p>L_otus Feet. He would give his daughter the dainty feet of a courtesan. This would enhance her beauty and her price, making her future shine like a new coin. He smiled to himself, pouring fresh tea. And it would stop her from running away…_</p><p>When the young concubine of an old farmer in rural China gives birth to a daughter called Li-Xia, or “Beautiful One,” the child seems destined to become a concubine herself. Li refuses to submit to her fate, outwitting her father’s orders to bind her feet and escaping the silk farm with an English sea captain. Li takes her first steps toward fulfilling her mother’s dreams of becoming a scholar—but her final triumph must be left to her daughter, Su Sing, “Little Star,” in a journey that will take her from remote mountain refuges to the perils of Hong Kong on the eve of World War II. </p>


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<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 8 Up—This sometimes goofy, sometimes gory debut novel introduces Sam, a fast-food employee in Seattle who has grown up unaware of his ability to raise the dead. After a bizarre encounter with a customer, he gets a beating from a stranger, and his coworker shows up missing her body below the neck (a misfortune that does not affect her positive attitude). It seems that Douglas, an evil local necromancer, has become aware of Sam's powers and views him as a threat. With the help of his friends—and a very attractive werewolf girl—Sam must try to tap into his necromancing abilities to beat Douglas at his own game. Some of the jokes, like the punning chapter titles that quote song lyrics from the likes of the Eurythmics,'70s-era Paul Simon, and Timbuk 3, may be lost on many of today's teens. However, for fans of horror-humor hybrids like the film <em>Shaun of the Dead</em>, this book may hold some appeal.—_Hayden Bass, Seattle Public Library, WA_ <br />(c) Copyright 2011.  Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. </p><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> Sam has dropped out of college and is stalled in a fast-food job in Seattle. Interrupting the boredom of days waiting on Plumpy customers and evenings watching old movies with his friends, a scary guy named Douglas enters Sam’s world. After a few pithy verbal threats, Douglas has Sam beaten and mauled by a sidekick—and later delivers teen Brooke’s pretty blond head to Sam’s door. The good news is that Brooke seems to be in no pain and is as sassy as ever. The bad news, as Sam finds out in short order, is that Douglas is a necromancer and has identified Sam, who hasn’t a clue what his strengths are, as a rival. Before the week is out, Sam finds himself in a cellar, caged with another pretty girl, who is part werewolf, part fairy. And then there’s Ashley, the parochial-school-uniformed 10-year-old who can orchestrate salvation for Sam by using her Blackberry and brains. With fine writing, tight plotting, a unique and uniquely odd cast of teens, adults, and children, and a pace that smashes through any curtain of disbelief, this sardonic and outrageous story’s only problem is that it must, like all good things, come to an end. Grades 9-12. --Francisca Goldsmith </p>


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<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 8 Up—Luce must spend her senior year at reform school after her boyfriend dies in a mysterious fire. She suspects that the dark shadows that have tormented her all her life had something to do with it. When she meets supernaturally gorgeous Daniel, she feels a familiar longing, making her believe they have met before. Although Cam is clearly interested in her, Luce only wants Daniel, who runs both hot and cold. He tries to keep Luce at a distance, telling her that the truth would kill her as it has many times before. The first chapter is gripping and foreshadows the supernatural elements to come. The plot revolves around lovers who find one another, only to lose one another over and over again in a story that spans centuries. Instead of vampires, though, these are fallen angels. Many elements are not resolved, such as the cause of the fire and why angels are at this school. Still, fans of supernatural romance will be lining up for this book despite its flaws, and begging for a sequel.—_Kris Hickey, Columbus Metropolitan Library, OH_ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Fallen angels sure seem poised to become the new vampires, with a similarly ideal blend of brooding mystery and sexy rebellion. After a fiery accident kills a boy she is crushing on, Luce gets sent to a reform school populated, most notably, by two gorgeous fellas, Daniel and Cam. Cam is safe and charming and eager to win Luce’s affections, while Daniel operates somewhere between aloof and downright hostile toward her. Readers will figure out Luce and Daniel’s star-crossed-lovers angle early on, making the hints dropped throughout about past lives and dangerous fates more obvious than compelling. Although there’s not enough story to justify the length of this series opener, readers who stick with it get rewarded with a climactic payoff that far exceeds the buildup. The final pages’ flurry of delicious information about what’s really going on with the cadre of angels and demons will likely leave readers more intrigued by what’s next than invested in what just happened. Perhaps the sequel will contain an explanation of what these immortal types are doing at a reform school in the first place. Grades 9-12. --Ian Chipman </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Sixteen-year-old Yara Silva has always known that ghosts walk alongside the living. Her grandma, like the other females in her family, is a Waker, someone who can see and communicate with ghosts. Yara grew up watching her grandmother taunted and scorned for this unusual ability and doesn't want that to be her future. She has been dreading the day when she too would see ghosts, and is relieved that the usually dominant Waker gene seems to have skipped her, letting her live a normal teenage life. However, all that changes for Yara on her first day at her elite boarding school when she discovers the gene was only lying dormant. She witnesses a dark mist attack Brent, a handsome fellow student, and rushes to his rescue. Her act of heroism draws the mist's attention, and the dark spirit begins stalking her. Yara finds herself entrenched in a sixty-year-old curse that haunts the school, threatening not only her life, but the lives of her closest friends as well. Yara soon realizes that the past she was trying to put behind her isn't going to go quietly. </p>


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In the second novel of the Gaean trilogy, human explorers have entered the sprawling mind of Gaea. Now they must fight her will. For she is much too powerful . . . and definitely insane. Reissue.


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<div><meta charset="utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; "><h3 class="productDescriptionSource" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 1.23em; font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.375em; margin-left: -15px; clear: both; ">Product Description</h3><div class="productDescriptionWrapper" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">I've been told that the entire continent of Antarctica groaned at the moment of my birth. The howl tore across glaciers, over mountains and deep into the ice. Everyone says so. Except for my father; all he heard was Mother’s sobs. Not of pain, but of joy, so he says. Other than that, the only verifiable fact about the day I was born is that an iceberg the size of Los Angeles broke free from the ice shelf a few miles off the coast. Again, some would have me believe the fracture took place as I entered the world. But all that really matters, according to my parents, is that I, Solomon Ull Vincent, the first child born on Antarctica—the first and only Antarctican—was born on September 2nd, 1974.<br><br>If only someone could have warned me that, upon my return to the continent of my birth thirteen years later, I would be kidnapped, subjected to tortures beyond comprehension and forced to fight...and kill. If only someone had hinted that I'd wind up struggling to survive in a subterranean world full of ancient warriors, strange creatures and supernatural powers. <br><br>Had I been warned I might have lived a normal life. The human race might have remained safe. And the fate of the world might not rest on my shoulders. Had I been warned.... <br><br>This is my story—the tale of Solomon Ull Vincent—The Last Hunter.</div></span></div>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. This debut novel, inspired by the life of the author's Korean mother, is a beautiful, deliberate and satisfying story spanning 30 years of Korean history. The tradition-bound aristocratic calligrapher Han refuses to name his daughter because she is born just as the Japanese occupy Korea early in the 20th century. When Han finds a husband for Najin (nicknamed after her mother's birthplace) at 14, her mother objects and instead sends her to the court of the doomed royal Yi family to learn refinement. Najin goes to college and becomes a teacher, proving herself not only as a scholar but as a patriot and humanitarian. She returns home to marry, but her new husband goes without her to study in America when she is denied a visa. As the Japanese systematically obliterate ancient Korean culture and the political climate worsens, so do Najin's fortunes. Her family is reduced to poverty, their home is seized and Najin is imprisoned as a spy while WWII escalates. The author writes at a languorous pace, choosing not to sully her elegant pages with raw brutality, but the key to the story is Korea's monumental suffering at the hands of the Japanese. <em>(Aug.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Adult/High School—In 1910 Gaesong, Korea, a female child is born to a learned scholar and calligrapher and his wife. The child, unnamed by her father, who is despondent over the recent annexing of Korea by Japan, names herself <em>Najin</em>. She proceeds to forge her own destiny, struggling to be an obedient daughter in the Confucian tradition of her father and the Christian faith embraced by her mother. To escape an arranged marriage, Najin goes to the emperor's palace to be a companion to the princess. With the collapse of the Joseon dynasty, she loses her position. She finds ways to further her studies in education and medicine and helps support her parents and younger, shiftless brother with work as a teacher and physician. When her father arranges another marriage, to a student minister, Najin agrees. Immediately she is left with his family to act as a servant while he studies in the U.S. Accused of spying after she returns to her own now-impoverished family, Najin spends months in prison. The novel, based on the life of the author's mother, comes to a satisfying conclusion with the surrender of Japan and the reunion of the couple. Descriptive imagery communicates Najin's philosophical musings, dreams, and appreciation of nature. Readers are left with greater understanding of the horrors of Japanese occupation and of the cultural, political, and religious upheaval that Korean families faced as they negotiated the modern world. Delicate black-and-white illustrations complement the prose. A compelling narrative about an intellectually curious and brave heroine.—_Jackie Gropman, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library System, Fairfax, VA_ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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            The West Virginia town of Grantville, torn from the twentieth century and hurled back into seventeenth century Europe has allied with Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, in the United States of Europe. So, when Gustavus invades Poland, managing to unite all the squabbling Polish factions into repelling the common enemy, the time-lost Americans have to worry about getting dragged into the fight along with the Swedish forces.             But Mike Stearns has another problem. He was Prime Minister of the USE until he lost an election, and now he’s one of Gustavus’s generals; and he has demonstrated that he’s very good at being a general. And he’s about to really need all his military aptitude. Gretchen , who never saw a revolution she didn’t like, has been arrested in Saxony, and is likely to be executed. The revolutionary groups which she has been working with are not about to let that happen, and suddenly there’s rioting in the streets. Saxony’s ruthless General Baner is determined to suppress the uprising by the time-honored “kill them all and let God sort them out” method, which only adds fuel to the fire. So Gustavus orders Mike Stearns to go to Saxony and restore order. But he makes one mistake.             He didn’t tell Mike to take his troops along on the mission. But he didn’t tell him not to, either . . .  Praise for the New York Times Best-Selling Series:“. . . gripping and expertly detailed . . . a treat for lovers of action-SF or alternate history . . . battle scenes depicted with power . . . distinguishes Flint as an SF author of particular note, one who can entertain and edify in equal, and major, measure.” —Publishers Weekly (in a starred review) “[This] alternate-history saga . . . is certainly a landmark in that subgenre. . . . A splendid example of character-centered alternate-history, this is a must read for its series' growing fandom.” —Booklist (Starred Review) “. . . takes historic speculation to a new level in a tale that combines accurate historical research with bold leaps of the imagination. Fans of alternate history and military sf should enjoy this rousing tale of adventure and intrigue.” —Library Journal “This alternate history series is already one of the best around and each new entry appears better than the previous one, a seemingly impossible feat . . . terrific. . . .” —The Midwest Book Review


