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<div><div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Still on Romulus in pursuit of his goal of reunifying the Vulcans and Romulans, Spock finds himself in the middle of a massive power struggle. In the wake of the assassination of the Praetor and the Senate, the Romulans have cleaved in two. While Empress Donatra has led her nascent Imperial Romulan State to establish relations with the Federation, Praetor Tal’aura has guided the original Romulan Star Empire toward joining the newly formed Typhon Pact. But numerous factions within the two Romulan nations vie for power and undivided leadership, and Machiavellian plots unfold as forces within and without the empires conduct high-stakes political maneuvers. </p><p>Meanwhile, four years after Benjamin Sisko returned from the Celestial Temple, circumstances have changed, his hopes for a peaceful life on Bajor with his wife and daughter beginning to slip away. After temporarily rejoining Starfleet for an all-hands-on-deck battle against the Borg, he must consider an offer to have him return for a longer stint. Beset by troubling events, he seeks spiritual guidance, facing demons new and old, including difficult memories from his time in the last Federation-Tzenkethi war. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>DAVID R. GEORGE III</strong> wrote the Crucible trilogy for Star Trek's 40th anniversary as well as <em>Olympus Descending</em> for Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Volume Three. He previously visited DS9 in the novels <em>The 34th Rule</em>, set during the timeframe of the series, and in <em>Twilight</em>, set after the finale. His other Star Trek contributions include a first season Voyager episode, "Prime Factors," and one of the_ Lost Era _books, <em>Serpents Among the Ruins,</em> which hit the <em>New York Times</em> bestseller list in Fall, 2003. Currently he is writing a novella for <em>Star Trek: Myriad Universes: Shattered Light</em>, coming in December, 2010, from Gallery Books.</p><p>In his almost nonexistent spare time, David enjoys trying his hand at new experiences, from skydiving to auditioning--with his lovely wife, Karen--for "The New Newlywed Game", from hiking a glacier in Alaska to belly dancing in Tunisia, from ocean kayaking in Mexico to having dinner at an actual captain's table somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Recently, he performed his first wedding ceremony--which he and Karen also wrote--marrying their friends Jen and Ryan Van Riper. David believes that the world is a wide, wondrous place, with exciting adventures waiting around just about every corner.</p><p>He remains free on his own recognizance. </p>

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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Still on Romulus in pursuit of his goal of reunifying the Vulcans and Romulans, Spock finds himself in the middle of a massive power struggle. In the wake of the assassination of the Praetor and the Senate, the Romulans have cleaved in two. While Empress Donatra has led her nascent Imperial Romulan State to establish relations with the Federation, Praetor Tal’aura has guided the original Romulan Star Empire toward joining the newly formed Typhon Pact. But numerous factions within the two Romulan nations vie for power and undivided leadership, and Machiavellian plots unfold as forces within and without the empires conduct high-stakes political maneuvers. </p><p>Meanwhile, four years after Benjamin Sisko returned from the Celestial Temple, circumstances have changed, his hopes for a peaceful life on Bajor with his wife and daughter beginning to slip away. After temporarily rejoining Starfleet for an all-hands-on-deck battle against the Borg, he must consider an offer to have him return for a longer stint. Beset by troubling events, he seeks spiritual guidance, facing demons new and old, including difficult memories from his time in the last Federation-Tzenkethi war. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>DAVID R. GEORGE III</strong> wrote the Crucible trilogy for Star Trek's 40th anniversary as well as <em>Olympus Descending</em> for Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Volume Three. He previously visited DS9 in the novels <em>The 34th Rule</em>, set during the timeframe of the series, and in <em>Twilight</em>, set after the finale. His other Star Trek contributions include a first season Voyager episode, "Prime Factors," and one of the_ Lost Era _books, <em>Serpents Among the Ruins,</em> which hit the <em>New York Times</em> bestseller list in Fall, 2003. Currently he is writing a novella for <em>Star Trek: Myriad Universes: Shattered Light</em>, coming in December, 2010, from Gallery Books.</p><p>In his almost nonexistent spare time, David enjoys trying his hand at new experiences, from skydiving to auditioning--with his lovely wife, Karen--for "The New Newlywed Game", from hiking a glacier in Alaska to belly dancing in Tunisia, from ocean kayaking in Mexico to having dinner at an actual captain's table somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Recently, he performed his first wedding ceremony--which he and Karen also wrote--marrying their friends Jen and Ryan Van Riper. David believes that the world is a wide, wondrous place, with exciting adventures waiting around just about every corner.</p><p>He remains free on his own recognizance. </p>

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<div><p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>While struggling to recover from a shattered personal life, Net Force Commander Alex Michaels races against time to find the culprits responsible for stealing plans to a top-secret atmospheric weapon that uses low-frequency wave generation to drive people mad. Original.</p>
<h3>Product Description</h3><p><em>In the year 2010, computers are the new superpowers. Those who control them control the world. To enforce the Net Laws, Congress creates the ultimate computer security agency within the FBI: the Net Force.</em></p><p>Reeling from a shattered personal life, Net Force Commander Alex Michaels is informed that top secret information from a joint Air Force-Navy venture has been accessed and downloaded. The research involves an atmospheric weapon with the capability to drive half a country into madness using low frequency wave generation. Now the technology has fallen into the wrong hands -- and testing has begun...</p><p>A powerful examination of America's defense and intelligence systems of the future, <em>Tom Clancy's Net Force TM</em> is the creation of Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik.</p><p>Read by Stephen Lang </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Tom Clancy is the author of numerous #1 bestselling novels including <em>Rainbow Six, Executive Orders</em>, and <em>Debt of Honor.</em> Steve Pieczenik is the author of <em>State of Emergency </em>and co-creator of <em>Tom Clancy's Op-Center </em>series. </p>

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<div><div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Though the head of a major multinational corporation -- and a key player in world affairs -- Samuel Walker Cox has a past that few people know about. But that group is about to get bigger. A computer disk has fallen into the hands of the Net Force, outing the powerful American businessman as a former Russian spy. Cox is willing to see the world in ruins to protect his name. Lucky for the United States that Net Force is on the job -- and is about to prove that no man is above the law ...</p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Tom Clancy is the author of numerous #1 bestselling novels including <em>Rainbow Six, Executive Orders</em>, and <em>Debt of Honor.</em> Steve Pieczenik is the author of <em>State of Emergency </em>and co-creator of <em>Tom Clancy's Op-Center </em>series. </p>

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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>When terrorists launch an attack on Army bases throughout the U.S., Net Force must partner with Army Intelligence and the National Guard to take down a cunning opponent who just might be one of them. Original.</p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>A newspaper photographer, Jean, researches the lurid and sensational ax murder of two women in 1873 as an editorial tie-in with a brutal modern double murder. (Can you guess which one?) She discovers a cache of papers that appear to give an account of the murders by an eyewitness. The plot weaves between the narrative of the eyewitness and Jean's private struggle with jealousies and suspicions as her marriage teeters. A rich, textured novel. </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In 1873, two women living on the Isles of Shoals, a lonely, windswept group of islands off the coast of New Hampshire, were brutally murdered. A third woman survived, cowering in a sea cave until dawn. More than a century later, Jean, a magazine photographer working on a photoessay about the murders, returns to the Isles with her husband, Thomas, and their five-year-old daughter, Billie, aboard a boat skippered by her brother-in-law, Rich, who has brought along his girlfriend, Adaline. As Jean becomes immersed in the details of the 19th-century murders, Thomas and Adaline find themselves drawn together-with potentially ruinous consequences. Shreve (Where or When; Resistance) perfectly captures the ubiquitous dampness of life on a sailboat, deftly evoking the way in which the weather comes to dictate all actions for those at sea. With the skill of a master shipbuilder, Shreve carefully fits her two stories together, tacking back and forth between the increasingly twisted murder mystery and the escalating tensions unleashed by the threat of a dangerous shipboard romance. Written with assurance and grace, plangent with foreboding and a taut sense of inexorability, The Weight of Water is a powerfully compelling tale of passion, a provocative and disturbing meditation on the nature of love. Author tour. <br />Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong> Fall into Cooking Featured Recipes from <em>Bobby Flay's Throwdown!</em>: Pumpkin Pie </strong></p><p><strong>Bobby Flay: Pumpkin Pie with Cinnamon Crunch and Bourbon-Maple Whipped Cream</strong></p><p><strong>Makes 1 10-inch pie</strong></p><p><strong>Cinnamon Crunch</strong><br />1/2 cup all-purpose flour<br />1/2 cup quick-cooking rolled oats<br />1/2 cup light muscovado sugar<br />1 teaspoon ground cinnamon<br />7 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small cubes, cold  </p><p><strong>Crust</strong><br />2 cups graham cracker crumbs<br />8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted<br />1⁄8 teaspoon ground cinnamon<br />1 large egg, lightly beaten  </p><p><strong>Filling</strong><br />3 large eggs<br />3 large egg yolks<br />3/4 cup dark muscovado sugar<br />1/4 cup granulated sugar<br />2 tablespoons molasses<br />11/2 cups canned pumpkin puree<br />11/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon, plus more for the top<br />1 teaspoon ground ginger<br />1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg<br />1/4 teaspoon ground cloves<br />1/2 teaspoon fine salt<br />1 cup heavy cream<br />1/2 cup whole milk<br />1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds scraped out and reserved, or 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract<br />3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted<br />Bourbon-Maple Whipped Cream (recipe follows) for serving  </p><p>To make the cinnamon crunch, preheat the oven to 350ºF. </p><p>Combine the flour, oats, muscovado sugar, and cinnamon in a food processor, and process a few times to combine. Add the butter and pulse until combined. Pat the mixture evenly into a 4-inch square on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake until golden brown and crisp, about 15 minutes. Remove and let cool. Transfer to a cutting board and chop into small pieces. Keep the oven on.</p><p>To make the crust, combine the graham cracker crumbs, butter, and cinnamon in a bowl and mix until combined. Press evenly onto the bottom and sides of a 10-inch pie plate. Brush with the beaten egg. Bake until light golden brown and firm, about 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.</p><p>Reduce the oven temperature to 300ºF.</p><p>To make the filling, whisk the eggs, egg yolks, both sugars, and the molasses together in a medium bowl. Mix in the pumpkin puree, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and salt. Whisk in the heavy cream, milk, and vanilla seeds or extract. Strain the mixture through a coarse strainer into a bowl. Whisk in the butter.</p><p>Place the pie plate on a baking sheet, pour the pumpkin mixture into the shell, and sprinkle additional cinnamon over the top. Bake until the filling is set around edges but the center still jiggles slightly when shaken, 45 to 60 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and cool to room temperature, about 2 hours.</p><p>Cut the pie into slices and top each with a large dollop of whipped cream and some of the cinnamon crunch.</p><p><strong>Bourbon-Maple Whipped Cream</strong><br />1 1/4 cups heavy cream, very cold<br />1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds scraped out and reserved<br />2 tablespoons Grade B maple syrup<br />1 to 2 tablespoons bourbon, to taste  </p><p>Combine the cream, vanilla seeds, maple syrup, and bourbon in a large chilled bowl, and whip until soft peaks form.</p><p><strong>Challenger: Michele Albano's Maple Pumpkin Pie with Pecan Streusel</strong></p><p><strong>Makes 1 9-inch pie</strong></p><p><strong>Pie Crust</strong><br />11/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting<br />1/2 teaspoon fine salt<br />1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening, very cold<br />1 to 2 tablespoons heavy cream, for brushing  </p><p><strong>Pecan Streusel</strong><br />3/4 cup pecans, toasted and chopped<br />1/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar<br />2 tablespoons all-purpose flour<br />1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon<br />2 tablespoons unsalted butter, diced, cold  </p><p><strong>Filling</strong><br />2 cups pumpkin puree, preferably fresh<br />2 tablespoons all-purpose flour<br />1/3 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar<br />1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg<br />1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon<br />1/2 teaspoon fine salt<br />1 1/4 cups heavy cream<br />1 cup Grade B maple syrup<br />3 large eggs, beaten<br />Maple Whipped Cream (recipe follows), for serving  </p><p>To make the crust, combine the flour and salt in a medium bowl and mix well. Break up the shortening and toss it with the flour mixture to coat. Using a pastry blender or your fingertips, mix the ingredients together until the dough forms coarse crumbs. Add 3 to 4 tablespoons ice-cold water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until the dough easily forms a ball that can hold itself together. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and as long as overnight.</p><p>While the dough is resting, make the streusel: Toss the pecans with the brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Add the butter, and using a pastry blender or your fingertips, work in until you have small clumps. Set aside.</p><p>Preheat the oven to 425ºF.</p><p>Sprinkle flour generously over a hard surface and roll the dough out with a rolling pin until it forms an 11-inch round. Fold the round in half, place it in a 9-inch pie plate, and then unfold the dough to completely cover the pie plate with a bit of an overhang. Tuck the overhang under to make a double-thick rim, and then use your fingers to crimp the edges of the pie shell. Brush the heavy cream over the crimped edges, and refrigerate until the filling is complete.</p><p>To make the filling, mix the pumpkin, flour, brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt together with an electric mixer on medium speed until smooth, scraping the sides of the bowl well. Add the heavy cream and maple syrup, scraping the bowl several times while mixing. Mix in the beaten eggs.</p><p>Pour the filling mixture into the pie shell, and bake for 15 minutes. Then lower the oven temperature to 350ºF and bake until the filling is almost firm, about 30 minutes. Remove the pie from the oven and sprinkle the pecan streusel over the top, covering the pie completely. Return the pie to the oven and bake until the filling is just a bit wobbly in the middle and the pecan streusel is golden, 10 to 15 minutes. The total baking time should be 55 to 60 minutes.</p><p>Cool the pie on a wire rack. The pie is best served at either at room temperature or cold. Before serving, garnish the pie with the Maple Whipped Cream.</p><p><strong>Maple Whipped Cream</strong><br />2 cups heavy cream <br />1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar <br />1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract <br />1/2 cup Grade B maple syrup, or to taste </p><p>Place the metal bowl of an electric mixer in the freezer to chill for at least 15 minutes.</p><p>Combine the cream, confectioners’ sugar, and vanilla in the chilled bowl, and beat on high speed until the mixture thickens. Add the maple syrup and beat on high speed until the cream holds firm peaks.</p><hr /><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>A famous chef walks into an eatery and says, "Hey, prepare your signature dish and let's see if I can make a variation worth televising." That, in essence, is the concept behind Throwdown! the Food Network reality show that premiered in 2006, the fifth of seven Flay vehicles to appear on the network. This companion volume is one part recap and one part cookbook. For true fans of the show, Flay recounts each episode in his trademark cocky prose ("I heat things up with Jamaican jerk jockey Nigel Spence") and in doing so provides a tasty travelogue of eateries, from Asian dumplings at the Good Fork in Brooklyn, N.Y., to chile cheeseburgers at the Buckhorn Tavern in San Antonio, Tex. Whether by accident or by design, his cook-off lineup is a treasure trove of comfort food. Meatloaf, mac 'n' cheese, wings, lasagna, cupcakes, and matzo ball soup are all in the battle: 51 items in total, with Flay and a competing chef each providing their own recipe, for a total of 102 recipes. The author has never met a dish that he didn't want to sauce, and this proclivity is much in evidence, including a black pepper vinegar sauce over pulled pork and a balsamic glaze over a roasted vegetable meatloaf. (Oct.) (c) <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>The new Detective Inspector Horton mystery - Horton and Cantelli are called to a nursing home where a resident claims she’s been attacked by an intruder. Ready to dismiss it as senile ramblings, Horton then discovers that her room-mate has died, the dead woman’s belongings are missing and her son, convicted for armed robbery, has been found dead in his cell. Soon Horton is caught up in a complex investigation that has far-reaching international implications.</p>


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<p class="description"><b><u>SUMMARY:</u></b><br>The #1 New York Times-bestselling series returns-and the stakes have never been higher.   Charlie Castillo's secret unit has been disbanded-but that doesn't mean he's out of business. As experience has painfully shown him, there are many things the intelligence community can't do, won't do, or doesn't do well, and he has the men and assets to help set things straight.  But the first opportunity, when it comes, is shocking: A FedEx package arrives, bearing photos of barrels containing some of the most dangerous biohazard materials on earth, all of which were supposed to have been destroyed during a raid on a secret Russian factory in the Congo. Who has them, and what do they want? Castillo has a feeling he's not going to like the answers.</p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>'So I was the 6787th person in Beijing wanting to act in the film and TV industry. There were 6786 young and beautiful, or ugly and old people before me trying to get a role. I felt the competition, but compared with 1.6 billion people in China, 6786 was only the population of my village. I felt an urge to conquer this new village.' Life as a film extra in Beijing might seem hard, but Fenfang ' the spirited heroine of Xiaolu Guo's new novel ' won't be defeated. She has travelled 1800 miles to seek her fortune in the city, and has no desire to return to the never-ending sweet potato fields back home. Determined to live a modern life, Fenfang works as a cleaner in the Young Pioneer's movie theatre, falls in love with unsuitable men and keeps her kitchen cupboard stocked with UFO instant noodles. As Fenfang might say, Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, isn't it about time I got my lucky break?</p>


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p><em></em>#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER  </p><p><em></em>"Pick up a Liza Marklund book, read it until dawn, wait until the stores open, buy another one." <br>— James Patterson  </p><p>"Beautifully structured and tautly written. Dynamic plots with suspense throughout."<br>— Kathy Reichs  </p><p>"Liza Marklund is the next great Nordic export for fans of crime fiction to discover...Edge-of-your-seat suspense, sophisticated plotting, complex characterisation and unique locales." <br>— Harlan Coben </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>In the middle of the freezing winter, a journalist is murdered in the northern Swedish town of Lulea. Crime reporter Annika Bengtzon suspects that the killing is linked to an attack against an air base in the late sixties. Against the explicit orders of her boss, Annika continues her investigation of the death, which is soon followed by a series of shocking murders.  </p><p>Annika quickly finds herself drawn into a spiral of terrorism and violence centered around a small communist group called The Beasts. Meanwhile, her marriage starts to slide, and in the end she is not only determined to find out the truth, but also forced to question her own husband's honesty. </p>

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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>In a new Detective Inspector Horton mystery, Inspector Andy Horton's holiday peace is shattered when, stepping out across an abandoned golf course on the Isle of Wight on a cold, grey January morning, he finds himself facing a distraught young woman with a gun in her hand, leaning over a corpse. When she professes to be the dead man's psychic, Horton's old adversary, DCI Birch, is convinced she is a mentally disturbed killer, but Horton is not so sure.</p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Over the last six seasons of <em>The Biggest Loser,</em> you've watched as contestants shed pounds, got healthy, and dramatically changed their lives for the better. In fact, you may have been so inspired by the show’s remarkable success stories that you've considered embarking on your own weight loss journey. </p><p>If you're looking to get healthy now, there’s good news: You don't have to spend time at the ranch to benefit from <em>The Biggest Loser</em> magic. <strong><em>THE BIGGEST LOSER: 30 DAY JUMP STAR</em></strong>T brings all of the secrets of the ranch right into your own home. <em>The Biggest Loser</em> experts—the same ones who advise the contestants—are here to walk you through a 30-day plan that will kick off your weight loss and help you build new, healthy habits. </p><p>In this book you’ll find easy-to-follow menus, recipes, exercise plans, and motivation for each day of the week. You’ll also find helpful tips and advice from past <em>Biggest Losers</em> who have been in your shoes, including the nine contestants from Season 7 who left the ranch early to follow this very plan at home. </p><p>So far, the Biggest Losers have lost more than a combined 10,000 pounds. But for each of them, the journey started with a commitment: to health, to weight loss, and to themselves. The first steps toward a healthier future are in this book—what are you waiting for? Make the commitment, take the leap—and begin your 30 day jump start today!</p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>Cheryl Forberg, RD,</strong> is the nutritionist for <em>The Biggest Loser</em>. As co-creator of the eating plan, she has counseled each season's contestants on reaching their fitness and nutrition goals. A James Beard award-winning chef, Cheryl brings a flavorful and fresh approach to eating for weight loss with a special emphasis on anti-aging. She is the author of <em>Positively Ageless: A 28-Day Plan for a Younger, Slimmer Sexier You</em> (Rodale, 2008). Cheryl is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Napa. </p><p><strong>Melissa Roberson </strong>is the editor of BiggestLoserClub.com, the website that offers food, fitness, and exercise tips. She often visits the ranch and interviews trainers and contestants about their inspiring weight loss journeys. She is a web veteran, having worked on new media projects for Time Inc., <em>The New York Times</em>, News Corps., Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. She lives in Hoboken, NJ. </p><p><strong>Lisa Wheeler</strong>, an international dance/fitness professional based in New York City, is the National Creative Manager for Equinox Group Fitness, a Contributing Editor for <em>Shape</em> Magazine and Choreographer for Cal Pozo's Fit Vid Productions, where clients include The Biggest Loser, Dancing with the Stars, American Gladiators and Denise Austin. She has appeared in more than 20 fitness videos, FiT TV, and hosted The Method Fitness Show. Lisa leads the Westin Workout segments on SPG TV and has hosted fitness programs for the NFL Channel, CNN Headline News, The View and QVC. She holds NASM, ACSM, ACE, and AFAA certifications.</p>

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<h3>Review</h3><p>“A whole-body, whole-foods plan...designed by a cleansing expert.” (Chicago Tribune )  </p><p>“Alejandro Junger, a hypercharismatic Uruguayan, is poised to become the detox movement’s It Boy” (Elle )  </p><p>“Through “Clean” Dr. Junger teaches us methods of cleansing, not only our physical bodies but also cleansing as a way of life-he shows us the power we have on a day-to-day basis to strive to be the healthiest, positive most beautiful beings possible.” (Donna Karan )  </p><p>“The Clean program works.... I have turned many of my friends on to this program and each one has experienced profound benefits, from weight loss to mental clarity to the end of chronic depression. The wisdom and information contained in this book is deeply helpful and life changing.” (Gwyneth Paltrow )  </p><p>“I have seen the incredible results of the CLEAN program with hundreds of patients, from changing their relationship to food, to weight loss to improving health to enjoying life again. If you want to achieve any of these, CLEAN is the book for you.” (Frank Lipman, M.D. author of SPENT )  </p><p>“With an acute understanding of the interconnectedness of body and mind, CLEAN presents a view of detoxification as a spiritual as well as physical necessity. Dr. Junger has given us a roadmap not only to greater health but also to greater joy.” (Marianne Williamson, author of The Age of Miracles )  </p><p>“Clean is a masterpiece of healing... Dr. Junger shows us how we don’t have to suffer any longer, nor feel tired, sick and weighed down with the sludge of modern life. You will discover that you didn’t know how badly you felt, once you have gotten Clean.” (Mark Hyman, MD, Author of the New York Times best-seller The UltraMind Solution )  </p><p>“I am a /CLEAN/ believer, and I recommend its study and practice with the greatest confidence and enthusiasm.” (Robert Thurman, author of Inner Revolution )  </p><p>“Alejandro Junger, M.D., is his message – brilliant, compassionate and embodied. Clean is visionary medicine, an initiation into the spirit of healing and its author’s credentials prove that science and spirituality are finally dancing cheek to cheek. ” (Gabrielle Roth, author of Sweat Your Prayers: Movement as Spiritual Practice ) </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>How many of us can honestly say we do not suffer from at least one of the following: </p><ul> <li>     Colds or viruses each year </li> <li>     Allergies or hay fever </li> <li>     Extra pounds that won't come off  </li> <li>     Restless nights </li> <li>     Recurrent indigestion, constipation, or irritable bowel syndrome </li> <li>     Itchy skin, acne, or any other troubling skin condition </li> <li>     Depression, anxiety, or frequent fatigue </li></ul><p>If you were to seek medical advice for any of the above, you would likely be prescribed pills, topical lotions, injections, or even surgery. Such treatments are used to manage the symptoms and do not address the root of the problem. Too often, doctors treat these common ailments as inevitable costs of living a modern life. The result is a patchwork approach to health care that has become the norm. </p><p>In <em>Clean</em>, a New York City cardiologist and a leader in the field of integrative medicine, Dr. Alejandro Junger offers a major medical breakthrough. Dr. Junger argues that the majority of these common ailments are the direct result of toxic buildup in our systems accumulated through the course of our daily lives. As the toxicity of modern life increases and disrupts our systems on a daily basis, bombarding us through our standard American diet and chemical-filled environments, our ability to handle the load hasn't accelerated at the same rapid pace. The toxins are everywhere, but <em>Clean</em> offers a solution. </p><p><em>Clean</em> is an M.D.'s program that provides all the tools necessary to support and reactivate our detoxification system to its fullest capabilities, and can be easily incorporated into a busy schedule. The effect is transformative: nagging health problems will suddenly disappear, extra weight will drop away, and for the first time in our lives we will experience what it truly means to feel healthy. </p><p>Every day spent on the Clean program is a major step in healing not just the symptom but the root of the problem, effectively and simply. Dr. Junger's life-changing program restores what rightfully belongs to you—your health, vitality, and peace of mind. </p>


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From first-time novelist Jordan Sonnenblick, a brave and beautiful story that will make readers laugh and break their hearts at the same time. Thirteen-year-old Steven has a totally normal life: he plays drums in the All-Star Jazz band, has a crush on the hottest girl in the school, and is constantly annoyed by his five-year-old brother, Jeffrey. But when Jeffrey is diagnosed with leukaemia, Steven's world is turned upside down. He is forced to deal with his brother's illness and his parents' attempts to keep the family in one piece. Salted with humor and peppered with devastating realities, DRUMS, GIRLS, AND DANGEROUS PIE is a heart warming journey through a year in the life of a family in crisis.


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<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 8 Up–After drinking some vodka and taking his mom's car for a spin to his father's girlfriend's house, who just happens to be his former third-grade teacher, 16-year-old Alex Gregory finds himself on his neighbors' lawn with police yelling at him and a broken gnome under his car. It is hard to believe that Alex would do anything like this; most of the time he hangs out with his friend Laurie, a sassy petite karate expert, and plays guitar in the school jazz band. He is also trying to get over his parents' recent split. For drinking and driving, Alex is sentenced to 100 hours of community service at a nursing home with Solomon Lewis. Sol is a difficult, crotchety, eccentric old man with emphysema who lashes out at Alex in strange Yiddish phrases. Soon Alex grows found of Sol, who teaches him something about the guitar, respecting the elderly, and taking responsibility for his actions. Alex's voice is fresh and funny, but doesn't downplay the serious situations. The other characters in the book are well defined and add interesting touches to the story. Fans of Sonnenblick's <em>Drums, Girls &amp; Dangerous Pie</em> (Turning Tide, 2004) will be pleased with this follow-up book in which Steven and Annette make a few brief appearances._–Shannon Seglin, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA_ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> While his mother is out on a first date, 16-year-old Alex decides to get drunk, steal her car, and drive to his father's home, hoping to catch him romancing one of Alex's former teachers. His goal? Revenge. Reality? A damaged car, a decapitated gnome, a drunk driving charge, and community service. He is ordered to serve his 100 hours visiting Solomon Lewis, the meanest, crankiest resident at Egbert P. Johnson Memorial Home for the Aged. Alex discovers that Solomon is also witty, intelligent, and a fighter--an old man who has lived all the joys, sorrows, and regrets of a long life. Sonnenblick has created a memorable cast of characters: acerbic Sol, a former famous jazz guitarist who is now dying of emphysema; narrator Alex, a budding guitarist with a tendency to make excuses rather than assume responsibility; and Alex's best friend Laurie, a tiny, pixielike karate master whom Sol refers to as Alex's "wife." Even minor characters, such as Alex's parents and the judge, take on a heft and weight uncommon in YA literature, and teens will easily connect with Alex's epiphanies: "You can't just throw someone out of your life when they displease you," and, "We're all free to choose some people to love, and then do it." It all adds up to a funny, bittersweet tour de force. <em>Frances Bradburn</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>When eighth-grader San Lee moves to a new town and a new school for the umpteenth time, he doesn't try to make new friends or be a loner or play cool. Instead he sits back and devises a plan to be totally different. When he accidentally answers too many questions in World History on Zen (only because he just had Ancient Religions two schools ago) all heads turn and San has his answer: he's a Zen Master. And just when he thinks everyone (including the cute girl he can't stop thinking about) is on to him, everyone believes him . . . in a major Zen way. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Jordan Sonnenblick has always been fascinated by Zen Buddhism and the practice of meditation. However, he has never actually been able to meditate due to his well-documented lifelong inability to sit still or be quiet. He lives with his serene wife and two half-wiggly, half-calm kids in Pennsylvania. </p>


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<h3>From</h3><p>Bova is best known as a prolific writer of works of science fiction. Here he tries his hand at supposedly historical fiction, with interesting, enjoyable, but uneven results. Lukka, a Hittite warrior, returns to the Hittite capital city to find it engulfed in civil war, his father murdered, and his wife and two young sons taken away by slavers. Along with a small cadre of soldiers under his command, Lukka launches an epic search for his family, which leads him to the gates of Troy as it is beseiged by the army of Agamemnon. Bova then proceeds to an original retelling of the final stages of the legendary Trojan War. In this account, Lukka serves as a literary mirror, revealing the personalities of some well-known characters, with a few surprising results. Odysseus, predictably, is practical, crafty, and a natural survivor in treacherous waters. Achilles is a born killer, but he is shown as short and ugly, and his death is decidedly unheroic. Helen is, of course, the babe of all babes, but she is also petty and whiny. Bova tends to use flowery, descriptive language to excess, but he knows his Homer. --Jay Freeman </p><h3>Review</h3><p>Excellent. A thrilling and inventive retelling of the legend of Troy. --David Hagberg, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>The Expediter</em>  </p><p>Completely convincing and emotionally satisfying; the adventure and warfare are gripping enough to keep me awake to finish the book in a single night. I hope that when I'm [Bova's] age, I'll be doing--as he is--the best work of my career. --Orson Scott Card, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>Ender's Game</em>  </p><p>A cast of stars, all seen through the eyes of a Hittite warrior. With authentic battle scenes and the reality of siege warfare, THE HITTITE is an adventure you'll want to undertake. --Barbara D'Amato, Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of <em>Foolproof</em></p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Just before he’s about to enter a seminary, a young man learns he’s the winner of Lucifer’s Lottery, a lottery held every 666 years, in which the winner receives eternal youth and wealth and a personal tour of Hell.</p><h3>About the Author</h3><p> Lee has been published at Zebra, Berkley, Cemetery Dance, and Necro Publications. Dorchester is now his exclusive paperback publisher.  Lee was one of the co-founders of the Splatterpunk movement in horror and is one of the most influential writers in the genre today.   Several of his short stories have been nominated for HWA’s Bram Stoker Award, such as 1994’s <em>Mr. Torso</em>.  He has also received many preliminary nominations for HWA’s Best Novel Stoker, including both _Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman <em>(1998) and</em> Sacrifice_ (1995). </p>