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>This fact-based thriller is more facts than thrills, as Earl Emerson, a lieutenant in the Seattle Fire Department who's penned a series of solid mysteries featuring detective Thomas Black, puts his professional expertise front and center. That may be a plus, as the book's centerpiece is an arson fire in a skyscraper, a scene that brings the NYFD's heroism on 9/11 sadly to mind, giving this book in timeliness what it lacks in narrative drama. There's a plot somewhere here which has to do with a few venal, scheming bad guys in a (fictional) Seattle Fire Department who keep a hero fireman from upsetting their big score by discrediting him, and when that doesn't work, trying to kill him. But Emerson concentrates less on character, story, and pacing than on the highly technical details of urban firefighting, which, while perhaps widening Emerson's appeal to a general audience, may make this title less than compelling to the devoted fans of his mysteries. <em>--Jane Adams</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Seattle fireman Emerson, of Shamus Award¤winning Thomas Black detective series fame, returns with his 12th novel¢a tale of arson, intrigue and sublimated rivalries among Seattle firefighters. John Finney, son of a retired fire chief and brother of a 21-year veteran, is haunted by the fire that killed one of his colleagues and placed him under departmental suspicion. Finney thinks the fire was arson, but can't prove it¢until two other fires erupt under even more suspicious circumstances, killing another one of his partners. In short order, the mistrust of Finney's colleagues flares dangerously close to criminal prosecution, while a mysterious rogue fire engine tries to run him down. Finney starts up his own investigation of the fires, and even manages to spark up a romance with Diana Moore, the department's only female firefighter. But when Finney's amateur sleuthing turns up a crooked business tycoon and an arson insurance scam involving Seattle's tallest tower, Emerson turns up the heat. The novel is, as expected, long on details of firefighting and its incipient hazards, though there is little mention of the real and enduring conflicts between the investigative arm of firefighters and law enforcement. Newcomers to Emerson's work who enjoy thrillers like Suzanne Chazin's The Fourth Angel should find little to complain about; as an example of the genre, however, in plotting and dialogue ( I ain't seen nothing but this goddamn smoke. Thought maybe my first wife was in there cooking dinner. ) this is at best a two-alarmer. <br />Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Emerson (_Firetrap_) takes a page from James Dickey's <em>Deliverance</em> in this rousing survival yarn that pits a group of mountain bikers against gun-toting, vengeance-obsessed adversaries and the unleashed fury of Mother Nature. Zak Polanski, a 28-year-old firefighter, is looking forward to a long weekend in the wilds of western Washington with his buddies. Their goal to traverse the Cascade Mountains, however, is almost derailed when authorities declare all backwoods areas in the state off limits due to wildfires. Deciding to risk it, the bikers set off into the pristine wilderness only to run into a raucous group of affluent adventurers. Polanski is shocked to find his former girlfriend's fiancé, William Scooter Potter III, leading the drunken crew. Equal parts reckless brats and self-satisfied billionaires, Potter and his accomplices begin to antagonize Polanski. As tensions rise, so does Polanski's willingness to murder the man who, in his mind, stole away his future wife. While the pacing is consistently pedal-to-the-metal and the intense description of the approaching wildfires memorable, too many two-dimensional characters undermine the thrills. <em>(Jan.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>On a late August day in the foothills of the Cascades, five bicyclists climb into the hot, dry air, the breeze of their movement cooling their overheated bodies, the stress of a workweek slipstreaming behind them. But another group has entered the park, too. They’re in cars, for pleasure and for vengeance. In Earl Emerson’s gripping new novel, a grudge turns an idyllic setting into a terrifying landscape of men and nature at their most dangerous.  </p><p>Zak Polanski doesn’t do long-term relationships, doesn’t like rich people, and, after saving Nadine Newcastle from an accident scene, isn’t ready to be loved back. When the improbable affair sours, Zak returns to his old ways. But Nadine’s former boyfriend, William Potter III, can’t let it go. Potter knows that Zak is one of five mountain bikers at an isolated camping ground at Panther Creek, and has come for a little payback.  </p><p>What starts as a nasty prank soon escalates. Someone has a gun. Someone makes a move. And a spark ignites amid a volatile mix of anger and alcohol, pride and betrayal. Now, men and women cut off from their urban environment are making choices, choosing sides, facing one another’s demons and their own. And when human hatred merges with nature’s fury, the only goal is to get out alive.  </p><p>A mesmerizing novel that weaves the story of a charged love affair with a drama of sheer survival, Primal Threat is a thriller delivered with the brawny, vivid, and lyrical style that makes Earl Emerson one of the most compelling storytellers of our time. </p>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>It's a tribute to Earl Emerson's narrative skill that he manages to make this implausible medical mystery not only believable but also compelling. When fire chief Jim Swopes traces the unknown disease that's wiped out half his department in less than a week to a truck crash on a western Washington highway, he knows his days are numbered--like the other victims, all of whom died, he has just seven days to live unless he can find an antidote to a chemical poison no one else believes exists. Helped by a beautiful doctor whose comatose sister drove one of the trucks in the crash, he traces the poison to a biotech firm with nothing to lose and everything to gain by letting the clock run out. But until it does, this tightly plotted race-against-time thriller will keep you riveted. <em>--Jane Adams</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Seattle firefighter Jim Swope-the irresistible protagonist of this latest high-octane thriller from the author of the Thomas Black detective series-is, in his own words, "destined for a jail cell, a straitjacket, or more likely, to end up dancing the funky chicken in a fusillade of bullets." This divorced, womanizing father of two has just realized he has exactly six days to figure out the nature of the mysterious ailment that's been killing off his North Bend Fire and Rescue colleagues-and is about to fell him, too. It all started several months ago, when he and other firefighters reported to the scene of a highway accident. It was here that Swope met emotionally unstable trucker Holly Riggs, a woman who became his girlfriend, then his ex-girlfriend, then his stalker. When Holly's sister, Stephanie, finds her in a coma months after the accident, she figures it was a suicide attempt. Only when Jim's colleagues also fall into comas does Jim realize that they were all poisoned at the scene of the accident. Each victim has only a week to live from the day his symptoms begin, and Jim already has trembling hands and a headache. He and Stephanie team up to uncover a tangled web of corporate corruption extending far beyond the Pacific Northwest, but centering on a nearby "hazmat" facility. Emerson, a veteran Seattle firefighter, infuses the firehouse scenes with expert detail, but it's the full-bodied characterization and wry humor of "mad dog" Swope that really sizzle. Readers who like a little hot sauce with their mystery will snatch this up.<br>Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong> Amazon Exclusive: A Q&amp;A with Author Christopher Pike</strong>   </p><p><strong>Q:</strong> How do you spend your time when you’re not writing? </p><p><strong> Pike:</strong> I love to read. I would read all day if I didn’t have to write for a living. I read almost as much nonfiction as novels, which seems to surprise people. I enjoy science and history books. I like biographies. Still, my favorite is a great novel; the genre does not matter so much. The last novels I read were <em>The Help</em> by Kathryn Stockett and <em>The Passage</em> by Justin Cronin. It’s hard to imagine two books more different, but I loved them both.</p><p><strong>Q:</strong> What advice do you have for budding authors?   </p><p><strong>Pike:</strong> Write every day, even if it’s only for half an hour. Don’t outline too much, don’t think too much. Just start writing and keep writing. Eventually, if you have talent, your own voice will emerge.</p><p>Writing involves hard work more than genius. Writing is rewriting. Of course, it’s true: we all read these articles about a person who sits and writes their first book and it sells ten million copies. But in the real world that doesn’t happen too often. And usually those authors who succeed too soon never learn to write. My books were rejected for seven years before I got published, and I consider myself lucky. </p><p><strong>Q:</strong> Do you have any writing rituals or special practices? Where do you write? When do you write?</p><p><strong>Pike:</strong> I usually meditate before I write. I’m not dogmatic when it comes to the subject. I can’t prescribe a specific system. But I can say it helps to sit quietly for half an hour with my eyes closed before I work. For me, my best inspiration seems to emerge in silence.</p><p>I seldom write before ten at night. I’m an extraordinary procrastinator. I spend the bulk of each day avoiding my computer. Every day I invent a new excuse why I cannot start writing early in the day. The strange thing is, when I finally do sit to write, I’m fine. But it’s difficult for me to get in the chair. I usually write until dawn. Then I sleep till noon. What a life. </p><p><strong>Q:</strong> You have a long and illustrious backlist. What makes <em>The Secret of Ka</em> special?</p><p><strong>Pike:</strong> I had more fun writing <em>The Secret of Ka</em> than any novel I’ve ever worked on. It was the one novel that swept away my procrastination phobia. Each afternoon that I woke up, I would dive right in. <em>Ka</em>’s one of the few stories I’ve written where I didn’t have a clue what was going to happen next. Usually I know the ending before I write a word. With Ka, I didn’t know what was going to happen on the next page.</p><p>The main male character in the book, Amesh, he’s missing his right hand. My girlfriend kept asking, “What’s the deal with his hand? Your female fans won’t fall in love with him if he can’t hug Sara.” I kept telling her, "I don’t know, I have to see. I only know Amesh lost his hand somewhere along the road." I felt like Sara did when she discovered the flying carpet. How cool it would be to jump on it and fly away to a magical island. It probably seems obvious to my readers that my characters would encounter djinn on the island, but I didn’t know that when Sara first got there. Up until then the story had been kind of lighthearted. I had no idea it would get so intense. I loved the first time Sara went head to head against the evil djinn, how it tricked her into almost killing herself. <em>The Secret of Ka</em> was one of those rare books that felt like it was dictated to me. I can’t really take credit for it. For example, when it came to the Three Laws of the Djinn, I didn’t have a clue what they were. I felt like the carpet spelled out the answer to Sara’s question and I simply wrote it down. My favorite books that I’ve written have been like that. <em>The Last Vampire</em> and <em>Remember Me</em> just came to me. I felt like little more than a typist when I wrote those novels. As I said earlier, thinking is overrated when it comes to writing. </p><p><strong>Q:</strong> What was your favorite book as a kid?</p><p><strong> Pike:</strong> <em>Childhood’s End</em> by Arthur C. Clarke. I remember I was in seventh grade and I ordered it at school from one of those book club forms they handed out every few months. But before the book could come, I found it in the school library. Only I didn’t want to read it because I had just paid thirty-five cents to buy it. Still, I kept sneaking into the library to read a few pages each day because I was enthralled. I had to know what happened next. I did this for about a week and then broke down and checked the book out and read it all the way through. Then, when the book club delivered it, I read it all over again.</p><p>I must have read <em>Childhood’s End</em> twenty times. I read all of Clarke’s novels. <em>The City and the Stars</em> was another favorite. Then I discovered Robert Heinlein, Issac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Clifford Simak, and James Blish. Asimov’s <em>Foundation</em> trilogy blew me away. I remember thinking at the time that if I could write one book in my life that touched someone else, like <em>The Foundation</em>, then my time on this planet would have been well spent. </p><p><strong>Q:</strong> If you had a whole day free with nothing to do, how would you fill it?</p><p><strong>Pike:</strong> I would read. There’s an old Beach Boys song called "Disney Girls." It has this line that says, "Reality, it’s not for me, and it makes me laugh." That sums up my life. I read to escape. I write to help other people escape. The world is a hard place. It’s good to get away from it now and then.</p><hr /><h3>Review</h3><ul> <li>     "The author ably juggles this central plot, creepy and elegant descriptions of the djinn, and even some juicy family drama to create a freewheeling, suspenseful action novel. Readers who recognize Pike as a key name in teen horror may be initially surprised by this subtly frightening adventure story, but there are still enough gross details mixed in to please even his hardcore fans."--_Bulletin,_ starred review   </li></ul><p>"Pike’s work is about action and twists, both of which are packed into the narrative."--_Kirkus Reviews<br />_</p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>A clothing executive, a stripper, a comic book collector and a minister are stuck in a nudist colony! Without meaning to, Corky Wopplesdown has just gotten sexy lingerie model, Wisper Nuckeby, fired. In an effort to somehow make things right he sets off on a wild journey to find her while in the unlikely company of a rude, horny stripper, a repressed minister, an unexpeced fiancee and a comic book collecting pervert. Then Corky's car breaks down in the tiny hamlet of Nikkid Bottoms, a little, coastal village where the sun is warm, the people are nice, and the clothing is optional. Funny, edgy and wickedly satirical, this is the irreverent Chuck Austen writing at his ingeniously zany, and unbelievably outrageous best. Fully illustrated. </p>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>In this first novel, Amy Bloom spins the tale of one Elizabeth Taube, charting her progress from an unloved adolescent to (alas) an unloved, middle-aged mother. To be sure, Elizabeth has had no shortage of suitors. Yet, one by one, they desert her, leaving nothing but their imprints upon her personality--which, if we are to take the title literally, is almost all the personality we have. The author steers clear of sentimentalizing her heroine's plight. And Bloom's eerie ability to convey physical sensation--which also distinguished her story collection __--is on ample and impressive display. </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The first two thirds of this first novel exhibit many of the excellent qualities seen in Bloom's highly praised short-story collection, Come to Me. Again, Bloom's prose combines lyrical imagery with a comfortable vernacular; her protagonist's vision of the world is distinctive, wry and intense. We meet Elizabeth Taube as a preteen in upper-middle class Great Neck, Long Island. Perceptive enough to know that she is unloved by her mother, a chilly interior decorator, and her father, a remote accountant, she is too innocent to understand the attentions of an elderly furrier, who teaches her about the power of the body to arouse passion. A short while later, she acquires the two lovers who will have the largest impact on her life. One of these, Max Stone, is her junior-high school English teacher and a clear father figure. Max tries and fails to repress the sexual aspect of his love for Elizabeth, and as a result ends up a broken man. While Max is almost entirely unsympathetic, Elizabeth's other lover, a black high school star athlete named Huddie Lester, is often too good to be true. The sure hand for characterization and plotting that Bloom showed in her stories is not always in evidence here; a blind black woman that Liz befriends is a fully realized and memorable character, yet her parents are especially unpleasant and underdeveloped. The book's pacing sometimes lags, and the last third of the novel, with Elizabeth a middle-aged mother, lacks credibility. Yet Bloom's beautifully inflected prose captivates a reader. Her keenly perceptive evocation of a young woman's burgeoning self-awareness and her sensuous descriptions of erotic passion are fashioned with undeniable intelligence and grace. 40,000 first printing; author tour. (Jan.) FYI: The first chapter of this novel is virtually identical to a story in Come to Me titled "Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines."<br>Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>First, humanity establishes ties with intelligent, extraterrestrial bugs. Some 20 years later, humanity makes first contact with intelligent, extraterrestrial babes. Or so goes the chronology in Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth, as detailed in the second book of the Founding of the Commonwealth prequel trilogy. Following up on __, <em>Dirge</em> fleshes out the foundation for the universe that's home to the ever-popular <em>Dirge</em> provides essential background for fans of all the Humanx books in typical action-packed Foster style.</p><p>The space babes in question call themselves the Pitar, and after somewhat stunted relations with the insectoid Thranx (first contacted in __), humanity falls all over itself fawning over this "drop-dead, overpoweringly, stunningly gorgeous"--if strangely reticent--new race. But everything isn't what it seems, of course, or there wouldn't be much of a story here. Not to give anything away, but even the most unobservant reader will soon realize that something's suspicious about these alluring aliens--especially when 600,000 colonists on the otherwise boring outpost of Treetrunk are swiftly, brutally, and mysteriously exterminated. <em>--Paul Hughes</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Derivative and predictable, this second novel in Foster's Founding of the Commonwealth series reinforces the lesson that looks can be deceiving. When Alwyn Mallory explores the new world of Argus V, he inadvertently becomes part of the first contact team to meet the alien Pitar. Unlike the unpleasantly buglike alien thranx, the Pitar are "drop-dead, overpoweringly, stunningly, gorgeous." Relations with the friendly but disliked thranx slow to a crawl as humanity overwhelmingly embraces the Pitar. Their telegenic appearances are so compelling that the media scarcely notices when the thranx are attacked by terrorists in a protected diplomatic enclave on Earth. Possibly the only good thing to come out of the slaughter is the founding of a joint religion by two clerics, one human and one thranx. As years pass, and the Pitar continue to refuse access to their homeworld, the media spin explains that they are "shy" and refuses to believe they could have anything to hide. Meanwhile, humanity is happily expanding through the galaxy and colonizing Argus V--until disaster strikes and all 600,000 colonists are hideously slaughtered by an unknown force. When Mallory is discovered, crazed and near death, hiding on one of the Argus's moons, he is the only hope humankind has for ascertaining just who the villainous, slaughtering aliens really are. Although Foster implies that interesting things are going to happen with human-thranx religious philosophies, that doesn't happen in this novel. Instead we get a vision of humanity as a race unable to see beyond the reflection of surface beauty and incapable of restraining itself from its basest instincts when that enhanced mirror is shattered. (June) </p><p>Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>It’s not a myth. It exists. Find it.   </p><p>Geologist Ross Kelly has it all: a lucrative career searching for oil across the world and a beautiful, brilliant wife, Lauren, pregnant with their fist child. But when Lauren, a Yale academic, deciphers the university’s mysterious Voynich manuscript, which has confounded experts for centuries, everything changes.  </p><p>An attempt to steal her translation of the Voynich leaves Lauren and their unborn child hovering on the brink of death, and Ross in the depths of despair. Encounters with a sinister Vatican priest and then a mysterious nun convince Ross to seek the centuries-old manuscript, which chronicles the ill-fated discovery of a mythic fabulous garden deep in the jungles of the New World: an Eden so terrible and miraculous it rewrites the book of Genesis and defies all reason.   </p><p>Although everyone tells him the story is surely an allegory, the possibility of the garden’s existence offers Ross the only hope of saving his wife and unborn child, and he decides to seek the garden out before it’s too late. <br>But he is not alone. Racing against time, against a lethal assassin, and a fanatical priest, Ross’s quest will lead him to a place that might challenge everything he ever thought about the source of life on earth.  </p><p><em>From the Trade Paperback edition.</em></p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Michael Cordy worked for ten years in marketing before starting to write full time.  </p><p><em>From the Trade Paperback edition.</em></p>