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>"Reminiscent of Ruth Rendall at her best." Herald "Relentless and frightening." Guardian "A compulsive thriller." Metro "Alvtegen keeps up a cracking pace." Uncut" </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>This is the story about two women who are trapped by a past that won't let go. As Maj-Britt festers malevolently in her hermetic apartment, appeased only by an endless supply of food, Monika works ceaselessly to blot out her pain, punishing herself unforgivingly if she fails to meet her own high standards. They have nothing in common but the determination to obliterate their memories and be left alone - but when a letter and a tragic accident force the past back to life, the emotional void at the centre of their lives gapes wide and threatens to engulf them both. Forced into a confrontation, each woman proves the catalyst for the other's destruction - or salvation. A taut psychological thriller, "Shame" builds inexorably and subtly into a study of the devastating powers of fear, oppressive religion and forbidden sexuality. </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>At the start of Lee's dramatic sequel to Breach, gun men hit the motorcade in which Paige Campbell, who has just met with the U.S. president, is riding through Washington, D.C., and kill everyone but her. Before she's captured, Campbell uses her cellphone to get off a call for help to Bethany Stewart, her colleague in the shadowy outfit known as Tangent. Stewart, in turn, recruits Travis Chase, who was once briefly involved in a Tangent operation, and reveals to him the existence of an "entity" resembling a dark metal cylinder that opens a hole in time. Since the entity has shown a horrific future for humanity, Chase and Stewart, who suspects the president was behind the motorcade attack, must scramble to save their friend and forestall devastation in the years to come. Lee imaginatively blends a Baldacci-like political tale of betrayals and assassination with time travel in a thoughtful science-fictional thriller. (Jan.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“WOW! Double Wow! Starkly original, <em>Ghost Country</em> by Patrick Lee will make Asimov and Heinlein cheer with the angels. The techno-thriller meets Sci-Fi, and the result is mind-blowing. Makes Tom Clancy look like the slowest child in the class.” (Stephen Coonts, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author )  </p><p>“Settle back and savor this one. Patrick Lee has an intense brand of storytelling. He’s a most welcome addition to the genre. The real deal. I look forward to reading more from him.” (Steve Berry, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of T_he Emperor's Tomb_ )  </p><p>“Patrick Lee’s <em>Ghost Country</em> is in a word: Brilliant. Less a novel, than an adventure, it left me breathless and awed. It’s explosive, innovative and ultimately mind-blowing. Pure exhilaration from the first page to the last.” (James Rollins, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>The Doomsday Key</em> ) </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>"If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves.  To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself.  And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that.  I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it.  I know that sounds a little pious."-- David Foster Wallace An indelible portrait of David Foster Wallace, by turns funny and inspiring,  based on a five-day trip with award-winning writer David Lipsky during Wallace’s Infinite Jest tour."   In David Lipsky’s view, David Foster Wallace was the best young writer in America.  Wallace’s pieces for Harper’s Magazine in the ’90s were, according to Lipsky, “like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away.  You knew something gigantic was coming.”         Then Rolling Stone sent Lipsky to join Wallace on the last leg of his book tour—for Infinite Jest, the novel that made him internationally famous. They lose to each other at chess. They get iced-in at an airport.  They dash to Chicago to catch a make-up flight.  They endure a terrible reader’s escort in Minneapolis.  Wallace does a reading, a signing, an NPR appearance.  Wallace gives in and imbibes titanic amounts of hotel television (what he calls an “orgy of spectation”).  They fly back to Illinois, drive home, walk Wallace’s dogs.  Amidst these everyday events, Wallace tells Lipsky remarkable things - everything he can about his life, how he feels, what he thinks, what terrifies and fascinates and counfounds him - in the writing voice Lipsky had come to love. Lipsky took notes, stopped envying him and came to feel about him—that grateful, awake feeling—the same way he felt about Infinite Jest.  Then Lipsky heads to the airport, and Wallace goes to a dance at a Baptist church. A biography in five days, Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself is an indelible portrait of one of America’s greatest writers. Told in his own words, here is Wallace’s own story, and his astonishing, humane, alert way of looking at the world; here are stories of being a young writer, of being young generally, trying to knit together your ideas of who you should be and who other people expect you to be, and of being young in March of 1996. And of what it was like to be with and—as he tells it—what is was like to become David Foster Wallace. David Lipsky is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine.  His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Magazine Writing, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, and many other publications. He contributes as an essayist to NPR's All Things Considered, and is the recipient of a Lambert Fellowship, a Media Award from GLAAD, and a National Magazine Award.  He's the author of the novel The Art Fair, a collection of stories, Three Thousand Dollars, and the bestselling nonfiction book Absolutely American, which was a Time magazine Best Book of the Year. </p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In this impressive sequel to A Wild Sheep Chase , Murakami displays his talent to brilliant effect. The unnamed narrator, a muddled freelance writer, is 34 and no closer to finding happiness than he was in the previous book. Divorced, bereaved and abandoned by his various lovers, he is drawn to the Dolphin Hotel--a strange and lonely establishment where Kiki, a woman he once lived with, "upped and vanished." Kiki and the Sheep Man, an odd fellow who wears a sheepskin and speaks in a toneless rush, visit the narrator in visions that lead him to two mysteries, one metaphysical (how to survive the unsurvivable) and the other physical (a call girl's murder). In his searchings, he encounters a clairvoyant 13-year-old, her misguided parents and a one-armed poet. All the hallmarks of Murakami's greatness are here: restless and sensitive characters, disturbing shifts into altered reality, silky smooth turns of phrase and a narrative with all the momentum of a roller coaster. If Mishima had ever learned the value of gentleness, this is the sort of page-turner he might have written. Paperback rights to Vintage. <br>Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>If Kafka were to find himself imprisoned in a novel that had been written by Raymond Chandler and was then forced to develop a sense of humor, the resultant voice might likely resemble that of the protagonist in this latest delight from one of Japan's leading contemporary writers. Something of a sequel to 1988's A Wild Sheep Chase ( LJ 10/15/89), this book features an ordinary man on an extraordinary journey living in a world glittering with technology in which something is wanting still. Fans of the first book will certainly want to read this one, although Dance Dance Dance stands quite well on its own. The relentless coyness and flippancy that characterized A Wild Sheep Chase gives way here to passages that are sometimes lyrical and an ending that is at once desperate, affirmative, and filled with the breath of life. Recommended for all serious fiction collections.<br><em>- Mark Woodhouse, Elmira Coll. Lib., N.Y.</em><br>Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>Hellhound on His Trail</em>, Ray's absence is essential--in his place, Hampton Sides traces the alter egos Ray created after escaping from prison and beginning his haphazard journey toward Memphis. Sides meticulously constructs parallel portraits of two very different men--one, the larger-than-life figurehead of the Civil Rights movement; the other, a nondescript loner with a spurious and violent history, whose identity was as fluid as his motives. The narrative builds to the staggering and heartbreaking moment of King's assassination, then races on through the immediate fallout: the worldwide manhunt led by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI; Ray's nearly successful attempt to flee to Rhodesia; and the riots that erupted throughout the United States as racial tensions reached a breaking point. Sides's storytelling packs a visceral punch, and in <em>Hellhound on His Trail</em>, he crafts an authoritative and riveting account of two intersecting lives that altered the course of American history. <em>--Lynette Mong</em>  </p><hr /><p><strong>David Grann Reviews <em>Hellhound on His Trail</em></strong></p><p><strong><em>New York Times</em> bestseller <em>Hellhound on His Trail</em>:</strong></p><p>Hampton Sides has long been one of the great narrative nonfiction writers of our time, excavating essential pieces of American history--from the daring rescue of POWs during World War II to the settling of the West--and bringing them vividly to life. Now in his new book, <em>Hellhound on His Trail</em>, he applies his enormous gifts to one of the most important and heart-wrenching chapters in U.S. history: the stalking and assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., by James Earl Ray.</p><p>The book chronicles the terrifying collision of these two figures. In 1967, King was struggling to complete his monumental Civil Rights crusade and to maintain, amid the rise of more militant factions, the movement’s nonviolent nobility. While King increasingly intuits his own death, Ray has begun to track him down. Through Sides’ prodigious research, Ray emerges as one of the eeriest characters, a prison escapee and racist who wears alligator shoes and is constantly transforming himself, changing names and physical appearances. He is determined to become somebody, to insert himself into the national consciousness, through a single unthinkable act of violence. </p><p>Sides illuminates not only the forces that culminated in King’s assassination; he also reveals the largely forgotten story of how his death led to the largest manhunt in American history. Almost unfathomably, it is J. Edgar Hoover, the person who had long hoped for King’s destruction and had even spied on him, who ultimately brings King’s killer to justice.</p><p><em>Hellhound on His Trail</em> reconstructs this taut, tense narrative with the immediacy of a novel. Yet what makes the book so powerful--indeed what lifts it into the ranks of a masterpiece--is that the story unfolds against the larger backdrop of the Civil Rights movement and the struggle to remake the country. If Ray is able to undergo a final metamorphosis, it is King, through his life and ultimate sacrifice, who enacts the greatest transformation: changing the character of a nation.</p><p>(Photo © Matt Richman)</p><hr /><p><strong>Questions for Hampton Sides</strong></p><p><strong>Q:</strong> How did the idea for <em>Hellhound on His Trail</em> come to you? What made you decide to focus on James Earl Ray?<br /><strong>A:</strong> So many books have concentrated on either advancing or debunking conspiracy theories about the King assassination, but few have looked hard at James Earl Ray himself. Who was this guy? What were his habits, his movements, his motives? I found him to be profoundly screwed up, but screwed up in an absolutely fascinating way. He was a kind of empty vessel of the culture. He was drawn to so many fads and pop-trends of the late nineteen-sixties. He got a nose job, took dancing lessons, graduated from bar-tending school, got into hypnosis and weird self-help books, enrolled in a locksmithing course, even aspired to be a porn director. His personality had all these quirks and contradictions. He was supposedly stupid, but he somehow managed to escape from two maximum security prisons. Some claimed he wasn’t a racist, yet he worked for the Wallace Campaign, called King "Martin Lucifer Coon," tried to emigrate to Rhodesia to become a mercenary soldier, and eventually hired a Nazi lawyer to defend him. He lived in absolute filth and squalor, but kept his clothes fastidiously laundered. And in the end, ironically, that’s what caught him: A tiny identifying laundry tag stamped into the inseam of a pair of undershorts found near the scene of the King assassination.</p><p><strong>Q:</strong> The "Notes" and "Bibliography" sections of <em>Hellhound on His Trail</em> total more than 50 pages--how did you begin to tackle the wealth of information that exists about Martin Luther King’s assassination? What was your research process like?<br /><strong>A:</strong>The research nearly gave me an aneurysm. But in the end, <em>Hellhound</em> is a work of narrative history, not a journalistic exposé. I don't think I unearthed any massive bombshells that will change the world forever--like, say, proving once and for all that J. Edgar Hoover actually orchestrated the whole affair. Instead, what I unearthed were thousands and thousands of tiny details that make the story come alive on the page and make it possible, for the first time, to understand the tragedy as a complete, multi-stranded narrative. The book's packed full of novelistic detail--weather, architecture, what people were wearing, what the landscape looked like, the music that was playing on the radio. To get all this stuff, I had to do the usual sort of archival work--from the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin to the London newspaper archives--and I went pretty much everywhere James Earl Ray went, following in his fugitive footsteps: Puerto Vallarta, Toronto, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Birmingham, Lisbon, London. But my real ace in the hole was a retired Memphis cop named Vince Hughes who has compiled the most fascinating, and most comprehensive, digital archive about the MLK assassination on the planet: Crime scene photos, police reports, unexpurgated FBI files, audio tapes, and many hundreds of thousands of unpublished documents that proved a real godsend. Every non-fiction writer needs to find a guy named Vince. Thank God I found mine.</p><p><strong>Q:</strong> How did you come up with the title? Is there significance to it?<br /><strong>A:</strong>It comes from the famous Robert Johnson blues song, "Hellhound On My Trail," which is about being pursued by fate, by the law, and ultimately by death. Johnson was the greatest of the Delta bluesmen, and he lived in and around Memphis much of his short tragic life. It was said that he’d gone to The Crossroads and sold his soul to the devil to learn to play the guitar, so he was always looking over his shoulder for his time to come. When King arrived in Memphis in 1968, he was representing black garbage workers who were mostly former plantation hands from Johnson country, from the Delta cotton fields. As a title, "hellhound" seemed evocative on twin levels: For King, who was constantly being hounded by death threats and Hoover’s FBI, as well as for Ray, who became the target of the largest manhunt in American history.</p><p><strong>Q:</strong> The King assassination, like the JFK assassination, is rife with conspiracy theories. How did you deal with them?<br /><strong>A:</strong>At the outset of my research, I took very seriously the idea that there might have been a conspiracy. I read all the conspiracy books, examined every angle. The only problem with the conspiracy theories that are out there, I found, is that they invariably fail the most basic test: They raise more questions than they address, they create more problems than they solve. And they’re so monumentally complicated: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, the Green Berets, President Johnson, the Memphis Police Department, the Memphis Fire Department, the Memphis Mayor’s Office, the Boy Scouts of America--everybody killed Martin Luther King! But as I got into it, it became clear that the evidence against James Earl Ray was overwhelming. He bought the rifle, the scope, the ammo, the binoculars. He checked into that rooming house three hours before the murder. He peeled out from the rooming house one minute after the murder, in the same getaway car described by eyewitnesses. He admitted to every one of these things. His only defense was that some other guy--a mysterious man he called Raoul--pulled the trigger. Well, there’s not a shred of evidence that Raoul ever existed. So in <em>Hellhound</em>, I take the clear position that Ray did it, but I leave many doors ajar as to the question of whether he had help, whether he was working in the hope of winning bounty money, whether members of his own family abetted him. When in doubt, I generally err on the side of Occam’s razor: The simplest explanation is usually the right one.</p><p><strong>Q:</strong> Can you compare <em>Hellhound on His Trail</em> to your previous books? Are there similarities among them? <br /><strong>A:</strong>I don’t concentrate on any one period of history, I like to locate my stories in wildly different eras and places. I seem to be drawn to large, sprawling, uncomfortable swaths of American history, finding embedded within them a tight narrative that involves strife, heroism, and survival under difficult circumstances. My histories tend to be character-driven, with a lot of plot, a lot of action. I don’t think you’d find me writing about, say, the Constitutional Convention or the Transcendental Movement. A friend once told me I’m interested in "human disasters"--social storms of one sort or another, and the ways in which people survive them, through courage, ingenuity, grace under pressure, luck. That’s true of the Bataan Death March, with the conquest of the West, and now, here, with the end of the Civil Rights era.</p><p><strong>Q:</strong>What made you decide to pursue writing as a career? Have you always wanted to be a journalist?<br /><strong>A:</strong>The first writer I ever met growing up in Memphis was Shelby Foote, the great Civil War historian, and he gave me certain ideas at an early age about what narrative history can aspire to be. My other deep influence was John Hersey, who wrote </p><p>(Photo © Gary Oakley)</p><hr /><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. The counterpoint between two driven men—one by a quest for justice, the other by an atavistic hatred—propels this engrossing study of the King assassination. Sides, author of the bestselling <em>Ghost Solders</em>, shows us a King all but consumed by the flagging civil rights movement in 1968 and burdened by presentiments of death. Pursuing him is escaped convict James Earl Ray, whose feckless life finds a belated, desperate purpose, perhaps stimulated by George Wallace's presidential campaign, in killing the civil rights leader. A third main character is the FBI, which turns on a dime from its long-standing harassment of Kingto a massive investigation into his murder; in Sides's telling, the Bureau's transoceanic hunt for Ray is one of history's great police procedurals. Sides's novelistic treatment registers Ray as a man so nondescript his own sister could barely remember him (the author refers to him by his shifting aliases to emphasize the shallowness of his identity). The result is a tragedy more compelling than the grandest conspiracy theory: the most significant of lives cut short by the hollowest of men. Photos. <em>(Apr. 27)</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><em>Jude the Obscure</em>, by <strong>Thomas Hardy</strong>, is part of the <em>Barnes &amp; Noble Classics</em><em> </em>series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of <em>Barnes &amp; Noble Classics</em>: </p><ul><li>     All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. <em>Barnes &amp; Noble Classics </em>pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. </li></ul><p>Virginia Woolf called him “the greatest tragic writer among English novelists,” but <strong>Thomas Hardy</strong> was so distressed by the shocked outrage that greeted <em>Jude the Obscure</em> in 1895 that he decided to quit writing novels.  For in telling the story of Jude Fawley, whose many attempts to rise above his class are crushed by society or the forces of nature, Hardy had attacked Victorian society’s most cherished institutions—marriage, social class, religion, and higher education.  </p><p>A poor villager, Jude Fawley longs to study at the elite University of Christminster, but his ambitions are thwarted by class prejudice—and an earthy country girl who tricks him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant.   Entrapped in a loveless marriage, he becomes a stonemason and falls in love with his cousin—the intellectual, free-spirited Sue Bridehead, who is also unhappy in marriage.  Sue leaves her husband to live with Jude and eventually bears his children out of wedlock.  Their poverty and the weight of society’s disapproval begin to take their toll on the couple, forcing them into a shattering downward spiral that ends in one of the most shocking scenes in all of literature.</p><p>A stunning masterpiece, <em>Jude the Obscure</em> is Hardy’s bleakest and most personal novel.</p><p><strong>Amy M. King</strong> is an Assistant Professor of Literature at the California Institute of Technology, and the author of <em>Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel</em>, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. She is also the author of articles on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture, and has taught widely in the English novel at Haverford College and Caltech. King received her doctorate in 1998 from Harvard University in English and American Literature and Language. </p><h3>Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.</h3><p><strong>From Amy M. King’s Introduction to <em>Jude the Obscure</em></strong></p><p>Hardy’s stature as a novelist when <em>Jude the Obscure</em> was published guaranteed him a certain degree of critical attention, but the attention he was to receive was so negative as to alter the course of his career. <em>Jude the Obscure</em> was Hardy’s final novel. In one of the strangest turns in literary history, Hardy at the age of fifty-five turned to poetry, which he continued to write until his death in 1928 at the age of eighty-eight. In letters to close friends he pretends a somewhat jaunty indifference to the negative response to <em>Jude</em>, but in an essay entitled “The Profitable Reading of Fiction,” which appeared in the journal <em>Forum</em> in 1888, Hardy’s defensiveness about readers suggests the effect the reception of his novel would have upon him:   </p><p>A novel which does moral injury to a dozen imbeciles, and has bracing results upon a thousand intellects of normal vigor, can justify its existence. . . . It is unfortunately quite possible to read the most elevating works of imagination in our own or any language, and, by fixing the regard on the wrong sides of the subject, to gather not a grain of wisdom from them, nay, sometimes positive harm. What author has not had his experience of such readers?—the mentally and morally warped ones of both sexes, who will, where practicable, so twist plain and obvious meanings as to see in an honest picture of human nature an attack on religion, morals, or institutions. </p><p>If Hardy had become wary of a certain kind of reader, his bitterness toward what he calls “the mentally and morally warped ones” did not prevent him from continuing to believe that such “imbeciles” numbered in the dozens, not the thousands. He continued to tinker with the novel in subsequent editions. In the 1903 edition he tempered the scene in which Arabella throws the pig genitals at Jude, while in the 1912 edition he introduces some two hundred small but nevertheless effectively important changes. These changes, which the edition you read here reflects, are generally considered to have been softening gestures to the depiction of Sue. For instance, as the bibliographical critic Robert Slack has shown, in the 1903 edition Jude threatens to return to Arabella unless Sue consents to live with him (and, it is inferred, become his sexual partner), and Sue agrees to it because he has “conquered” her; in the 1912 edition, Sue’s acquiescence is the result of love. The key words “I do love you” are included seventeen years after the first publication of the novel. The revisions that Hardy makes go beyond an author’s usual attention to errors in early editions. <em>Jude</em> clearly stayed with Hardy in the years following his switch to poetry, though whether we should understand that switch in light of a renunciation inspired by the extremity of the negative reaction to <em>Jude</em> or as an excuse for returning to the genre (poetry) with which he began his writing career is less certain; it was, if nothing else, a decisive one.</p>

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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>The cat that captured America's hearts returns, to share more of his special brand of magic. </strong>   </p><p><em>Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World</em> was a blockbuster bestseller and a publishing phenomenon. It has sold nearly a million copies, spawned three children's books, and will be the basis for an upcoming movie. No doubt about it, Dewey has created a community. Dewey touched readers everywhere, who realized that no matter how difficult their lives might seem, or how ordinary their talents, they can-and should-make a positive difference to those around them. Now, Dewey is back, with even more heartwarming moments and life lessons to share.   </p><p><em>Dewey's Nine Lives</em> offers nine funny, inspiring, and heartwarming stories about cats--all told from the perspective of "Dewey's Mom," librarian Vicki Myron. The amazing felines in this book include Dewey, of course, whose further never-before-told adventures are shared, and several others who Vicki found out about when their owners reached out to her. Vicki learned, through extensive interviews and story sharing, what made these cats special, and how they fit into Dewey's community of perseverance and love. From a divorced mother in Alaska who saved a drowning kitten on Christmas Eve to a troubled Vietnam veteran whose heart was opened by his long relationship with a rescued cat, these Dewey-style stories will inspire readers to laugh, cry, care, and, most importantly, believe in the magic of animals to touch individual lives. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>Vicki Myron</strong> was Dewey's Mom and the director of the Spencer Public Library for twenty years. As the author of the #1 <em>New York Times</em> bestseller <em>Dewey</em>, she speaks throughout the country. Myron lives in Spencer, Iowa.   </p><p><strong>Bret Witter</strong> is a former book editor turned writer. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky. </p>

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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>A Q&amp;A with Anne C. Heller</strong>   </p><p><strong>Question:</strong> Many people discover Ayn Rand’s novels </p><p><strong>Anne C. Heller:</strong> It's true that I didn’t read Ayn Rand’s popular novels in high school or college. I read them for the first time seven or eight years ago, while I was editing a trial issue of a new financial magazine at Condé Nast Publications. <em>Atlas Shrugged</em>. In the novel, the speech is delivered by a young copper baron to an assembled crowd of liberal bureaucrats and corporate welfare-statists. He argues that money, far from being the root of all evil, as the liberals in the novel pretend to think, is really "the root of all good," and "the barometer of a society’s virtue." The speech surprised me with its passion and seemingly air-tight logic and aroused my curiosity. So I read the books.</p><p>At that time, Rand and her work weren’t in the news, as they are now. Once I had finished <em>Atlas Shrugged</em> for the second time, I looked around to see what had been written about her. Later, I learned that the novels were still selling in the hundreds of thousands of copies every year and that she was influential among libertarians and certain conservatives; yet no full-scale, impartial biography of this extraordinary woman had been written. Only former disciples and detractors had published books about her. The time seemed right to take a fresh approach. </p><p><strong>Question:</strong> Do you think your experience with her work, philosophy, and life was different from those who read her in their adolescence?</p><p><strong>Anne C. Heller:</strong> Yes. I appreciated Rand’s insights into the nature of power and her spectacular ability to integrate plot, character, and theme more than I might have when younger. And, I was less susceptible to her romantic celebration of heroic achievement.</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> <em>Ayn Rand and the World She Made</em> is the first objective, investigative biography of Ayn Rand. What new sources did you use for your research? Did you travel for your research?</p><p><strong>Anne C. Heller:</strong> The only other biography was written in the 1980s by </p><p>I traveled all over the United States to work in relevant archives and to conduct interviews with her former friends and followers, many now in their eighties and nineties, who spoke surprisingly candidly about her capacity for cruelty as well as her genius and personal magnetism. I had three lengthy interviews with her long-time lover, Nathaniel Branden, now eighty, and spoke with most members of what used to be called the "inner circle" of her cult following. I also had access to interviews with her elderly Russian sister and with close friends from the 1920s and 1930s, all now deceased. </p><p><strong>Question:</strong> What surprised you most?</p><p><strong>Anne C. Heller:</strong> I was surprised by many things--by how deeply her hostility to liberal social programs was rooted in her Russian childhood, by her remarkable insight into the psychology of envy and mediocrity, by her personal courage, and by her unfailing ability to spot a flaw in any opposing argument. I was also surprised to discover that many of her former followers, though personally damaged by her temper and her moral absolutism, remembered her as the most important and beneficent person in their lives. They had been wounded by her and yet loved her and were protective of her memory and legend.</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> Why does Rand remain a bestseller? </p><p><strong>Anne C. Heller:</strong> She certainly does remain popular. In a 1991 poll, sponsored by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, Americans named <em>Atlas Shrugged</em> the book that had most influenced their lives after the Bible. In a separate 1998 poll by Modern Library, readers chose <em>Atlas Shrugged</em> and <em>The Fountainhead</em> as number one and two on a list of the one hundred greatest novels of the twentieth century, and Rand’s other two novels, </p><p>Like Holden Caulfield and Huckleberry Finn, Rand’s fictional heroes strike each new generation as timelessly American in their self-reliance and revolt against timidity and conformity. And her passionate, brainy arguments on behalf of limited government and unfettered individual rights strike a strong chord, especially in times of economic trouble and increased government activism. </p><p>(Photo © Brennan Cavanaugh) </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum was born to Jewish parents in 1905 Russia. Ayn Rand left Russia in 1926 for America and founded her anticollectivist philosophy, Objectivism, a philosophy of free market capitalism and the pursuit of self-interest as a moral good. Depressive, pill-taking, chain-smoking and manipulative, Rand's life was defined by a longtime Sunset Boulevard–like affair with Nathaniel Branden, who went on to start the self-esteem movement. At the same time, the combustible Rand was married to a passive man with matinee-idol looks. Magazine editor and journalist Heller competently describes Rand's feuds with William F. Buckley and with her sister, who had remained in the U.S.S.R., and the more courtly relationship Rand had with publisher Bennett Cerf. This objective account of the Objectivist Rand will interest her still large and devoted readership. Photos. <em>(Nov. 3)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>

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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>'If you like Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code, why are you even looking at this, you retard?' Jimmy Carr 'If you are suffocating in cosy Christmas cheer, this abrasively cynical, relentlessly misanthropic book might feel like a welcome faceful of ice-cold water straight out of the Clyde.' The Sunday Times 'Quite triumphantly, this is the most abusive, obscene, insulting memoir yet published!Many, many funny lines here. A difficult book to read sedately in public.' The Evening Standard 'He has a shocking, acid-tongued wit and his sharp observations make this one of the funniest autobiographies I've read.' The Sun 'an original mix of confession and stand-up monologue ! it's rather gratifying that it's outselling most of the books by more famous figures.' The Guardian 'a refreshing antidote to the usual feelgood books by TV stars.' The Independent 'My Shit Life So Far, showcases that cruel and unusual comedy that's become Frankie's trademark, and should probably be enjoyed far away from hot liquids! bizarre, intelligent and abusively hilarious.' <strong></strong> The List 'frequently funny.' Heat 'biting wit.' Independent on Sunday 'Fans of Boyle's dark style will hope this book provides laughs-a-plenty and an antidote to the play-it-safe, sickly sweet autobiographies of other so-called celebrities. They will not be disappointed.' Dave TV 'Only read this book in public if you have no qualms about blowing coffee through your nose in spurts of guilty laughter ! Punchier than a cage fighter, with more disclosures than an episode of Parky ! Addictive and expertly brutal.' Hotline </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Frankie's outrageous, laugh-out loud, cynical rant on life as he knows it is presented here in all its outrageous glory. From growing up in Pollockshaws, Glasgow—“it was an aching cement void, a slap in the face to childhood, and for the family it was a step up”—to his rampant teenage sex drive—“in those days if you glimpsed a nipple on T.V. it was like porn Christmas”—and first job working in a mental hospital, nothing is out of bounds. Outspoken, cynical, and always outrageous, Frankie Boyle, the dark heart of <em>Mock the Week</em>, says the unsayable as only he can. From the TV programs he would like to see made (“_Celebrities On Acid On Ice_—just like <em>Celebrities Dancing On Ice</em>, but with an opening sequence where Graham Norton hoses the celebrities down with liquid LSD”), to his native Scotland and the Mayor of London, nothing and no one is safe from Frankie's fearless, sharp-tongued assault. Sharply observed and full of taboo-busting, we-really-shouldn't-be-laughing-at-this humor, <em>My Shit Life So Far</em> shows why Frankie Boyle really is the blackest man in show business.</p>

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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Powers (The Man Who Kept the Secrets) details the rise and untimely fall of the Lakota's most famous warrior in this richly detailed, sensitive, and evenhanded portrayal. Little known before his stunning surprise victory over Custer's 7th Infantry at Little Bighorn, Crazy Horse (ca. 1840–1877) became the strongest opponent of white incursion on Indian land in the Black Hills, revered for his strategic brilliance and bravery. Opposed to any concessions that would remove his people from their land, Crazy Horse terrified the American military as well as those Indian leaders who considered cooperating with the U.S. government's demands. Drawing on firsthand accounts by soldiers and officers, settlers and Lakota, the author assembles a savvy analysis of the conflicting interests and worldviews at play, highlighting the cultural and political misunderstandings that led to the (most likely) accidental slaying of the Lakota leader as he surrendered to U.S. forces at Camp Robinson. Numerous conflicting versions of what happened in Crazy Horse's final minutes are handled with aplomb by the author, as is the warrior's shifting legacy in the decades after his death. (Nov.) (c) <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Despite the title, this beautifully written and absorbing work is less about the death of Crazy Horse and more about the personality and life of the Native American icon. It is also an insightful and scrupulously fair examination of the culture of Plains Indian bands and their interaction with advancing white civilization in the nineteenth century. Crazy Horse, from the Ogalala Lakota (Sioux) band, remains one the most revered but mysterious Native American leaders. As Powers reveals, even those who claimed to be his close friends found him to be a distant, enigmatic figure. To his credit, Powers does not attempt to unravel any mysteries of his subject’s persona. He explains Crazy Horse through his actions, and those actions seemed to constantly revolve around the incessant warfare that raged across the Great Plains during his lifetime. It seemed that he was most comfortable fighting, either against whites or against neighboring bands. As for his death at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, Powers accepts that it was the result of an inadvertent struggle, but he asserts that the U.S. Army had targeted him due to his apparent recalcitrance. --Jay Freeman </p></div>


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<h3>From</h3><p>Psychiatrists, counselors, and the like are in a unique position. They are in possession of incredibly interesting stories, yet the constraints of confidentiality and ethical concerns make sharing them difficult. Balancing the maintenance of privacy with the urge to tell—what are stories for, if not for sharing?—is a tricky matter. Small achieves that feat in this collection of “his most bizarre cases.” This is not a metaphor. While working a psychiatric ward shift as a new doctor, he is faced with an unresponsive client who is naked and standing on her head. Another client seems obsessed with having an arm amputated. A couple faces conflicting dreams and nightmares of a Disneyland wedding. Small’s stories cover the entire range of his more than 20-year career, from his fumbling attempts at looking professional with a client who is certain he’s trying to seduce her, to a recent encounter with a mentor who feels that his career has been a fraud. The stories are witty; the clients are treated respectfully, and the reader reaps the reward. --Matthew Tiffany </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>True stories are more bizarre than any fiction, and Dr. Gary Small knows this best. After thirty distinguished years of psychiatry and groundbreaking research on the human brain, Dr. Small has seen it all—now he is ready to open his office doors for the first time and tell all about the most mysterious, intriguing, and bizarre patients of his career. </p><p><em>The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head</em> is a spellbinding record of the doctor's most bewildering cases, from naked headstands and hysterical blindness to fainting schoolgirls and self-amputations. It is an illuminating journey into the mind of a practicing psychiatrist and his life in medicine as it evolves over time—a behind-the-scenes look at the field and a variety of mental diseases as they've never been seen or diagnosed before. You'll find yourself exploring the puzzling eccentricities that make us human. </p><p>Often funny, sometimes tragic, and always compelling, Dr. Small takes you on a tour of his career that moves from the halls of a crowded inner-city Boston emergency room to the multimillion-dollar ski lodges of the nation's elite. In between, Dr. Small introduces a strange cast of true-life characters and conditions, while dealing with mysterious hysterical blindness, a man convinced that his penis is shrinking, secret double lives, and frighteningly psychotic romantic desires. His career and personal life come full circle when his own mentor becomes his patient, making Small realize that no one is beyond mental exploration—not even himself. </p>


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>Each book includes a $15 gift card from DonorsChoose.org to give to a classroom in need.</strong></p><p>The American public school system is in crisis, failing millions of students, producing as many drop-outs as graduates, and threatening our economic future. By 2020, the United States will have 123 million high-skill jobs to fill—and fewer than 50 million Americans qualified to fill them.</p><p>Educators, parents, political leaders, business people, and concerned citizens are determined to save our educational system. Waiting for <em>"Superman"</em> offers powerful insights from some of those at the leading edge of educational innovation, including Bill and Melinda Gates, Michelle Rhee, Geoffrey Canada, and more.</p><p>Waiting for <em>"Superman"</em> is an inspiring call for reform and includes special chapters that provide resources, ideas, and hands-on suggestions for improving the schools in your own community as well as throughout the nation.</p><p>For parents, teachers, and concerned citizens alike, Waiting for <em>"Superman"</em> is an essential guide to the issues, challenges, and opportunities facing America’s schools.</p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>Karl Weber</strong> is a writer and editor based in New York. He collaborated with Muhammad Yunus on his bestseller <em>Creating a World Without Poverty</em> and has edited two previous Participant Media Guides, <em>Food, Inc.</em> and <em>Cane Toads and Other Rogue Species</em>.</p><p><strong>Davis Guggenheim</strong> is a critically acclaimed, Academy Award®-winning director and producer, whose work includes <em>It Might Get Loud</em>, the 2009 documentary featuring Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White; and <em>An Inconvenient Truth</em> featuring former Vice President Al Gore, which won the Oscar® for Best Documentary in 2007. More recently, Guggenheim directed Barack Obama's biographical film for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, as well as Obama's 30-minute primetime infomercial. Guggenheim has also directed many television series including <em>Deadwood</em>, <em>NYPD Blue</em>, and <em>24</em>.</p>

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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

He's the porn world's Everyman. Blessed with an enormous "talent" yet average looks, he's starred in more than 1,700 adult films, directed 250 of them, and over the last twenty years has become porn's biggest ambassador to the mainstream. He's appeared in 60 regular films, 14 music videos, and VH1's *Surreal Life*, starred in the critically acclaimed *Porn star* (a movie about his life), and in *Being Ron Jeremy* (a take off on *Being John Malkovich*), co-starring Andy Dick. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. . . .  

 Ron Jeremy is a born storyteller (funny, considering he doesn't do a lot of talking in his films). He knows where all the bodies are buried, and in this outrageous autobiography he not only shows you the grave but also gives you the back story on the tombstone. Get ready for *Ron Jeremy*—a scandalously entertaining deep insider's view of the porn industry and its emergence into popular culture, and a delectable self-portrait of the amazingly endowed Everyman every man wanted to be.


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>A vacation spot picked at random, Thailand is intended to provide relaxation for archaeologist Annja Creed. Yet the irresistible pull of the country's legendary Spirit Cave lures Annja and her companions deep within a network of underground chambers. Original.</p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The 16th Thomas and Charlotte Pitt mystery demonstrates Perry's trademark skill for enhancing well-designed mystery plots with convincing historical settings and cleverly drawn relationships among characters. In this outing, Pitt, last seen in Traitors Gate, tackles a case that could cost him his career. As it has been only two years since the unsolved Jack the Ripper murders, the Home Office anxiously anticipates the speedy arrest of the person who has murdered a Whitechapel prostitute with her own stocking. Finlay FitzJames, a young diplomat who is the son of a powerful merchant banker, is the prime suspect, even though the evidence against him is circumstantial: an old Hellfire Club badge, inscribed with Finlay's name, was found under the prostitute in bed, and cufflinks with his initials were discovered in the room. While Pitt grapples with this politically sensitive case, his sister-in-law, Emily Radley, makes friends with Finlay's younger sister, a social butterfly named Tallulah. Thanks to Pitt's diligence (and Emily's and Tallulah's meddling), the case is closed. Or so it seems until another very similar murder occurs. Whitechapel residents are terrified anew, Parliament is filled with grumblings, the Queen conveys her displeasure and newspaper reporters are turning the investigation into a case study in police incompetence and corruption. As Perry edges toward her surprise ending, she crafts her tale with elegance, narrative depth and gratifying scope. BOMC main selection. <br />Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Thomas and Charlotte Pitt take on Jack the Ripper in this latest in Perry's best-selling Victorian mystery series.<br />Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Secrets and lies, calumnies and evasions: in Anne Perry's Victorian mysteries, these elements, rather than a hat or gloves, a bustle or a watch fob, are the usual accoutrements of refined ladies and gentlemen. <em>Half Moon Street</em> marks the return of Inspector Thomas Pitt (20 novels now, beginning with __ and still going strong) to the cobblestoned streets and elegant drawing rooms of 19th-century London.</p><p>The inhabitants of those drawing rooms aren't usually thrilled to see him, because he always comes bearing bad news. This time, a body has turned up in a boat on the Thames: Delbert Cathcart, a talented portrait photographer with a taste for blackmail. Clad in a velvet dress, wrists manacled, legs spread grotesquely, skull crushed, Cathcart reminds Pitt of a perverse echo of the Lady of Shalott, or perhaps a debased Ophelia. Which of Cathcart's clients could have been pushed so far as to retaliate in such hideous fashion? </p><p>Pitt's official investigation is usually combined with another more idiosyncratic approach to the crime; this secondary analysis gives Perry free rein to dissect the manners and morals of Victorian society. In <em>Half Moon Street</em>, the genteel inquisition falls to Caroline Fielding, Charlotte's mother (Charlotte, who must need a bit of rest after so many outings, has been packed off to Paris for a vacation; her presence in the book is restricted to letters marveling, rather tediously, at the scandalous iniquities of the Moulin Rouge dance hall). Perry's readers will no doubt remember that Caroline scandalized society by marrying a much younger actor, Joshua. <em>Half Moon Street</em> introduces Caroline to his theatrical world, and to Cecily Antrim, a beautiful actress with liberal politics. Cecily poses both a personal and philosophical threat to Caroline, who is disturbed by her willingness to expose the realities of female sexuality on stage: "Should such things be said? Was there something indecent in the exposure of feelings so intimate? To know it herself was one thing, to realize that others also knew was quite different. It was being publicly naked rather than privately." This fear of exposure resonates through the worlds of theatrical and photographic art, as actors, diplomats, and genteel citizens race to hide their secrets from Pitt and Caroline.</p><p>While Perry evokes the London atmosphere with her usual skill, her narrative lacks its usual finesse. Rather than balancing Pitt's and Caroline's investigation, the novel lurches between them so that it seems all too often that Perry, in pursuit of one story, has forgotten the other. Additionally, Caroline's reaction to feminist politics and sexuality is inexplicably repetitive; her turgid expressions of horror seem the result of an overly eager copy-and-paste procedure. One hopes that this is a momentary lapse in an otherwise solid series. <em>--Kelly Flynn</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Set in Oscar Wilde's London in 1891, Perry's new Thomas Pitt mystery is all about the importance of being earnest. Superintendent Pitt is summoned to the Thames when police discover the body of a young man dressed in a torn green velvet gown, manacled to a punt, "in parody of ecstasy and death." At first it seems the victim is Henri Bonnard, a functionary in the French embassy; eventually, Pitt and dour sidekick Sergeant Tellman identify the body as Delbert Cathcart, a gifted photographer. Was there a connection between Cathcart and lookalike Bonnard? Why was Cathcart's body arranged in that disturbing "feminine pose," which Perry repeatedly describes as a "mockery" of paintings of the Lady of Shallot and Ophelia? Meanwhile, Pitt's mother-in-law, Caroline Fielding, recently married to an actor 17 years her junior, blushes and stammers as her husband and his theater friends expound on Ibsen. While she's clarifying her views on the irresponsibility of pornography, Caroline spends long hours entertaining Samuel Ellison, her late husband's American half-brother, who tearfully recounts his nation's history ("I watched the white man strengthen and the red man die"). For a grandma, Caroline is an oddly jejune character, and her moralistic musings overwhelm the mystery plot, which stagnates early on. What's clearly intended to be intellectually challenging comes across as silly and pretentious. There's even a pub scene in which Wilde himself witlessly pontificates, and "a pale young Irishman addressed by his fellows as Yeats, stare[s] moodily into the distance." 15-city author tour; audio rights to Random House Audio. (Apr..<br /><em>- moodily into the distance." 15-city author tour; audio rights to Random House Audio. (Apr.) </em><br />Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Victorian socialites Thomas and Charlotte Pitt investigate the murders of two London aristocrats in this 15th installment in Perry's popular historical mystery series.<br />Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Recent revelations about Perry's past--as a young girl in Australia, she was convicted of killing her best friend's mother--will generate additional hype for her newest book, another entry in her popular Thomas and Charlotte Pitt mystery series. The book hit stores early--no doubt to capitalize on the "convicted murderess" brouhaha--and has been chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection. But Perry is not just some flash-in-the-pan writer whose publicists decided to take advantage of a media scoop. To fans of the historical mystery, she's one of the masters of the genre. Her latest story, set as usual in turn-of-the-century London, has Inspector Thomas Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, investigating the mysterious death of Thomas' mentor, Sir Arthur Desmond. The death has been ruled a suicide, but Sir Arthur's son is convinced his father was murdered for attempting to expose treason in the Colonial Office. Thomas and Charlotte begin to suspect that the nefarious Inner Circle, a group of highly influential but dangerously corrupt men, may be responsible for the killing. Perry's fascinating details of Victorian social customs, dress, language, politics, and behavior plus her usual engrossing plot virtually guarantee the success of another fine entry in an outstanding series. <em>Emily Melton</em></p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>After a less-than-impressive outing with the more-turgid-than-tense <em>Half Moon Street</em>, Anne Perry is back on familiar--and entertaining-- turf with <em>The Whitechapel Conspiracy</em>. As if apologizing for their last efforts, the whole Victorian crew seems thankfully less concerned with respecting social mores than with ratcheting up the pressure in a nicely paced political-conspiracy potboiler. </p><p>For Inspector Thomas Pitt, doing one's job can have unpleasant consequences. When his testimony sends distinguished soldier John Adinett to the gallows for the murder of Martin Fetters, traveler and antiquarian, Adinett's friends (members of the Inner Circle, "those men who had secret loyalties which superseded every other honor or pledge") ensure that Pitt loses his command of the Bow Street station. He is forced to leave his family and take up an undercover existence in the slum district of Spitalfields, chasing anarchists (though he feels he might as well be chasing his own tail). But when his wife, Charlotte, their maid, Gracie, and her would-be suitor, Sergeant Tellman, apply themselves to the task of restoring Pitt's good name, they uncover an anarchist's conspiracy that dwarfs even Guy Fawkes's Gunpowder Plot. The secrets and lies of respected men lurking in the halls of power, who will stop at nothing short of abolishing the monarchy, form the backdrop for the trio's frantic investigations. To top everything off, Perry throws in a marvelously effective subplot--but to divulge how Jack the Ripper figures into the narrative would be to spoil a highly entertaining read.</p><p>The novel has its flaws; Charlotte's great-aunt Vespasia seems less the dynamic character she has been throughout the series than a mouthpiece of mourning for the waves of change. Yes, the reader is tempted to say, the potential downfall of the British monarchy would no doubt be painful and unspeakably unsettling for those who respect Victoria and her forebears--but must one natter endlessly on about it? Better to let the whole shebang go gracefully into that good night. No fears for contemporary Victorian-philes, though; with Thomas and Charlotte around, who could doubt that the monarchy will live to fight another day? <em>--Kelly Flynn</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In her 21st novel featuring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, Edgar Award-winner Perry pulls out the stops and delivers one of the finest performances of her career. Four years after the Ripper terrorized London, Thomas's testimony in a murder case is enough to convince a jury to convict distinguished soldier John Adinett of the murder of his friend, Martin Fetters, despite Adinett's having no clear motive for the killing. Upon conclusion of the case, Thomas finds himself removed from command of the Bow Street Station and sent to work undercover for the Special Branch in the East End. Somehow, unknowingly, he has offended the powerful members of the sinister Inner Circle, and his banishment to the slums puts him in the middle of alleged anarchist plots and dangerous conspiracies. His only allies are his wife, Charlotte, their servant girl, Gracie, and his subordinate officer, Tellman. As a team, they dig into the puzzle behind the Adinett-Fetters murder, believing that, if they can understand why the murder occurred, they can restore Pitt to his job. What none of them realize, however, is that the murder is only a small part of a terrifying conspiracy, one that threatens the very fabric of English society. That the conspiracy itself is so plausible is a testament to Perry's knowledge of her period. This is a mesmerizing and suspenseful tale, rich in period detail, rife with articulate and believable characters. (Feb. 1) <br />Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Thomas Pitt prefers the grim routine of murder investigations to the riskier probing of Victorian governmental intrigues. Yet Anne Perry's <em>Southampton Row</em> again finds him displaced from his police command, this time to foil the political ambitions of a ruthless republican.</p><p>Charles Voisey, leader of a powerful secret society known as the Inner Circle, was defeated by Pitt when he tried (in __) to abolish the British monarchy. Only months later, though, he's back on top, running for a seat in Parliament. Under the auspices of the newly created Special Branch, Pitt is charged with learning whether Voisey has any "unguarded vulnerabilities." The odds against Pitt succeeding are high; Voisey may be "shallow, self-important [and] condescending," but he impresses voters as more charismatic and less controversial than his opponent, Aubrey Serracold, who's also hobbled by his connection to the recent slaying of a popular spiritualist. While Pitt's wife, Charlotte, and their family are safely out of London on vacation, Pitt, aided by the gruff but dogged Inspector Samuel Tellman, his politically astute sister-in law, and Charlotte's resourceful great-aunt Vespasia, seeks to solve the medium's murder before it can derail Aubrey Serracold's campaign.</p><p>Perry expertly portrays the volatile British political climate of the 1890s, and by making Pitt and Tellman rivals in their investigation, she further illuminates both men's characters. However, <em>Southampton Row</em> reduces the usually intrepid Charlotte to a hand-wringing irrelevance, and the novel feels too much like an intermediate and inconclusive chapter in a longer story arc. Like Holmes and Moriarty, Thomas Pitt and Charles Voisey appear destined to grapple once more. <em>--J. Kingston Pierce</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>HNewcomers to Perry's series about Victorian police officer Thomas Pitt might be baffled by all the backstory from 2001's The Whitechapel Conspiracy in this 22nd entry, but loyal fans should hit the ground reading. Bounced from his beloved job as superintendent at the Bow Street cop shop in the political backlash of the plot against Queen Victoria that he and his aristocratic wife, Charlotte, uncovered in that last book, Pitt not only has to work for the sneaky Victor Narraway of Special Branch but must also give up a much-deserved vacation with his family to look into the murder of a society spiritualist in London's Southampton Row. It seems that Charles Voisey, head of a secret society called the Inner Circle and the man whom the Pitts stopped from coming this close to turning England into a republic (with himself as president), is now running for Parliament as a Tory against a promising Liberal candidate, Aubrey Serracold. Voisey shouldn't stand a chance unless Serracold's wife, one of the murdered medium's clients, really did knock her off. Since Charlotte spends virtually all of the book on Dartmoor, her place in the investigation is ably filled by her sister, Emily, married to another up-and-coming Liberal. As ever, excellent craftsmanship sets this series in the front rank of historical mysteries. (Mar. 1)Forecast: A 15-city author tour, national print and radio advertising as well as a sample chapter in the mass market edition of The Whitechapel Conspiracy (Jan.) should help ensure another run up bestseller lists.</p><p>Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</p>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett returns in this third adventure in C.J. Box's tough, tender, and engrossing series, which just keeps getting better. When a forest service supervisor is murdered right after a manic shooting spree that slaughtered a herd of elk, a mysterious stranger who trains falcons and carries an unusual weapon is arrested for the slaying. Then a special investigative team headed by a devious, vindictive woman arrives in Saddlestring, bent on a bloody confrontation with a group of government-hating survivalists camped out on federal land. Among then is Jeannie Keeley, who abandoned her daughter April three years earlier. Since then, April has become like a daughter to Joe and his wife Marybeth, and a sister to their own children. Now April is right in the middle of what promises to be the last stand for the ragged band of refugees from the firestorms of Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Montana Freemen, and only Nate the falconer, who owes Joe his life for finding the real killer of the supervisor and freeing him from jail, may be able to save her before the Bighorn Mountains are covered in blood. A tense, taut thriller marked by lyrical renderings of the harsh, beautiful landscape, <em>Winterkill</em>'s subtext, as in Box's previous novels, is the conflict between individual rights and freedoms and governmental power that continues to smolder in the towns and valleys of the American west. <em>--Jane Adams</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett runs into trouble again in Box's third fast-paced novel (after Open Season and Savage Run), which focuses on the conflict between parental custody and foster care, as well as the growth of "independent nation" cults. As usual, Pickett, though fallible, is the voice of reason and honesty amid a cacophony of greed and evil. During a horrendous blizzard, he finds the body of Lamar Gardiner, "the District Supervisor for the Twelve Sleep National Forest," pinned by arrows to a tree, near seven illegally shot elk. Sheriff "Bud" Barnum suspects a band of misfits, the Sovereign Citizens, which is camping in the forest, among them Jeannie Keeley, the birth mother of the Picketts' foster daughter, April. Pickett suspects locals killed the combative Gardiner. Soon, the little town of Saddlestring is swarming with press, as well as U.S. Forest Service bureaucrats, including the psychotic Melinda Strickland, and two vicious FBI agents. When Pickett learns of a plan to raid the encampment, he resolves to warn the Sovereigns, especially since Jeannie has April there. Box's description of the harsh yet splendid Wyoming landscape is vivid and memorable, his handling of complex social issues evenhanded and unsentimental. But most of his characters tend to be either two-dimensional villains or saints, and in each book the life of a member of Pickett's family is threatened. Box needs to develop more believable characters to realize his potential as an outstanding new talent. <br>Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p><em>Starred Review.</em> When four environmental activists employed by Yellowstone Park are murdered in an isolated area, the Wyoming governor sends outspoken Joe Pickett, fired in his last outing, <em>In Plain Sight</em> (2006), from the state's game and fish department, to investigate in Anthony-winner Box's absorbing seventh crime novel, his best yet. Helped by astute park ranger Judy Demming and his antisocial pal, falconer Nate Romanowski, Joe gradually connects the murders to competition for bio-mining rights in Yellowstone's hot springs. Joe's often harassed family is on the sidelines, except for a startling appearance by his long-estranged father. Box skillfully weaves ominous scientific phenomena and legal loopholes peculiar to Yellowstone into his story of corruption, greed and deception. The author vividly evokes Yellowstone's natural beauty, but the book's real power emanates from Pickett's (and Box's) passion for preserving the wilderness and stopping those who would cynically destroy it. <em>(May)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> Box set the standards so high with his Joe Pickett series that, once in a while, he's had a hard time getting over the bar himself, as with <em>In Plain Sight</em> (2006), where he just tripped it with his toe. In <em>ree Fire</em>, however, he gets over cleanly. Pickett, having been fired as a game warden, is working as foreman of his father-in-law's ranch when Wyoming's loose-cannon governor, Spencer Rulon, reinstates him--not to work his old district but to investigate, without official support, a crime in Yellowstone National Park. A lawyer has found a legal loophole that allows him to kill four campers and walk away scot-free, enraging Rulon. (A remote, uninhabited part of the park, soon dubbed the "Zone of Death," has murky jurisdiction and no residents to form a jury.) But, sure as Pickett is hard on government vehicles, there's something even more sinister than a twisted legal mind behind the murders. Box is a master at working New West issues into his stories--here it's something called biomining--exploring pro and con arguments without missing a storytelling beat. And, mining series gold, he's forged a perfect alloy of familiar and fresh. Though Joe's far out in no-man's-land, as professionally on his own as he's ever been, the family man's moral compass is as strong as ever. And setting the action in the bubbling Yellowstone caldera--which could blow sky high any minute, we're told--is a masterstroke, lending both urgency and the long view to the proceedings. Once again, recommended for practically everybody. <em>Keir Graff</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>When an elk hunter is shot and gruesomely gutted in Box's solid eighth Joe Pickett novel (after 2007's <em>Free Fire</em>), Wyoming governor Spencer Rulon assigns Joe to the investigative team headed by Joe's nemesis, game and fish director Randy Pope. The authorities suspect a group led by antihunting activist Klamath Moore, but Joe thinks an enigmatic clue near the body points to a serial killer. As usual, Joe stands alone against official protocol, placing his career and life in peril by following his hunches. He persuades Rulon to release his pal, iconoclast Nate Romanowski, who's awaiting trial on spurious charges, to help him on the case. Writing beautifully about the mountain West and its people, Box takes care to present both sides of the controversial issue of hunting. The narrative alternates between the searchers and the killer, whose identity will keep readers guessing up to the surprising climax. <em>Author tour. (May)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> In January, Box branched out from his popular Joe Pickett series with a stand-alone thriller, Blue Heaven (2008). His publisher for that book seems to be pushing him toward a broader audience—even ditching his familiar black Stetson in the author photo. Longtime fans might have wondered whether Pickett would soon be an also-ran. But there’s no need to worry just yet. Although Blood Trail is a mite slimmer than its predecessors (two books a year will do that to a writer), Box is clearly still comfortable in the saddle. And his game warden—now a special agent reporting directly to the governor—is still as dogged on the trail as he is hard on government-issued vehicles. There’s a little less family time for Joe, but there are some interesting developments in his friendship with the enigmatic Nate Romanowski. Joe needs Nate’s help and some luck besides, because it’s elk season, and someone is hunting elk hunters. And with a flamboyant anti-hunting activist coming to town with his supporters, it’s looking like another classic standoff: implacable ideologues on both sides and a pondering Pickett caught in the middle. Box always addresses a New West issue, but there’s something great about the way he’s waited until the eighth installment to tackle the one that would seem most obvious, given his hero’s occupation. We prefer Box with the cowboy hat, but whether hatted or bareheaded, he continues to be red hot—and now there’s twice as much of him to go around. --Keir Graff </p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Personal tragedies affect almost everyone involved in Faletti's well-constructed serial killer novel set in glitzy Monte Carlo. FBI agent Frank Ottobre is recovering in Monaco from his wife's death by visiting his friend police commissioner Nicolas Hulot when the first deaths occur, of an American race car driver and the celebrated driver's chess champion girlfriend. Ottobre is soon drawn into a baffling case where the killer goads police with untraceable phone calls to Jean-Loup Verdier, the principality's most popular radio host, before each murder. As the victim count mounts, so does the suspense in this fine cat-and-mouse game of skill and subtlety. A smooth translation and several intriguing subplots, one of which features a powerful American general intent on vigilante justice, keep the pace moving briskly, despite the unusual length. First published in Italy in 2002, this winning novel marks Milan-based publisher Baldini Castoldi Dalai's entry into the U.S. market. <em>(June)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>A best-seller across Europe, Italian author Faletti’s first novel is a top-notch thriller. Monte Carlo, in Monaco, is supposed to be one of the safest places on earth, with a police force more concerned with paparazzi than with homicide, but that all changes when a mystery man calls a popular radio show. The next day two faceless bodies are discovered, along with I kill written in blood. The substantial cast of characters that assembles to find the killer is led by Frank, a former FBI agent; Frank’s best friend, Nicholas, the police commissioner; and the charismatic DJ Jean-Loup Verdier. All the characters are fully fleshed and three-dimensional, which makes the use of multiple viewpoints particularly enjoyable. The dialogue and narration could have been a little tighter, but Faletti manages to pull it off, maintaining a good pace and masterfully building tension through 600 pages, a clear sign of a major new talent. This one will appeal not only to devotees of European crime fiction but also to thriller fans in general. --Jessica Moyer </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Bradbury's first collection since the quasi-definitive Stories is a very mixed bag, including, along with the charming and the moving stories, some of the author's weakestfrail conceits feebly decked out in the same stylistic knick-knacks Bradbury has been pulling from his well-used trunk for the past 35 years. Storytelling itself is the theme of a number of these short narratives; Bradbury understands that a primary function of fiction is to act as a guidepost back to the emotional richness of childhood and adolescence. In "On the Orient, North" a ghost, at the point of dissipation, rejuvenates itself by telling scary winter's tales to a group of children. In "Banshee" a screenwriter and a director tell each other disturbing cautionary talesone narrator, to the other's misfortune, is not making it up. The fey souls in "The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair" find their relationship cannot withstand a little hard reality. The title story concerns a man who claims to have traveled into the future and declares that there the world's problems have been resolved. He produces documentation of his claims and lives to see the realization of his vision, even though a vision is all it is. The documentation turns out to be fabrications, but the hope it had inspired allows mankind to bring about its own salvation. The fiction creates the truth in this lovely exercise in utopian dreaming. 30,000 first printing; BOMC alternate. <br />Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>An old woman learns what it truly means to believe in ghosts in "On the Orient, North"; another woman discovers a mysterious "Trapdoor" in a house she has occupied for years; and an old man attempts to change his own past in "A Touch of Petulance" in this new collection of 23 stories by one of sf's grand masters. Simplicity and warmth shine through even the weaker stories as the author continues to focus his sights on the elusive human heart. Recommended for sf and fantasy collections. BOMC alternate. JC<br />Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Even if you prefer the tougher, edgier William Monk books by Anne Perry, such as __, there's no denying the wealth of detail and the powerful emotions at work in her longer series of Victorian murder mysteries featuring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt. The Pitt books effectively merge Henry James with Raymond Chandler: by having a middleclass policeman married to a socialite, Perry can probe both worlds, as she does in <em>Bedford Square</em>, a story of high-level blackmail and murder.</p><p>A famous historical scandal called the Tranby Croft affair (a gambling case involving the Prince of Wales) is very much in the news when the body of a working-class man is found early one morning on the posh doorstep of General Brandon Balantyne. No one in the house claims to know the murdered man, but he has a valuable piece of jewelry belonging to the Balantynes in his pocket. Thomas Pitt and his outspoken aide, Sergeant Tellman, must tread lightly, but Charlotte--and especially her sharp relative Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould--aren't restrained by such social niceties. Gracie, the Pitts' smart and rough-tongued maid, is also a valued asset to the investigation, which proceeds in a satisfying, if not particularly surprising, manner to a highly dramatic conclusion. </p><p>Other recent books in the Pitt series include __, <strong>, and </strong>. <em>--Dick Adler</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>History, social commentary and suspense blend artfully in this 19th installment (after Brunswick Gardens, 1998) in Perry's popular series featuring London Police Superintendent Thomas Pitt and his adventurous wife, Charlotte. The mystery arises when a body is found outside the home of respectable General Brandon Balantyne (who appeared in two earlier Pitt novels). Pitt and Sergeant Tellman, whose class prejudices are challenged during the investigation, are mystified by the body's identity and the motive for the murder. Their diggings lead them to a parallel case, when Pitt discovers that six honorable men, including Balantyne and Assistant Police Commissioner Cornwallis, are being blackmailed. Perry uses the historical Tranby Croft gambling scandal involving the Prince of Wales as backdrop, highlighting how even the imputation of wrongdoing can tarnish someone's good name. To find the blackmailer, Pitt seeks a common bond among the accused. The careful reader may spy that link before Pitt does, but will nonetheless be swept along by the narrative's rush and engaged by its attention to period detail. Aiding Pitt is a cast of smart, well-drawn female characters: Charlotte, whose social connections afford her access to society's upper crust; Gracie, the Pitts' uneducated but no-nonsense maid; and Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, Charlotte's worldly-wise relation, who dominates the narrative once she joins the investigation. Pitt solves the case based on a clever red herring, uncovering the murderer in a quick, horrifying finale. Yet again, Perry delivers an astute and gripping examination of life behind Victorian England's virtuous facade. Mystery Guild main selection; author tour. <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>While bestseller Perry doesn't offer much of a puzzle in her seventh Christmas-themed Victorian historical (after 2008's <em>A Christmas Grace</em>), she does a highly credible job of evoking Dickens, especially in the opening scenes set in Whitechapel. As the 1883 holiday season nears in London's East End, 13-year-old Gracie Phipps, a supporting character in Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series (_Buckingham Palace Gardens_, etc.), encounters a woebegone younger child, Minnie Maude Mudway, on the mean streets of her neighborhood. Minnie is looking for a missing donkey, Charlie, which belonged to her beloved uncle Alf. The animal disappeared the day before, around the same time Alf, a bone-and-rag dealer, was killed. The two girls turn detective in an effort to find Charlie as well as the truth about how Alf died. Mr. Balthasar, a shopkeeper who assists in the sleuthing, lends an appealing Holmesian touch. <em>(Nov.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Anne Perry’s Victorian Christmas novels have attracted as many faithful readers as her two_ New York Times_ bestselling series featuring investigators Thomas Pitt and William Monk.<strong> A Christmas Promise</strong> is the seventh in Perry’s holiday series, and it will surely bring joy to this special season.  </p><p>Three days before Christmas, in the freezing slums of London’s East End, thirteen-year-old Gracie Phipps encounters Minnie Maude Mudway, who is only eight, alone, and determined to find her friend Charlie.  </p><p>However Charlie is no ordinary companion: He is a donkey who belonged to Minnie Maude’s Uncle Alf. Gracie is shocked to learn that only the day before, someone brutally murdered Uncle Alf and made off with his rag-and-bones cart and the beloved beast who pulled it. Now, come hell or high water, Minnie Maude means to rescue Charlie–and Gracie decides to help. But the path that Uncle Alf had taken to his death was not his regular route, and in his cart were not just the usual bits of worn silver and china but also, the children are told, a dazzling golden box. What its contents may have been no one can say, for, like Charlie and the cart, it too has vanished.  </p><p>Uncertain where their four-legged friend may be, the children are drawn into an adult world far beyond their innocent imaginings. And in a shop gleaming with beautiful objects, they recruit an unexpected ally: Mr. Balthasar, who warns them that the shining prize may be a Pandora’s box of evil.  </p><p>Set in the Victorian world where Anne Perry reigns supreme, <strong>A Christmas Promise </strong>culminates in a radiant finale that will remain with you long after the final page is turned. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Teran's cinematic fifth novel portrays the 1910 Mexican revolution via the gun sights of an unlikely duo: Rawbone, a hardened smalltime assassin, and John Lourdes, a Bureau of Investigation agent. The two are thrown together when Rawbone is caught smuggling munitions from Texas into Mexico and Rawbone's lawyer arranges a deal: immunity in exchange for Rawbone sharing his criminal intel. A bargain is struck, with Lourdes assigned to accompany Rawbone into the Mexican underground. The twist: Lourdes, unknown to everyone but himself, is Rawbone's son. As the two men make their way through a snake's nest of smugglers, thugs and professional killers, Lourdes must suppress the angst he feels toward his father and focus on surviving another day. While this bit of dramatic irony quickly wears thin, father and son share a sharp wit, cunning instinct and thirst for adventure that make this spy mission the very definition of a thrill. Teran's fast-paced prose reads like it was written for the big screen (Universal scooped up the film rights), and even if the moralizing about U.S. foreign intervention gets heavy-handed, this remains an intelligent page-turner. <em>(Nov.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>Praise for <em>The Creed of Violence</em>:  </p><p>"Boston Teran's The Creed of Violence is a terrific story and beautifully written. It works as a story about imperialism, and it's also a touching tale of fathers, sons and one very bad man's attempts at regeneration. But most of all it's exciting and tense and you'll probably read it, as I did, in one great sitting." —Robert Ward, author of <em>Red Baker</em> and <em>Four Kinds of Rain</em>  </p><p>“Teran’s considerable skills sneakily transform his characters, who use language like a concealed weapon. His Rawbone, a raconteur straddling the gutter between the old West and belle époque, is a Manila line braided with wit, cold-blooded efficiency, and a surprisingly expansive soul—a romantic cynic too wise to misinterpret derision for insight. The hallucinogenic epic he traverses with young John Lourdes produces one of the most exciting literary pairings since Fagin met Twist.” —Todd Field  </p><p>Praise for <em>God Is a Bullet</em>:  </p><p>“Ranks with Joan Didion’s <em>The White Album</em> . . . and John Ford’s classic film <em>The Searchers</em>.” —_The San Francisco Examiner_  </p><p>“A millennial morality play . . . that might well have been written by William Blake [and] James Ellroy . . . if they’d all sat around with a few gallons of absinthe.” —_Dallas Morning Herald_  </p><p>Praise for <em>Never Count Out the Dead</em>:  </p><p>“Cements Teran’s talent as a . . . virtuoso.” —_Publishers Weekly_  </p>


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>'Karin Alvtegen in brilliant shape ... I read without stopping and with mounting excitement to see how Karin Alvtegen will tie it all together in the end. As the pro she is, she manages to to do just that, and the story builds up towards its dramatic and entirely unexpected denouement ... Karin Alvtegen's new novel offers nearly four hundred pages of pure suspense.' Jonkopings-Posten </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>In a nondescript apartment block in Stockholm, most of the residents are elderly. Usually a death is a sad but straightforward event. But sometimes a resident will die and there are no friends or family to contact. This is when Marianne Folkesson arrives, employed by the state to close up a life with dignity and respect. Gerda Persson has lain dead in her apartment for three days before Marianne is called. When she arrives, she finds the apartment tidy and ordered. Gerda's life seems to have been quite ordinary. Until Marianne opens the freezer and finds it full of books, neatly stacked and wrapped in clingfilm, a thick layer of ice covering them. They are all by Axel Ragnerfeldt, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, with handwritten dedications to Gerda from the author. What story do these books have to tell, about Gerda, and more importantly about Ragnerfeldt, a man whose fame is without precedent in the nation's cultural life, but seldom gives interviews? </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p><em>Starred Review.</em> Bestseller Connelly's dazzling 13th Harry Bosch novel (after 2006's <em>Echo Park</em>) reunites Bosch with his former flame, FBI agent Rachel Walling. Bosch must break in a new partner, rookie Iggy Ferras, when they're called to look into the execution of physicist Stanley Kent on a Mulholland Drive overlook. When a special FBI unit, headed by Walling, arrives and tries to usurp his case, claiming it's a matter of national security, Bosch refuses to back down. Walling's focus on the potential theft of radioactive material from the hospital where Kent was lending his expertise to cancer treatment and her unwillingness to share information only make Bosch more determined to solve the case. This is a quick read, almost half the length of Connelly's previous novels, but he spares no punches when it comes to complexity and suspense. The scramble to investigate threats to national security, justified or otherwise, is a timely subject and one on which Connelly puts a brilliant new spin. <em>(May 22)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Michael Connelly originally published <em>The Overlook </em>as a serialized novella in the <em>New York Times Magazine</em>; the 16 sections contained 3,000 words each. Although expanded to novel form, <em>The Overlook</em> weighs in as a good, if slim (and perhaps, as a few critics claim, slight), addition to the Harry Bosch series. For the most part, the novel succeeds in maintaining Connelly's trademark fast-paced action, plot twists, suspense, and spare, humorous writing-all over the course of 12 hours. Some reviewers cited tired characters, dull romance, a bizarre time frame, and plotting missteps, but for followers of Harry Bosch, <em>The Overlook </em>is a worthy addition.<br /><em>Copyright © 2004 Phillips &amp; Nelson Media, Inc.</em></p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>An incendiary page turner.-Janet Maslin, New York Times on <em>City of Bones</em>  </p><p>"A Spartan saga of good and evil"-Cathy Burke, <em>People</em> (Book of the Week)  </p><p>"The most talented of crime writers."—_The New Yorker_  </p><p>"A taut minidrama in which even minor characters . . . play standout roles that burn with conviction."-Marilyn Stasio, <em>New York Times Book Review</em> on <em>City of Bones</em>  </p><p>"Harry [Bosch] is a Chandlerian knight errant: tough, shrewd, and principled enough to pursue the truth despite formidable opposition."—_Booklist_  </p><p>"Connelly diabolically teases readers while scaring the hell out of them"—_Kirkus Reviews _  </p><p>"I've left many 'page-turners' unfinished, but I finished <em>Chasing the Dime</em>—and then read it all over again. In fact, I can't tell you what I would pay for a bookshelf full of thrillers like this one."—_Time Out New York_</p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>THE LAST COYOTE: LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch is suspended from the force for attacking his commanding officer. Unable to remain idle, he investigates the long-unsolved murder of a Hollywood prostitute-his mother. TRUNK MUSIC:Harry returns to the force to investigate the murder of a movie producer with Mafia ties.Up against both the LAPD's organized crime unit and the Mob, Harry follows the money trail to Las Vegas, where the case becomes personal. ANGELS FLIGHT:The murder of a prominent attorney who made his career suing the police for racism and brutality lands Harry's friends and associates on the list of suspects-and he must work closely with longtime enemies suspicious of his maverick ways to investigate them. </p>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>After a literally explosive opening where sniper fire cuts through the chest of an unnamed victim (Swagger?), readers of <em>Time to Hunt</em> are plunged into the final years of the Vietnam War and the struggles of Marine Donny Fenn. Stationed in Washington, D.C., after recovering from a nearly mortal wound, Fenn is asked to spy on Marines who may have ties to the peace movement. What Donny quickly learns, however, is that his Navy superiors are more interested in framing <em>somebody</em> than they are in finding the truth. In this first section, readers waiting to discover the outcome of the assassination and glimpse Bob "The Nailer" Swagger will instead be swept away by Hunter's vivid painting of the divided loyalties and torn identities that plagued soldiers and citizens in the early 1970s.</p><p>But all of this action is only a prelude to Donny's subsequent relationship with Swagger in Vietnam. Hunter fleshes out the mythology that he began to create in </p><p>The last two sections cut to contemporary events and find Swagger married to Donny's former love, Julie. Slowly, the events of the first half of the book begin to merge with Swagger's present history and stories that readers will recognize from Hunter's earlier novels. Swagger uncovers a deep connection between the Vietnam demonstrations of the 1970s, the predatory work of the CIA, and the killer who is after him and his family now. Nothing is as it first seems, and readers of <em>--Patrick O'Kelley</em></p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>When a sniper shoots a man in the mountains of Idaho and wounds the woman who is with him, it is not an isolated incident but the deliberate culmination of events that began during the Vietnam War. Bob Lee Swagger, who was a Marine sniper in Vietnam known as "Bob for the Nailer" for his lethal shooting, at first believes that he was the gunman's intended target. The wounded woman is his wife and the widow of his wartime comrade, Donny Fenn. Donny had been killed by a Russian sniper assigned the task of neutralizing Bob, or so Bob had always believed. But now it seems possible that Donny might have been the main target all those years ago and that it is Donny's widow that the sniper has come to kill, not Bob. Both a gripping war novel and a complex thriller coiled around the convoluted intrigues of the supposedly concluded Cold War, this is page-turning entertainment that will delight action adventure readers.?Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, MA<br>Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Hunter ( The Spanish Gambit ) has written a smoothly believable race-against-time thriller with frightening plausibility. Unidentified military terrorists kidnap welder Jack Hummel from his Maryland home and direct him to cut through a block of titanium to reach a launch key in the South Mountain MX missile site. The president decides to send in the crack Delta assault team, but the man best suited to command them is Col. Dick Puller, who was discredited and disgraced in Iran in 1979. Puller, in turn, must work with the only man who knows the missile silo, its designer, Prof. Peter Thiokol. The leader of "Aggressor-One" is discovered to be Russian Military Intelligence chief Arkady Pashin: he is charismatic, reactionary and messianically determined to launch the single MX that will trigger a massive Soviet reply. Part of the fast-moving plot revolves around two abandoned coalmine tunnels, a stupid Russian spy and Thiokol's estranged wife, who unwittingly gave the Russians the plans for South Mountain. The 7 a.m.-to-midnight action flashes cinematically on Delta Force, the crack Russian Spetsnaz troops and various civilians. The book is fun, even if the finale is too drawn-out and a bit preachy: " . . . the regular people, the Rest of US" will save us. 40,000 first printing; $40,000 ad budget. <br />Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Paramilitary terrorists who have taken over a top-secret nuclear complex kidnap Maryland welder Jack Hummel and force him to cut through a half-ton titanium block that conceals the launch button. Reissue. <em>NYT. </em></p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>Originally published as <em>The Spanish Gambit</em>  </p><p>Some came for love. Others for money. In a country ripped apart by war, each will find a way to live--or die...  </p><p>"Brilliant."<br />--Tom Clancy  </p><p>"Constantly surprising."<br />--_The Washington Post_  </p><p>"Hunter is a deft craftsman with a sure sense of pace and scene."<br />--_The Washington Post_  </p><p>"Stephen Hunter is the best writer of straight-out thrillers working today."<br />--_Rocky Mountain News_ (Denver, Colo.) </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Stephen Hunter has chosen the backdrop of the chaotic and cruel Spanish Civil War to weave a classic tale of espionage and counterespionage. Julian Raines was one of the first Englishmen to volunteer for the international brigade in Spain. The British Secret Service suspect that the flamboyant Raines was recruited for the KGB by the Bolsheviks during his student days at Oxford and send Robert Florry, a struggling young writer to Spain after Raines with orders to eliminate him. Florry was an old school chum to Raines and had every reason to hate him. The British are not alone on Raines' trail. The ruthless Communist leader in Barcelona believes that the identity of the double agent conceals a powerful and profitable secret. It is a novel that constantly surprises. </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>In this brilliant first thriller, in the vein of Peter James, a killer goes on the rampage in a quiet Sussex village, leaving only one witness a woman fighting for her life. On a cold January morning, a nightmare awaits a small Sussex village. A deranged young man goes on the rampage, shooting everyone in his path before taking his own life. It is a senseless, tragic event, but sadly not an unfamiliar one. At least, that's what everyone thinks. Only Julia Trent believed to be the sole survivor knows that there was a second man involved. But after being shot and badly injured, her account of the massacre is ignored. But she cannot let it rest there. Together with Craig Walker, the journalist son of one of the victims, Julia sets out to find the truth. As they peel back the layers of a dark and dangerous conspiracy, they discover the slaughter didn't begin on that bitter day in January. And worst of all, it won't end there.</p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Here is the novel that started it all, launching the <strong>cyberpunk</strong> generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: <em>Neuromancer</em>, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace--and science fiction has never been the same. </p><p>Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway--jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way--and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance--and a cure--for a price.... </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Neuromancer is a fitting commemoration of the tenth anniversary of publication of Gibson's Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel. The text is abridged, read by the author, and enhanced with music, sound effects, and other audio engineering. The plot contains sex, drugs, black market body parts, virtual reality, electronic relationships, pleasure palaces, murder, mayhem, cloned assassins, and intrigue in cyberspace, with nary a virtual nice guy in the mix. Wow! There's just enough time to take a deep breath between cassettes, as the listener is bombarded with strong language, tumultuous violence, and compelling imagery. Terrific stuff. Gibson's horrifying vision of our terrible headlong rush to nowhere is a must for science fiction and adult fiction collections.<br /><em>Cliff Glaviano, Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., Ohio</em><br />Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>The first of William Gibson's usually futuristic novels to be set in the present, <em>Pattern Recognition</em> is a masterful snapshot of modern consumer culture and hipster esoterica. Set in London, Tokyo, and Moscow, <em>Pattern Recognition</em> takes the reader on a tour of a global village inhabited by power-hungry marketeers, industrial saboteurs, high-end hackers, Russian mob bosses, Internet fan-boys, techno archeologists, washed-out spies, cultural documentarians, and our heroine Cayce Pollard--a soothsaying "cool hunter" with an allergy to brand names.</p><p>Pollard is among a cult-like group of Internet obsessives that strives to find meaning and patterns within a mysterious collection of video moments, merely called "the footage," let loose onto the Internet by an unknown source. Her hobby and work collide when a megalomaniac client hires her to track down whoever is behind the footage. Cayce's quest will take her in and out of harm's way in a high-stakes game that ultimately coincides with her desire to reconcile her father’s disappearance during the September 11 attacks in New York.</p><p>Although he forgoes his usual future-think tactics, this is very much a William Gibson novel, more so for fans who realize that Gibson's brilliance lies not in constructing new futures but in using astute observations of present-day cultural flotsam to create those futures. With <em>Pattern Recognition</em>, Gibson skips the extrapolation and focuses his acumen on our confusing contemporary world, using the precocious Pollard to personify and humanize the uncertain anxiety, optimistic hope, and downright fear many feel when looking to the future. The novel is filled with Gibson's lyric descriptions and astute observations of modern life, making it worth the read for both cool hunters and their prey. <em>--Jeremy Pugh</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Gibson, known as the "patron saint of cyberpunk lit," has made his reputation with futuristic tales. Though his new novel is set in the present, baroque descriptions of everyday articles and menacing anthropomorphic treatment of the Internet and sister technology give it a sci-fi feel. Cayce Pollard, a market researcher with razor-sharp intuition, makes big bucks by evaluating potential products and advertising campaigns. In London, she stays in the trendy digs of documentary filmmaker friend Damien (away on assignment), whom she e-mails frequently. When Cayce brusquely rejects the new logo of advertising mogul Hubertus Bigend, she earns his respect and a big check but makes an enemy of his graphic designer, vindictive Dorotea Benedetti. Hubertus later hires Cayce to ferret out the origin of a series of sensual film clips appearing guerrilla style on computers all over the world and attracting a growing cult following. Cayce treats this as a standard job until somebody breaks into Damien's flat and hacks into her computer. Suddenly every casual encounter carries undertones of danger. Her investigative trail takes her to Tokyo and Russia and through a rogue's gallery of iconoclastic Web-heads. Casting a further shadow is the memory of her father, Win, a security expert (probably CIA) missing and presumed dead in the World Trade Center disaster of exactly a year earlier. For complicated reasons even she doesn't understand, she connects her current dilemma with her father's tragedy and follows the trail with the fervor of a personal vendetta. Gibson's brisk, kinetic style and incisive observations should keep the reader entertained even when Cayce's quest begins to lose urgency. Gibson's best book since Mona Lisa Overdrive should satisfy his hardcore fans while winning plenty of new ones.<br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Forty years ago, Bob Lee Swagger's father, a state trooper, was killed by two robbers in an Arkansas shoot-out. Now a young writer has arrived at Swagger's door with some penetrating and troubling questions. What really happened that long-ago Arkansas night? The powers that be don't want that question answered, but Swagger, to his surprise, finds that he does -- even if it means having to use his long-abandoned combat skills and cunning to find out. Like the infrared "black light" that exposes a sniper's target in the night, Swagger homes in on the shadowy figures desperate to keep the secret of his father's murder buried. </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>With a flourish of authorial prestidigitation, through this action-packed tale of revenge Hunter transforms the seemingly unrelated Point of Impact and Dirty White Boys, his most recent-and most critically acclaimed-novels, into parts one and two of a trilogy. In the process, Hunter confirms his status as one of the most skilled hands in the thriller business. Former Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger has put his past behind him until he meets Russell Pewtie, who wants to write a book about Bob Lee's father, Earl, a state trooper who died in a shoot-out in Blue Eye, Ark., in 1955. The link between Pewtie and Bob Lee, which ties the three novels together, is that Lamar Pye, the escaped con who almost killed Pewtie's father in Dirty White Boys, turns out to be the son of one of the men who killed Earl. Behind that death, it's revealed here, lies a 40-year-old conspiracy that is somehow tied to the brutal murder of a young black girl that Earl was investigating on the day he died. The plot is fast-paced, well-constructed and builds to a pulse-pounding night ambush that echoes the finale of Point of Impact but that stands on its own as a classic one-on-one confrontation. Other echoes of the earlier novels sound as well, giving this one the feel of a recapitulation, or a farewell. But then Hunter has set a high standard for himself-and while this novel doesn't match the escalating craziness of Dirty White Boys or the stone-cold efficiency of Point of Impact, it should seal his reputation as an author who not only can write bestselling thrillers, but write them exceedingly well. Literary Guild main selection; major ad/promo; author tour. <br />Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>“This is one of the most startling of the century's varied achievements in Irish writing.”<br />—Seamus Deane  </p><p>"John Banville is one of the greatest masters of the English language.” <br />—_The Scotsman_  </p><p>"_Birchwoo_d represents a watershed in contemporary Irish writing..” <br />—Colm Toibin </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>An early classic from the Man Booker-prize winning author of <em>The Sea</em>.  </p><p><em>I am therefore I think</em>. So starts John Banville’s 1973 novel <em>Birchwood</em>, a novel that centers around Gabriel Godkin and his return to his dilapidated family estate. After years away, Gabriel returns to a house filled with memories and despair. Delving deep into family secrets—a cold father, a tortured mother, an insane grandmother—Gabriel also recalls his first encounters with love and loss. At once a novel of a family, of isolation, and of a blighted Ireland, <em>Birchwood</em> is a remarkable and complex story about the end of innocence for one boy and his country, told in the brilliantly styled prose of one of our most essential writers. </p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>This suite of five stories hits all of Ishiguro's signature notes, but the shorter form mutes their impact. In Crooner, Tony Gardner, a washed-up American singer, goes sloshing through the canals of Venice to serenade his trophy wife, Lindy. The narrator, Jan, is a hired guitar player whose mother was a huge fan of Tony, but Jan's experience playing for Tony fractures his romantic ideals. Lindy returns in the title story, which finds her in a luxury hotel reserved for celebrity patients recovering from cosmetic surgery. The narrator this time is Steve, a saxophonist who could never get a break because of his loser ugly looks. Lindy idly strikes up a friendship with Steve as they wait for their bandages to come off and their new lives to begin. In the final story, Cellists, an unnamed saxophonist narrator who, like Jan, plays in Venice's San Marco square, observes the evolving relationship of a Hungarian cello prodigy after he meets an American woman. The stories are superbly crafted, though they lack the gravity of Ishiguro's longer works (_Never Let Me Go_; <em>Remains of the Day</em>), which may leave readers anticipating a crescendo that never hits. <em>(Sept.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Ishiguro blends musical concepts with their literary counterparts in his latest work, and <em>Nocturnes</em> has the ephemeral quality of a song cycle with recurring themes and motifs developed in different prose keys. Though critics admired Ishiguro's lovely writing, "unassuming to the point of near-invisibility, like a lake whose still surface belies the turbulent currents beneath" (_Los Angeles Times_), they took issue with his characters—insubstantial and unconvincing when compared to the haunting creations found in his novels—and his implausible plot developments. Perhaps <em>Entertainment Weekly</em> summed it up best by stating that <em>Nocturnes</em>, by any other writer, would be praiseworthy; by a celebrated author like Ishiguro, it can best be likened to a minor work from a master composer. </p>