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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Gaius Petreius Ruso, doctor to the Legions, is about to return home to Gaul after many years' absence. Little does he realize the letter summoning him back has been forged, or that the sunny Mediterranean lifestyle conceals a dark threat lurking at every corner. His family are in horrific debt to dangerous men and when the principal creditor, Severus, is poisoned in the Ruso home they become the primary suspects in his murder. But the crimes go far deeper. What role did Severus play in the deliberate sinking of a cargo ship? Who are the brutal investigators sent by Rome? And how worrying is the outbreak of the new religion, Christianity, in the neighbourhood? When Ruso takes a job stitching up gladiators in the local amphitheatre, matters come to a head. He's literally in the lion's den and even Tilla, his loyal servant, may not be able to save him from the clutches of a most devious murderer . . . Ruso and the Root of All Evils, is published in the US as Persona Non Grata.</p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Fantasy fans on the younger side of Harry Potter will find a good jolt of action, mystery and humor in Corduner's light and swift reading of this magyk-filled adventure. Infants switched at birth, spell casting, Brownies, boggarts, dastardly villains and wizards add lively scenery and action throughout. Though a broad cast of characters threatens to become unwieldy, Sage's smooth storytelling pace and Corduner's assured, inviting voice keep things on track. Sharp listeners will have young Septimus Heap's fate (and that of Jenna, adopted by his family) figured out before recording's end, but will still enjoy the ride. And since Septimus is the gifted-by-birthright seventh son of a seventh son, and this is the first in a planned trilogy, listeners are left with the anticipation of more to come. Ages 9-up <em>(Apr.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 4-8–A wide cast of characters battle the forces of Darke Magyk in a well-realized world of fantasy. At birth, Septimus Heap is carried away for dead, and his father, Silas Heap, is entrusted with a baby girl. When the villainous Supreme Custodian tries to assassinate the now 10-year-old Jenna, who, it turns out, is the daughter of the murdered queen, the girl flees to the Marram Marshes along with some family members, the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, and a young army guard known only as "Boy 412." Pursued by the servants of the Necromancer DomDaniel, and aided by an engaging array of magical beings, they finally prevail in a satisfying and fairly exciting conclusion. Despite the hefty length, the novel is quite easy to follow. Many creative magical elements, such as the deliciously repulsive Magogs, add to the fun. Frequent point-of-view shifts give a well-rounded picture of the multiple plot threads and add many opportunities for light humor. On the other hand, with so many characters represented, it's hard to feel strong empathy for any of them. Jenna, the Queenling, and Boy 412, in particular, nearly emerge as full-blooded individuals at times, but neither quite stands out as an engaging hero. Villains are well drawn and varied, and most are more comical than truly menacing. The ease with which a once-formidable enemy like the Hunter is finally dispatched, however, detracts a bit from the eventual triumph of the protagonists. Overall, this is a fine choice for fantasy readers looking to delve into a new world with lots of magic, plenty of action, and a few neat surprises._–Steven Engelfried, Beaverton City Library, OR_ <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>