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<h3>From</h3><p>Here is the latest installment in Bloomsbury's fascinating Writer in the City series, which matches well-known writers with cities with which they are intimately familiar. Banville has not written a guidebook but rather, in his own words, "a handful of recollections, variations on a theme"--snapshots, if you like, of the city's past and present. The book begins with the author's first visit to Prague, during the cold war, but as we go deeper into the book, we also go deeper into the city's history. Banville flicks so effortlessly between past and present that Prague soon appears as a collage, effectively lifting the city's rich and visible past out of time and bringing it to life once again, as the author visits the birthplace of Franz Kafka or steps inside a cathedral whose construction was begun in 1344. While most travel memoirs clearly distinguish between the way a place is today and the way it used to be, Banville's perspective is somewhat different. This, he says, is Prague, past and present, the way it has always been. <em>David Pitt</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>"As remarkable a literary voice as any to come out of Ireland, Joyce and Beckettt notwithstanding." -- <em>,San Francisco Chronicle,</em>  </p><p>"Ireland's finest contemporary novelist." -- <em>,The Economist,</em>  </p><p>"Mr. Banville is that rare writer who can pack all five senses into one declarattive sentence." -- <em>,Wall Street Journal,</em>  </p><p>"What is unusual-defiantly and therefore perhaps gloriously so-about Banville.iss the prose: poetic, sensuous, revelatory." -- <em>,New York Review of Books,</em>  </p><p>Praise for John Banville:  </p><p>"Ireland's finest contemporary novelist."-_The Economist_  </p><p>"Mr. Banville is that rare writer who can pack all five senses into one declarative sentence."<br />-_Wall Street Journal_  </p><p>"As remarkable a literary voice as any to come out of Ireland, Joyce and Beckett notwithstanding."-_San Francisco Chronicle_  </p><p>"What is unusual-defiantly and therefore perhaps gloriously so-about Banville...is the prose: poetic, sensuous, revelatory."-_New York Review of Books_<br />-- <em>Review</em></p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>R.A. Salvatore's The Cleric Quintet tells the tale of the scholar-priest Cadderly, who is plucked from the halls of the Edificant Library to fulfill a heroic quest across the land of Faerûn.Cadderly leads the combined forces of Carradoon and Shilmista against Castle Trinity, stronghold of his enemy Aballister. But another mission calls him on a journey leading into a past he hoped he would be able to forget.</p>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>A Q&amp;A with Author John Banville</strong>   </p><p><strong>Question:</strong> Where did you get the idea to use Greek gods as characters in a novel? And then how did you settle on the ones we meet in <em>The Infinities</em>? </p><p><strong>John Banville:</strong> I have always been an admirer of the great German dramatist Heinrich von Kleist, particularly the play I consider his masterpiece, <em>The Infinities</em> quite closely on Amphitryon, but fiction has its own laws and its own demands, and the finished novel is an autonymous creature, though the Kleist is still there in skeletal form.</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> Why did you decide to make Adam Godley a mathematician?</p><p><strong>John Banville:</strong> I don’t know that I ever actively decided to make him anything."Decisions" in the writing of fiction tend to be mostly a matter of dream and drift. But I wanted him to be someone operating in an otherworld of speculation, pure number, and infinitudes, where the gods might be already at play. </p><p><strong>Question:</strong> There is something so classical and familiar about the death bed scene, the family patriarch dying and the family coming from far and wide to gather at his bedside. What about the death bed construct appealed to you as a starting off point?</p><p><strong>John Banville:</strong> Again, I didn’t think of the book as centering on a death bed scene--and I don’t think it does, really--but of course fiction is a tired old business where there is nothing new under even the intensest sun. In fact, one of the pleasures of working in the novel form is the challenge of finding new ways to present old things. Spinoza says somewhere that the wise man thinks only of death but all his thoughts will thereby be a contemplation of life. I hope that’s the case with <em>The Infinities</em>, and that everything in it is vividly alive, even the dying old man upstairs.</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> Many readers have commented on the humor in this novel. Is it harder for you to write comedy or tragedy (which you have certainly done in previous novels)?</p><p><strong>John Banville:</strong> All my books are funny, if you know how to listen for the jokes. The novel, at a certain basic level, is a comic form. Do you know the story of Kafka reading to a group of friends from </p><p><strong>Question:</strong> This novel takes place over the course of a single day. Why did you decide on that time structure?</p><p><strong>John Banville:</strong> I was following Amphitryon in this--preserving the unities, as the Aristotelians say. There is a nice compactness to the time-scale in the book, which I like. Also the fact of limiting the action to a single day makes for a mysterious sweet melancholy. Everyone has days that will live in the memory for a lifetime; for my characters, that Midsummer Day is one.</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> So Hermes is our narrator (though, of course, John Banville is really our narrator). So author as messenger? Author as God? Or is that just reading too much into it?</p><p><strong>John Banville:</strong> Well, of course, in the little world of a novel the author is a god, or at least a demigod, watching over his creatures, helping them, if he can, or at least not hindering them. In a wider sense, I find the pagan world of the Greeks highly appealing, and wish we could regain their state of innocence and sophistication. Bring back the old gods, I say.</p><p>(Photo © Jerry Bauer) </p><hr><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Having apparently exorcised his taste for bloody intrigue with his pseudonym, Benjamin Black, Banville returns to high form (and his given name) with a novel even more pristine than his Booker-winning <em>The Sea</em>. Old Adam Godley lies dying, flying through his past on the way to eternity while his brooding son (also named Adam) sleepwalks through his marriage to the amorous Helen, and young Adam's loony sister, Petra, writes an encyclopedia of human morbidity. But Adam and his brood are not alone, nor is our narrator any detached third person: the gods are afoot, chiefly Hermes, disguised as a farmer, whispering to us of mortal love, guiding old Adam on his way, and laying bare all the Godleys' secrets while divine Zeus conducts illicit amours with Helen. Hermes assures us that mortal speech is barely articulate gruntings, yet Banville has the perfect instrument for his textured prose, almost never as finely tuned as this. The narrative is rife with asides, but it is to the common trajectory of a life that—despite the noise crowding ailing Adam's repose—it lends its most consoling notes, elevating the temporal and profane to the holy eternal. <em>(Mar.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>

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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Incandescent prose. Beautifully textured characterisation. Transparent narratives. The adjectives to describe the writing of John Banville are all affirmative, and <em>The Sea</em> is a ringing affirmation of all his best qualities. His publishers are claiming that this novel by the Booker-shortlisted author is his finest yet, and while that claim may have an element of hyperbole, there is no denying that this perfectly balanced book is among the writer’s most accomplished work. </p><p>Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past? </p><p>The fashion in which John Banville draws the reader into this hypnotic and disturbing world is <em>non pareil</em>, and the very complex relationships between his brilliantly delineated cast of characters are orchestrated with a master’s skill. As in such books as <em>Shroud</em> and <em>The Book of Evidence</em>, the author eschews the obvious at all times, and the narrative is delivered with subtlety and understatement. The genuine moments of drama, when they do occur, are commensurately more powerful. --_Barry Forshaw_</p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Banville's magnificent new novel, which won this year's Man Booker Prize and is being rushed into print by Knopf, presents a man mourning his wife's recent death—and his blighted life. "The past beats inside me like a second heart," observes Max Morden early on, and his return to the seaside resort where he lost his innocence gradually yields the objects of his nostalgia. Max's thoughts glide swiftly between the events of his wife's final illness and the formative summer, 50 years past, when the Grace family—father, mother and twins Chloe and Myles—lived in a villa in the seaside town where Max and his quarreling parents rented a dismal "chalet." Banville seamlessly juxtaposes Max's youth and age, and each scene is rendered with the intense visual acuity of a photograph ("the mud shone blue as a new bruise"). As in all Banville novels, things are not what they seem. Max's cruelly capricious complicity in the sad history that unfolds, and the facts kept hidden from the reader until the shocking denouement, brilliantly dramatize the unpredictability of life and the incomprehensibility of death. Like the strange high tide that figures into Max's visions and remembrances, this novel sweeps the reader into the inexorable waxing and waning of life. <em>(Nov. 8)</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>A brilliant, engaging, and highly literate espionage-cum-existential novel, John Banville's <em>The Untouchable</em> concerns the suddenly-exposed double agent Victor Maskell, a character based on the real Cambridge intellectual elites who famously spied on the United Kingdom in the middle of the 20th century. But Maskell--scholar, adventurer, soldier, art curator, and more--respected and still living in England well past his retirement from espionage, looked like he was going to get away with it when suddenly, in his 70s and sick with cancer, he is unmasked. The question of why, and by whom is not as important for Maskell as the larger question of who finally he himself really is, why he spied in the first place, and whether his many-faceted existence adds up to an authentic life. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>The author of such exemplary works as Athena (LJ 5/1/95), Irishman Banville here takes on the juicy challenge of writing a spy novel and handles the assignment with far more grace and intelligence than even the best of that genre's authors. Double-agent Victor Maskell wakes up one morning to discover that after years of informing on London for Moscow, someone has informed on him. To sort out what has happened, he begins a journal. What follows is the richly detailed account of a man who clearly had convictions but whose behavior remains an enigma throughout. As he recalls his Irish childhood, complete with pastor father, beloved stepmother, and retarded brother; his emotional entanglements with careless golden boy Nick and his sister, Baby, whom Victor quite oddly marries long before he realizes that he is gay; and his relations with a slew of hedonistic, upper-class Englishmen too incisively characterized to be mere types, Victor remains subtle, crusty, and tantalizingly out of reach. His story is so well told that why he spied?and who betrayed him?become secondary. Highly recommended.<br /><em>-?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"</em><br />Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Irish author Banville (The Book of Evidence; The Untouchable) is one of the most seductive writers currently at work. His books are so intensely imagined and freshly observed, with a startling image or insight on every page, that story almost ceases to matter. In fact, his tale here is tenuous in the extreme. Alexander Cleave is a successful actor because only in performance can he hide his essential hollowness, his sense of his own intangibility. When his career starts to falter, he retreats to his childhood home in a small town by the sea and tries to learn to live with himself, to discover who he really is. Into this existential anguish intrude memories of his parents, his estranged wife, his emotionally damaged daughterDand the ghosts of people he may not even know, but to whose sadness he is attuned. He begins an uneasy relationship with a slovenly caretaker, Quirke, and Quirke's enigmatic teenage daughter, Lily; he is visited by his wife; he goes to a strangeDand magnificently evokedDcircus with Lily; he receives terrible news about his daughter. There is by no means a surfeit of incident, and the book never falters or creates impatience because every scene, every moment, is so alive, so exquisitely lit, felt and polished, that to read among them is like listening to great music. And when Banville does choose toward the end to raise the emotional temperature, the effect is deeply moving. (Feb. 28) Forecast: Banville will probably never be a hugely popular writer, and The Eclipse, unlike The Untouchable, is not structured along conventional lines. But perceptive reviews and the support of people who love exquisitely turned prose will help to slowly build his readership. <br />Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>The Banvillian narrator is often antisocial to the point of alienating his own audience. Armed with perfect diction, he uses language to hole up in an exclusive, hopelessly cool state of mind where the well-adjusted are unwanted. Esteemed stage actor Alexander Cleave is the latest in a line of haunted white males from Banville (The Untouchable). Beleaguered by a premonition of death, he quits the summer tour to live in his dilapidated childhood home, much to his wife's contempt. Although his seemingly irrational fears do have a climax, it will leave readers dumbfounded. This has a lot to do with the misleading "plot"Aa tedious chain of Alexander's memories about his tortured mother and aloof father. Banville's leading man is at his best when he plays a caring father to the housekeeper Quirke's daughter, but this comes too late. Not recommended.<br /><em>-AHeather McCormack, "Library Journal" </em><br />Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>"The great American novel . . ." <br />-- Edith Wharton </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Lorelei Lee and her best friend Dorothy take the world by storm in their search for the ideal suitor, the richer the better. Lorelei meets an American millionaire who might just be the one. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was made into a delightful classic film starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell (1953) and features the song 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend'. </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>“All the characters in Thomas Mann’s masterpiece come considerably closer to speaking English in John E. Woods’s version . . . Woods captures perfectly the irony and humor.” –_New York Times Book Review _  </p><p>“[Woods’s translation] succeeds in capturing the beautiful cadence of [Mann’s] ironically elegant prose.” –_Washington Post Book World _  </p><p>“[_The Magic Mountain_] is one of those works that changed the shape and possibilities of European literature. It is a masterwork, unlike any other. It is also, if we learn to read it on its own terms, a delight, comic and profound, a new form of language, a new way of seeing.” –from the new Introduction by A. S. Byatt </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)  </p><p>With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Thomas Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. <em>The Magic Mountain</em> takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps–a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World War. To this hermetic and otherworldly realm comes Hans Castorp, an “ordinary young man” who arrives for a short visit and ends up staying for seven years, during which he succumbs both to the lure of eros and to the intoxication of ideas.   </p><p>Acclaimed translator John E. Woods has given us the definitive English version of Mann’s masterpiece. A monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, <em>The Magic Mountain</em> is an enduring classic. </p>


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<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Gr 9 Up–This highly entertaining anthology contains 12 distinct stories brought together by two well-known YA authors. Though each tale has its own flavor, the snarky dialogue between the coeditors draws them together, in the end creating the feel of one long, continuous story. With Black defending the unicorn side of the debate and Larbalestier advocating voraciously for zombies, each team has six powerful stories to sway readers into joining one side or another. Though there are no weak selections in this amazingly well-put-together anthology, there are several standouts for each side. Queen of the Undead, Carrie Ryan, takes readers once again to the world of The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Delacorte, 2009) in the commanding “Bougainvilla.” Though there is some graphic language, Alayna Dawn Johnson's “Love Will Tear Us Apart” takes place in another immensely intense and thought-provoking zombie world. Diana Peterfreund wows readers by delving again into the dark world of Rampant (HarperTeen, 2009) with “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn,” proving Astrid is not the only strong female hunter out there. Conversely, Meg Cabot provides a funnier view of the beasts in “Princess Prettypants,” in which a unicorn literally farts rainbows. The debate is wrapped up with Libba Bray's strong zombie tale, “Prom Night,” leaving readers with both hope and realism battling for dominance. This is a must-have for fantasy collections, though schools must be cautioned that there is strong profanity, a bestiality tale, and graphic scenes of both violence and sexual encounters._Jessica Miller, New Britain Public Library, CT_<br />© Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Can the chatter of the YA nerdosphere launch a successful book? This imaginative collection answers with a resounding yes. Beginning in February 2007, editors Black and Larbalestier debated zombies’ and unicorns’ strengths and weaknesses on Larbalestier’s blog, and the resulting interest roped in stories from a number of impressive authors, including Libba Bray, Meg Cabot, and Garth Nix. Handy icons make it easy to choose which stories each camp will want to read, but the book’s A-plus design—and the desire to know which team wins!—will have unicorn die-hards crossing over into flesh-eating territory, and vice versa. The standouts come from the authors who take their gimmicky mission the most seriously: Carrie Ryan’s “Bougainvillea,” in which she continues the mudo mythology she began in The Forest of Hands and Teeth (2009); Maureen Johnson’s highly unsettling “The Children of the Revolution”; Scott Westerfeld’s propulsive “Inoculata”; and Margo Lanagan’s “A Thousand Flowers,” in which she writes about unicorns with such freshness and fire, you’d think she invented them. Who ultimately wins? To reuse an old joke: everyone. --Daniel Kraus </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><br></div><div class="productDescriptionWrapper" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">In a stunning follow-up to his much-heralded masterpiece, <i>Kalooki Nights</i>, acclaimed author Howard Jacobson has turned his mordant and uncanny sights on Felix Quinn, a rare-book dealer living in London, whose wife Marisa is unfaithful to him.<p>All husbands, Felix maintains, secretly want their wives to be unfaithful to them. Felix hasn't always thought this way. From the moment of his first boyhood rejection, surviving the shattering effects of love and jealousy had been the study of his life. But while he is honeymooning with Marisa in Florida an event occurs that changes everything. In a moment, he goes from dreading the thought of someone else's hands on the woman he loves to thinking about nothing else. Enter Marius into Marisa's affections. And now Felix must wonder if he really is a happy man.</p><p><i>The Act of Love</i> is a haunting novel of love and jealousy, with stylish prose that crackles and razor-sharp dialogue, praised by the London Times as "darkly transgressive, as savage in its brilliance, as anything Jacobson has written." It is a startlingly perceptive, subtle portrait of a marriage and an excruciatingly honest, provocative exploration of sexual obsession.</p><div><br></div><div class="emptyClear" style="clear: both; height: 0px; font-size: 0px; "></div></div></span></div>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>At the start of Christopher's cartoonish fourth Templar suspense novel (after The Templar Throne), a sniper assassinates the pope while the Holy Father is giving the Christmas blessing on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica. Before easily escaping, the killer also fatally shoots a cardinal, two bishops, and the Vatican's official photographer. This outrage is merely the prologue to an even greater intended act of political violence, the murder of the U.S. president, who's sure to attend the pontiff's funeral. The president's death will pave the way for the rise to power of right-wing Sen. Richard Sinclair, a story line used far more effectively by Richard Condon in The Manchurian Candidate. Standing in the way of the bad guys is the clichéd pairing of an older ex-soldier, John "Doc" Holliday, and his attractive younger female protégé, Peggy Blackstock, who respond to traumatic situations with banter out of one of the weaker James Bond movies. (Jan.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>In Rome, the assassination of the Pope on Christmas Day sets off a massive investigation that stretches across the globe. But behind the veil of Rex Deus-the Templar cabal that silently wields power in the twenty-first century-the plot has only just begun.   </p><p>When retired Army Ranger Lt. Col. John Holliday uncovers the true motive behind the pontiff's murder, he must unravel a deadly design to extend the Templar influence to the highest levels of power. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The "lies" in this haunting, powerful Holocaust novel are not just the Nazis' monstrous racialist myths, but also the personal fictions adopted by their victims in order to survive. Two such survivors are orphaned nine-year-old Maciek and his sharp-tongued aunt, Tania. Posing as Catholic Poles to hide their Jewish identity, constantly on the move, they witness slaughter in the Warsaw Ghetto from a nearby rooftop and, later, break ranks on a march to cattle cars destined for Auschwitz. As narrator, Maciek speaks in a voice much more mature than his years alone suggest, yet his simple matter-of-factness lends a keen moral edge to his observations on the bestiality and irrationality around him. Just as the war ends, Poles carry out a bloody pogrom, and both nephew and aunt assume new surnames, living under new lies. Scattered italicized passages summoning up Dante and Virgil suggest the enormity of evil, a superfluous device in this searing story of the quest for an authentic self in an insane world. <br />Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>The teller of this tale reveres the Aeneid because "that is where he first found civil expression for his own shame at being alive, skin intact and virgin of tattoo, when his kinsmen and almost all the others, so many surely more deserving than he, perished in the conflagration." Indeed, this seems a very real attempt on the part of the author to expurgate, or at least come to terms with, a sense of guilt that has haunted him throughout his life and to reflect on the lingering impact of evil on individual lives. Survival in wartime often requires compromise, but for a young Jewish boy and his aunt, survival in wartime Poland requires a total suspension of identity. It is the ultimate act of theater, requiring a careful and constant denial of one's heritage. For the child, the tragedy is that suspension becomes loss: "He became an embarrassment and slowly died. A man who bears one of the names Maciek used has replaced him. . . . Our man has no childhood he can bear to remember." A moving addition to Holocaust literature and one well recommended.<br /><em>- David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.</em><br />Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Both Terry McCaleb and Harry Bosch are featured in a story that is a murder mystery, a legal thriller, and a psychological drama. Harry Bosch is up to his neck in a case that has transfixed all of celebrity-mad Los Angeles: a movie director is charged with murdering an actress during sex, and then staging her death to make it look like a suicide. Bosch is both the arresting officer and the star witness in a trial that has brought the Hollywood media pack out in full-throated frenzy. Meanwhile, Terry McCaleb is enjoying an idyllic retirement on Catalina Island when a visit from an old colleague brings his former world rushing back. It's a murder, the unreadable kind of murder he specialized in solving back in his FBI days. The investigation has stalled, and the sheriff's office is asking McCaleb to take a quick look at the murder book to see if he turns up something they've missed. McCaleb's first reading of the crime scene leads him to look for a methodical killer with a taste for rituals and revenge. As his quick look accelerates into a full-sprint investigation, the two crimes - his murdered loner and Bosch's movie director - begin to overlap strangely. With one unsettling revelation after another, they merge, becoming one impossible, terrifying case, involving almost inconceivable calculation. McCaleb believes he has unmasked the most frightening killer ever to cross his sights. But his investigation tangles with Bosch's lines, and the two men find themselves at odds in the most dangerous investigation of their lives.</p>


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For the first time in one volume, the three novels that introduced Michael Connelly's great LAPD homicide detective, maverick Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch. The Black Echo (Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel) For Harry Bosch-hero, loner, nighthawk-the body stuffed in a drainpipe off Mulholland Drive isn't just another statistic. This one is personal. Billy Meadows was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat," fighting the VC and the fear they used to call the Black Echo. Harry let Meadows down once. He won't do it again. The Black Ice The corpse in the hotel room seems to be that of a missing LAPD narcotics officer. Rumors abound that the cop had crossed over-selling a new drug called Black Ice. Now Harry's making some dangerous connections, leading from the cop to a string of bloody murders, and from Hollywood Boulevard's drug bazaar to Mexico's dusty back alleys. In this lethal game, Harry is likely to be the next victim. The Concrete Blonde When Harry Bosch shot and killed Norman Church, the police were convinced it marked the end of the hunt for the Dollmaker-L.A.'s most bizarre serial killer. But now Church's widow is accusing Harry of killing the wrong man-a charge that rings terrifyingly true when a new victim is discovered with the Dollmaker's macabre signature. For the second time, Harry must hunt the murderer down, before he strikes again. Together, these three novels are the perfect way to discover, or rediscover, the sleuth the New York Times Book Review called a "wonderful, old-fashioned hero who isn't afraid to walk through the flames."


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>When bestselling author Sparks (_The Notebook_; <em>Message in a Bottle</em>; etc.) receives a brochure offering a three-week trip around the world, it's not hard for him to persuade Micah, his older brother, to join him in touring Guatemala's Mayan ruins, Peru's Incan temples, Easter Island, the killing fields in Cambodia, the Taj Mahal and Ethiopian rock cathedrals. His account of the trip is refreshingly honest and perceptive. At each stop, the brothers, both deeply committed to their families, cover the crucial moments in a life full of familial love and tragedy: Nick's role as the middle child always feeling left out; his marriage in 1989; the loss of Nick and Micah's mother two months later after a horseback riding accident; the death of Nick's first baby and the physical problems of his second son; the death of their father in a car accident; and the passing of their younger sister from a brain tumor. As the brothers travel together through these mythical sites and share candid thoughts, they find themselves stunned by fate's turns, realizing that a peaceful moment may be shattered at any time. Weaving in vignettes of tenderness and loss with travelogue-like observations, Sparks's account shows how he and his brother both evolved on this voyage. "Somehow there was a chance we could help each other, and in that way, I began to think of the trip less as a journey around the world than a journey to rediscover who I was and how I'? developed the way I did." <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Who wouldn't want to go on a trip around the world? When best-selling novelist Sparks receives a travel brochure from his alma mater, Notre Dame, he thinks, "If not now, then when?" and asks his brother to join him. They both have family obligations, but this sounds like the trip of a lifetime, and as the reader soon finds out, they both need to relax. As they journey to faraway places, the brothers reminisce about their unusual childhood. Instead of the idealistic life readers may imagine, their early years were marked by poverty, although redeemed by their mother's great love. Their father was a graduate student working several jobs to support the family, and the boys, best friends as well as brothers, led an independent life filled with adventure, derring-do, and responsibilities beyond their years. This is a rare opportunity for readers to get to know a favorite author as Nicholas reveals the inspirations for his fiction. A must-read for Sparks fans as well as a treat for those who want to find out what makes a family strong. <em>Patty Engelmann</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<div><meta charset="utf-8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; color: rgb(24, 24, 24); font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; ">In these two stories from bestselling author Nick Hornby, revelations are at hand.<p style="font-family: georgia, serif; line-height: 1.4; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; ">In Not a Star, Lynn has always thought her son, Mark, was a little, well, unremarkable. Until the day a neighbor drops off a porn video at her house, with a note telling her to watch it. Turns out, Mark is rather remarkable in one specific area of his life (and anatomy). Lynn and her husband, Dave, don’t quite know what to think. The revelation of their son’s talent ripples through Lynn’s life as she alternately encounters humor, horror, and unexpected emotional reactions.</p><p style="font-family: georgia, serif; line-height: 1.4; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; ">What do you do in the face of impending doom? In Otherwise, Pandemonium, you lose your virginity with the hottest girl in the Little Berkeley Big Band… Here, the world is a different place; the future is uncertain; the choices one makes are the only thing standing between a semblance of order or utter chaos. And the TV’s been acting funny. This is a story that makes you think and feel, and reminds us of the fleeting nature of time.</p><div><br></div><p style="font-family: georgia, serif; line-height: 1.4; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; "></p><a class="actionLinkLite" href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7014617-not-a-star-and-otherwise-pandemonium#" style="color: rgb(33, 86, 37); text-decoration: none; font-family: arial, verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; "></a></span><a class="actionLinkLite" href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7014617-not-a-star-and-otherwise-pandemonium#" style="color: rgb(33, 86, 37); text-decoration: none; font-family: arial, verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; "></a><a class="actionLinkLite" href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7014617-not-a-star-and-otherwise-pandemonium#" style="color: rgb(33, 86, 37); text-decoration: none; font-family: arial, verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; "></a></div>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Card's newest series opener can't decide whether it's a thought experiment featuring a nifty magic system, a YA urban fantasy, or a series of fantasy interludes, so it settles for performing all three tasks satisfactorily, if not spectacularly. Danny North, descendant of exiled mages from another world, is taken aback when he comes into his true powers as a gatemage. He could reconnect his people with their long-lost home world, but gatemages are usually killed to maintain a fragile peace among the exiled clans. Fleeing his home, Danny finds refuge and slowly explores his potential, planning to open the first Great Gate in 14 centuries. Meanwhile, on the far-off world of Westil, a young gatemage named Wad finds love, conspiracies, and betrayal in a remote castle while struggling to recall his hazy past. Though occasionally uneven and meandering, this ambitious tale is well crafted, highly detailed, and pleasantly accessible. (Jan.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“As always, everyone will be struck by the power of Card’s children, always more and less than human, perfect yet struggling, tragic yet hopeful, wondrous and strange.”--_Publishers Weekly_ starred review on <em>Ender's Shadow</em> _  </p><p><em>“Threads from all the other books in the series flow through this narrative, which fills gaps, fleshes out familiar characterizations, and introduces well-limned new ones. Ender’s angst, combined with his handling of the intrigue swirling around him, ensures the depth for which the series is famous.”--</em>Booklist_ on <em>Ender in Exile</em></p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>From the _ New York Times_ bestselling author-the shooting script to his award-winning film, with an original Introduction and vivid stills from the movie. </strong>   </p><p>Jenny is a 16-year-old girl stifled by the tedium of adolescence; she can't wait for her sophisticated adult life to begin. One rainy day her suburban existence is upended by the arrival of David, a much older suitor who introduces her to a glittering new world of concerts, art, smoky bars, urban nightlife, and his glamorous friends, replacing her traditional education with his own version. It could be her awakening-or her undoing. This edition of Hornby's adapted screenplay, which includes stills from the film, is a perfect accompaniment to the highly anticipated movie, which stars Carey Mulligan as Jenny, Peter Sarsgaard, Emma Thompson, Dominic Cooper, and Alfred Molina. It is a must-have for fans of Hornby's novels, featuring his signature pitch-perfect dialogue, mordant wit, and the resonant humanity of his writing   </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>Nick Hornby</strong> is the author of the bestselling novels _ Slam,A Long Way Down, How to Be Good, High Fidelity_, and <em>About a Boy</em>, and the memoir <em>Fever Pitch</em>. He is also the author of <em>Songbook</em>, a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, <em>Shakespeare Wrote for Money</em>, and <em>The Polysyllabic Spree</em>, and editor of the short story collection <em>Speaking with the Angel</em>. A recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters' E. M. Forster Award, and the Orange Word International Writers' London Award 2003. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Charming, divorced Jeremy Marsh is a rising star. As a dashing, successful 37-year-old Manhattan science journalist, his skeptical scrutiny of ineffective antidepressants, cults and television clairvoyants has caught the eye of North Carolina restaurant owner Doris McClellan, who invites Jeremy to bucolic Boone Creek to scoop the story of eerie mystery lights appearing in an ancient cemetery. A diviner who can predict the sex of unborn babies, Doris suspects the lights are a ghostly curse. Her beautiful librarian granddaughter, Lexie Darnell, makes a lovely, if guarded, tour guide as Jeremy revs up his electromagnetic equipment for the ghost hunt. After witnessing the ethereal graveside lights, both grow closer, much to the chagrin of local deputy Rodney Hopper, who wants Lexie for himself. Guided by sage Doris and manipulated by meddling mayor Tom Gherkin, big-city Jeremy and smalltown Lexie find that trepidation about their differences somehow manages to bloom into love. Jeremy eventually uncovers the hidden truth behind the glowing graveyard fog and departs the lush gothic environs for New York. Can love bridge the gap? Sparks (_The Wedding_) delivers another shrink-wrapped, reliably uncomplicated romantic confection that's light as air, smooth as silk and gloriously sweet. <em>Agent, Theresa Park</em>._ (One-day laydown Apr. 12)_ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>New York skeptic Jeremy Marsh makes his living exposing frauds in the articles he writes for <em>Scientific American</em>. His latest target is a famous psychic who claims to speak to the dead. The acclaim he receives for his expose places Jeremy in the public eye with an appearance on national television. Jeremy then travels to Boone Creek, North Carolina, to search for the truth behind the mysterious lights that appear in the local cemetery. The legend is that an old curse causes the spirits to wander, and now the town wants to capitalize on the phenomena to bring in badly needed tourist dollars. But Doris McClellan, the local psychic, wants the lights debunked, and asks Jeremy to investigate. What Jeremy doesn't count on is falling for Doris' granddaughter, Lexie, the town librarian. Lexie has had enough of smooth-talking city men, and shields her heart, but Jeremy keeps trying to penetrate her tough shell. Lexie never wants to leave Boone Creek, and she believes that Jeremy will never want to stay. Although Sparks' latest starts with great potential, the main characters feel cool and distant; it is the secondary characters who embody the warmth and verve that usually mark Sparks' best-sellers. <em>Patty Engelmann</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<div><div><h3>Review</h3></div><p>Praise for the rise of <strong>Theodore Roosevelt</strong>  </p><p>?Magnificent . . . a sweeping narrative of the outward man and a shrewd examination of his character. . . . It is one of those rare works that is both definitive for the period it covers and fascinating to read for sheer entertainment. There should be a queue awaiting the next volume.?<br>-W. A. Swanberg, <em>The New York Times Book Review</em>  </p><p>?Theodore Roosevelt, in this meticulously researched and beautifully written biography, has a claim on being the most interesting man ever to be President of this country.?<br>-Robert Kirsch, <em>Los Angeles Times Book Review</em>  </p><p>?Spectacles glittering, teeth and temper flashing, high-pitched voice rasping and crackling, Roosevelt surges out of these pages with the force of a physical presence.?<br>-_The Atlantic Monthly_  </p><p>?Morris?s book is beautifully written as well as thoroughly scholarly-clearly a masterpiece of American biography. . . . Hundreds of thousands will soon be reading this book . . . and will look forward, as I do, to Morris?s second volume.?<br>-Kenneth S. Davis, <em>Worcester Sunday Telegram</em> -- <em>Review</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Described by the <em>Chicago Tribune</em> as "a classic," <strong>The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt</strong> stands as one of the greatest biographies of our time. The publication of <strong>The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt</strong> on September 14th, 2001 marks the 100th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt becoming president. </p>