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<h3>From</h3><p>Award-winning science journalist Taubes follows his Good Calories, Bad Calories (2007) with this eminently more reader-friendly explanation of the dangers of dietary carbohydrates. If the USDA dietary guidelines—recommending that highly caloric grains and carbohydrates comprise 45 to 65 percent of daily caloric intake—are so healthy, why, he asks, has obesity among Americans been on the upswing? Why has this same diet, endorsed by the American Heart Association, not managed to reduce the incidence of heart disease? And, finally, he asks why mainstream health experts continue to promote the notably unscientific notion of “calories in/calories out” as the single focus of weight management? After explaining in layperson’s terms the science that debunks the idea that weight control is a matter of burning more calories than one consumes, Taubes offers an alternative viewpoint: no carbs. While his recommendation to eliminate carbohydrates (grains, fruits, sugars, etc.) from one’s diet is not necessarily a new one, Taubes does present compelling supporting evidence that many, if not all, people should consider at least severely limiting carbohydrates in their diet. --Donna Chavez </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>An eye-opening, myth-shattering examination of what makes us fat, from acclaimed science writer Gary Taubes.  </p><p>In his <em>New York Times</em> best seller, <em>Good Calories, Bad Calories,</em> Taubes argued that our diet’s overemphasis on certain kinds of carbohydrates—_not_ fats and <em>not</em> simply excess calories—has led directly to the obesity epidemic we face today. The result of thorough research, keen insight, and unassailable common sense, <em>Good Calories, Bad Calories</em> immediately stirred controversy and acclaim among academics, journalists, and writers alike. Michael Pollan heralded it as “a vitally important book, destined to change the way we think about food.”   </p><p>Building upon this critical work in <em>Good Calories, Bad Calories</em> and presenting fresh evidence for his claim, Taubes now revisits the urgent question of what’s making us fat—and how we can change—in this exciting new book. Persuasive, straightforward, and practical, <em>Why We Get Fat </em>makes Taubes’s crucial argument newly accessible to a wider audience.  </p><p>Taubes reveals the bad nutritional science of the last century, none more damaging or misguided than the “calories-in, calories-out” model of why we get fat, and the good science that has been ignored, especially regarding insulin’s regulation of our fat tissue. He also answers the most persistent questions: Why are some people thin and others fat? What roles do exercise and genetics play in our weight? What foods should we eat, and what foods should we avoid?   </p><p>Packed with essential information and concluding with an easy-to-follow diet, <em>Why We Get Fat </em>is an invaluable key in our understanding of an international epidemic and a guide to what each of us can do about it. </p>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>The Kill Clause</em>'s opening pages will knot the stomach of even the most seasoned crime reader. U.S. Marshall Tim Rackley is expecting his daughter home for her seventh birthday party. Instead he finds a fellow cop at his door, bearing the news that little Ginny has been savagely dismembered, her remains recovered in a nearby creek. Only an hour or so later, reeling with shock and grief, Rackley learns that the perpetrator has been caught--and that some fellow cops have arranged a little one-on-one meeting for him at an isolated shack, complete with an untraceable gun. Rackley arrives, faces this monster, and...</p><p>But that would be giving too much away. Suffice it to say that this powerful opening launches a killer thriller, rich in both adrenaline-pumping action and thought-provoking issues of vigilantism, power, and the moral dilemmas of those sworn to uphold the law. Hurwitz's prose is muscular yet intelligent; he draws characters well, and he unrolls action scenes with amazing vividness (as well as treating us to lots of fascinating lore about lock picking, identity theft, and cell-phone technology). Occasionally his plot twists verge on the outlandish, and a few characters seem to exist only to speechify on a certain point of view. But these are minor flaws in this fine, intense, often un-put-downable tale. <em>--Nicholas H. Allison</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>A motley crew of ex-cops and fringe characters, who have all lost loved ones and seen the villains walk, are organized into a vigilante hit squad by a media personality who sees this as a good launchpad for his books in this first thriller in a projected series by Hurwitz (Do No Harm; Minutes to Burn). The squad-or the Commission, as it calls itself-chooses as executioner Tim Rackley, a US marshal and former Special Forces muscle who is vulnerable to their offer, having just lost his only child in a gruesome attack ("her remains had required three biohazard bags to depart the scene"). Devastated, Rackley leaves his job and his wife, a county sheriff, to take the assignment, disappearing into the murk of L.A. to begin a series of high-tech hits on high-profile criminals who have slipped through the system's cracks-including the man who, Rackley believes, killed his daughter. But Rackley suspects the Commission of fuzzy logic after one unclear target assessment leads two of the Commission (a murderous pair of bulked-up ex-cop brothers called, none too subtly, the "Mastersons") to go on a rampage, invoking the Commission's "kill clause"-the immediate (and brutal) dissolution of the squad. Caught between his former law enforcement colleagues and the Mastersons' rising bloodlust, Tim must risk one more vigilante act to put justice back in the hands of the courts. The high gore level and farfetched premise give the novel a cartoonish edge, but Hurwitz's deft descriptions of Tim's methods of disappearing, breaking-and-entering, and stealing identities are convincing, and his fast-paced plotting will keep readers riveted. Tim is a promising series hero, with his multitude of skills and conflicted loyalties, and Hurwitz is off to a fine start with this first installment.<br>Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Singer-songwriter Crowell's upbringing in Texas had all the prerequisite elements of a hardscrabble country music story--drinking, guns, fistfights, fierce spankings, infidelity, Pentecostal preachers, fishing, love, hate, laughter, tears, sex, drugs, and of course, music. But Crowell's storytelling abilities and narrative flair elevate this book far above the average music memoir. Born in 1950 to a blue-collar, hard-drinking, country-singing father and religious mother, Crowell lived in Jacinto City, east of Houston, in a shoddily constructed house cursed with leaks, mosquitoes, and vermin. He recalls hurricanes, fishing trips, rock throwing fights, and bow-and-arrow mishaps, all with the enthusiasm of a hyper 10-year-old pedaling at full speed (something he and neighborhood kids did when following the "Mosquito Dope Truck," a DDT spraying vehicle that they chased on their bicycles). Crowell touches on his early musical influences, including a Hank Williams concert when he was only two, and an outdoor show by Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash in a thunderstorm, as well as his first time playing music with his father's band. It's not music that's at the heart of this book, however, but his loving and turbulent relationships with his parents and their often strained but deep love for one another. (Jan.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> Crowell is among the best storytellers to emerge from Nashville. Up to now, he told his stories in song, but with this heartfelt memoir, he can now be called a writer of the first order. Houston, where Crowell grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s, was a city full of characters found in stereotypical country songs: hard-drinking fathers and long-suffering mothers singing along to the beer-soaked ballads of Hank Williams. But this is not fiction; Crowell actually lived the life, soaking up its exhilarating and disturbing atmosphere. Crowell is unsparingly honest, yet there is an admirable restraint here, too. He clearly loves his family, accepting their bountiful deficiencies even when he criticizes them or wishes them harm. He can now see the kind of lives his parents wanted to live, and how they fell woefully short. He calls his father an enigma and savant; he admires his mother, who suffered from double dyslexia and epilepsy, for her towering instinct for survival. But he also discusses lighter topics, such as his early days in a rock ’n’ roll band, making for an exceptional memoir. --June Sawyers </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>'A work of great thoughtfulness and enterprise, it sheds a uniquely intimate light behind the facade of the new Russia.' - Colin Thubron;'A uniquely personal chronicle, and a testament to friendship. Susan Richards's political fact-finding is set ablaze by her intimacy with the discomforts and dangers of life in these remote regions, where the magic of the natural world challenges urban degradation, and where physical deprivation coexists with a richness of belief-systems as strange as the mountains of the moon.' - Victoria Glendinning;'Susan Richards has long been one of the very best writers on Russia. Her new book is a remarkable blend of travel and reflection, as she introduces us to the vivid gallery of people she meets in the provinces. The result is a brilliant, poignant evocation of a society in transition.' - Robert Service;'Once again, Susan Richards gives a rare and wonderful evocation of ordinary lives in Russia. People fall in love, fall ill, make money, lose money; some are nobly defeated, some shamelessly successful. Each one tells us more about the lethal tides of recent Russian history than years of newspaper reports.' - Philip Marsden;'Russia exerts a peculiar pull for English travellers...Susan Richards's version shines because she knows her subjects very well. These are stories of friendships across the miles, not just brief encounters plundered for material...This traveller's tale, with all the absorption and detail of the genre, is also the story of an entire country.' - Anne McElvoy, Evening Standard;'Lost and Found in Russia is intense reading...bursting with good material...For a rich portrait of the new Russia, grab this off the shelf and skip all those biographies of Vladimir Putin.' - Thomas de Waal, Sunday Times;'wonderful...Lost and Found in Russia is beautifully written, with arresting images on almost every page... It is a travelogue as rich and compelling as a novel' - Lesley Chamberlain, Independent</p>