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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>In this lively biography, Edmund Morris returns to the gifted, energetic, and thoroughly controversial man whom the novelist Henry James called "King Theodore." In his two terms as president of the United States, Roosevelt forged an American empire, and he behaved as if it was his destiny. In this sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography <em>The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt</em>, Morris charts Roosevelt's accomplishments: the acquisition of the Panama Canal and the Philippines, the creation of national parks and monuments, and more. "Collaring Capital and Labor in either hand," Morris writes, Roosevelt made few friends, but he usually got what he wanted--and earned an enduring place in history.</p><p>Morris combines a fine command of the era's big issues with an appreciation for the daily minutiae involved in governing a nation. Less controversially inventive, but no less readable, than the Ronald Reagan biography <em>Dutch</em>, <em>Theodore Rex</em> gives readers new reason both to admire and fault an American phenomenon. <em>--Gregory McNamee</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The second entry in Morris's projected three-volume life of Theodore Roosevelt focuses on the presidential years 1901 through early 1909. Impeccably researched and beautifully composed, Morris's book provides what is arguably the best consideration of Roosevelt's presidency ever penned. Making good use of TR's private and presidential papers as well as the archives of such prot‚g‚s as John Hay, William Howard Taft, Owen Wister and John Burroughs Morris marshals a rich array of carefully chosen and beautifully rendered vignettes to create a dazzling portrait of the man (the youngest ever to hold the office of president). Morris proves the perfect guide through TR's eight breathless, fertile years in the White House: years during which the doting father and prolific author conserved millions of Western acres, swung his "big stick" at trusts and monopolies, advanced progressive agendas on race and labor relations, fostered a revolution in Panama (where he sought to build his canal), won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War and pushed through the Pure Food and Drug Act. John Burroughs once wrote that the hypercreative TR "was a many sided man, and every side was like an electric battery." In the end, Morris succeeds brilliantly at capturing all of TR's many energized sides, producing a book that is every bit as complex, engaging and invigorating as the vibrant president it depicts. Illus. (On-sale: Nov. 20)Forecast: Long-awaited, this volume comes out in the centennial of TR's rise to the presidency. Morris's gift for storytelling and his outstanding reputation from volume one (and perhaps his notoriety for the controversial Reagan bio Dutch) should guarantee large sales. </p><p>Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</p>

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<div><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> Morris completes his fully detailed, correlatively dynamic triptych of the restless, energetic, on-the-move first President Roosevelt, following The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979), the title self-explanatory in terms of its coverage of TR’s life, and Theodore Rex (2001), about his presidency. Now the author presents Colonel Roosevelt, the title by which Roosevelt chose to be called during his postpresidential years (in reference, of course, to his military position during the Spanish-American War). This is the sad part of TR’s life; this is the stage of his life story in which it is most difficult to accept his self-absorption, self-importance, and self-righteousness, but it is the talent of the author, who has shown an immaculate understanding of his subject, to make Roosevelt of continued fascination to his readers. In essence, this volume tells the story of TR’s path of disenchantment with his chosen successor in the White House, William Taft, and his attempt to resecure the presidency for himself. The important theme of TR’s concomitant decline in health is also a part of the narrative. We are made aware most of all that of all retired presidents, TR was the least likely to fade into the background. --Brad Hooper </p><h3>Review</h3><p><strong>_Praise for <em>Colonel Roosevelt</em>_</strong>  </p><p>"Now with <em>Colonel Roosevelt</em>, the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud." –Janet Maslin, _The New York Times  </p><p><em>"Exemplary… Consistently rich and on point, with rapidly developing events providing a backdrop for the balanced examination [Morris] presents of his subject…The TR trilogy is masterful, and can rightfully take its place among the truly outstanding biographies of the American presidency." –</em>LA Times<br>_<br>"Reading Edmund Morris on Teddy Roosevelt is like listening to Yo-Yo Ma play Bach: You know from the first note you’re in inspired hands. In <em>Colonel Roosevelt</em>—the final installment in a trilogy that began with <em>The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt</em> and <em>Theodore Rex</em>—Morris registers the Bull Moose’s last decade in handsome, sweeping prose that avoids the valedictory chord struck by biographers who, nearing the end of their prodigious labors, resort to swooning across the chapters, unwilling to let go of their muse." _– The Washingtonian  </p><p>"Colonel Roosevelt_, the third part of his three-volume biography of Roosevelt, is a worthy and extremely engaging culmination of Mr. Morris' work. It is popular history at its best." –Claude R. Marx, _The Washington Times<br>_  </p><p><strong><em>Praise for the classic biographies by Edmond Morris</em></strong>  </p><p><em></em><em>The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt</em><br>Winner of the Pulitzer Prize<em></em>  </p><p>“One of those rare works that is both definitive for the period it covers and fascinating to read for sheer entertainment.”_—The New York Times Book Review_  </p><p>“A towering biography.”_—Time_  </p><p><em></em><em>Theodore Rex</em><br>Winner of the <em>Los Angeles Times</em> Book Prize for Biography<em></em>  </p><p>“A masterpiece . . . A great president has finally found a great biographer.”_—The Washington Post_  </p><p>“As a literary work on Theodore Roosevelt, it is unlikely ever to be surpassed. It is one of the great histories of the American presidency, worthy of being on a shelf alongside Henry Adams’s volumes on Jefferson and Madison.”_—Times Literary Supplement_  </p><p><em>“Magnificent . . .  a compulsively readable, beautifully measured and paced account.”—Chicago Tribune</em></p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Having just returned from France after World War I with a medal of honor and serious shell shock, Inspector Ian Rutledge struggles to settle back into his duties at Scotland Yard. When, despite his tenuous condition, an envious supervisor assigns him to a traumatic case involving the murder of an army colonel and a young captain as the prime suspect, Rutledge must gather all of his strength to not only solve the case, but fight the town people's prejudice against military personnel. To make matters worse, the prime witness is another veteran--on the brink of insanity--scorned by the villagers for what they perceive to have been less than honorable conduct during his tour of duty. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Inspector Ian Rutledge, a British veteran of the Great War secretly still suffering from shell-shock, returns to his Scotland Yard job in hopes of exorcizing his private demons. However, a devious higher-up has learned of his Achilles heel and gets Ian assigned to a potentially explosive and career-damaging case?a murder involving a decorated war hero, a beautiful ward, and a shell-shocked witness. Strong, elegant prose; detailed surroundings; and sound plotting characterize this debut historical?the first in a projected series. Highly recommended.<br />Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>When <em>Wings of Fire</em>, were "light and warmth and beauty intermingled with such passion that they sang in the heart as you read them. <em>Wings of Fire</em> had touched him in ways that few things had." Olivia's death, along with that of two members of her family, have brought Rutledge from London to investigate. But, as a sharp local clergyman tells him, "Be sure your own ghosts don't infringe on your logical mind--don't rain havoc on Borcombe in search of your own absolution." </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In a brilliant return after his introduction in A Test of Wills (1996), Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge is dispatched to Cornwall to investigate three deaths?seemingly a double-suicide and an accident?that have occurred within weeks in the Trevelyan family. Still recovering from shell shock sustained while serving in France during WWI, Rutledge carries in his head the challenging voice of Hamish MacLeod, a Scottish soldier about whose battlefront death Rutledge experiences profound guilt. In the village of Borcombe, Rutledge learns that one of the apparent suicides, Olivia Marlowe, wrote as O.A. Manning, a poet whose work had uncannily captured both the misery of war and the passion and beauty of love. Olivia Marlowe and her devoted half-brother Nicholas Cheney died of poisoning within hours of each other. Another half-brother, Stephen FitzHugh, the only family member opposed to selling the family estate where Olivia and Nicholas lived, fell down the stairs to his death not long after the funeral. Searching for answers about the deaths and for an understanding of the poet, Rutledge finds himself on a decades-long trail of cleverly disguised murders. Todd's cast is sometimes hard to keep straight, but readers will find it hard to resist following Rutledge on this emotionally intense quest. Memorable characters, subtle plot twists, the evocative seaside setting and descriptions of architecture, the moors and the sea fully reward the attention this novel commands. <br />Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>In <em>Search the Dark</em>, the third entry in Charles Todd's remarkable series, the walking-wounded survivors of World War I crowd the English landscape. Scotland Yard's Inspector Rutledge is one of many who suffer from shell shock. He constantly hears--and responds to--the voice of Hamish, a Scottish soldier he shot for cowardice. His latest case does not help his fragile state of mind as it involves another weary and discouraged veteran, Bert Mowbray.</p><p>On his way to Lyme Regis to search for work, Bert looks out of the train window in a town called Singleton Magna, and sees an unbelievable sight--his wife and two children who he thought were killed in a London bombing raid. He leaps off the train and tries to find his family, racing desperately across fields and country roads, and finally winding up asleep under a tree. Meanwhile, the battered body of a woman is found on the edge of a cornfield, and Mowbray is arrested. Is the woman his wife? Did he kill her? And what happened to the two children who were with her? </p><p>Everywhere Rutledge looks, he shows us various forms of damage caused by the war--from the hopes of a local girl whose lover returned with a French wife, to the trauma that Mowbray is going through. As in the first two books, <strong> and </strong>, Todd demonstrates the massive damage done to an entire country by focusing on the small, personal battles of the survivors. <em>--Dick Adler</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The third compelling Ian Rutledge mystery (Wings of Fire; A Test of Wills) takes the sensitive and appealing Scotland Yard inspector, a former WWI officer, to the countryside of Dorset. In 1919, another former soldier is arrested for murder in the town of Singleton Magna after the battered corpse of a young woman is found nearby. Withdrawn and suicidal, the suspect will speak to no one, and the police call Scotland Yard for help in finding the two young children who may have been in the dead woman's charge. Rutledge arrives, still carrying in his head the voice of Hamish MacLeod, a Scottish deserter whom he executed during the war and whose harsh, conscience-like presence in the inspector's mind seems to soften as the novel progresses, adding dimension to Todd's literary device. In his investigation, Rutledge encounters others whose spirits were ravaged in the war: Simon Wyatt, scion of local gentry, who has abandoned his plans to serve in Parliament; his French wife, unaccepted by the townspeople; Wyatt's former fianc?e, who may not have given up her previous expectations; a young local man whose head wound has left him mentally diminished; and an independent young woman from London. The discovery of a second woman's battered corpse further knots Rutledge's task, which is rooted, it evolves in this fine period mystery, as much in love as in war. Author tour. <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The muddy, bloody horrors of WWI continue to haunt Insp. Ian Rutledge, back at work at Scotland Yard, but just barely. Still guilt-stricken over his wartime murder of Corp. Hamish MacLeod, who "cracked" during the Somme offensive of 1916, Rutledge hears Hamish's voice in his head as a steady, moralizing conversationalist. Now Rutledge has been dispatched to Scotland to identify the probable remains of Eleanor Gray, an aristocratic suffragette inexplicably estranged from her mother, the imperious Lady Maude. Local police theorize that Eleanor was murdered on the Highlands by beautiful, young Fiona MacDonald, who's been raising Eleanor's newborn son as her own. Unconvinced of a link between the two women, Rutledge visits Fiona in jail and immediately recognizes her as Hamish's beloved fianc?e. But Fiona won't exonerate herself, refusing to identify the boy's real parents. Following the Edgar-nominated A Test of Wills (1996), this fourth installment in the series focuses narrowly on the question: is there a link between Fiona and Eleanor? Since the answer is never in doubt, there's not much to absorb suspense addicts, as Rutledge slogs through Scotland trying to break the apparently deadlocked circumstantial case. The resolution, implicating too many peripheral characters, is particularly unsatisfying. But readers will continue to be captivated by Todd's portrait of the dangerously unraveling detective, and his equally incisive evocation of the grieving postwar world. Agent, Jane Chelius. (Oct.) <br />Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>A sensitive approach, literate prose, and provocative situations mark Todd's latest addition to his Ian Rutledge series. Although recovered enough from World War I shell shock to function ably in his job with Scotland Yard, Ian still carries with him an internal voice of guilt named Hamish, a soldier he ordered shot for cowardice. When Ian investigates a possible murder in Scotland, the main suspect turns out to be the dead Hamish's intended, who seems destined for the gallows but will not betray a confidence. Very forceful emotional scenes ensue as Ian ferrets out the truth. A special treat for series and historical fans. <br />Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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In his latest novel, bestselling author Charles Todd brings his classic mystery series to a new level of intensity and intrigue. The year is 1919, and Ian Rutledge is a fragile yet courageous former soldier searching for his place in a postwar world. Now a Scotland Yard investigator, Rutledge is called upon to probe a small-town murder — and discovers that it may be connected to one of the greatest disasters of all time....Watchers of TimeIn Osterley, a marshy Norfolk backwater, a man lies dying on a rainy autumn night. While natural causes will surely claim Herbert Baker’s life in a matter of hours, his last request baffles his family and friends. Baker, a devout Anglican, inexplicably demands to see the town’s Catholic priest for a last confession. The old man dies without knowing that the very priest who gave him comfort will follow him to the grave just a few weeks later — the victim of an appalling murder.The local police are convinced the evidence points to an interrupted robbery, and have named a suspect, Matthew Walsh. But the dead priest’s bishop insists that Scotland Yard oversee the investigation. A simple task for Rutledge, a man not yet well enough to return to full duty. The Inspector draws on years of experience and a war-honed intuition as he finds himself uncovering secrets that the local authorities would prefer not to see explored. Surely, they reason, it is better to charge an outsider — Matthew Walsh — with murder than to learn that someone in this tightly knit community would commit such a horrendous crime. And yet there are those, Rutledge soon discovers, who held grudges against the priest that had little to do with God or the Church. No one in Osterley is aware that Rutledge hears voices — or, rather, one haunting voice: that of a soldier he was forced to execute during the War. It is with the voice of Hamish MacLeod, by turns second-guessing and taunting him, that Rutledge begins a journey toward the devastating truth that will unlock the secrets of Osterley and pare away its layers of deception. And in piecing together a different story, Rutledge encounters a chain of events that stretches from these brooding marshes to one of the greatest sea disasters in history — the sinking of the Titanic. Who is the mysterious woman who may have boarded that ship ... and who is the secretive woman who survived it? Rutledge comes to believe that he alone can stop a killer from striking again. Deftly capturing the anguish of a man haunted by his tragic past, Watchers of Time delves beneath a cast of unforgettable characters to examine a mystery even greater than murder: the mystery of what is right and what is wrong after the world has committed the sin of war.From the Hardcover edition.


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>This brilliant and gripping whodunit may well be the best of Todd's six Rutledge novels (Watchers of Time, etc.). Featuring as its protagonist a Scotland Yard inspector who is among the walking wounded after his WWI traumas, the series has always been compelling. This time, Todd ratchets up the psychological pressures by raising doubts about the one aspect of Rutledge's life that he has felt secure about: his prewar accomplishments as a policeman. The widow of a convicted killer, who went to the gallows for preying on the infirm elderly, confronts him with a missing jewelry piece found in a neighbor's possession, suggesting that Rutledge helped execute an innocent man. Reopening the inquiry requires caution not only because of the soul-searching it provokes, which threatens to shatter the inspector's tenuous grasp on sanity, but also because the case contributed to his superior's promotion. This old mystery becomes only one of the puzzles Rutledge must resolve when he's ordered to investigate the poisoning deaths of three disabled soldiers. The solutions to both sets of crimes are logical, satisfying and unexpected, but it is the character of Rutledge himself-intuitive, exquisitely sensitive to mood, the emotions of others and the significance of what is left unsaid-that makes this both an outstanding historical mystery and literate period fiction.<br />Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Todd's sixth work featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge is a well-crafted addition to his popular historical series (e.g., Watchers of Time). Rutledge is taken aback when a persistent Nell Shaw brings him new evidence that could clear her late husband's name. Had Rutledge and his fellow policemen inadvertently sent an innocent man to his death six years earlier? Reconsidering the pre-World War I case serves to distract the inspector from his current assignment: determining who is killing maimed ex-soldiers in the peaceful countryside in Kent. Rutledge is sidetracked as well by his friendship with Elizabeth Mayhew, the widow of an old school chum. Elizabeth's feelings for a mysterious stranger further complicate Rutledge's investigation. Todd expertly demonstrates how shadows from the past intersect with unsolved murders in the present, revealing tantalizing details about Rutledge's wartime experience in France along the way. Here, Todd downplays the role of Hamish (the dead soldier who lives on in Rutledge's mind), but he remains a key player in the series. A pleasure to read; highly recommended for all public libraries and collections of historical mysteries.<br /><em>Laurel Bliss, Yale Arts Lib. </em><br />Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Integral to most crime tales is the unearthing of concealed and unfavorable facts about suspected malefactors. But the mother-son duo who write under the <em>nom de plume</em> "Charles Todd" are particularly adept, in their historical novels featuring Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, at exploiting painful secrets as tools in developing both character and plot. It's rare, in a Todd tale, that even the innocent should escape unscathed. The authors demonstrate their skills once more in <em>A Cold Treachery</em>, which sends the shell-shocked and lonely Rutledge to probe the winter massacre of a sheep-farming family in northern England, at the same time as he searches for the missing and only witness to that chilling savagery.</p><p>"It was beyond comprehension," we're told of the December 1919 violence, near the rustic Lake District town of Urskdale, that left Gerald and Grace Elcott and three of their progeny shot to death. A fourth child, 10-year-old Josh Robinson, is nowhere to be found. He's thought to have fled from the scene, only to have perished in a recent blizzard. Coming off the grim proceedings recalled in __, Rutledge--shackled as always to the nattering ghost of Hamish MacLeod, a Scotsman he'd ordered executed on a World War I battlefield--must determine whether the murderer was a passing stranger, or a local who'd previously concealed his or her aptitude for barbarity--and might kill again. Gerald Elcott's less-successful brother, Paul, has ample motive (he’s next in line to inherit their clan's farm), as does Grace's sister, Janet Ashton, who just happens to arrive in Urskdale with a gun in hand (supposedly to protect her sibling from Paul's anger). Yet there's another, more frightening possibility--that Josh, Gerald's stepson, upset by the breakup of his parents, committed these atrocities. Desperate for clues, and with his impatient superior threatening to replace him on this case, Rutledge still can't claim to know who, or what, was behind the carnage.</p><p>After their disappointing standalone, <strong>, it's a relief to see the Todd pair return to the "gloomy, defeated and exhausted" postwar England of Ian Rutledge, where no end of dire dramas appear to lurk. Like its half-dozen predecessors, stretching back to </strong>, <em>A Cold Treachery</em> satisfies with its copious period details, characters traumatized by fate and failures, and a bedeviled young protagonist who must solve other people's problems before his own. And even as Hamish seems here to slip further into the background, there's finally the prospect of Rutledge finding companionship of a more corporeal sort. --_J. Kingston Pierce_</p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Traditional mystery lovers who prefer their whodunits enriched with psychological insight will heartily embrace Todd's seventh Inspector Rutledge novel (after 2002's <em>A Fearsome Doubt</em>). Still haunted by the ghost of a corporal whose execution for insubordination he ordered during WWI, Rutledge fights a constant battle to hang on to his sanity by devoting himself to his detective work for Scotland Yard. This time, the brutal massacre of the Elcott family, including two adults and three children, takes him to the Lake District town of Urskdale. While the local authorities prefer to blame an outsider for the murders, the inspector quickly finds the hidden passions churning beneath the stolid surface of the small rustic town. Since one family member, a 10-year-old boy, wasn't found with his relatives' bloody corpses, Rutledge pursues clues suggesting that the missing lad may be either a potential future victim or the killer himself. Todd's ear for dialogue is superb, and he effortlessly conjures up the harsh life of a simple farm community through his vivid characters. As with its predecessors, this novel is imbued with tragic sadness, and Rutledge's struggle with his own demons serves as a moving counterpoint to the searing pain of other characters trapped by circumstances or emotions beyond their control. Perhaps this superb effort will bring Todd an audience to match the deserved critical acclaim he has received. FYI:_Todd is the pseudonym of a mother-son writing team._ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p><em>Starred Review.</em> The complex, evocative ninth installment in Todd's series set in post-WWI England (after 2006's <em>Long Shadow</em>) showcases the pseudonymous author's usual subtle understatement and deft characterization. Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, who has returned from the trench warfare of France haunted by the carnage (and in particular by his order to execute one of his own men), heads to the seaside village of Hampton Regis to defuse a hostage situation. Stephen Mallory, who served under Rutledge's command in the war and is suspected of viciously assaulting his ex-lover's husband, demands Rutledge's presence before he will release his ex-lover and other hostages. To manage the crisis, Rutledge must weather the suspicions of the local police and identify the person responsible for the assault and two subsequent murders. Todd, a mother-and-son writing team, seamlessly melds a fair-play whodunit with psychological suspense in the tradition of P.D. James's best. <em>(Jan.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Motive, motive, motive. Is it jealousy? Money? Or something entirely different? Scotland Yard Inspector Rutledge must find the answer when he's summoned to the small town of Hampton Regis at the behest of Stephen Mallory, accused of viciously attacking one Matthew Hamilton. Afraid of being railroaded for a crime he insists he didn't commit, Mallory holds Hamilton's wife and her housekeeper hostage, hoping Rutledge can prove his innocence. It's tough going for Rutledge, who is dogged by unpleasant memories of Mallory, whom he knew while soldiering in the Great War, and by the echoing voice of Hamish, also a fellow soldier, whose imagined counsel steadies the investigator as he casts about for suspects. Todd, the pseudonym of a mother-son writing team, incorporates touches of both Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie in this character-driven mystery, which builds smoothly but not simply to a climax that is likely to be a genuine surprise. <em>Stephanie Zvirin</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. The exemplary 10th Inspector Ian Rutledge historical whodunit (after <em>A False Mirror</em>) offers tight plotting and rich characterization amid understated but convincing evocations of post–WWI England. Haunted by memories of battle, unable to find a safe haven after his discharge from a psychiatric hospital and the abrupt departure of his fiancée, shell-shocked veteran Rutledge has returned to his prewar life as a Scotland Yard inspector. This time out, the War Office wants him to locate a mysterious person of interest, connected with (and perhaps the same as) an unidentified corpse found at a Yorkshire abbey. Rutledge toils diligently to uncover personal secrets and shames that may have motivated someone to kill, and their connection to a long-ago romance between the suspected killer's wife and the local inspector investigating the case. The mother and son writing as Charles Todd show no evidence of running out of ideas for murder mysteries that illuminate new aspects of their compelling protagonist and the horrors of the Great War. <em>(Dec.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>The Great War never relinquished its hold on Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, leaving him haunted and isolated, unable to forget. In the spring of 1920, he's dispatched to Berkshire to find a missing man whose war work is so secret even Rutledge cannot know its true nature. Meanwhile, miles away, an unidentified body has been discovered in the ruins of a Yorkshire abbey, clothed in a monk's robe and wearing a gas mask. </p><p>In the shadow of a great white horse cut into the chalk hillside—where cottages once built to house the sick and untouchable now shelter outcasts like himself—Rutledge must extract a terrible truth from those who hide from the past. For death is never quite finished with anyone, least of all the men who fought in the bloody trenches of France. </p>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>When smalltime insurance salesman Walter Huff meets seductive Phyllis Nirdlinger, the wife of one of his wealthy clients, it takes him only minutes to determine that she wants to get rid of her husband--and not much longer to decide to help her do it. Walter knows that accident insurance pays double indemnity on railroad mishaps, so he and Phyllis plot frantically to get Nirdlinger on--and off--a train without arousing the suspicions of the police, the insurance company, Nirdlinger's dishy daughter, her mysterious boyfriend, or Nirdlinger himself. This brief but complex novel is a perfect example of the ordinary-guy-gone-disastrously-wrong story that Cain always pulls off brilliantly. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>'[A] fine idea for a series... They already have a superb noir backlist. but adding Philip K Dick's Minority Report and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? improves the mix.' SCOTSMAN </p>

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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Mildred Pierce is the story of a determined and ambitious woman who, after her feckless husband abandons her, by hard work and sacrifice builds a successful business to ensure the future of her pampered and selfish daughter. But she isn't prepared for the intrigues and devastating betrayals of those closest to her. This is James M. Cain's most substantial novel and a classic of the Depression years.</p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>Too Much Happiness</em>. Real life assaults her central characters rather brutally--in the forms of murder and madness, death, divorce, and all manner of deceptions--but they respond with a poise and clarity of thought that's disarming--sometimes, even nonchalant--when you consider their circumstances. Her women move through life, wearing their scars but not so much wearied by them, profoundly intelligent, but also inordinately tender and thoughtful. There's more fact than fiction to these stories, rich in quiet, precise details that make for a beautiful, bewildering read. --_Anne Bartholomew_</p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Munro's latest collection is satisfyingly true to form and demonstrates why she continues to garner laurels (such as this year's Man Booker International Prize). Through carefully crafted situations, Munro breathes arresting life into her characters, their relationships and their traumas. In Wenlock Edge, a college student in London, Ontario, acquires a curious roommate in Nina, who tricks the narrator into a revealing dinner date with Nina's paramour, the significantly older Mr. Purvis. Child's Play, a dark story about children's capacity for cruelty and the longevity of their secrets, introduces two summer camp friends, Marlene and Charlene, who form a pact against the slightly disturbing Verna, whose family used to share Marlene's duplex. The title, and final, story, the collection's longest and most ambitious, takes the reader to 19th-century Europe to meet Sophia Kovalevski, a talented mathematician and novelist who grapples with the politics of the age and the consequences of success. While this story lacks some of the effortlessness found in Munro's finest work, the collection delivers what she's renowned for: poignancy, flesh and blood characters and a style nothing short of elegant. <em>(Nov.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>"One of the towering novels of this century." -- <em>--</em><em>New York Times</em>  </p><p>"The book obviously belongs with the most original and creative novels of our time." -- <em>--Alfred Kazin</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Geoffrey Firmin, a former British consul, has come to Quauhnahuac, Mexico.Here the consul's debilitating malaise is drinking, and activity that has overshadowed his life. <em>Under the Volcano</em> is set during the most fateful day of the consul's life--the Day of the Dead, 1938. His wife, Yvonne, arrives in Quauhnahuac to rescue him and their failing marriage, inspired by a vision of life together away from Mexico and the circumstances that have driven their relationship to the brink of collapse. Yvonne's mission is to save the consul is further complicated by the presence of Hugh, the consul's half-brother, and Jacques, a childhood friend. The events of this one day unfold against a backdrop unforgettable for its evocation of a Mexico at once magical and diabolical.</p><p><em>Under the Volcano</em> remains one of the most powerful and lyrical statements on the human condition and one man's constant struggle against the elemental forces that threaten to destroy him.</p>


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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>"An outstanding novel...a classic adventure story."</p><p>-- <em>The New York Times</em>  </p><p>"A profound and moving work of the imagination."</p><p>-- <em>Los Angeles Times Book Review</em>  </p><p>"An incredible literary achievement....Brilliant."</p><p>-- Anthony Burgess </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><em>The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film, tells of a young boy's struggle to survive World War II in China.</em></p><p>Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him.</p><p>Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world.</p><p>Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint. </p>

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<h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>In 1876 William "[Buffalo] Bill" [Hickok] and Charley Utter rode into Deadwood, a hellish frontier settlement in the Black Hills. Bill died there, victim of a possibly demented assassin. Fortunately, this is mostly the story of his constant companion, Charley, a man of sapient insight and, though less famous than his friend, of extensive and varied experience. Charley, Bill, their acquaintance the Bottle Fiend, and later Bill's widow Agnes and mourner Calamity Jane saw some remarkable things in Deadwood and raised considerable Cain. By turns heroic, ludicrous, vicious, pathetic, and infuriating, the exotic citizens of Deadwood grab the reader's interest immediately and never let go. Highly recommended for its deadpan, offbeat, credible frontier anarchy. Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army TRALINET Ctr., Fort Monroe, Va.<br />Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“If you want to call<strong> Deadwood</strong> a Western, you might as well call <strong>The House of Mirth</strong> chick lit. Dexter looked at the dark, twisted, ridiculous doings of Bill Hickok and company, said to himself, ‘I recognize that!<strong>’</strong> and gave us a world-class entertainment.” —Jonathan Franzen, author of <strong>The Corrections</strong>  </p><p>“Unpredictable, hyperbolic and, page after page, uproarious; a joshing book written in high spirits and a raw appreciation of the past.” --_The New York Times Book Review_  </p><p>“Splendid. . . . Rumor put straight. . . . A carefully researched knitting of events into their most dazzling fabric.” --_The Philadelphia Inquirer_  </p><p>“<strong>Deadwood</strong> may well be the best western ever written.” —_The Washington Post Book World_  </p><p>"What deepens and darkens [Dexter's] writing, so that art is the precise word to describe it, is a powerful understanding that character rules, that we live with our weaknesses and die of our strengths." --_Time_  </p><p>"Dexter is a master of colloquial poetry, of moods revealed through gestures and settings." -_-Playboy_   </p><p>"One of the greatest American writers... a storyteller who cuts straight to the nerve." --Scott L. Turow  </p><p>"Dexter's strongest suit is his exquisite understanding of the finely meshed engines of greed, appetite, and interest." --_The New York Times Book Review_  </p><p>"Great, eccentric characters....Dexter's writing is a living thing." --_USA Today_</p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>As one might expect of Doctorow, the title is ironic. In settings that range across the U.S., most of the alienated characters in the five stories here find life anything but sweet as they struggle to surmount the stigmas of poverty, lack of education and their instincts to gamble against the odds. Three of the male protagonists are passive and amoral; attempting to defend their irrational behavior, each reminds himself that he is not stupid. All of themâ€"a young grifter who dutifully abets his mother's murderous greed on a farm near Chicago ("A House on the Plains"); a love-besotted accessory to a kidnapping in California (the slyly humorous "Baby Wilson"); and a cuckolded member of a religious cult commune in Kansas ("Walter John Harmon")â€"share a capacity for self-delusion and self-preservation. The two female protagonists attempt to alter fate and find themselves buffeted by the inescapable force of male power. The protagonist of "Jolene: A Life" is forced into a cross-country hegira in pursuit of a sweet land where she won't be an outsider. Scared and desperate despite her cool facade, Jolene becomes a victim in every relationship. If the story's denouement veers too close to soap opera, Doctorow's empathetic character portrayal redeems the plot twists. The most riveting narrative, "Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden," describes a presidential administration that is secretive, arrogant and contemptuous of ordinary citizens. In this knowing treatment of the cynical abuse of power, Doctorow uses the spare, laconic style endemic to thrillers and builds suspense with sure strokes. Boring like a laser into the failures of the American dream, he captures the resilience of those who won't accept defeat. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Each critic professes great respect for Doctorow, who, at age 73 and many awards later, has earned it. However, there the split begins. Many critics hail these stories, four of which were published previously in <em>The New Yorker</em>, as an achievement that perfectly captures the American nation’s mood, its aberrant characters, and dark underbelly. But others dismiss the book as a slim, shallow effort that does not live up to Doctorow’s past work. Common complaints? “A House on the Plains” doesn’t fit in with the other four stories, and “Child, Found Dead in the Rose Garden,” which could have been a powerful political piece, doesn’t live up to its promise. </p><p><em>Copyright © 2004 Phillips &amp; Nelson Media, Inc.</em></p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>THE NEXT CHAPTER IN THE EXTRAORDINARY HISTORY OF THE STAR WARS GALAXY BEGINS HERE. . . .   </p><p>After a violent civil war and the devastation wrought by the now-fallen Darth Caedus, the Galactic Alliance is in crisis–and in need. From all corners, politicians, power brokers, and military leaders converge on Coruscant for a crucial summit to restore order, negotiate differences, and determine the future of their unified worlds. But even more critical, and far more uncertain, is the future of the Jedi.  </p><p>In a shocking move, Chief of State Natasi Daala orders the arrest of Luke Skywalker for failing to prevent Jacen Solo’s turn to the dark side and his subsequent reign of terror as a Sith Lord. But it’s only the first blow in an anti-Jedi backlash fueled by a hostile government and suspicious public. When Jedi Knight Valin Horn, scion of a politically influential family, suffers a mysterious psychotic break and becomes a dangerous fugitive, the Jedi become the target of a media-driven witch hunt. Facing conviction on the damning charges, Luke must strike a bargain with the calculating Daala: his freedom in exchange for his exile from Coruscant and from the Jedi Order.  </p><p>Though forbidden to intervene in Jedi affairs, Luke is determined to keep history from being repeated. With his son, Ben, at his side, Luke sets out to unravel the shocking truth behind Jacen Solo’s corruption and downfall. But the secrets he uncovers among the enigmatic Force mystics of the distant world Dorin may bring his quest–and life as he knows it–to a sudden end. And all the while, another Jedi Knight, consumed by the same madness as Valin Horn, is headed for Coruscant on a fearsome mission that could doom the Jedi Order . . . and devastate the entire galaxy. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Aaron Allston is the New York Times bestselling author of the Star Wars: Legacy of the Force novels<strong> Betrayal, Exile,</strong> and <strong>Fury</strong>; the Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Enemy Lines adventures <strong>Rebel Dream</strong> and <strong>Rebel Stand</strong>; novels in the popular Star Wars X-Wing series; and the Doc Sidhe novels, which combine 1930s-style hero-pulps with Celtic myth. He is also a longtime game designer and was recently inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts &amp; Design (AAGAD) Hall of Fame. He lives in Central Texas. </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Following a trail of clues across the galaxy, Luke Skywalker continues his quest to find the reasons behind Jacen Solo’s dark downfall and to win redemption for the Jedi Order. Sojourning among the mysterious Aing-Tii monks has left Luke and his son Ben with no real answers, only the suspicion that the revelations they seek lie in the forbidden reaches of the distant Maw Cluster. There, hidden from the galaxy in a labyrinth of black holes, dwell the Mind Walkers: those whose power to transcend their bodies and be one with the Force is as seductive and intoxicating as it is potentially fatal. But it may be Luke’s only path to the truth.   </p><p>Meanwhile, on Coruscant, the war of wills between Galactic Alliance Chief of State Natasi Daala and the Jedi Order is escalating. Outraged over the carbonite freezing of young Jedi Knights Valin and Jysella Horn after their inexplicable mental breakdowns, the Jedi are determined to defy Daala’s martial tactics, override Council Master Kenth Hamner’s wavering leadership, and deal on their own terms with the epidemic of madness preying on their ranks. As Han and Leia Solo, along with their daughter Jaina, join the fight to protect more stricken Knights from arrest, Jedi healers race to find a cure for the rapidly spreading affliction. But none of them realize the blaster barrel is already swinging in their direction–and Chief Daala is about to pull the trigger.   </p><p>Nor do Luke and Ben, deep in the Maw Cluster and pushing their Force abilities beyond known limits, realize how close they are–to the Sith strike squad bent on exterminating the Skywalkers, to a nexus of dark-side energy unprecedented in its power and its hunger, and to an explosive confrontation between opposing wielders of the Force from which only one Master–good or evil–can emerge alive. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Troy Denning is the_ New York Times_ bestselling author of <strong>Star Wars: Tatooine Ghost; Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Star by Star; the Star Wars: Dark Nest trilogy: The Joiner King, The Unseen Queen, and The Swarm War; and Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Tempest, Inferno, and Invincible</strong>–as well as <em>Pages of Pain</em>, <em>Beyond the High Road</em>, <em>The Summoning</em>, and many other novels. A former game designer and editor, he lives in western Wisconsin with his wife, Andria. </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>The life of an Appalachian coal miner, who has been separated from his family for years, is drastically changed and complicated as he seeks revenge when his daughter suddenly appears in his cabin, and he discovers the true identity of her illegitimate chi</p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Serenade is the story of the eternal triangle - with a difference. John Howard Sharp is an American opera singer down on his luck, having just bombed in Rigoletto in Mexico City when he first encounters the beautiful Mexican-Indian prostitute called Juana. Miraculously, she offers him the chance to rebuild his career in Hollywood and New York but then Winston Hawes, the young, rich and well-connected conductor who had first launched Sharp, comes back into his life with terrible consequences. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>James M. Cain was born in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1892. Having served in the US Army in World War 1, he became a journalist in Baltimore and New York in the 1920's. He later worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Cain died in 1977 </p>


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Ben Grace, a member of the organized crime gang that controls Lake City, leaks evidence implicating the leader in murder and tax evasion, leading to a violent struggle to maintain control of the city in face of a reforming mayoral candidate</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; ">Take a look back at the Onion's coverage of this generation's most prominent newsmaker -- the Area Man. The Onion is already universally known for providing the best and most ground-breaking coverage of national and international events, but local reporting has always been at the core of America's Finest News Source. In this incisive and timeless collection, Chronicles Of The Area Man includes such stirring reports as "Area Man Has Far Greater Knowledge Of Marvel Universe Than Own Family Tree," "Area Woman To Get By On Looks For Six More Years," "Area Grandparents Still Have No Idea What Grandson Does For A Living," and the classic story of perseverance, "Area Man Makes It Through Day." With this collection of the Onion's best local coverage, you'll see there's a little bit of the Area Man inside us all.</div></span></div>


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


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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Aleksandr Orlov has in the last year become one of the most loved figures in British culture and his catchphrase Simples! can be heard from the playground to the office. Written in his inimitable voice (as dictated to his sidekick Sergei), his autobiography will offer the same humour as his TV ads, giving us the full story of his ancestors Journey of Courageousness from the Kalahari to Russia, the low-down on his life as entrepreneur and founder of comparethemeerkat.com and his love of grubs and cravats.My name is Aleksandr Orlov. I live and make work in Moscow. I have a success business. I have a mansion decorate with many fine things. I have a naturally majestic posture. But I would have none of these things if it were not for my family. This book is dedicated to them. I also wish to inspire next generation of young businesskats. I am hope that this book will show what can come of courage, hard work and a good fur-care regime. I am also hope that with royalties I will be able to re-marble roof on Orlov family mansion</p>


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<div><p class="description">Few masters of science fiction have brought us glimpses of the near future as vividly as Arthur C. Clarke, in short stories, in novels, and in films. This collection of his classic stories includes "The Sentinel," the original source for the classic film, <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>. This special edition is a collection of Clarke's highest caliber short fiction.</p>
<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Originally published in 1983, the "2001 Anniversary Edition" of Arthur C. Clarke's <em>The Sentinel</em> offers insight and commentary on 10 of Clarke's most notable short stories.</p><p>In Clarke's introduction, he explores why he became the kind of writer he did, and he offers a look at the very first paragraph he ever published--in 1933. This anthology spans three decades, beginning in 1946 with the second story he published, "The Rescue Party," and offers a chance to read some of the short stories that later germinated into his most spectacular works.</p><p>It's a special treat to be able to see the beginnings of <strong> and </strong>, along with Clarke's thoughts on how each story came about. The truly amazing thing is that Clarke's short fiction still holds up, by and large. It's unavoidable that time would catch up with Clarke, though. In fact, he almost apologetically reminds the reader that while "Jupiter V" is dated, Sputnik was still six years in the future when it was written in 1951.</p><p>While it would have been wonderful if Clarke had added an additional introduction about the human race's journey into 2001 and beyond for this special edition, that was not to be. His most recent words in this anthology were written in 1983. But that's a minor quibble. With exceptional illustrations by Lebbeus Woods, <em>The Sentinel</em> is a must-read, not only for Clarke fans, but for all readers of science fiction. <em>--Kathie Huddleston</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>'Clarke is one of the greatest imaginative writers of hard science fiction' New Scientist 'Arthur Clarke is one of the true geniuses of our time' Ray Bradbury 'Arthur C. Clarke is the prophet of the space age' The Times 'A one-man literary Big Bang, Clarke has originated his own vast and teeming futurist universe' Sunday Times '3001 is not just a page-turner, plugged in to the great icons of HAL and the monoliths, but a book of wisdom too, pithy and provocative' New Scientist 'Arthur C. Clarke is blessed with one of the most astounding imaginations ever encountered in print' New York Times 'One of the truly prophetic figures of the space age! the colossus of science fiction' New Yorker </p>

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This Halcyon Classics ebook collection contains fifty short stories by more than forty masters of science fiction. Many of the stories in this collection were published during the heyday of popular science fiction magazines from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Included within this work are stories by Ben Bova, Cordwainer Smith, Phillip K. Dick, Randall Garrett, Paul Ernst, Kurt Vonnegut, Harry Harrison, Jack Williamson, Lester Del Rey, Fredric Brown, Murray Leinster, C.M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Andre Norton, H. Beam Piper, and many others.

This collection is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.


Contents:

A Question of Courage, J.F. Bone
The Duelling Maching, Ben Bova
Keep Out, Frederic Brown
Indirection, Everett B. Cole
The Game of Rat and Dragon, Cordwainer Smith
The World Beyond, Raymond Cummings
Victory, Lester Del Rey
The Defenders, Phillip K. Dick
The Hammer of Thor, Charles Willard Diffin
The Planetoid of Peril, Paul Ernst
The Jupiter Weapon, Charles L. Fontenay
This World Must Die, H.B. Fyfe
Psichopath, Randall Garrett
The Man Who Hated Mars, Randall Garrett
Hawk Carse, Anthony Gilmore
The Helpful Hand of God, Tom Godwin
A Scientist Rises, D.W. Hall
Monsters of Mars, Edmond Hamilton
The Sargasso of Space, Edmond Hamilton
The K-Factor, Harry Harrison
The Misplaced Battleship, Harry Harrison
Walls of Acid, Henry Hasse
Old Rambling House, Frank Herbert
Made in Tanganyika, Carl Jacobi
Sight Gag, Lawrence Janifer
Get Out of Our Skies, E. K. Jarvis
Cubs of the Wolf, Raymond F. Jones
The Cosmic Expense Account, C.M. Kornbluth
We Didn’t Do Anything Wrong, Hardly, Roger Kuykendall
The Great Potlatch Riots, Allen Kim Lang
Gambler’s World, Keith Laumer
No Great Magic, Fritz Leiber
The Ambulance Made Two Trips, Murray Leinster
The Leader, Murray Leinster
The Mississippi Saucer, Frank Belknap Long
Summer Snow Storm, Stephen Marlowe
The Attack From Space, S.P. Meek
The Great Drought, S.P. Meek
Death of Spaceman, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The People of the Crater, Andre Norton
An Ounce of Cure, Alan Nourse
Image of the Gods, Alan Nourse
A Slave is a Slave, H. Beam Piper
Day of the Moron, H. Beam Piper
Pythias, Frederick Pohl
The Hunters, Joseph Samachson
The Judas Valley, Robert Silverberg
Project Mastodon, Clifford D. Simak
2BR02B, Kurt Vonnegut
The Pygmy Planet, Jack Williamson


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that "suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down." He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more--including Krakauer's--in guilt-ridden disarray, would also provide the impetus for <em>Into Thin Air</em>, Krakauer's epic account of the May 1996 disaster. With more than 250 black-and-white photographs taken by various expedition members and an enlightening new postscript by the author, the <em>Illustrated Edition</em> shows readers what this tragic climb looked like and potentially provides closure for Krakauer and his detractors. </p><p>"I have no doubt that Boukreev's intentions were good on summit day," writes Krakauer in a postscript dated August 1998. "What disturbs me, though, was Boukreev's refusal to acknowledge the possibility that he made even a single poor decision. Never did he indicate that perhaps it wasn't the best choice to climb without gas or go down ahead of his clients." As usual, Krakauer supports his points with dogged research and a good dose of humility. But rather than continue the heated discourse that has raged since <em>Into Thin Air</em>'s denouncement of guide Boukreev, Krakauer's tone is conciliatory; he points most of his criticism at G. Weston De Walt, who coauthored __, Boukreev's version of events. And in a touching conclusion, Krakauer recounts his last conversation with the late Boukreev, in which the two weathered climbers agreed to disagree about certain points. Krakauer had great hopes to patch things up with Boukreev, but the Russian later died in a avalanche on another Himalayan peak, Annapurna I. Krakauer further buries the ice axe by donating his share of royalties from sales of <em>The Illustrated Edition</em> to the Everest '96 Memorial Fund, which aids various environmental and humanitarian charities. <em>--Rob McDonald</em></p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Heroism and sacrifice triumph over foolishness, fatal error, and human frailty in this bone-chilling narrative in which the author recounts his experiences on last year's ill-fated, deadly climb. Thrilling armchair reading. <br />Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From</h3><p>The fifth novel in the Last Rune saga continues the tale of a complex conflict between hidden users of magic on our Earth and open users of magic on an alternate Earth called Eldh. The action jumps between worlds and times, not to mention among the viewpoints of a cast of characters grown so large that it is beginning to demand a few lists. Nevertheless, those who have stayed with the story since <em>Beyond the Pale</em> (1998) kicked it off are going to enjoy themselves. <em>The Gates of Winter</em> picks up right where <em>Blood of Mystery</em> [BKL Ap 1 02] left off, and there is plenty of action in both worlds as heroes and villains alike try to win the race to find Travis, the Runemaster. Besides its plentitude, the action is brisk throughout, building to a climactic battle at the gate between the worlds at the very end of the book--an ending, be it noted, that not merely promises but guarantees at least one further volume. <em>Roland Green</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>In a masterwork of brilliant storytelling, the epic fantasy of two parallel worlds--mystical Eldh and modern Earth--takes a surprising turn in Book Five of Mark Anthony’s thrilling saga of magic, suspense, and adventure_, The Last Rune_.  </p><p><em></em>The Gates of Winter  </p><p><em></em>The enigmatic Shemal has known only two Runebreakers. One, her rival Kelephon, served the Pale King and his army of apocalypse. The other was Travis Wilder, the Runebreaker of prophecy.Now, in outcast and newly made Runebreaker Larad, Shemal has found a weapon to open the door between worlds. As the shadow of Shemal’s master, the vengeful god Mohg, Lord of Nightfall, looms, Grace Beckett seeks to harness wild magic and Travis Wilder joins her in the struggle between warriors and mages, witches <br />and kings and betrayers of every form.  </p><p>As the time of final reckoning approaches, Travis and Grace will find themselves facing a dark conspiracy of evil whose virulence threatens to overwhelm anyone who stands in its way. Yet if they don’t succeed in stopping it, two worlds will be lost forever. </p>


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<h3>From</h3><p>Comedian Oswalt (The King of Queens, Caprica) offers up a collection of colorful essays ranging in topic from his experiences working at a movie theater to sends-ups of eccentric relatives, including a grandmother who gives exceedingly odd birthday gifts. To delve into the book is to take a tour of Oswalt’s delightfully offbeat mind: he shares with readers what he was doing to procrastinate while writing certain chapters, suggests some truly morbid greeting cards, and parodies the vampire craze in comic-book form. The title is a reference to Oswalt’s theory that creative teens gravitate toward three subjects for their early stories: zombies, spaceships, or wastelands. Oswalt found himself drawn toward wastelands, a natural choice for a comedian who likes to poke fun at society. Oswalt is a wonderfully descriptive writer, vividly evoking his zombielike coworker at the theater, a grim Canadian comedy club, and the wanderings of his teen imagination with sharp, sardonic prose. --Kristine Huntley </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“Further proof that Patton Oswalt is way funnier than I am, which is either high praise or an insult. Your call.” —Judd Apatow  </p><p>“Patton Oswalt is a brilliant rarity; a relentlessly creative and original comic who is also a superb writer. If you don’t buy this book you are a fool and I will, I swear, fight you.” —Conan O’Brien  </p><p>“Funny, thoughtful stuff. Patton alternates the spit-take hilarity of a great stand-up with the quiet, mordant insight that clearly helped make him one. Which is amazing, ‘cause he’s an idiot.” —Joss Whedon  </p><p>“Fans of Patton Oswalt’s standup comedy have always known he was a born writer at heart, and now here’s the proof. This is a surprisingly affecting, sincere and daresay vulnerable collection of essays, all keenly observed, always very funny.” —Dave Eggers  </p><p>“I don’t know what’s sharper, Oswalt’s brains or Oswalt’s tongue.”</p><p>—<strong>Sarah Vowell</strong>  </p><p>“I have impeccable taste, and I only converse with the following three: God, the Devil, and Patton Oswalt. All three have opened for me. This book is a funny tragedy. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll convert to Pattonism. If you do not love this book, remember, I know where you live in your mother’s basement.”</p><p>—<strong>Harlan Ellison</strong>  </p><p>“Perfect—I can describe Patton’s book the same way I describe his stand up—brilliant and prolific, I am slackjawed, amazed, and left feeling both inspired and fraudulent.”</p><p>—<strong>Sarah Silverman</strong>  </p><p>“Patton Oswalt is among the funniest on-stage talking humans I am aware of, so it annoys me deeply that he is also an incredibly talented writer. It annoys me, but it does not surprise me. Every sentence in this book is funny (except for the sad ones), but it also brims with Oswalt-ian smarts and surprising poignancy.”</p><p>—<strong>John Hodgman</strong></p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>~TWILIGHT~  </p><p>BY EVENING, WHEN THE WINDS ROSE yet again, the power began to stutter at half-strength, and the sirens to fail. From those streetlights whose bulbs hadn’t been stoned, a tea-colored dusk settled in uncertain tides. It fell on the dirty militias of pack dogs, all bullying and foaming against one another, and on the palm fronds twitching in the storm gutter, and on the abandoned cars, and everything — everything — was flattened, equalized in the gloom of half-light. Like the subjects in a browning photograph in some antique photo album, only these times weren’t antique. They<br />were now.  </p><p>The air seemed both oily and dry. If you rubbed your fingers together, a miser imagining a coin, your fingers stuck slightly.  </p><p>A fug of smoke lay on the slopes above the deserted freeway. It might have reminded neighbors of campfire hours, but there were few neighbors around to notice. Most of them had gotten out while they still could.  </p><p>Dinah could feel that everything was different, without knowing how or why. She wasn’t old enough to add up this column of facts:<br />- power cuts<br />- the smell of wet earth: mudslide surgically opening the hills<br />- winds like Joshua’s army battering the walls of Jericho<br />- massed clouds with poisonous yellow edges<br />- the evacuation of the downslope neighbors, and the silence<br />and come up with a grown-up summary, like one or more of the following:<br />- the collapse of local government and services<br />- the collapse of public confidence, too<br />- state of emergency<br />- end of the world<br />- business as usual, just a variety of usual not usually seen.<br />After all, Dinah was only ten.  </p><p>Ten, and in some ways, a youngish ten, because her family<br />lived remotely.  </p><p>For one thing, they kept themselves apart — literally. The Ormsbys sequestered themselves in a scrappy bungalow perched at the uphill end of the canyon, where the unpaved county road petered out into ridge rubble and scrub pine.  </p><p>The Ormsbys weren’t rural castaways nor survivalists — nothing like that. They were trying the experiment of living by gospel standards, and they hoped to be surer of their faith tomorrow than they’d been yesterday.  </p><p>A decent task and, around here, a lonely one. The Ormsby family made its home a citadel against the alluring nearby world of the Internet, the malls, the cable networks, and other such temptations.  </p><p>The Ormsby parents called these attractions slick. They sighed and worried: dangerous. They feared cunning snares and delusions. Dinah Ormsby wished she could study such matters close-up and decide for herself.  </p><p>Dinah and her big brother, Zeke, were homeschooled. This, they were frequently reminded, kept them safe, made them strong, and preserved their goodness. Since most of the time they felt safe, strong, and good, they assumed the strategy was working.  </p><p>But all kids possess a nervy ability to dismay their parents, and the kids of the Ormsby family were no exception. Dinah saw life as a series of miracles with a fervor that even her devout parents considered unseemly.  </p><p>"No, Santa Claus has no website staffed by underground Nordic trolls. No, there is no flight school for the training of apprentice reindeer. No to Santa Claus, period," her mother always said. "Dinah, honey, don’t let your imagination run away with you." Exasperatedly: "Govern yourself!"  </p><p>"Think things through," said her dad, ever the peacemaker. "Big heart, big faith: great. But make sure you have a big mind, too. Use the brain God gave you."  </p><p>Dinah took no offense, and she did try to think things through. From the Ormsby’s bunker, high above the threat of contamination by modern life, she could still love the world. In a hundred ways, a new way every day. Even a crisis could prove thrilling as it unfolded:<br />- Where, for instance, had her secret downslope friends gone? Just imagining their adventures on the road — with their normal, middle-class<br />families — made Dinah happy. Or curious, anyway.<br />- For another instance: Just now, around the corner of the house, here comes the newcomer, Gage. A distant cousin of Dinah’s mom. A few<br />days ago he had arrived on the bus for a rare visit and, presto. When the problems began to multiply and the result was a disaster, Gage had<br />been right there, ready to help out as an emergency babysitter. Talk about timely — it was downright providential. How could you deny it?  </p><p>Therefore, Dinah concluded,<br />- A storm is as good a setting for a miracle as any.  </p><p>Of course, it would have been a little more miraculous if Gage had proven to be handy in a disaster, but Dinah wasn’t inclined to second-guess the hand of God. She would take any blessing that came along. Even if decent cousin Gage was a bit — she tried to face it, to use her good mind with honesty — ineffectual.  </p><p>Hopeless at fixing anything. Clumsy with a screwdriver. Skittish with a used diaper. ("As a weather forecaster," Zeke mumbled to Dinah, "Gage is all wet: where is the clear sky, the sunlight he’s been promising?")  </p><p>Yes, Gage Tavenner was a tangle of recklessly minor talents. Who needed a mandolin player when the electric power wouldn’t come on anymore?  </p><p>But he was all they had, now. An adequate miracle so far.   </p><p>"Zeke," Gage called, "get down from that shed roof ! Are you insane? We want another medical crisis?"  </p><p>"I was trying to see where the power line was down. . . ."  </p><p>"And fry yourself in the process? Power is out all over the county. Up there, if the winds get much stronger, you’ll be flown to your next destination without the benefit of an airplane. Down. Now. . . . "  </p><p><hr />WHAT-THE-DICKENS by Gregory Maguire. Copyright (c) 2007 by Gregory Maguire. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.  </p><p><em>From the Hardcover edition.</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>"Gregory Maguire does for the dark and stormy night what he did for witches in Wicked." — The New York Times Book Review</strong>  </p><p>A terrible storm is raging, and Dinah is huddled by candlelight with her brother, sister, and cousin Gage, who is telling a very unusual tale. It’s thestory of What-the-Dickens, a newly hatched orphan creature who finds he has an attraction to teeth, a crush on a cat named McCavity, and a penchant for getting into trouble. One day he happens upon a feisty girl skibberee working as an Agent of Change — trading coins for teeth — and learns of a dutiful tribe of tooth fairies to which he hopes to belong. As his tale unfolds, however, both What-the-Dickens and Dinah come to see that the world is both richer and far less sure than they ever imagined. </p>


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SUMMARY:
A former POW hunts for the truth behind a web of murder, betrayal, and treasonIn the midst of the Korean War, Martin Shane and five others were captured as POWs and tormented by the cruel Colonel Li. One of them revealed military secrets in return for freedom, but before Shane could uncover his identity, a violent explosion wiped his memory and confined him to the sterile halls of a mental institution. When he suddenly regains his memory six years later, Shane has only one goal: find out who betrayed them to Colonel Li. Shane seeks out the five men he fought beside all those years ago in order to expose a shocking truth behind the fateful day that changed all of their lives forever."Jack Higgins is the master." -Tom ClancyJack Higgins is the New York Times bestselling author of more than sixty thrillers that have sold over 250 million copies worldwide, including The Eagle Has Landed and The Wolf at the Door. Before beginning his writing career, Higgins served in the British Army along the East German border. He lives in the Channel Islands.


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SUMMARY:
Reissue of the timeless Higgins classic'ŚFrom being a fighter in his teens, to becoming a leader north of the border in his twenties, by the age of forty, Martin Fallon was a revered man; a legend and hero of the Organization.After time in prison, and a battle with the bottle, he's ready to turn his back on the fight.But the war isn't over, and now, his services are needed once again'ŚLed back into operation under false pretences by his employers, Fallon is thrown into a rescue mission, and up against The Ulster Constabulary; a ruthless and terrifying sect with a penchant violence, and a ransom on the head of a king.Fallon must drag himself from the edge to fight for justice, searching for truth, and spilling blood.


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<div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>_"… in Your book all my days were recorded, even those which were purposed <em>_before they had come into being." </em>—Psalm 139:16 Young Cameron Vaux’s mind is slipping. Memories of his wife, killed two years earlier in a car accident, are vanishing just as his dad predicted they would. Memories he knows he has to remember. His father tells Cameron that to save his mind he must find "the book with all days in it" —the past and future record of every soul on earth. When an obscure clue leads Cameron to a small central Oregon town, he meets enigmatic Taylor Stone, a possible guide to finding the book who seems to carry secrets far deeper than anyone imagines. Local hotshot TV personality Ann Bannister thinks the legend of the book is a farce, but she has her reasons to join Cameron’s search anyway. Finally, there is fanatical New Age guru Jason Judah, who will stop at nothing to find the book of days before Cameron does.  </p><p><em></em>Acclaim for <em>Book of Days</em>:  </p><p><em></em>"I devoured <em>Book of Days</em> in one sitting. It is an exciting but poignant novel about how truly important our memories and choices are to who we become. It's still resonating in my heart."  </p><p><strong>Colleen Coble</strong>, best-selling author of _The Lightkeeper's Bride<br>_<br>"_Book of Days_ is actually better than Rubart's best-selling debut, <em>Rooms</em> . . . a terrific story that is equal parts fast-paced thriller, thought-provoking allegory, and moving drama."  </p><p><strong>Rick Acker</strong>, author of _When the Devil Whistles<br>_<br>"James L. Rubart is officially now one of my favorite writers. <em>Book of Days</em> is a great read, why people buy novels."  </p><p><strong>Dan Walsh</strong>, award-winning author of <em>The Unfinished Gift</em></p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>James L. Rubart</strong> is a professional marketer, speaker, and writer. He serves on the board of the Northwest Christian Writers Association and lives with his wife and sons in Seattle, Washington. </p>

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<h3>Review</h3><p>“[A] mammoth epic of the islands, [a] vast panorama . . . wonderful.”—_Baltimore Sun_  </p><p>“One novel you must not miss! A tremendous work from every point of view—thrilling, exciting, lusty, vivid, stupendous.” _—Chicago Tribune  </p><p><em>“A memorable novel, a superb biography of a people.”</em>—Houston Chronicle_</p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>In <em>Hawaii</em>, Pulitzer Prize–winning author James Michener weaves the classic saga that brought Hawaii’s epic history vividly alive to the American public on its initial publication in 1959, and continues to mesmerize even today.  </p><p>The volcanic processes by which the Hawaiian Islands grew from the ocean floor were inconceivably slow, and the land remained untouched by man for countless centuries until, little more than a thousand years ago, Polynesian seafarers made the perilous journey across the Pacific and discovered their new home. They lived and flourished in this tropical paradise according to their ancient traditions and beliefs until, in the early nineteenth century, American missionaries arrived, bringing a new creed and a new way of life to a Stone Age society. The impact of the missionaries had only begun to be absorbed when other national groups, with equally different customs, began to migrate in great numbers to the islands. The story of modern Hawaii, and of this novel, is one of how disparate peoples, struggling to keep their identity yet live with one another in harmony, ultimately joined together to build America’s strong and vital fiftieth state. </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Adventurers, scoundrels and missionaries. The best and worst of two continents carve an empire out of the vast wilderness that is to become South Africa. For hundreds of years, their rivalries and passions spill across the land. From the first Afrikaners to the powerful Zulu nation, and the missionaries who lived with both--all of them will influence and take part in the wars and politics that will change a nation forever.<br />THE COVENANT: generations of people who forge a new world in a story of adventure and heroism, love and loyalty, cruelty and betrayal.   </p><h3>From the Inside Flap</h3><p>Adventurers, scoundrels and missionaries. The best and worst of two continents carve an empire out of the vast wilderness that is to become South Africa. For hundreds of years, their rivalries and passions spill across the land. From the first Afrikaners to the powerful Zulu nation, and the missionaries who lived with both--all of them will influence and take part in the wars and politics that will change a nation forever.<br />THE COVENANT: generations of people who forge a new world in a story of adventure and heroism, love and loyalty, cruelty and betrayal. </p>


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Product Description
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.

Included within this work are stories by Phillip K. Dick, Randall Garrett, Harry Harrison, H. Beam Piper, Edmund Hamilton, Paul Ernst, Fredric Brown, Randall Garrett, Jack Williamson, Stanley Weinbaum, C.M. Kornbluth, and many others.

This collection is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.