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The first ever intimate portrait of Britain's best-loved, but little known, comedy entertainer, this fully authorized, biography of comedian Tommy Cooper shows the man behind the laughter that few people saw. Until his tragic death on live television in 1984, Tommy Cooper lived in constant fear of the day he would be found out by his audience. He could never accept the accolades that came so thick and fast from every direction, and died to the sounds of laughter that he never really believed. Supplementing his own intimate knowledge with material accessed for the first time from the archives of Cooper's agent and manager, Miff Ferrie, and with the full co-operation of the Cooper family, John Fisher's warm, honest, and insightful writing skillfully brings alive the man behind the comedic mask in this definitive biography of a comedy legend.


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For more than forty years, distinguished author Roger Rosenblatt has also been a teacher of writing, guiding students with the same intelligence and generosity he brings to the page, answering the difficult questions about what makes a story good, an essay shapely, a novel successful, and the most profound and essential question of them all—why write?   Unless It Moves the Human Heart details one semester in Rosenblatt's "Writing Everything" class. In a series of funny, intimate conversations, a diverse group of students—from Inur, a young woman whose family is from Pakistan, to Sven, an ex–fighter pilot—grapples with the questions and subjects most important to narrative craft. Delving into their varied lives, Rosenblatt brings readers closer to them, emotionally investing us in their failures and triumphs.   More than a how-to for writers and aspiring writers, more than a memoir of teaching, Unless It Moves the Human Heart is a deeply felt and impassioned plea for the necessity of writing in our lives. As Rosenblatt wisely reminds us, "Writing is the cure for the disease of living. Doing it may sometimes feel like an escape from the world, but at its best moments it is an act of rescue."


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<h3>Product Description</h3><blockquote><p>Before long, and without intending it, I found that jewelry had become part of my personal diplomatic arsenal. Former president George H. W. Bush had been known for saying "Read my lips." I began urging colleagues and reporters to "Read my pins." </p></blockquote><p>It would never have happened if not for Saddam Hussein. When U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright criticized the dictator, his poet in residence responded by calling her "an unparalleled serpent." Shortly thereafter, while preparing to meet with Iraqi officials, Albright pondered: <em>What to wear?</em> She decided to make a diplomatic statement by choosing a snake pin. Although her method of communication was new, her message was as old as the American Revolution—Don't Tread on Me. </p><p>From that day forward, pins became part of Albright's diplomatic signature. International leaders were pleased to see her with a shimmering sun on her jacket or a cheerful ladybug; less so with a crab or a menacing wasp. Albright used pins to emphasize the importance of a negotiation, signify high hopes, protest the absence of progress, and show pride in representing America, among other purposes. </p><p>Part illustrated memoir, part social history, <em>Read My Pins</em> provides an intimate look at Albright's life through the brooches she wore. Her collection is both international and democratic—dime-store pins share pride of place with designer creations and family heirlooms. Included are the antique eagle purchased to celebrate Albright's appointment as secretary of state, the zebra pin she wore when meeting Nelson Mandela, and the Valentine's Day heart forged by Albright's five-year-old daughter. <em>Read My Pins</em> features more than 200 photographs, along with compelling and often humorous stories about jewelry, global politics, and the life of one of America's most accomplished and fascinating diplomats. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Madeleine Albright served as U.S. secretary of state from 1997 to 2001 and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997. She is the author of three <strong>New York Times</strong> bestselling books: <em>Madam Secretary</em>; <em>The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs</em>; and <em>Memo to the President: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership</em>. She is founder of The Albright Group LLC and Albright Capital Management LLC. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Defense attorney Nina Reilly has bad luck with men: one marriage ended abruptly, and another ended in tragedy. Still, her misfortunes with the opposite sex are nothing compared to the trouble she has finding a decent client. In her sixth outing, <em>Move to Strike</em>, Nina's defending a minor who's a major pain: Nikki Zack, a mouthy, rebellious teenager who's being tried as an adult in the murder of her uncle, a wealthy plastic surgeon. Like a lot of people in Lake Tahoe, Nikki disliked Bill Sykes, who showed both greed and snobbery to Nikki and her scatterbrained mother, Daria. He discouraged their familial overtures except when he cheated them in a land deal. Nevertheless, Nikki claims she didn't kill him, even though she was spotted sneaking around his pool on the night of the murder, and the prosecution's case against her is based on a blood sample that indicates she wielded the murder weapon. Nina is particularly struck by two strange facts: Sykes's son Chris was killed in a plane crash at almost the same time Sykes died, and Sykes's widow, Beth, is almost abnormally quick to front the money for her niece's defense, no questions asked. </p><p>Nina knows Nikki saw something or someone at Sykes's house, but she's not sure whether Nikki's protecting her sleazy, housebreaking boyfriend or Daria, whose vagueness is almost too extreme to believe. Nikki is placed under house arrest, but that's not enough to keep her--or Nina and her son Bob--safe when a stranger starts calling. When the treasure trove of unimpressive-looking rocks that Nikki took from Sykes's underwater hiding place turns out to be something completely unexpected, the ring of suspects widens and danger creeps closer. Nina teams with Paul van Wagoner, the investigator (familiar from __ and previous Nina Reilly mysteries) she can't quite seem to disentangle herself from, to help sort the loose ends from the dead ends. And there are plenty of both.</p><p>The O'Shaughnessy sisters (Perri is a pen name for Pamela and Mary) are taking new risks and increasing the stakes with every book, and <em>Move to Strike</em> shows they can pull it off. The characters are deftly drawn and the plotting masterfully complex. The pacing falls a bit short of heart-stopping; the courtroom scenes serve to up the stakes for Nikki, yet don't really add much tension. But this series is still young and keeps getting better and better. Grisham and Turow, check your rear-view mirrors: there's a new writer in the fast lane. <em>--Barrie Trinkle</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Crime knocks at lawyer Nina Reilly's door once again in this breathy legal drama, the sixth in a series, set in the resort community of Lake Tahoe, Nev. This time it is single mother Reilly's 13-year-old son, Bob, who steers her toward a new case, begging her to defend his friend, 16-year-old Nikki Zack. Nikki is accused of killing her rich uncle, plastic surgeon Bill Sykes, with a 16th-century samurai sword. She says she didn't do it, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Nikki was on the scene at the time of the killing and was known to hold a grudge against her selfish and stingy uncle. Even Reilly, a softie for the underdog, has to admit it doesn't look good for Nikki, until several other suspects pop upAdisgruntled patients of Sykes, a lecherous business partner, other bitter family members. The case is confused by the death of Sykes's 19-year-old son the same day in a plane crash while returning to Lake Tahoe from L.A. Complicating matters further is a mining claim in northern Nevada that's yielding lots of high-grade opals. The claim used to belong to Nikki's family until Sykes convinced Nikki's ditzy mom, Daria, to sell it to him at a steep discount. O'Shaughnessy, the pseudonym for sisters Mary and Pamela O'Shaughnessy, splits the action between Reilly's courtroom maneuvering and the detective work of her longtime investigator, Paul van Wagoner, whose role is greatly expanded this time around. Van Wagoner lacks the requisite magnetism for co-star status, and the plot swivels in a few unlikely directions, leading up to a far-fetched finale. Nevertheless, Reilly fans should enjoy this latest entry in a thriving series. Agent, Nancy Yost. Major ad/promo; BOMC and Mystery Guild main selections; Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild alternates. (Aug.) <br />Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Noel Riley Fitch's savory new biography, <em>Appetite for Life</em>, reveals a woman as appealing as the good food and serious cooking she popularized. As a California girl and Smith College undergraduate, Fitch writes, Julia McWilliams was notable for her high spirits and voracious appetite. Performing intelligence work in Asia during World War II, she met Paul Child, and their marriage of mutual devotion and affection endured until his death in 1994. His postwar assignment took them to France, where she discovered her true calling. </p><p>Fitch reminds us that Child championed fresh ingredients at a time when frozen foods and TV dinners dominated American supermarket shelves, and that she demystified haute cuisine with her earthy humor and casual attitude toward mistakes. This affectionate portrait of the remarkable Julia Child reflects her fervent belief that the pleasures of the table are a natural accompaniment to the pleasures of life. </p><h3>From</h3><p>No one person in the U.S. improved the nation's standard of eating more than Julia Child. Her celebrity stems less from her masterwork, <em>Mastering the Art of French Cooking</em>, than from her perennially popular PBS television series, <em>The French Chef</em>. Born into a wealthy Southern California home, Julia McWilliams led a lively but pampered existence until she met Paul Child in wartime India. These two eager esthetes, for whom the worst possible sin was being boring, bonded into an extraordinarily strong marriage that helped the husband survive McCarthy's purges and gave the wife a decade to focus on her revolutionary book. Although the Childs crossed paths with dozens of political, artistic, and literary notables in postwar Paris, Marseille, Bonn, Oslo, and Washington, biographer Fitch does little but catalog names. But he does make both Childs' personalities come alive, from Paul's meticulousness to Julia's exuberant, even bawdy, gusto. Uneasy yet productive relationships among Julia and her coauthors fed off both professional and cultural differences. Fitch recounts in mortifying detail one of publishing's great gaffes: Houghton Mifflin let <em>Mastering</em> slip away to Knopf. Julia's evolution from author into television personality and food guru began in her fifties; now in her eighties, she continues to reshape the food world she transfigured. <em>Mark Knoblauch</em></p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>It is the end of a nearly perfect society. Beautiful, happy people still drive electric cars to fulfilling jobs like any other day, but no one noticed that the Apocalypse began a few weeks ago.   </p><p>Now the perfect society's misfits are its only hope for salvation, but they're barely keeping it together on a normal day: A detective burdened by an unforgivable failure investigates an impossible murder. An overweight nurse comes out of her shell exactly long enough to be attacked by a dead man. An introverted genius and his insecure girlfriend are marked for death by a conspiracy they didn't know existed. Each of these damaged strangers holds a piece of the puzzle, but as they begin to find each other, they realize they are being stalked by a methodical killer with the pure heart of a child.   </p><p>Now they must piece together the mystery and find the courage to stand together against impossible odds before the world goes dark forever.  </p><p>Sometimes destiny falls unexpected into the most broken lives, like a stone fallen out of the clear black sky.  </p><p>Reviews:<br />"Doty's razor-sharp prose and impeccable sense of timing make this book difficult to put down... A fast-paced, highly entertaining thriller." -- Kirkus Discoveries   </p><p>Awards: <br />2009 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) thriller semifinalist</p>


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The long-awaited and hugely-entertaining sequel toMr. Nice. During the mid-1980s, Howard Marks had forty-three aliases, eighty-nine phone lines and companies trading throughout the world. At the height of his career he was smuggling consignments of up to fifty tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada. He was eventually busted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison at Terre Haute Penitentiary, Indiana for marijuana smuggling. He was released in April 1995, after serving seven years. Senor Nice tells the story of what happened next. After release from prison, Marks changed careers: he wrote two best-selling books, became a sports and travel writer, stood as a parliamentary candidate, and embarked on a long-running sell-out series of one-man shows. While performing in his home town of Kenfig Hill, Wales, an elderly aunt told him of his outlaw ancestry: William Owen, the legendary Welsh smuggler (who had operated for some time in South America) and his great-great-grandfather Patrick McCarty, the half-brother of Billy the Kid, who had joined Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Patagonia. So, Marks decided to explore South America. His travels took him to Jamaica and Panama in the footsteps of the Welsh buccaneer Henry Morgan; to a search for obscure Welsh settlers in Brazil whom he never found; and a search among the thriving Welsh community in Patagonia for signs of Billy the Kid's half-brother. Richly comic and charged with the sense of adventure that induced this Oxford graduate to become the world's most notorious marijuana smuggler,Senor Niceis the hugely entertaining sequel toMr. Nice.


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An enticing collection of original writing on drugs by the bestselling author of Mr. Nice. A totally different kind of anthology filled with everything but the predictable. Take a trip through the heady highs and stoney lows of the history and discovery of drugs. The guide is Howard Marks, the guru of dope-smuggling, dope-dealing, and just, well, dope! The territory is the world of mind-bending substances. From politics and sex to business and religion, rock n' roll to literature, this unique collection includes Howard's favourite drug writings from Dickens to Welsh, as well as many new and hilarious anecdotal stories from the drug lord himself.