Contents:

OPERATION EARTHWORM by Joe Archibald
AGGRAVATION OF ELMER by Robert Andrew Arthur
LAST RESORT by Stephen Bartholomew
WHERE THERE'S HOPE, by Jerome Bixby
ZERO HOUR by Alexander Blade
LIGHTER THAN YOU THINK by Nelson Bond
A PRIZE FOR EDIE by Jesse Franklin Bone
THE EINSTEIN SEE-SAW by Miles John Breuer
HALL OF MIRRORS by Fredric Brown
WEAK ON SQUARE ROOTS by Russell Burton
HARD GUY by H. B. Carleton
THE PERFECTIONISTS by Arnold Castle
COMPETITION by James Causey
FINAL WEAPON by Everett B. Cole
BEYOND THE VANISHING POINT by Ray Cummings
THE GUN by Philip K. Dick
MAROONED UNDER THE SEA by Paul Ernst
THE GIFT BEARER by Charles L. Fontenay
EXILE by H. B. Fyfe
AFTER A FEW WORDS by Randall Garrett
THE BLUFF OF THE HAWK by Anthony Gilmore
CRY FROM A FAR PLANET by Tom Godwin
THE SECOND SATELLITE by Edmond Hamilton
TOY SHOP by Harry Harrison
THE ALTAR AT MIDNIGHT by C.M. Kornbluth
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER by Roger Kuykendall
JOIN OUR GANG? by Sterling E. Lanier
DISTURBING SUN by Philip Latham
THE YILLIAN WAY by Keith Laumer
ONE MARTIAN AFTERNOON by Tom Leahy
JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT by William Lee
A BOTTLE OF OLD WINE by Richard O. Lewis
DAUGHTERS OF DOOM by Herbert Livingston
G-R-R-R...! by Robert Donald Locke
NEXT DOOR, NEXT WORLD by Robert Donald Locke
THE BIG TOMORROW by Paul Lohrman
THE MAN FROM TIME by Frank Belknap Long
WHEN I GROW UP by Richard E. Lowe
AND ALL THE EARTH A GRAVE by C.C. MacApp
BLACK EYES AND THE DAILY GRIND by Stephen Marlowe
PUSHBUTTON WAR by Joseph P. Martino
REX EX MACHINA by Frederic Max
DEAREST by H. Beam Piper
SORRY: WRONG DIMENSION by Ross Rocklynne
THE SECOND VOICE by Mann Rubin
CREATURES OF VIBRATION by Harl Vincent
A MARTIAN ODYSSEY by Stanley G. Weinbaum
THE LAKE OF LIGHT by Jack Williamson
UNDER ARCTIC ICE by H.G. Winter
LONESOME HEARTS by Russ Winterbotham


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Gignomai is the youngest brother in the current generation of met'Oc, a once-noble family exiled on an island for their role in a vaguely remembered civil war.  </p><p>On this island, a colony was founded seventy years ago. The plan was originally for the colonists to mine silver, but there turned out not to be any.  </p><p>Now, an uneasy peace exists on the island, between the colonists and the met'Oc. The met'Oc are tolerated, in spite of occasional cattle stealing raids, since they alone possess the weapons considered necessary protection against the island's savages.  </p><p>Gignomai is about to discover exactly what it is expected of him, and what it means to defy his family. He is the hammer who will provide the spark that will ignite a brutal and bloody war. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>K.J. Parker is a pseudonym. Find more about the author at www.kjparker.com. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>Neil Shubin Reviews <em>Insectopedia</em></strong>   </p><p><strong><em>Insectopedia</em>:</strong>   </p><p><em>Insectopedia</em> is one of the most remarkable books I have read in a long time. Like its subject, it is many things, all of them fascinating. First, it is a reference book of the first order: it is loaded with facts--some profound, others curious, and still others laugh-out-loud funny. <em>Insectopedia</em> is also part personal memoir, scientific detective story, and even cultural study. We travel the Amazon, visit Chernobyl, and enter laboratories and sidewalk cafes in search of insects and the ideas and cultures they inspire. Insects stir eerie fascination: they are beautiful, disgusting, important, and annoying. To some they are tasty. To others they are a source of sexual fetish. Who knew? In Raffles's hands insects become windows into our culture, science, health--even our psyche. In each page of <em>Insectopedia</em>, the more we learn of insects, the more we come to face--and sometimes even challenge--our own views of the world.</p><p><em>Insectopedia</em>, it's hard to look at a cricket, a bumblebee, and a human being the same way ever again. I adored the book. What an accomplishment. And I thought I knew insects... <em>--Neil Shubin</em></p><hr /><p><em></em><br />A Q&amp;A with Hugh Raffles<em></em>   </p><p><strong>Question:</strong> You’re an anthropologist who has written about life in the Brazilian Amazon in </p><p><strong>Hugh Raffles:</strong> Actually, no! But since I started researching this book a few years ago, I’ve become completely obsessed by insects and our relationships with them. Now they seem like the most amazing creatures. But before that, they were around me but weren’t something I paid that much attention to unless they were biting me or invading my apartment.</p><p>For a long time though, I’ve been interested in the connections between people and animals of all types. And I’ve thought a lot about what other worlds exist alongside the ones that we people live in. Most of these worlds are invisible to us. To give an example: we usually assume that time is a universal measure that everyone experiences in more or less similar ways. But it seems likely that other animals’ experience of time is completely different from ours--that for them, their short lives might actually last a very long time.</p><p>Despite the complexity of our own reality, it’s quite a limited universe when we consider all the parallel realities within which other beings exist. Insects are fascinating because they’re so different from us. It’s almost impossible to imagine what the worlds they live in are like. Recreating those worlds is one of the things I try to do in <em>The Illustrated Insectopedia</em>, often by meeting people (artists, musicians, and scientists, for example) who have their own interesting ways of thinking about this.</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> How did you decide on this encyclopedic format of A to Z? Did that seem a natural order after you wrote the essays or did you plan that from the beginning?</p><p><strong>Hugh Raffles:</strong> I’m one of those people who’s interested in pretty much everything. After spending a long time writing a book about one small community in the Brazilian Amazon, I wanted a project that would give me the freedom to find out about as many things as possible. The form of an encyclopedia seemed perfect for that. Now, I also realize that the insects pushed me in this direction: there are so many of them and so many different species, they’re everywhere and they won’t stay still--the book needed a structure that would capture some of that energy.</p><p>There were two other reasons for the A to Z. One was that, much as I like encyclopedias, I also wanted to make fun of them--the vanity of the idea that it’s possible to know everything, and then possible to collect all that knowledge in one place. My entries are a little arbitrary, but then, so are the entries in a real encyclopedia when you compare them with all the possible information that could be included.</p><p>The second reason was that I wanted to find out what it would be like to write with such a constraining form. It was tough! In fact, it was exhausting to be locked into 26 entries. There was a long period when I’d already written enough chapters for a whole book but still wasn’t even halfway through the alphabet. I’d say there were a couple of years when I lost hope that I’d ever get the thing finished. But on the other hand, there’s no doubt that the alphabet pushed me to be more creative than I would have been otherwise--and it let me experiment with writing essays of different lengths and different styles. And it was fun--it encouraged me to be playful, which is always good!</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> How did you research topics in this book? What led you from one topic to the next?</p><p><strong>Hugh Raffles:</strong> I started working on this book back in 2003 and since then I’ve been constantly on the lookout for interesting stories and situations about insects. Lots of people sent me ideas and I built up a collection of possible topics. I wanted an "encyclopedic" spread of chapters--a wide range across history and geography. And, in fact, the book visits 11th century Japan, 16th century Prague, 19th century France, modern-day China, Niger, and Florence, among many other times and places.</p><p>I was especially interested in situations in which people and insects encountered each other in such a way that the superiority of human beings was no longer certain. I looked for situations in which the meeting between people and insects led to the person discovering something new about themselves, about his or her relationship to other beings, and about what it means to be human. I’d like to say that the insects had some kind of experience in these encounters too, but I don’t think I’ve managed to figure that out yet!</p><p><strong>Question:</strong> What was the most bizarre thing you discovered about people and insects? How about the most universal thing?</p><p><strong>Hugh Raffles:</strong> The most bizarre thing? Well, it’s probably the most universal thing too. The more I’ve learned about insects and the more amazing they’ve become to me, the more strange it seems that we kill them without the least thought. Elias Canetti said that insects are "outlaws" because they are the only living beings which we kill with absolutely no moral qualms--think of Obama and the fly he swatted during that CNBC interview. What did he say? Something like "Got you, sucker!" That seems pretty bizarre to me and, unfortunately, more or less universal!</p><p>(Photo © Michael Lionstar)</p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Though the title suggests a Latin-heavy lexicon of insects from aphids to wolf spiders , anthropologist Raffles (_In Amazonia_) takes a decidedly different approach in his erudite and entertaining paean to bugs. Some chapters focus on nations: the paradox that in Niger, where crops are regularly ravaged by locusts, that very scourge—when salted and fried or boiled like shrimp—is also a protein staple; the craze in Japan for stag and rhinoceros beetles as pets; and the revival of a Chinese tradition—now televised—of crickets locking jaws with the ferocity of fighting dogs. Other sections feature individuals who have dedicated their lives to the contemplation of insects, e.g., the Austrian painter Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, who draws inspiration from radiation-deformed leaf bugs. One short chapter considers same-sex behavior (interspecies ass play); a longer one studies the crush-freaks who fetishize the close-up sight and amplified sound of bugs being crushed by women's feet. Raffles' eclectic examination of our diverse reactions to bugs, ranging from scholarly and aesthetic awe to revulsion or phobia, is an enthralling hodgepodge of historical fact, anthropological observation, and scientific insight. <em>(Mar.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In this sequel to <em>A Singular Hostage</em>, native Bostonian and Muslim convert Ali continues the saga of Marianna Givens, a young Englishwoman living in 19th-century India. Though competently written and often entertaining, the novel feels like exoticism cloaked as historical fiction (the prologue delivers a taste of what's to come: in Calcutta, Marianna encounters a Hindu soothsayer who points his "authoritative, brown hand away from the crowd" and tells her that her "path lies to the northwest" and that she "must return there to find [her] destiny"). Marianna casts her lot with the Sufi family of Shaikh Waliullah as she marries his son, the Punjabi courtier, Hassan Ali Khan. She flees to Calcutta with Hassan's infant son, Saboor, to protect him from the opium-addicted Maharajah of Punjab. After two years in exile, Marianna travels back to Lahore to give Saboor to his father, divorce Hassan and return to respectable British society. Ali convincingly captures both Victorian-era Punjabi and British court culture, and her description of the conniving ineptitude of the British as they travel across the subcontinent humanizes them. Upon arriving in Lahore, the traveling party finds itself caught between warring Punjabi factions. The conclusion, in which Marianna predictably displays a redemptive heroism, sets up for the final book in this trilogy, slated for release in 2005. <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 this sequel to <em>A Singular Hostage</em> (Bantam, 2002), Mariana Givens, a tempestuous Englishwoman, is sent to India to find a husband from the surfeit of bachelor British officers there. Two years have passed since her disastrous first visit, when her reputation was ruined by her marriage to a wealthy Punjabi, Hassan. She is devoted to his son Saboor, whom she rescued from kidnappers and has been sheltering. The revelation that the marriage was never consummated affords Mariana the chance to restore her good name: once in Lahore she can return Saboor to his father, request a divorce, and proceed to Afghanistan with her aunt and uncle and the rest of the British entourage. But she again falls under the spell of Hassan and his family, and decides to stay with him. Amid fighting following the death of the maharajah, Mariana goes to tell her aunt and uncle of her decision and returns to find him gravely wounded. This mid-19th-century adventure story contrasts the richness of Islam and its strict laws regarding women with the equally rigid societal norms of privileged, upper-class British. The characters and their actions illustrate the barriers between cultures and the difficulty of establishing trust among peoples with different worldviews. The engaging ending suggests another installment to come._–Molly Connally, Chantilly Regional Library, VA_</p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>What's a Victorian girl to do? Twenty years old, not quite beautiful, more interested in military history than in conventional female doings, Mariana Givens sets off for India with Gov.-Gen. Lord Auckland's enormous party in hopes of finding a husband. Several eligible British officers are ready to propose, but Mariana would rather study Urdu with wise Munshi Sahib or hang out with the elephants. The officers are weepy or large-eared, except for Harry Fitzgerald, who turns out not to be eligible, after all. It's the eponymous hostage who steals her heart: Saboor, a luminous infant who was kidnapped by the ailing, one-eyed Maharajah Ranjit Singh, ruler of the Punjab, whom Lord Auckland is on his way to meet. After Saboor's mother is poisoned, Mariana is readily enlisted to return Saboor to his father, Hassan Sahib. Will she come to love Hassan as much as she loves Saboor? Although the ending is inconclusive, suggesting a sequel (one is in the works; called A Beggar at the Gate, it will be published in 2003), Mariana is unlikely to return to flower-arranging in Sussex. Sometimes lyrical and zippy, sometimes predictable and plodding, this richly populated novel is notable for an odd combination of strengths: a compelling mysticism, a convincing historicity and a flare for slapstick comedy sending up both the Indian and British patriarchies. Old-time Olympia Press readers will warm to the hair-waxing scene as Mariana is prepared for a sham (or is it?) wedding to Hassan.<br />Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Adult/High School-Mariana Givens is not a proper Victorian young lady; at 20, she is impetuous, outspoken, and inquisitive. Sent to relatives in India in 1838 to find a husband among the eligible suitors in the British officer corps, she is allowed a Muslim munshi, or teacher. An eager, apt pupil of Hindustani language and culture, Mariana becomes a translator for the straitlaced sisters of the Governor-General of India and travels with his entourage to Punjab, where he hopes to persuade the Maharaja to aid the British army in its invasion of Afghanistan. Mariana finally meets a dashing officer, but their romance is cut short. When a charismatic boy held hostage by the ailing Maharaja, who believes the child has curative powers, disappears, his rescuers are led to Mariana, who agrees to hide him. The rest of her adventure, robust and satisfying as a cup of Darjeeling tea, centers on Saboor, her determination to return him to his father, and the lengths to which she will go to protect this child who has so entranced her. The Maharaja, the Governor-General, his sisters, and other players are all historical figures. By contrasting the British view of Indian culture and its people with the view of Punjabis themselves, rich and poor, this mesmerizing tale helps readers better understand a vitally important area of the world.<br /><em>Molly Connally, Chantilly Regional Library, VA</em><br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From</h3><p>Although this is Australian author Tsiolkas’ fourth novel, it is the first to be published in the U.S. With its raw style, liberal use of profanity and racial epithets, and laserlike focus on the travails of suburban life, it is a down-and-dirty version of Tom Perrotta’s best-selling Little Children (2004). At a barbecue in a Melbourne suburb, a man loses his temper and slaps the child of the host’s friends. This incident unleashes a slew of divisive opinions, pitting friends and families against each other as the child’s parents take the man to court. Told from eight different viewpoints, the novel also deftly fills in disparate backstories encompassing young and old, single and married, gay and straight, as well as depicting how multiculturalism is increasingly impacting the traditional Aussie ethos. For good measure, the author also throws in male vanity, infidelity, and homophobia. Tsiolkas’ in-your-face style is sure to alienate some readers—the child’s parents, for example, are among the book’s most unlikable characters—but his novel, which won the 2009 Commonwealth Prize, fairly radiates with vitality as it depicts the messy complications of family life. --Joanne Wilkinson </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"A layered, briskly paced story about complex people. Think Tom Wolfe meets Philip Roth. Or 'The Sopranos' meets 'The Real Housewives of Orange County." <br />-Oscar Villalon, <em>Los Angeles Times</em>   </p><p>"Brilliant, beautiful, shockingly lucid and real, this is a novel as big as life built from small, secret, closely observed beats of the human heart. A cool, calm, irresistible masterpiece." <br />-Chris Cleave, author of <em>Little Bee</em>   </p><p>"_The Slap_ is nothing short of a tour de force, and it confirms Christos Tsiolkas's reputation as one of the most significant contemporary storytellers at work today. In his new book, Tsiolkas puts a microscope to family life and presents us with a vision both of unflinching honesty and great tenderness. The luminosity of his prose and the brilliance of his characterisation render the ordinary quite extraordinary. Here is a novel of immense power and scope, reminiscent of Jonathan Franzen's <em>The Corrections</em> and Don De Lillo's <em>Underworld</em>." <br />-Colm Toibin, author of <em>Brooklyn</em> and <em>The Master</em>   </p><p>"Like all Tsiolkas' work, it is wildly energetic and fearless, thrillingly about our lives now." <br />- Helen Garner, author of <em>The Spare Room</em>   </p><p>"This is a rich and engrossing novel, full of vivid incidents and intricate patterns...Tsiolkas's subtle character drawing, fast-moving narrative, and above all, fierce moral commitment make <em>The Slap</em> a worthy winner of the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize." <br />-_The Telegraph_   </p><p>"Riveting from start to finish." <br />-Jane Smiley, author of <em>A Thousand Acres</em> and <em>Private Life</em>   </p><p>"Radiates with vitality as it depicts the messy complications of family life." <br />-_Booklist_   </p><p>"Complex and multilayered. ...intertwined lives and slowly revealed connections make for a singular reading experience." <br />-_Library Journal_   </p><p>"With <em>The Slap</em>, Christos Tsiolkas secures his place as one of Australia's most important novelists...It is thrilling to have our life reflected back at us so accurately...Tsiolkas has written an absolute ripper." <br />-_The Age_   </p><p>"The best politicians are those who can instinctively divine the zeitgeist of their country's centre. For the ones who can't, I would place <em>The Slap</em> as mandatory bedside table reading. It's a perfect social document... More importantly, it's also a hell of a read." <br />-_The Australian_   </p><p>"Strikingly tender...it claws into you with its freshness and truth." <br />-_Sydney Morning Herald_   </p><p>"A controversial and daring novel, <em>The Slap</em> uses the iconic scene of a suburban Australian barbecue to examine identities and personal relationships in a multicultural society. Offering points of view from eight different characters, it taps into universal tensions and dilemmas around family life and child-rearing. This book is sure to challenge readers and provoke debate." <br />-Committee for The Commonwealth Writers Prize 2009 </p>


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SUMMARY:
An American classic, The Orchard Keeper is the first novel by one of America's finest, most celebrated novelists.  Set is a small, remote community in rural Tennessee in the years between the two world wars, it tells of John Wesley Rattner, a young boy, and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger who, unbeknownst to either of them, has killed the boy's father.  Together with Rattner's Uncle Ather, who belongs to a former age in his communion with nature and his stoic independence, they enact a drama that seems born of the land itself.  All three are heroes of an intense and compelling celebration of values lost to time and industrialization.


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SUMMARY:
Intrepid treasure hunters believe they have discovered the final resting place of Fantome, a legendary warship that wrecked off Nova Scotia almost two hundred years ago. She was rumored to have gone down with an extraordinary treasure. But circling beneath the ocean's surface waits something unbelievable… and terrifying. Some unfortunate divers have encountered a massive, thought-to-be-extinct shark known as the megalodon.Archaeologist Annja Creed has always had a healthy respect for sharks. But when a researcher friend asks for her help, Annja braves the deep, cold waters of the Atlantic, determined to discover the truth. Instead she finds herself hunting an unknown traitor on a sabotaged ship. With death waiting both above and below the ocean's surface, Annja must battle her most dangerous enemy yet.


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Product Description
This Halcyon Classics ebook collection contains fifty science fiction short stories by fifty 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.

Included within this work are stories by Poul Anderson, Phillip K. Dick, Randall Garrett, Harry Harrison, Frank Herbert, Murray Leinster, H. Beam Piper, Robert Silverberg, Algis Budrys, Fritz Leiber, Edmond Hamilton, and many others.

This collection is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.


Contents

THE VALOR OF CAPPEN VARRA, by Poul Anderson
THE ISSAHAR ARTIFACTS, by Jesse Franklin Bone
EARTHMEN BEARING GIFTS, by Fredric Brown
CITADEL, by Algis Budrys
SENSE FROM THOUGHT DIVIDE, by Mark Clifton
ALARM CLOCK, by Everett B. Cole
THE SCALPEL OF DOOM, by Ray Cummings
THE CRYSTAL CRYPT, by Philip K. Dick
DISQUALIFIED, by Charles L. Fontenay
A TRANSMUTATION OF MUDDLES, by H. B. Fyfe
A SPACESHIP NAMED McGUIRE, by Randall Garrett
AND DEVIOUS THE LINE OF DUTY, by Tom Godwin
THE GOLDEN JUDGE, by Nathaniel Gordon
THE WORLD OF THE CRYSTAL CITIES, by George Griffith
RAIDERS INVISIBLE, by D. W. Hall
THE MAN WHO EVOLVED, by Edmond Hamilton
THE UNDERSEA TUBE, by L. Taylor Hansen
NAVY DAY, by Harry Harrison
THE BEGINNING, by Henry Hasse
OPERATION HAYSTACK, by Frank Herbert
I'LL KILL YOU TOMORROW, by Helen Huber
THE LONG VOYAGE, by Carl Jacobi
THE MAN WHO PLAYED TO LOSE, by Laurence Mark Janifer
THE GREAT GRAY PLAGUE, by Raymond F. Jones
THE PLAGUE, by Teddy Keller
THE ADVENTURER, by C. M. Kornbluth
GREYLORN, by Keith Laumer
THE CREATURE FROM CLEVELAND DEPTHS, by Fritz Leiber
ATTENTION SAINT PATRICK, by Murray Leinster
THE CALM MAN, by Frank Belknap Long
A PLACE IN THE SUN, by Stephen Marlowe
PIPE OF PEACE, by James McKimmey, Jr.
B. C. 30,000, by S. P. Meek
ALL CATS ARE GRAY, by Andre Norton
BEAR TRAP, by Alan E. Nourse
CROSSROADS OF DESTINY, by H. Beam Piper
THE THIRST QUENCHERS, by Rick Raphael
COMBAT, by Mack Reynolds
DEAD MAN'S PLANET, by Joseph Samachson
TREES ARE WHERE YOU FIND THEM, by Arthur Dekker Savage
AN INCIDENT ON ROUTE 12, by James H. Schmitz
SURVIVAL TACTICS, by Al Sevcik
MINOR DETAIL, by Jack Sharkey
RESURRECTION, by Robert J. Shea
THE LEECH, by Robert Sheckley
THE CLEAN AND WHOLESOME LAND, by Ralph Sholto
POSTMARK GANYMEDE, By Robert Silverberg
THE MOST SENTIMENTAL MAN, by Evelyn E. Smith
SUBJECTIVITY, by Norman Spinrad
IN THE ORBIT OF SATURN, by R. F. Starzl


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This Halcyon Classics ebook collection contains fifty science fiction short stories by more than forty authors. Many of the stories in this collection were published during the heyday of popular science fiction magazines from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Included within this work are stories by Poul Anderson, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Phillip K. Dick, Randall Garrett, Paul Ernst, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Williamson, Phillip Jose Farmer, Lester Del Rey, Leigh Brackett, Fredric Brown, Murray Leinster, Ben Bova, and many others.

This collection is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.


Contents:

A Strange Manuscript found in a Copper Cylinder (James De Mille)
A World by the Tale (Randall Garrett)
A World is Born (Leigh Brackett)
Accidental Death (Peter Baily)
Arena (Fredric Brown)
Atom Boy (Ray Cummings)
Beyond Lies the Wub (Phillip K. Dick)
Blind Spot (Bascom Jones)
Cully (Jack Egan)
Dead Giveaway (Randall Garrett)
Dead Ringer (Lester Del Rey)
Dead World (Jack Douglas)
Divinity (Joseph Samachson)
Four Miles Within (Anthony Gilmore)
Heist Job on Thizar (Randall Garrett)
Hex (Laurence Janifer)
In the Year 2889 (Jules Verne)
Indulgence of Negu Mah (Robert Arthur)
Lease to Doomsday (Lee Archer)
Lost in Translation (Laurence Janifer)
McIlvane’s Star (August Derleth)
Missing Link (Frank Herbert)
Next Logical Step (Ben Bova)
Pandemic (J.F. Bone)
Remember the Alamo (T.R. Fehrenbach)
Salvage in Space (Jack Williamson)
Security (Poul Anderson)
Subspace Survivors (E.E. “Doc” Smith)
The Aliens (Murray Leinster)
The Big Trip Up Yonder (Kurt Vonnegut)
The Chronic Argonauts (H.G. Wells)
The Cosmic Express (Jack Williamson)
The Day Time Stopped Moving (Bradner Buckner)
The Eternal Wall (Raymond Z. Gallun)
The Gifts of Asti (Andre Norton)
The Hated (Frederick Pohl)
The Last Evolution (John W. Campbell)
The Man Who Saw the Future (Edmond Hamilton)
The Memory of Mars (Raymond F. Jones)
The Moon is Green (Fritz Leiber)
The Nothing Equation (Tom Godwin)
The Power and the Glory (Charles W. Diffin)
The Radiant Shell (Paul Ernst)
The Stoker and the Stars (Algis Budrys)
The Street That Wasn’t There (Carl Jacobi and Clifford D. Simak)
The World Behind the Moon (Paul Ernst)
There is a Reaper (Charles De Vet)
They Twinkled Like Jewels (Phillip José Farmer)
Waste Not, Want (Dave Dryfoos)
Year of the Big Thaw (Marion Zimmer Bradley)


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<p class="description">Detective Dennis Milne is waiting to kill three unarmed men. Cynical and jaded, Milne likes to think that he's hurting only those who deserve it. But this time he's been duped. Instead of shooting drug dealers, he kills two respectable customs officers and an accountant -- suddenly Milne, his lucrative sideline and what remains of his conscience are heading for trouble. Twelve hours later he's back on duty in London's King's Cross. Eighteen-year-old Miriam Fox has been found dead -- her throat slashed. Milne's dogged enquiries into the murky world of the teenage vice trade soon implicate fellow police officers and the manager of the hostel where Miriam once stayed. With his own crimes returning to haunt him, Milne uncovers a web of depravity more shocking than he could ever have imagined.</p>


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his Halcyon Classics ebook collection contains fifty short stories by more than forty masters of science fiction. Many of the stories in this collection were published during the heyday of popular science fiction magazines from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Included within this work are stories by Poul Anderson, Phillip K. Dick, Randall Garrett, Harry Harrison, Murray Leinster, Walter M. Miller, Jr., H. Beam Piper, Clifford Simak, Robert Silverberg, Jack Williamson, and many others.

This collection is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.


Contents:

The Man Who Came Early, Poul Anderson
The Cuckoo Clock, Wesley Barefoot
Zen, Jerome Bixby
Say Hello for Me, Frank Coggins
The Guardians, Irving Cox
Martians Never Die, Lucius Daniel
Foundling on Venus, John and Dorothy De Coucy
Vital Ingredient, Charles De Vet
The Skull, Phillip K. Dick
The Eye of Allah, Charles W. Diffin
Tree, Spare that Woodman, Dave Dryfoos
Service With a Smile, Charles L. Fontenay
The Monster, Randall Garrett
The Last Supper, T.D. Hamm
The Passenger, Kenneth Harmon
Goodbye Dead Man!, Tom W. Harris
The Velvet Glove, Harry Harrison
Prelude to Space, Robert W. Haseltine
Tight Squeeze, Dean C. Ing
The Jameson Satellite, Neal R. Jones
A Matter of Importance, Murray Leinster
The One and the Many, Stephen Marlowe
Shepherd of the Planets, Alan Mattox
Planet of Dreams, James McKimmey
Stolen Brains, S.P. Meek
The Hoofer, Walter M. Miller Jr.
PRoblem, Alan Nourse
The Return, H. Beam Piper & John G. McGuire
Time and Time Again, H. Beam Piper
The Day of the Boomer Dukes, Frederick Pohl
The Hohokam Dig, Theodore Pratt
Make Mine Homogenized, Rick Raphael
Revolution, Mack Reynolds
Spawn of the Comet, H. Thompson Rich
Runaway, Joseph Samachson
DP, Arthur Dekker Savage
Pirates of the Gorm, Nat Schachner
Gone Fishing, James H. Schmitz
Alien Offer, Al Sevcik
Forever, Robert Sheckley
The Hour of Battle, Robert Sheckley
The Happy Unfortunate, Robert Silverberg
The Street That Wasn’t There, Clifford D. Simak & Carl Jacobi
The Delegate from Venus, Henry Slesar
The Big Fix, George O. Smith
Vortex Blaster, E.E. “Doc” Smith
The Planet of Dread, R.F. Starzl
Sweet Their Blood and Sticky, Albert F. Teichner
Homesick, Lyn Venable
The Meteor Girl, Jack Williamson


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<p class="description">Dennis Milne is back! A dark, gritty, utterly page-turning novel set in London's meanest of mean streets: the follow-up to the hugely acclaimed debut, The Business of Dying. When Dennis Milne -- now living under an assumed identity in the Philippines -- hears that his old friend and colleague Malik has been gunned down in a restaurant, he decides to go back to the violent city he once called home, and bring the murderer to book. Milne arrives in a pre-Christmas London that is cold and hostile. But he is no longer a policeman; no longer charged with keeping the peace and upholding the law. Although his friends at the King's Cross station do not know that Milne is back in town, it soon becomes clear that his arrival has been expected by men who are after his blood. Hungry for revenge and determined to uphold his own very rough brand of justice, Milne's search for the person behind his friend's death leaves a trail of death and destruction that is more wide-reaching than even he could have expected. "From the Hardcover edition."</p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>Praise for Simon Kernick:  </p><p>“Simon Kernick writes with his foot pressed hard on the pedal. Hang on tight!”<br />–Harlan Coben   </p><p>“Great plots, great characters, great action and some spectacular violence. Simon Kernick might just be the best of Britain’s new-wave crime writers.”<br />–Lee Child  </p><p><em>From the Hardcover edition.</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>A terrifying read-in-one-gulp thriller with a killer premise: what do you do when the woman in bed beside you is a headless corpse . . .   </p><p>Straight off I knew it was going to be a bad day. The room was stifling hot; and when I did finally manage to drag open my eyes, all I could see was blood. I thought I’d stepped into the middle of a nightmare.   </p><p>But I was wrong. The nightmare was only just beginning.   </p><p>Ex-soldier Sean Tyler wakes up in an unfamiliar room next to the headless corpse of a girl he’s met only once. With his memory of the previous twenty-four hours wiped clean, he’s hardly out of bed before the phone rings. A voice tells him to press play on the room’s DVD machine. The film shows him stabbing someone to death.   </p><p>Tyler is confident that the footage is fake, but will a jury see things the same way? The man on the phone tells him to go to an address in east London, and await instructions. Tyler knows he must do as he is told. He also knows that the phone caller has no intention of keeping him alive.   </p><p>To survive he must recover the missing twenty-four hours of his life and find out who’s setting him up before his time runs out for good. The clock is ticking...  </p><p><em>From the Hardcover edition.</em></p>


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<h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Delhi has a richly layered past, and Dalrymple (In Xanadu, McKay, 1990) deftly peels away each layer to reveal how the city came to be what it is today. Djinns are spirits said to be seen only after prolonged fasting and prayer; they too are integral to understanding the city. The author, a young Scot carrying on the fine British tradition of travel writing, has a knack for meeting fascinating people and capturing their most revealing remarks. He introduces us to dervishes, eunuchs, partridge fighting, weddings, and expatriates. His wife contributes sketches that nicely complement his text. Considering the importance of Delhi, the capital of the world's second most populous nation, this book deserves to be in most public and academic libraries.<br /><em>Harold M. Otness, Southern Oregon State Coll. Lib., Ashland</em><br />Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>'Delightful ... Surely one of the funniest books about India' TLS 'Now read by Tim Pigott-Smith, City of Djinns gets a wonderful new lease of life. Dalrymple has a rare gift for historical narrative and catches the engaging, Anglo-Indian speech of his cast with telling accuracy.' Independent 23/5/98 </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In 1924, Nathan Leopold, 19, and Richard Loeb, 18, both intellectually precocious scions of wealthy Jewish Chicago families, kidnapped and brutally murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in an attempt to commit the perfect crime. Historian Baatz, of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, replays the crime (on which Meyer Levin's 1956 novel <em>Compulsion</em> was based) from the killers' point of view, detailing their intense, often sexual, relationship that culminated in the murder. But they left a crucial piece of evidence and eventually confessed to the murder. Clarence Darrow cleverly had the boys plead guilty to avoid a trial, and the legendary defense attorney went head to head with State's Attorney Robert Crowe in a sentencing hearing before Judge John Caverly. Both sides trotted out psychiatrists to testify whether Leopold and Loeb were mentally ill. Darrow's gamble paid off in life sentences. Loeb was murdered in prison in 1936; Leopold was eventually paroled in 1958. Baatz gives an acute portrait of the two murderers bound together in a web of fantasy, but his heavy reliance on novelistic techniques (there!—he had done it) and meandering pacing prevent this from being as convincing as his exhaustive research deserves. B&amp;w photos. <em>(Aug.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb have been the objects of derision and curiosity ever since the sensational murder they committed on Chicago’s South Side in 1924. These two privileged teenagers, who killed little Bobby Franks, a neighbor, also from a privileged family, just for the thrill of achieving the perfect crime (“a murder that would never be solved”), have become almost legendary “bad boys.” Baatz’s comprehensive account of the case succeeds in identifying their peculiar personality traits as well as what it was in the nature of their relationship that made them believe in their infallibility in performing the ultimate crime. All of Leopold and Loeb’s intense planning quickly unraveled, however, when the victim’s body was discovered soon after the murder; the murderers had counted on the body never being located. The second strong point of this exhaustively researched and rivetingly presented account is the thoroughness with which the author reconstructs the police investigation and the trial itself; a vivid portrait of the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow, who defended Leopold and Loeb, is a fascinating by-product. One of the best true-crime books of this or any other season. --Brad Hooper </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>This memoir is a journey into a complex world readers will find fascinating and at times repugnant. After being denied a visa to remain in the U.S., British-born Ahmed, a Muslim woman of Pakistani origin, takes advantage of an opportunity, before 9/11, to practice medicine in Saudi Arabia. She discovers her new environment is defined by schizophrenic contrasts that create an absurd clamorous clash of modern and medieval.... It never became less arresting to behold. Ahmed's introduction to her new environment is shocking. Her first patient is an elderly Bedouin woman. Though naked on the operating table, she still is required by custom to have her face concealed with a veil under which numerous hoses snake their way to hissing machines. Everyday life is laced with bizarre situations created by the rabid puritanical orthodoxy that among other requirements forbids women to wear seat belts because it results in their breasts being more defined, and oppresses Saudi men as much as women by its archaic rules. At times the narrative is burdened with Ahmed's descriptions of the physical characteristics of individuals and the luxurious adornments of their homes but this minor flaw is easily overlooked in exchange for the intimate introduction to a world most readers will never know. <em>(Sept.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Denied visa renewal in America, British-born Pakistani physician Ahmed, 31, leaves New York for a job in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where she celebrates her Muslim faith on an exciting Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca even as she encounters rabid oppression from the state-sanctioned religious extremist police. She is licensed to operate ICU machines in the emergency ward, but as a woman, she is forbidden to drive, and she must veil every inch of herself. Her witty insider-outsider commentary as a Muslim and feminist, both reverent and highly critical, provides rare insight into the upper-class Saudi scene today, including the roles of women and men in romance, weddings, parenting, divorce, work, and friendship. After 9/11, she is shocked at the widespread anti-Americanism. The details of consumerism, complete with Western brand names, get a bit tiresome, but they are central  to this honest memoir about connections and conflicts, and especially the clamorous clash of “modern and medieval, . . . Cadillac and camel.” --Hazel Rochman </p>


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SUMMARY:
“Behind almost every painting is a fortune and behind that a sin or a crime.” With these words as a starting point, Michael Gross, leading chronicler of the American rich, begins the first independent, unauthorized look at the saga of the nation’s greatest museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this endlessly entertaining follow-up to his bestselling social history 740 Park, Gross pulls back the shades of secrecy that have long shrouded the upper class’s cultural and philanthropic ambitions and maneuvers. And he paints a revealing portrait of a previously hidden face of American wealth and power.The Metropolitan, Gross writes, “is a huge alchemical experiment, turning the worst of man’s attributes—extravagance, lust, gluttony, acquisitiveness, envy, avarice, greed, egotism, and pride—into the very best, transmuting deadly sins into priceless treasure.” The book covers the entire 138-year history of the Met, focusing on the museum’s most colorful characters. Opening with the lame-duck director Philippe de Montebello, the museum’s longest-serving leader who finally stepped down in 2008, Rogues’ Gallery then goes back to the very beginning, highlighting, among many others: the first director, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, an Italian-born epic phony, whose legacy is a trove of plundered ancient relics, some of which remain on display today; John Pierpont Morgan, the greatest capitalist and art collector of his day, who turned the museum from the plaything of a handful of rich amateurs into a professional operation dedicated, sort of, to the public good; John D. Rockefeller Jr., who never served the Met in any official capacity but who, during the Great Depression, proved the only man willing and rich enough to be its benefactor, which made him its behind-the-scenes puppeteer; the controversial Thomas Hoving, whose tenure as director during the sixties and seventies revolutionized museums around the world but left the Met in chaos; and Jane Engelhard and Annette de la Renta, a mother-daughter trustee tag team whose stories will astonish you (think Casablanca rewritten by Edith Wharton).With a supporting cast that includes artists, forgers, and looters, financial geniuses and scoundrels, museum officers (like its chairman Arthur Amory Houghton, head of Corning Glass, who once ripped apart a priceless and ancient Islamic book in order to sell it off piecemeal), trustees (like Jayne Wrightsman, the Hollywood party girl turned society grand dame), curators (like the aging Dietrich von Bothmer, a refugee from Nazi Germany with a Bronze Star for heroism whose greatest acquisitions turned out to be looted), and donors (like Irwin Untermyer, whose collecting obsession drove his wife and children to suicide), and with cameo appearances by everyone from Vogue editors Anna Wintour and Diana Vreeland to Sex Pistols front man Johnny Rotten, Rogues’ Gallery is a rich, satisfying, alternately hilarious and horrifying look at America’s upper class, and what is perhaps its greatest creation.