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Don't let the title of this dry suspense novel fool you. It's very cold in January in Iowa, the setting for Donald Harstad's third outing in his series featuring Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman and his partner Hester Gorse. The only thing mild is the humor in this spare procedural, which involves the usual turf battle between the white hats (local law enforcement) and the black hats (the FBI) as a sidebar to the main plot. Instead of the mean streets and criminal underclass of urban thrillers, we get the militant extremists who frequent the vast, empty reaches of the Midwest. In this case, the black hats are onto the crazies, and the local good guy, Deputy Carl, is caught in the crossfire. The crazies want enough money to blow the heartland (who wouldn't, in January?), and to get it, they're prepared to blow up Iowa's biggest economic asset, a riverboat casino on the Mississippi. They're being manipulated by a chief crazy (or maybe an arch crazy) named Gabriel, and (naturally) the feds have been a few steps behind Gabriel for a while now. Deputy Carl is a nice guy, but irony is not his strong suit, and he's not particularly fast on the uptake, either. Eventually he does save the day in this somewhat pedestrian and slow-motion regional mystery. If you liked the movie <em>Fargo</em>, you'll love <em>The Big Thaw</em>. --_Jane Adams_</p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Anthony Award nominee Harstad (Eleven Days and Known Dead) makes a third foray to the town of Nation County, Iowa, in this compelling police procedural. One cold winter night, Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman gets a call to join the pursuit of a burglary suspect who's leading the police on a merry car chase. When the suspect drives into a snowy ditch, Houseman digs him out and recognizes him as Fred Grothler, a bored kid who's committed petty crimes in the past. Fred confesses that he and his two cousins, Dirk and Royce Colson, have been responsible for a spate of recent break-ins into the homes of wealthy residents staying warm in Florida. Two nights earlier he dropped his cousins off at Cletus Borglan's palatial farmhouse, but they never came out. Maybe they froze? Houseman visits the farm and indeed finds Dirk and Royce frozen stiffAafter having been shot dead. Hardly any of the characters in this busy novel are what they seem. Upstanding citizen Borglan keeps a library whose contents betray his extreme antigovernment views. Even the FBI special agent who takes charge of the case has some strange associates for a lawman. A retired deputy sheriff, Harstad writes "cop talk" that's not only believable but often (intentionally) funny. He also supplies plenty of interesting trivia. For instance, half a million quarters, stacked, stretch 4.2 miles and weigh 25,000 pounds. That's what Houseman and Hester Gorse, his second in command, have to secure on the Beauregard, Nation County's floating casino and scene of the book's spectacular finale. (Aug.) <br />Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>"THE WATER WARS is a gripping environmental thriller with a too-real message. Cameron Stracher tells a story with quick pacing, compelling characters and a vision of a frightening future." - Howard Gordon, Executive Producer, '24,' and author of Gideon's War (forthcoming 2011).<br>(Howard Gordon )  </p><p>"Let us pray that the world which Cameron Stracher has invented in THE WATER WARS is testament solely to his pure, wild, and brilliant imagination, and not his ability to see the future. I was parched just reading it." -- Laurie David, academy award winning producer of An Inconvenient Truth, and author of The Down to Earth Guide to Global Warming<br>(Laurie David )  </p><p>In the tradition of THE HUNGER GAMES, Cameron Stracher's WATER WARS is both a trenchant cautionary tale of a world drained of its most precious resource and a rousing adventure-story of the plucky young heroes who set out to save it. Perfect for young readers-but with more than enough substance for mom and dad as well. <br>--Justin Cronin, author of THE PASSAGE (Justin Cronin ) </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>Would you risk everything for someone you just met?</strong></p><p><strong>What if he had a secret worth killing for?</strong></p><p>Welcome to a future where water is more precious than <strong>oil or gold...</strong></p><p>Hundreds of millions of people have already died, and millions more will soon fall-victims of disease, hunger, and dehydration. It is a time of drought and war. The rivers have dried up, the polar caps have melted, and drinkable water is now in the hands of the powerful few. There are fines for wasting it and prison sentences for exceeding the quotas.</p><p>But Kai didn't seem to care about any of this. He stood in the open road drinking water from a plastic cup, then spilled the remaining drops into the dirt. He didn't go to school, and he traveled with armed guards. Kai claimed he knew a secret-something the government is keeping from us...</p><p>And then he was gone. Vanished in the middle of the night. Was he kidnapped? Did he flee? Is he alive or dead? There are no clues, only questions. And no one can guess the lengths to which they will go to keep him silent. We have to find him-and the truth-before it is too late for all of us.</p><p>"Let us pray that the world which Cameron Stracher has invented in The Water Wars is testament solely to his pure, wild, and brilliant imagination, and not his ability to see the future. I was parched just reading it."<br>-Laurie David, Academy Award–winning producer of An Inconvenient Truth and author of The Down to Earth Guide to Global Warming</p><p>"A gripping environmental thriller with a too-real message."<br>- Howard Gordon, executive producer of 24 and author of Gideon's War</p><p>(20100901) </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In a moving account of strength in the face of adversity, Ralston presents the full story behind the 2003 event that became worldwide news: his self-amputation of his right arm after it was caught between a boulder and a canyon wall during what began as a routine day hike in the Utah Canyons. An experienced climber, Ralston, 28, effectively shows he wasn't a risk-taker, and alternates between describing how his jaunt turned into a nightmare when a huge stone suddenly came unstuck as he used it to climb down a ledge, and recalling early experiences that changed his novice attitudes toward hiking, which he admits "were not intrinsically safe." Ralston candidly renders the details of six days of entrapment, using transcribed monologues from videotapes he made while trapped, including his increasingly exhausted thoughts as well as poignant farewells to his family. But his best writing details his self-amputation and his subsequent march to safety, in which he rappelled one-armed down a hill and then hiked six miles before someone found him. Ralston's prose is never gruesome, nor is it used to shock, even as he describes first breaking his forearm, and then slipping "into some sort of autopilot" as he cuts through muscle fibers to detach the arm. It's truly thrilling when he finishes and is free: "A crystalline moment shatters and the world is a different place." 16 pages of color photos.<br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Adult/High School - From midday Saturday, April 26, 2003, until midday Thursday, May 1, Ralston was pinned between a boulder and a canyon wall in a remote area of Canyonlands National Park in Utah. He had little food and water. No one would even wonder where he was until he didn't show up for work on Tuesday. Unable to sit, lie down, use his right arm (that was the part between the rock and the wall), or sleep, he knew right away that he was in for an excruciatingly difficult time. Those 120 hours of what he calls "uninterrupted experience" tested to the fullest his physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual being. His eventual rescue led to international headlines, partially due to his dramatic means of escape: he severed his arm with a cheap, dull, dirty knife. This is a searing and amazingly detailed rendition of his ordeal, along with accounts of several of Ralston's previous wilderness adventures. He is one active and tough guy, but readers never get the sense that he is boastful or seeking notoriety. Rather, he seems genuinely intrigued, even mildly befuddled, by his insatiable drive to be active in the wild. One could say he takes too many risks, and that he has a tendency toward carelessness. He himself notes this. But the man's drive and devotion to his calling are nothing but admirable. Sixteen pages of color photographs add considerably to readers' experience of this nuanced, gripping survival story that belongs in most collections._ - Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA_ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>"Shepherd has a fine eye for absurdity, for the madness and idiocy in all of us."<br />--_Best Sellers_ -- <em>Review</em>  </p><p>Mr. Shepherd has the true satirist's grip on his pen: he is humorous, sympathetic, and ironic all at once, an enviable skill and one that makes reading <em>In God We Trust</em> an infinitely satisfying experience. -- <em>Boston Globe</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>A beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana, reissued in a strikingly designed paperback edition.  </p><p>Before Garrison Keillor and Spalding Gray there was Jean Shepherd: a master monologist and writer who spun the materials of his all-American childhood into immensely resonant--and utterly hilarious--works of comic art. <strong>In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash</strong> represents one of the peaks of his achievement, a compound of irony, affection, and perfect detail that speaks across generations.  </p><p><strong>In God We Trust</strong>, Shepherd's wildly witty reunion with his Indiana hometown, disproves the adage "You can never go back." Bending the ear of Flick, his childhood-buddy-turned-bartender, Shepherd recalls passionately his genuine Red Ryder BB gun, confesses adolescent failure in the arms of Junie Jo Prewitt, and relives a story of man against fish that not even Hemingway could rival. From pop art to the World's Fair, Shepherd's subjects speak with a universal irony and are deeply and unabashedly grounded in American Midwestern life, together rendering a wonderfully nostalgic impression of a more innocent era when life was good, fun was clean, and station wagons roamed the earth.  </p><p>A comic genius who bridged the gap between James Thurber and David Sedaris, Shepherd may have accomplished for Holden, Indiana, what Mark Twain did for Hannibal, Missouri. </p>


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Writer, musicologist, archivist, singer, DJ, filmmaker, record, radio and TV producer, Alan Lomax was a man of many parts. Without him the history of popular music would have been very different. Armed with a tape-recorder and his own near-flawless good taste, Lomax spent years travelling the US, particularly the south, recording its heritage of music and song for posterity, bringing to light the talents of performers ranging from Jelly Roll Morton to Leadbelly and Muddy Waters, and crucially influencing generations of musicians from Pete Seeger to the Stones, from Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan. Exiled from the US for seven years in the McCarthy era, his influence on British folk and rock was virtually as profound as on American music. The Stones owed both their existence and their name to Lomax's discovery Muddy Waters, and without Leadbelly there would have been no skiffle and no Beatles as we know them. His influence continues: recordings made by Lomax are the core of the sound-tracks of Oh, Brother, Where art Thou? and The Gangs of New York, and even featured, remixed, on Moby's Play. John Szwed's biography is the first ever of this remarkable and contradictory man (whom he both knew and worked with for ten years); through it Szwed will tell the story of a musical and political era, as he did so successfully in his previous book on Miles Davis and Sun Ra.


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>The 9.8 million viewers of TLC's Jon and Kate Plus Eight recognize Kate Gosselin as the practical mom of eight who has come into their homes for over 100 episodes of her family's hit reality show. In I Just Want You to Know, Kate reveals a grateful and faith-filled mother who only wants the best for her children and is willing to sacrifice to make that happen. The book covers the three years her family lived in their Elizabethtown home, a period Kate considers one of the happiest of her life. In it she discusses the individuality of eight kids (all under the age of six) transitioning from the chaos of caring for infants to the structured days of a home filled with budding preschoolers, as well as her thoughts on communication, everyday miracles, and providing a safe home. During that time, Kate discusses her family's unique challenges from daily schedules to traveling, her need for control to learning how to be flexible, the individuality of all eight kids, how God provided every day, and her faith that held it all together. </p><h3>From the Back Cover</h3><p>The 9.8 million viewers of TLC's Jon and Kate Plus Eight recognize Kate Gosselin as the practical mom of eight who has come into their homes for over 100 episodes of her family's hit reality show. In I Just Want You to Know, Kate reveals a grateful and faith-filled mother who only wants the best for her children and is willing to sacrifice to make that happen. The book covers the three years her family lived in their Elizabethtown home, a period Kate considers one of the happiest of her life. In it she discusses the individuality of eight kids (all under the age of six) transitioning from the chaos of caring for infants to the structured days of a home filled with budding preschoolers, as well as her thoughts on communication, everyday miracles, and providing a safe home. During that time, Kate discusses her family's unique challenges from daily schedules to traveling, her need for control to learning how to be flexible, the individuality of all eight kids, how God provided every day, and her faith that held it all together. </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>She was the first woman to inherit the throne of England, a key player in one of Britain’s stormiest eras, and a leader whose unwavering faith and swift retribution earned her the nickname “Bloody Mary.” Now, in this impassioned and absorbing debut, historian Anna Whitelock offers a modern perspective on Mary Tudor and sets the record straight once and for all on one of history’s most compelling and maligned rulers.    Though often overshadowed by her long-reigning sister, Elizabeth I, Mary lived a life full of defiance, despair, and triumph. Born the daughter of the notorious King Henry VIII and the Spanish Katherine of Aragon, young Mary was a princess in every sense of the word—schooled in regal customs, educated by the best scholars, coveted by European royalty, and betrothed before she had reached the age of three. Yet in a decade’s time, in the wake of King Henry’s break with the pope, she was declared a bastard, disinherited, and demoted from “princess” to “lady.” Ever her deeply devout mother’s daughter, Mary refused to accept her new status or to recognize Henry’s new wife, Anne Boleyn, as queen. The fallout with her father and his counselors nearly destroyed the teenage Mary, who faced imprisonment and even death. It would be an outright battle for Mary to work herself back into the king’s favor, claim her rightful place in the Tudor line, and ultimately become queen of England, but her coronation would not end her struggles. She flouted the opposition and married Philip of Spain, sought to restore Catholicism to the nation, and fiercely punished the resistance. But beneath her brave and regal exterior was a dependent woman prone to anxiety, whose private traumas of phantom pregnancies, debilitating illnesses, and unrequited love played out in the public glare of the fickle court.     Anna Whitelock, an acclaimed young British historian, chronicles this unique woman’s life from her beginnings as a heralded princess to her rivalry with her sister to her ascent as ruler. In brilliant detail, Whitelock reveals that Mary Tudor was not the weak-willed failure as so often rendered by traditional narratives but a complex figure of immense courage, determination, and humanity.</p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>YOU PROBABLY THINK YOU KNOW ALL THERE IS TO KNOW.   </p><p>ANNA NICOLE SMITH LOST HER SON.   </p><p>SHE ACCIDENTALLY OVERDOSED. SHE WAS A DRUG ADDICT.   </p><p>YOU DON'T KNOW A THING...  </p><p>She was famous for being famous-Americana at its Scarlet Letter-wearing best. A bodacious young girl from Texas, Anna remade herself into the centerfold of the world. She was a "dumb blonde," a stripper, a Playboy Playmate, who boldly took her case against her billionaire husband's family all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her tragic life and untimely death evoke an odd mix of fascination, shock, and dismay. And through it all, there still exists a voracious thirst to discover more about who she actually was...and how she <em>really</em> died.  </p><p>In a book that is sure to surprise even the most avid pop culture junkies, Rita Cosby blows the lid off this astounding story. After an in-depth investigation, this is the definitive journalistic account of the Anna Nicole Smith saga-with unearthed secrets and explosive, never-before-told information. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>An Emmy-award winning journalist, Rita Cosby hosted the top-rated show on MSNBC, "Rita Cosby: Live &amp; Direct." She also hosted Fox New Channel's highly rated programs, "Fox News Live with Rita Cosby" and "The Big Story Weekend Edition with Rita Cosby." Some of her groundbreaking interviews include: an exclusive interview with Slobodan Milosevic while he was imprisoned at The Hague; an exclusive interview with Yasser Arafat when his compound was under siege; she was the first journalist to see the suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo and witness an actual interrogation; and a rare, private meeting with Pope John Paul II after receiving an exclusive letter from Timothy McVeigh explaining why he carried out the Oklahoma City bombing. Having interviewed more than a dozen world leaders and four US Presidents, she also made headlines for her interviews with Michael Jackson, David Berkowitz and Dr. Jack Kevorkian. She has been a featured guest on hundreds of television and radio shows worldwide and earned her two bachelors' degrees from the University of South Carolina. </p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Longtime collaborators Herbert and Anderson set themselves a steep challenge—and, in the end, fail to meet it—in this much anticipated wrapup of the original Dune cycle (after 2006's <em>Hunters of Dune</em>). A large cast scattered across the cosmos must be brought together so that the final, all-powerful Kwisatz Haderach may be revealed in the ultimate face-off between humankind and the machine empire ruled by the implacable Omnius. Though pacing is brisk and the infrequent action scenes crackle with tension, only two minor characters—gholas, who are young clones with restored memories, of Suk doctor Wellington Yueh and God-Emperor Leto II—acquire real depth. Everyone else is too busy reacting to mostly irrelevant subplots like sabotage aboard the no-ship <em>Ithaca</em>, a plague devastating the planet of Chapterhouse and the genetic engineering of marine-dwelling sandworms. The lengthy climax relies on at least four consecutive deus ex machina bailouts, eventually devolving into sheer fairy tale optimism. Series fans will argue the novel's merits for years; others will be underwhelmed. <em>(Aug.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>By the time of this second volume of the third Dune prequel trilogy, battles and plagues have nearly destroyed humans and their planets. Sheanna revives the ghola cloning project to pit genius against numbers. Almost all the saga principals have been re-created—Paul, Jessica, Letos I and II, Chani, Stilgar, even Wellington Yueh and Baron Harkonnen—and are hiding on the no-ship. The eleventh ghola of Duncan Idaho keeps an eye on things. Naturally, such a crew generates intrigue, dissension, and many actions unintentionally at cross-purposes. Some of the re-creations learn from the past, some don't. Meanwhile, Omnius and Erasmus, leaders of the thinking machines, search for the no-ship; failing to find it, they finish the destruction of any planet capable of supporting human life. When the clones and the thinking machines finally confront each other, the conflict proves pretty gripping. Its plot derived from Frank Herbert's notes, Sandworms should fascinate Dune fans. The series' long run by now begs the question of whether, since Sandworms ties up so many loose ends, more of what has been learned about the construction and destruction of ecologies, and about thinking machines, in the 42 years since Dune was first published couldn't figure in the promised ninth prequel volume, Paul of Dune. Murray, Frieda </p>

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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Dean Koontz is the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers. He lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever Anna, and the enduring spirit of their golden, Trixie. </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>The first volume of Churchill's Noble-Prize winning six-part chronicle of World War II. THE GATHERING STORM depicts the rise of Hitler and the indifference of the leaders of the European democracies to the clouds of the gathering storm. Churchill incorporate contemporary documentation and his own reminiscence in this opening memoir.</p></div>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>After two prequel trilogies to the legendary SF epic (the Legends of Dune and Prelude to Dune series), Frank Herbert's son Brian, in collaboration with Anderson, launch a new trilogy that takes up where Herbert Sr. left off with Chapterhouse: Dune (1985). This entertaining if over-the-top update begins three years after the refugee "no-ship," Ithaca, has fled Chapterhouse and the brutal Honored Matres, a corrupted faction of the all-female Bene Gesserit order led by Mother Commander Murbella. Duncan Idaho, Murbella's ex-love slave, guides the ship carrying reincarnated warrior Miles Teg, the dissident Rev. Mother Sheeana and 150 other refugees. While Murabella deals with violent rebels from within, another more sinister enemy... secretly infiltrates the Honored Matres... Herbert's ecological and religious concerns now seem oddly prescient, but this sizzling update, still filled with crazed women who sexually enslave men, sometimes borders on campy 1950s B-movie parody.<br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"One of the monuments of modern science fiction."--_Chicago__ Tribune_ on <em>Dune</em>  </p><p>"I know nothing comparable to it except <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>."--Sir Arthur C. Clarke on <em>Dune</em>  </p><p>"A portrayal of an alien society more complete and deeply detailed than any other author in the field has managed . . . a story absorbing equally for its action and philosophical vistas. . . . An astonishing science fiction phenomenon."--_The <strong>Washington</strong> Post_ on <em>Dune</em>  </p><p>"Powerful, convincing, and most ingenious."--Robert A. Heinlein on <em>Dune</em>  </p><p>"Herbert's creation of this universe, with its intricate development and analysis of ecology, religion, politics, and philosophy, remains one of the supreme and seminal achievements in science fiction."--_Louisville__ Times_ on <em>Dune</em><br>__<br>"The kind of intricate plotting and philosophical musings that would make the elder Herbert proud."--_Publishers Weekly_ (starred review) on <em>Dune: The Butlerian Jihad</em>  </p><p>"Sit back and enjoy."--_Booklist_ on <em>Dune: The Machine Crusade</em><br>__<br>"_Dune_ addicts will happily devour Herbert and Anderson's spicy conclusion to their second prequel trilogy."--_Publishers Weekly_ on _Dune: The <strong>Battle</strong> of Corrin_</p>

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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Consider the book. Though <strong> and </strong> differ considerably in content and intended audience, they do share some basic characteristics. They have pages, they're roughly the same shape, and whether in a bookstore, library, or private home, they are generally stored vertically on shelves. Indeed, this is so much the norm that in these days of high-tech printing presses and chain bookstores, it's easy to believe that the book, like the cockroach, remains much the same as it ever was. But as Henry Petroski makes abundantly clear in <em>Book on the Bookshelf</em>, books as we know them have had a long and complex evolution. Indeed, he takes us from the scroll to the codex to the hand-lettered illuminated texts that were so rare and valuable they were chained to lecterns to prevent theft. Along the way he provides plenty of amusing anecdotes about libraries (according to one possibly apocryphal account, the library at Alexandria borrowed the works of the great Greek authors from Athens, had them copied, and then sent the copies back, keeping the originals), book collectors, and the care of books. </p><p>Book-lover though he may be, however, Henry Petroski is, first and foremost, an engineer and so, in the end, it is the evolution of bookshelves even more than of books that fascinates him. Pigeonholes for scrolls, book presses containing thousands of chained volumes, rotating lecterns that allowed scholars to peruse more than one book at a time--these are just a few of the ingenious methods readers have devised over the centuries for storing their books: "in cabinets beneath the desks, on shelves in front of them, in triangular attic-like spaces formed under the back-to-back sloped surfaces of desktops or small tabletop lecterns that rested upon a horizontal surface." Placing books vertically on shelves, spines facing outward, is a fairly recent invention, it would seem. Well written as it is, if <em>Book on the Bookshelf</em> were <em>only</em> about books-as-furniture, it would have little appeal to the general reader. Petroski, however, uses this treatise on design to examine the very human motivations that lie behind it. From the example of Samuel Pepys, who refused to have more titles than his library could hold (about 3,000), to an appendix detailing all the ways people organize their collections (by sentimental value, by size, by color, and by price, to name a few of the more unconventional methods), Petroski peppers his account with enough human interest to keep his audience reading from cover to cover. <em>--Alix Wilber</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>That bookshelves might harbor secret and enchanting lives is a thrilling prospect for any serious reader. What laws of human nature govern our sturdy cases of books? What damning quirks of character glare from a few casually stowed volumes? In this disappointing study, however, Petroski's effort to reveal the "evolution of the bookshelf as we know it" yields few rewards. Pondering the physics of the bookend and the genealogy of the library carrel, this Duke University scholar observes the bookshelf as a piece of the infrastructure undergirding our civilization. We learn that medieval books were chained to their shelves to prevent theft, and that beverage stains have plagued bibliophiles almost since the dawn of the printed word. Admirers of Petroski's earlier works (The Evolution of Useful Things, Remaking the World, etc.) will not be surprised by his exquisite research, or by the gusto with which he plunges into the dustiest of library bins. But the bookshelf proves a more oblique topic than bridges or even pencils, two of Petroski's other interests. The practical construction principles of bookshelves make for rather dull reading, and conjecture about lectern usage in the Middle Ages wears thin. This book is most successful when delving into the gritty aspects of engineering, whether it be the cantilevered forces of library book stacks or the architecture of the British Museum Reading Room. After lingering among such fusty stacks, readers will welcome the whimsical appendix, which proposes arranging one's books alphabetically by the author's first name, or even by the first word of the antepenultimate sentence. (Sept.) <br>Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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