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Noesner, a former FBI hostage negotiator for 23 years, was the first person to run the bureau's Crisis Negotiation Unit. Looking back, he recalls some major standoffs along with his efforts to understand and interpret the behavior of hostage takers, sometimes finding negotiations thwarted by the actions of his own colleagues. The compelling centerpiece of the book is Noesner's analysis of "what went wrong at Waco" with the Branch Davidians when negotiation and tactical teams were working at cross purposes. After opening with a dramatic account of a man who abducted his estranged common-law wife and their son and was holding a gun to her head, Noesner describes his own "quintessentially American childhood," when he got the idea for his life's work from a segment about the FBI on The Mickey Mouse Club. Drawing on official reports, personal notes, memos, and memories of conversations, he writes with a simple style that nevertheless generates much suspense, recreating past events with a vivid intensity certain to fascinate true crime readers. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Formerly chief of the FBI’s unit for hostage negotiation, Noesner interlinks principles for talking to cornered desperadoes with cases from his career. Some of those caught nationwide attention, such as the disastrous 1993 siege of religious zealots in Waco, Texas, and here Noesner tells his side of the story. In his discussion of less-well-known incidents, Noesner underlines his core belief that negotiation is more effective in peacefully resolving standoffs than law enforcement’s method of tactical assault. Although professionals are the audience for that debate, true-crime readers have plenty to absorb in Noesner’s accounts, which include several episodes of the husband-abducting-wife-and-kids scenario, a couple of prison riots, three 1990s showdowns between the law and beleaguered fanatics (the Branch Davidians, the Montana Freemen, and the “Republic of Texas”), and a miscellany of terrorism and kidnapping incidents. Working his ideas into the narrative, Noesner reconstructs negotiating dialogue both as a critique of techniques, such as establishing rapport with a hostage taker, and as life-or-death drama. The latter, plus the inside-the-FBI tone, renders Noesner’s recollections a guaranteed attraction in new-books displays. --Gilbert Taylor </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><em>New York Times</em> restaurant critic Ruth Reichl reads her (only very slightly abridged) memoir with the same humor, care, and intimacy that she put into its writing. The voices of the chefs, waiters, and gourmands who taught her to love food and its preparation come to life in this audiobook. Particularly compelling is her wonderful tale of "Life on Mars"--boarding school in Montreal might well have been on another planet. We listen as her halting French becomes fluent, as she shares weekend forays for forbidden smoked meat and cream puffs (the cure for all homesickness) with her new friend, Beatrice, and as her encounter with Beatrice's father, Monsieur du Croix, introduces her to a new level of joy in food. Audiobook listeners are also treated to a handy booklet of recipes included with the tapes that represent a dish from each of the main characters we meet in Ruth's life. </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Reichl discovered early on that since she wasn't "pretty or funny or sexy," she could attract friends with food instead. But that initiative isn't likely to secure her an audience for her chaotic, self-satisfied memoirs, although her restaurant reviews in the New York Times are popular. Reichl's knack for describing food gives one a new appreciation for the pleasures of the table, as when she writes here: "There were eggplants the color of amethysts and plates of sliced salami and bresaola that looked like stacks of rose petals left to dry." But when she is recalling her life, she seems unable to judge what's interesting. Raised in Manhattan and Connecticut by a docile father who was a book designer and a mother who suffered from manic depression, Reichl enjoyed such middle-class perks as a Christmas in Paris when she was 13 and high school in Canada to learn French. But her mother was a blight, whom Reichl disdains to the discomfort of the reader who wonders if she exaggerates. The author studied at the University of Michigan, earned a graduate degree in art history, married a sculptor named Doug, lived in a loft in Manhattan's Bowery and then with friends bought a 17-room "cottage" in Berkeley, Calif., which turned into a commune so self-consciously offbeat that their Thanksgiving feast one year was prepared from throwaways found in a supermarket dumpster. Seasoning her memoir with recipes, Reichl takes us only through the 1970s, which seems like an arbitrary cutoff, and one hopes the years that followed were more engaging than the era recreated here. <br />Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Relationships always drive Mayor's plots, but never more so than in this intricate, suspense-filled 18th Joe Gunther novel (after 2006's <em>The Second Mouse</em>). When Gunther's mother and brother are almost killed in a suspicious car accident, he helps Deputy Sheriff Rob Barrows narrow in on a local, lawless family with a grievance against the Gunthers. Meanwhile, the investigation of two similar but seemingly unrelated deaths leads Gunther's colleagues at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation to online chat rooms where older men pick up teen girls. Gunther's former lover, Gail Zigman, makes an appearance, but Lyn Silva, last seen in 2004's <em>The Surrogate Thief</em>, takes center stage as his new love interest. This book takes Gunther all over Vermont, offering occasional breaks from the tension with evocative descriptions of mountains and snow. Though Mayor is considered a regional writer, his books intelligently deal with subjects of national concern, and Gunther's crime-solving skills and personal charisma have broad appeal. <em>(Oct.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"The writing is strong, with sharp social observations throughout. Gunther grows on you from novel to novel." (<strong>Washington Post Book World</strong> )  </p><p>"The strength of this durable series has always been its insularity: local settings; sharp small-town characterizations; home-grown police procedures." (<strong>Kirkus Reviews</strong> )  </p><p>HIGH PRAISE FOR MAYOR AND THE JOE GUNTHER SERIES   </p><p>"Archer Mayor's unassuming voice and down-to-earth style stamp his regional crime novels with a sense of integrity." (<strong>The New York Times Book Review</strong> )  </p><p>"Mayor's skills are equal to the vigor of his imagination, and we take his word for every twist, every turn, every thunderbolt." (<strong>The New Yorker</strong> )  </p><p>"Mayor's Joe Gunther novels are among the best cop stories being written today." (<strong>Booklist</strong> ) </p>

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<h3>From</h3><p>Gr. 2-4. In another hilarious, easy chapter book about Junie B. Jones, the irrepressible kindergartner veers from catastrophe to rapture and back again. This time she has trouble deciding what to be on Job Day. Older kids will laugh at Junie's mistakes and misunderstandings, especially with language, and they'll remember their own bewilderment and bloopers. She gets punished for shooting off her big fat mouth ("Punishment is the school word for sitting at a big table all by yourself"). She's frank that the Pledge of Allegiance is a jumble for her ("I don't know what that dumb story is even talking about"). She's heartbroken to discover that Mickey Mouse isn't real. When she hates, she hates (even her "bestest" friend); when she's humiliated, she can't bear it ("I hided my head"). Brunkus' energetic drawings pick up the slapstick action and the spunky comic hero. <em>Hazel Rochman</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Another hilarious, easy book about Junie B. Jones."--_Booklist _ -- <em>Review</em></p>


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<h3>From</h3><p>Gr. 2^-4. Junie B. Jones is back, as intense, vulnerable, and funny as ever, in this chapter book that's part of the First Stepping Stone Book series. Always, she wants to be the "bestest winner of anyone," but in her school carnival, she loses and loses, and when the kids laugh (especially that boy Jim that she HATES), it ruins her "self-steam." The innocent first-person narrative of this kindergarten kid will make lower-school readers laugh out loud at her mispronunciations as they recognize their own confusion and failure, then and now. <em>Hazel Rochman</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>"The innocent first-person narrative will make lower-school readers laugh out loud at her mispronunciations as they recognize their own confusion and failure." -- <em>Booklist </em> -- <em>Review</em></p>


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<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Kindergarten-Grade 2-This exuberant kindergartner's newest adventure begins with a visit to the local beauty shop. Fascinated with sitting in the "spinny" chair and helping the beautician give her dad a haircut, Junie decides that her hopes and dreams are wrapped up in scissors, smelly hair gel, and fluffy towels. When her father warns her that it takes years of hard work to learn how to cut hair, the girl takes his advice and starts practicing...on her bunny slippers, on the dog, and eventually on herself. When she goes to school wearing three hats to cover her unfortunate "sprigs," only her teacher and a session with the real beautician can save her. Parks does an excellent job of keeping her adult characters real, in charge, yet not overbearing. Junie's teacher's sympathy and understanding are heartwarming, and her dad's exasperation is completely believable. Junie is always the focus and the one who solves the dilemma, this time by confessing to her teacher and admitting that she might need some help. Brunkus's illustrations complete the child's exploits. The honesty and inventiveness of this savvy kindergartner make the Junie B. books accessible and completely enjoyable.<br /><em>Linda Bindner, formerly at Athens Clarke County Library, GA</em><br />Copyright 1998 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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<div><p class="description"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; ">Review</span></p><p>"She's funny, she's outrageous, she's bigger than life. I'm in love with Junie B....and with Barbara Park's warm, wonderful, laugh-aloud stories." -- Patricia Reilly Giff, author of the Newbery Honor Book <strong>Lily's Crossing</strong> -- <em>Review</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>It's a mushy gushy mystery!  </p><p>Hurray! February 14 -- Valentime's Day, Junie B. calls it -- is just around the corner. Junie B. can't wait to see all the valentimes she'll get. But she never expected a big, mushy card from a secret admirer! Who <em>is</em> this secret mystery guy, anyway? Junie B. is determined to find out! </p>

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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Kindergarten is just about to let out for the summer, and room 9 is going on a field trip to a farm. All the children squeal with joy--all but Junie B. Jones. </p><blockquote><p>'Cause guess what? Farms are not my favorites. </p></blockquote><p>Junie B. Jones, hilarious heroine of more than a dozen well-loved books, is mortally afraid of ponies. An imprudent babysitter once allowed her to watch a cable TV show called <em>When Ponies Attack</em>, so a trip to a farm seems like the ultimate in reckless endangerment. Never mind the roosters, which, according to her classmate, Meanie Jim, can peck your head to a nub. It takes some pretty fast talking by Junie's parents, teacher, and the farmer himself to get Junie to participate in the field trip, where she has a surprisingly good time. Until she bonds with Peep, a fluffy little chick, only to discover, to her horror, that Peep's destiny is to become a rooster. </p><p>Award-winning author Barbara Park has joined with illustrator Denise Brunkus to create a charmingly outrageous character with a precocious yet childish voice that readers will never forget: "After that my heart got very poundy inside. 'Cause I heard the sound of footprints, that's why." Brunkus's comical drawings of Junie and her friends are the "bestest" ever. Don't miss any of the laugh-out-loud titles in the Junie B. Jones series. (Ages 5 to 8) <em>--Emilie Coulter</em></p><h3>Review</h3><p>"It's hard for anyone to resist Junie B."--_Booklist_   </p><p>"It's a real hoot!"--_School Library Journal_   </p><p>"A genuinely funny, easily read story."--_Kirkus _  </p><p><em>From the Trade Paperback edition.</em></p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>It had to happen. The spunkiest sass mouth in room 9 finally <em>B.</em> I think I have mentioned that to you before... B., B., B., B., B.")</p><p>The 18th installment in Barbara Park's popular beginning chapter-book series puts our temperamental heroine into a brand-new class where she has to make brand-new friends. And as if that weren't hard enough, her brand-new teacher, Mr. Scary ("He made that name up, I believe," Junie writes in a journal assignment), figures out that she needs eyeglasses. Will all the other kids laugh at her? Will that obnoxious Excellent-plus-getting May become even more obnoxious?</p><p>With Park's solid track record, the appeal of Junie B. just can't be doubted-she can be a good friend to readers her age, which is a difficult grade level to find fun books for. And even kids who don't need glasses will likely still giggle along as Junie B. plays "the E game" (an eye test) with the nurse, and kids who <em>do</em> need glasses will find themselves with a strong (if a little scared at first) ally. (Ages 4 to 8) <em>--Paul Hughes</em></p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Gr 1-3-While first grade offers a whole year of exciting possibilities for Junie B., things get off to a confusing start. Feeling tentative about her new teacher, she renames him Mr. Scary. Her last year's best friend now has two new best friends and her old bus pal has a new buddy. Then, Junie's teacher discovers that she needs glasses. Now that is something to worry about. "What if Room One laughs their head off at me? What if I look like a goonie bird and no one wants to be my friend?" However, her classmates, who already agree that twins with rhyming names, a boy with a spiky gel hairdo, and bilingual Jose are fascinating, determine that Junie B. and her purple glasses are definitely cool. As always, Park is in touch with what the kids know and how they feel. A satisfying read, especially for fans.</p><p><em>Sharon R. Pearce, Geronimo Public School, OK</em></p><p>Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</p>


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Junie, an outspoken, sometimes exasperating, first grader is thrilled when she is told she can help out Mrs. Gutzman in the school cafeteria and imagines what it will be like to be a professional lunch lady. Reprint.


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The inimitable Miss Jones stars in Junie B., First Grader: Toothless Wonder by Barbara Park, illus. by Denise Brunkus. Junie is the first in her class to have a loose upper tooth. But she wants nothing to do with the Tooth Fairy and fears she'll end up looking like her dentally challenged uncle. Ages 6-8.<br />Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 1-4-In this 20th book about Junie B., Parks hits on the universal theme of losing one's first tooth. As the first person in her class to have this experience, Junie B. worries that she'll look funny, but her teacher assures her that it is a momentous event in her life, and that she'll look more grown up when the new one comes in. This, of course, delights the child. However, she is convinced that the tooth fairy is really a witch. After all, what would a tooth fairy do with all of those teeth? This is an ideal read-aloud to first graders and a choice that they will enjoy reading independently as they move into chapter books. Humorous black-and-white drawings show Junie B. as she interacts with her classmates and family.<br /><em>Jean Lowery, Bishop Woods Elementary School, New Haven, CT</em><br />Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Junie B. Jones is thrilled. "The whole entire first grade" is planning a kickball tournament, and this feisty first grader daydreams about being the star of Room One. Unfortunately, where Junie B. goes, trouble must follow. "And it’s called, I accidentally kicked my ball over the fence. And I didn’t want to go get it. So I had to find something else to kick." That something else turns out to be her mom’s watering can--which happens to be full at the time. Now Junie B. has an owie on her piggy toe and it looks like she won't be able to participate in the tournament. But wait! Her friend Sheldon can't play kickball either, due to a spectacular fall in the classroom. Maybe these two can come up with an alternate plan that will still allow Junie B. to be the star!</p><p>Barbara Park’s inexhaustible beginning chapter-book series has all the ingredients young readers like best: humor, repetition, predictability (with a few surprises), and lots of silly action. Grown-up readers might tire of the cute malapropisms, but kids will thrive on the "whole entire" series. (Ages 5 to 8) <em>--Emilie Coulter</em></p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 1-3--In this adventure, Junie B. is sidelined by an injury and cannot participate in the first-grade kickball tournament. When her teacher offers her a chance to be a cheerleader, stage fright almost ruins her halftime performance, but the irrepressible protagonist comes through in the end. Text and illustrations work well together. Junie's distinct and authentic voice speaks to beginning chapter-book readers. Her journal entries (complete with corrected spelling mistakes) are a nice counterpoint to the straightforward plot. Classroom politics, family dynamics, and the frustrations and triumphs of growing up are treated with humor and hope. This will be a hit where the series is popular._--Ellen M. Riordan, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, MD_ <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>Everybody's favorite sass-mouth first grader comes back for her 23rd installment in this <em>star</em>!"), but as with all Junie endeavors, expect a bumpy voyage.</p><p>The usual classroom crew is back, including Lennie, Herbert, and Jose, and Junie doesn't disappoint with her unintentionally hilarious asides ("Attendance is the school word for who isn't here") and trademark wisdom ("Glitter can turn your whole day around"). (Ages 4 to 8) <em>--Paul Hughes</em></p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 1-3–In another zany appearance, feisty Junie B. wins a starring role as the <em>Pinta</em>, the "fastest" of Columbus's ships, in a play to be presented on Parents' Night. Amid typical kid-type disasters (a flu virus, arguments over staging, a frazzled teacher), the students in Room One have a dramatic–and surprising–opening night. Like the other beginning chapter books in this series, Junie B. tells her story in simple, realistic language, including grammatical and spelling errors. Illustrations add humorous details. The interactions of the characters are consistently interesting, and the plot moves quickly. Readers will relate instantly to the trials and tribulations of this first grader, and her approach to conflict resolution and her unrefined social skills make good springboards for classroom discussion. This protagonist often offers examples of how not to handle a situation, but she is always endearing and wonderfully funny._–Corrina Austin, Locke's Public School, St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada_ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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From the author ofBlacklands, a literary thriller about the hunt for a serial killer in a small town in the English countryside.


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<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p><em>Starred Review.</em> Grade 5–9—In present-day London, strange things start happening around Zanna: dogs stop to stare at her, birds circle her head. Then, she and her friend Deeba find themselves in an alternate reality where obsolete objects such as old typewriters eventually "seep" and strange people and creatures dwell, including sentient "unbrellas." The girls learn that Zanna is the chosen one, the "shwazzy," of UnLondon. However, her first fight with the nefarious Smog isn't what was predicted in the book of prophecies. The girls soon end up back in London with Zanna unable to recall their time away. Alone in the memory, Deeba pieces together the Smog's plot and finds a way back to UnLondon via library stacks. Readers soon realize that sometimes the chosen one doesn't get to save a city, and that sometimes steps in a preordained quest don't come out as planned. Miéville's fantastical city is vivid and splendidly crafted. Who would have thought a milk carton could make such an endearing pet? Or that words, or utterlings, could have a life and form of their own? Fans of Neil Gaiman's <em>Coraline</em> (HarperCollins, 2002) or Norton Juster's <em>The Phantom Tollbooth</em> (Knopf, 1961) will love this novel. The story is exceptional and the action moves along at a quick pace. Given that the girls are 12, older readers might be put off, but it is well worth selling to them.—_Nancy Kunz, Tuckahoe Public Library, NY_ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Award-winning author China Miéville (_King Rat_; <em>Perdido Street Station</em>; <em>The Scar</em>; <em>Iron Council</em>, HHHH Jan/Feb 2005) claims that he meant <em>Un Lun Dun</em> for younger readers, but, like the Harry Potter__series, the novel will appeal to a wide range of ages. While it includes the basics of the genre—magic, monsters, quests, heroes—it breaks the mold in many ways. An urban adventure with a strong environmental message, the novel harkens back to London's Great Smog of 1952, which bridges the real and the fantastical. Miéville's playful, clever language and plot, reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's, also impressed most critics, though a few thought them contrived and tedious. "Finding it as a grown-up may not be the optimum way to stumble into UnLondon," concludes <em>Salon</em>, "but it's pretty miraculous all the same." <br /><em>Copyright © 2004 Phillips &amp; Nelson Media, Inc.</em></p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p><em>Starred Review.</em> Hugo-winner Simmons (_Olympos_) brings the horrific trials and tribulations of arctic exploration vividly to life in this beautifully written historical, which injects a note of supernatural horror into the 1840s Franklin expedition and its doomed search for the Northwest Passage. Sir John Franklin, the leader of the expedition and captain of the <em>Erebus</em>, is an aging fool. Francis Crozier, his second in command and captain of the <em>Terror</em>, is a competent sailor, but embittered after years of seeing lesser men with better connections given preferment over him. With their two ships quickly trapped in pack ice, their voyage is a disaster from start to finish. Some men perish from disease, others from the cold, still others from botulism traced to tinned food purchased from the lowest bidder. Madness, mutiny and cannibalism follow. And then there's the monstrous creature from the ice, the thing like a polar bear but many times larger, possessed of a dark and vicious intelligence. This complex tale should find many devoted readers and add significantly to Simmons's already considerable reputation. <em>(Jan.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>The prolific and versatile Simmons turns to historical fiction in this fine narrative of the lost Franklin expedition of the 1840s, in which nearly 200 men sailed in search of the Northwest Passage aboard two converted naval vessels, <em>Erebus</em> and <em>Terror</em>. They seemingly sailed off the face of the earth, until remains of the longest survivors among them were discovered many years later. Simmons makes the <em>Terror</em>'s Captain Crozier his protagonist, and through his eyes we see history infused with sf, fantasy, and horror elements: sf because the expedition went farther into the then unknown than did the Apollo astronauts; fantasy because the hardships of the grippingly described arctic environment played havoc with their minds; and horror because the men perished in ones and twos, in dozens and scores, from boat accidents, falls, scurvy, hypothermia, exposure, starvation, and parasitic infections. Crozier survives by taking refuge among the Inuit and covering the expedition's nightmarish trail by burning his ship and vanishing from civilization, by which time readers may be as emotionally drained as he. Outstanding. <em>Roland Green</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</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 and novellas 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 Randall Garrett, H. Beam Piper, Fredric Brown, Randall Garrett, Clifford D. Simak, Murray Leinster, Edmond Hamilton, Poul Anderson, Mack Reynolds and many others. This collection also includes the novellas THE NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES by Fritz Leiber and the classic story of time travel THE TIME MACHINE by H.G. Wells.<br><br>This collection is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.<br><br><br>Contents:<br><br>THE BARBARIAN by Poul Anderson<br>TWO TIMER by Fredric Brown<br>FLIGHT THROUGH TOMORROW by Stanton Coblentz<br>THE PLAYERS by Everett B. Cole<br>THE SOUND OF SILENCE by Barbara Constant<br>EGOCENTRIC ORBIT by John Cory<br>A CHOICE OF MIRACLES by James A. Cox<br>TRADER’S RISK by Roger Dee<br>DEAD WORLD by Jack Douglas<br>SHOW BUSINESS by Boyd Ellanby<br>DISOWNED by Victor Endersby<br>ONE OUT OF TEN by J. Anthony Ferlaine<br>THE CIRCUIT RIDERS by R. C. FitzPatrick<br>WIND by Charles L. Fontenay<br>THE FLYING CUSPIDORS by V. R. Francis<br>I LIKE MARTIAN MUSIC by Charles E. Fritch<br>IRRESISTIBLE WEAPON by H. B. Fyfe<br>SATELLITE SYSTEM by H. B. Fyfe<br>BELLY LAUGH by Randall Garrett<br>FIFTY PER CENT PROPHET by Randall Garrett<br>THE TENTACLES FROM BELOW by Anthony Gilmore<br>THE STARS, MY BROTHERS by Edmond Hamilton<br>IT'S A SMALL SOLAR SYSTEM by Allan Howard<br>MEX by Laurence Mark Janifer<br>THE NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES by Fritz Leiber<br>MORALE by Murray Leinster<br>SAND DOOM by Murray Leinster<br>THE SKY TRAP by Frank Belknap Long<br>POISONED AIR by S. P. Meek<br>THE BLACK LAMP by S. P. Meek<br>INFINITE INTRUDER by Alan E. Nourse<br>LETTER OF THE LAW by Alan E. Nourse<br>GENESIS by H. Beam Piper<br>GRAVEYARD OF DREAMS by H. Beam Piper<br>DOGFIGHT—1973 by Mack Reynolds<br>FREEDOM by Mack Reynolds<br>NOVICE by James H. Schmitz<br>ONENESS by James H. Schmitz<br>THE DOPE ON MARS by Jack Sharkey<br>HELLHOUNDS OF THE COSMOS by Clifford D. Simak<br>DREAM TOWN by Henry Slesar<br>HEART by Henry Slesar<br>HISTORY REPEATS by George O. Smith<br>PYGMALION'S SPECTACLES by Stanley G. Weinbaum<br>THE TIME MACHINE by H.G. Wells<br>THE TERROR FROM THE DEPTHS by Sewell Peaslee Wright<br>VAMPIRES OF SPACE by Sewell Peaslee Wright<br>UNSPECIALIST by Murray F. Yaco<br>STAR MOTHER by Robert F. Young<br>THE GREAT DOME ON MERCURY by Arthur L. Zagat</div></span></div>


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p><strong>The first and only collection of unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut since his death--a fitting tribute to the author, and an essential contribution to the discussion of war, peace, and humanity's tendency toward violence.</strong>  </p><p><em>Armageddon in Retrospect</em> is a collection of twelve new and unpublished writings on war and peace. Imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor, the pieces range from a visceral nonfiction recollection of the destruction of Dresden during World War II--an essay that is as timely today as it was then--to a painfully funny short story about three Army privates and their fantasies of the perfect first meal upon returning home from war, to a darker, more poignant story about the impossibility of shielding our children from the temptations of violence. Also included are Vonnegut's last speech as well as an assortment of his artwork, and an introduction by the author's son, Mark Vonnegut. <em>Armageddon in Retrospect</em> says as much about the times in which we live as it does about the genius of the writer. </p><p><strong>Read an Unreleased Kurt Vonnegut Story, "Guns Before Butter"</strong></p><p>"Guns Before Butter," Kurt Vonnegut's story of hungry GIs held as prisoner of war in World War II in Dresden (a site of Vonnegut's best-known novel, <em>Slaughterhouse-Five</em>, and his own wartime imprisonment), was unpublished until its inclusion in <em>Armageddon in Retrospect</em>. Read the complete story </p><p><strong>Kurt Vonnegut Sketchbook</strong></p><p>Click through on the images below to see samples of the artwork included in <em>Armageddon in Retrospect</em>: </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. When Kurt Vonnegut died in April 2007, the world lost a wry commentator on the human condition. Thanks to this collection of unpublished fiction and nonfiction, Vonnegut's voice returns full force. Introduced by his son, these writings dwell on war and peace, especially the firebombing of Dresden, Germany. The volume opens with a poignant 1945 letter from Pfc. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. to his father in Indianapolis, presenting a vivid portrait of his harrowing escape from that city. The fiction, full of his characteristic humor, includes stories about time travel and the impossibility of peace in the world (Great Day) and, in the title piece, a kind of mock <em>Paradise Lost</em>, Dr. Lucifer Mephisto teaches his charges about the insidious nature of evil and the impossibility of good ever triumphing. In his final speech, Vonnegut lets go some of his zingers (jazz is safe sex of the highest order) and does what he always did best, tell the truth through jokes: And how should we behave during the Apocalypse? We should be unusually kind to one another, certainly. But we should also stop being so serious. Jokes help a lot. And get a dog, if you don't already have one. So it goes. <em>(Apr.)</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>“A charming and mannered fantasy confection with a darker core of gothic romance” is how New York Times bestselling author Robin Hobb described Galen Beckett’s marvelous series opener, The Magicians and Mrs. Quent. Now Beckett returns to this world of dazzling magick and refined manners, where one extraordinary woman’s choice will put the fate of a nation—and all she cherishes—into precarious balance.  </p><p>Her courage saved the country of Altania and earned the love of a hero of the realm. Now sensible Ivy Quent wants only to turn her father’s sprawling, mysterious house into a proper home. But soon she is swept into fashionable society’s highest circles of power—a world that is vital to her family’s future but replete with perilous temptations.  </p><p>Yet far greater danger lies beyond the city’s glittering ballrooms—and Ivy must race to unlock the secrets that lie within the old house on Durrow Street before outlaw magicians and an ancient ravening force plunge Altania into darkness forever. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>What if there was a fantastical cause underlying the social constraints and limited choices that confront a heroine in a novel by Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë? Galen Beckett began writing the stories of the Lockwell sisters to answer that question. </p>

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<div><h3>Review</h3><p>'Outstanding ... fast, pacy and full of suspense' - The Sun </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>When ex-priest Tom Shaman, jaded from years in the LA ghetto, decides on a last-minute trip to Venice, he gets much more than the break he'd been hoping for. A brutal killer is on the loose and Tom finds himself catapulted into a series of ritualistic killings unlike anything Venice has ever seen. Enlisted by the Italian police, Tom teams up with investigator Valentina Morassi to dig deep into the city's darkest history, stretching from an ancient civilisation in 700 BC and the sexual decadence of 18th century Italy to the gritty underworld of modern-day Venice. As Valentina and Tom trace the killings through the centuries, they uncover a deadly secret, a secret that generations have killed to protect: a priceless Etruscan mosaic known as the Gates of Hell... </p>

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Jack King is about to learn why people say: 'SEE NAPLES AND DIE' . . . THE CASE Bones broken, burned and buried in a serial killer's secret graveyard. THE KILLER Cold, sadistic, sociopathic and somehow always one step ahead of the law. SETTING The Bay of Naples home of pizza, Vesuvius, Pompeii and the world's most brutal crime mob the Camorra. THE SUSPECTS A gang boss's son-in-law. A renegade psychologist. A violent twenty-four-year-old infected with a fatal disease. THE DETECTIVE Sylvia Tomms the Carabinieri's leading female capitano just divorced and heading her first serial murder case. THE PROFILER Jack King the only guy you'd trust if you were hunting a serial killer in a city where the mob rules and murder is just a way of life. VIPER a menacing new thriller from the author of the internationally acclaimed SPIDER.


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'For a second she thinks she is dead. Then she opens her eyes and wishes she was.' The press call him the Black River Killer and his stats are shocking: 16 murders; not captured in 20 years; the FBI's best profiler - Jack King - burned out and beaten, his career shattered. Jack and his wife now run a hotel in Tuscany. And though he still gets nightmares, rural Italy is a whole world away from BRK's brutal crime scenes in Southern Carolina. Or so Jack thought... As Italian cops discover the body of a young woman - her remains mutilated like BRK's victims - a gruesome package arrives at the FBI, twin events that conspire to lure the profiler back into the hunt. But this time, who is the spider and who is the fly?


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<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>With <em>The Charnel Prince</em>, author Greg Keyes keeps up the pace set by __ with a second taut entry in his series--the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. The Briar King has awoken and mythical beasts roam the land. Crotheny's king and his daughters are dead by betrayal. His bereaved wife Murielle keeps tenuous hold on the throne and the hope that her headstrong daughter, Anne Dare, has escaped the assassins' blades. The queen sends her most trusted and lethal knight, Sir Neil MeqVren, on a quest to discover her daughter's fate. He will find Anne has narrowly escaped the massacre at Saint Cer and lives on the run in the company of her maid, Austra, and the duel-prone swordsman Cazio. Meanwhile, woodsman Aspar White is sent on a mission to slay the Briar King. All will fight for their lives in the wake of dark forces emerging from shadow to force a dangerously forgotten prophecy into the world. </p><p>Keyes is among authors like George R.R. Martin whose work is reinvigorating the often tired genre of high fantasy with rich, dark, and mature storytelling. His characters are vibrant and range far beyond Dungeons &amp; Dragons cliché. He places these starkly drawn men and women into a world built upon a squirming foundation of myth, legend, prophecy, and folklore, which, to their own peril, they are only beginning to understand. <em>--Jeremy Pugh</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The age of Everon is ending in the elegiac second installment of bestseller Keyes's fresh and imaginative high fantasy saga that began with 2003's <em>The Briar King</em>. Told in a inventive prose often as disturbing as it is beautiful, Keyes's sprawling multiple-viewpoint narrative explores a weird landscape fraught with "ancient evils and fresh curses." Black briars spurt up "like slow fountains" wherever the Briar King walks in the King's Forest. As the Briar King turns villagers into unholy monsters, creatures such as greffyns and manticores once deemed the stuff of myth attack anyone who dares challenge him. In a land on the brink of civil war, assassins have claimed most of Queen Muriel's family except for her gifted youngest daughter, Anne Dare, who escaped death with her servant Austra, and is now struggling to return home to fulfill a prophecy. Other well-drawn characters include Sir Neil MeqVren, the queen's protector, and Leovigild "Leoff" Ackenzal, a talented composer. Those who haven't read <em>The Briar King</em> may have problems at first following the plot, but Keyes's lyricism, pacing and deft handling of eternally important topics—the dance between church and state, man and woman, life and death—make this a thought-provoking entertainment. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>At the start of the third book in Keyes's Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series (_The Briar King_, etc.), princess Anne Dare's father, the king of Crotheny, is dead and her mother, Muriele, is the prisoner of her mad uncle, Robert Dare, who now rules the kingdom. Anne does her best to elude her uncle's clutches as she flees across a well-developed landscape reminiscent of Renaissance northern Italy (rugged terrain and priests who belong to an established church) and medieval Germany (thick forests and ogres). The scenes and viewpoints shift often enough to be somewhat confusing, but the occasional well-handled erotic episode or magic duel can startle with its originality. This volume closes with a climactic grand battle in which Anne's cohorts appear to be victorious. Readers curious about the fate of Robert Dare, who has vanished, must await the fourth and final volume in this sophisticated and intelligent high fantasy epic. <em>(July)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>Praise for Greg Keyes and his novels of The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone  </p><p>The Charnel Prince   </p><p>“There is adventure and intrigue, swordplay and dark sorcery aplenty.”<br />–Realms of Fantasy  </p><p>“Keyes’s world is rich, detailed and always believable; the twisty plot is delightful and frightening in turns.”<br />–Locus  </p><p>“Strong world building and superior storytelling.”<br />–Library Journal  </p><p>The Briar King  </p><p>“A wonderful tale . . . It crackles with suspense and excitement from start to finish.”<br />–Terry Brooks  </p><p>“A graceful, artful tale from a master storyteller . . . [The novel] starts off with a bang, spinning a snare of terse imagery and compelling characters that grips tightly and never lets up.”<br />–Elizabeth Haydon, bestselling author of Prophecy: Child of Earth  </p><p>“Epic high fantasy . . . Keyes mixes cultures, religions, institutions, and languages with rare skill.”<br />–Publishers Weekly (starred review)<br />_  </p><p>_</p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Larsen's competent debut has many of the right ingredients for a successful spy thriller: plenty of action, technical detail that would do Tom Clancy proud, and a hero with almost superhuman skills. When Christine Palmer, an American doctor sailing solo across the Atlantic, retrieves the almost lifeless body of David Slaton in the middle of the ocean, Slaton commandeers her small boat and demands she deliver him to England. A member of Kidon (Mossad's special assassination team), Slaton is the sole survivor of a ship that sank with a super-secret cargo-a pair of unaccounted for nuclear weapons. Double agents within Mossad want to kill Slaton before he uncovers their convoluted plot to use the weapons to undermine Israel's international support. Needless to say, they're soon after Palmer as well. What's missing is that no character, except for Palmer, has an inner life.<br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>One perfect shot will change the course of history. Christine Palmer, a young American doctor sailing solo across the Atlantic, makes an incredible discovery - a man narrowly clinging to his life in the frigid waters. But there is much more to this desperate survivor than meets the eye.David Slaton is a Kidon - a highly-trained, highly-precise, and highly-dangerous assassin. The Kidon is both the hunter and the hunted, and he and Christine are in grave danger. Will they win in this race against time?With the precision of a sharpshooter, author Ward Larsen weaves an intricate tale of espionage and intrigue. </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>All in a day's work for a Splinter Cell®He is Sam Fisher: Third Echelon special operative. And when a cargo freighter loaded down with radioactive material is headed towards the coast of the United States, he has minutes to disable the ship - or die trying. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The final installment of Thalassa's Paradise Trilogy (following <em>A Singular Hostage</em> and <em>A Beggar at the Gate</em>) finds Mariana Givens living within the confines of the British cantonment at Kabul in 1841, on the eve of the first Afghan war. An assassination attempt in Lahore thwarted by her husband, Hassan Ali Khan (son of a Sufi sheikh), has forced Mariana to leave Lahore, abandoning Hassan (and her stepson, Saboor). Mariana lives miserably in an English microsociety that doesn't recognize her marriage, full of dinner parties and eager suitors. Hassan, meanwhile, is recovering slowly from wounds, and his family is second-guessing Mariana's intentions. As tension escalates between the British (who have deposed the Afghan king, Amir Dost Muhammad, and installed a more friendly rival, Shah Shuja) and the Afghans (who are preparing to attack the British army and its 10,000 "camp followers"), Mariana faces dangerous choices. As in the other books, Ali does a highly credible job creating the clannish atmospheres of the British and Sufi subcultures, and makes the strictures that Mariana and Hassan face (and those of their servants) palpable. The detail she offers (including mystic writings from a variety of traditions) is nicely wedded to the plot, which moves with brisk and engaging efficiency. <em>(Apr.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Readers first met the brave Englishwoman Mariana Givens in Ali's exciting debut novel, <em>A Singular Hostage</em> (2002), and Ali continued Mariana's incredible adventures in <em>A Beggar at the Gate </em>(2004). The final book of the Paradise trilogy concludes Mariana's saga. It's 1841, and Mariana is at the British cantonment in Kabul. The pressure is on to break all ties with Hassan Ali Khan, her Muslim Indian husband (from whom she's been separated), and marry a British officer as one of her own. Mariana can't make up her mind. Does Hassan still consider their marriage valid? Does he still love her? To help with her decision, she goes to a mystic, a Sufi seer. But things are never easy in nineteenth-century Afghanistan. Afghan forces have the British cantonment under siege, and Mariana is put in a terrible position. With its incredible detail, historical accuracy, strong sense of place, Sufi mysticism, and fearless heroine who risks her life to do the right thing, this is a perfect ending to an excellent trilogy. <em>Shelley Mosley</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>Denise Holden's life is a fragile mix of luck and hard work. A single mom of a speech-delayed son, Denise makes ends meet by moving to the small town of Edenton, North Carolina, and working the late shift as a waitress. When Denise crashes her car and her son Kyle flees the accident and disappears into the storm, her only stroke of luck is the quick arrival of Taylor McAden, a volunteer fireman. Taylor's got a knack for fixing people, and he can't help wanting to be involved with Denise beyond the initial rescue of Kyle.</p><p>As Taylor helps Denise recover from the accident and get to know the town, they discover a sweet bond and a magical chemistry that pulls them closer and closer. Though Taylor fits perfectly into Denise's family, he's unable to open his heart to being loved by her. As Taylor struggles to understand his conflicting desires, Denise questions the wisdom of gambling with Kyle's and her own emotions.</p><p>Author Nicholas Sparks has found a loyal audience for his stories about the internal battles that accompany the arrival of love. His heroes may be truck-driving manly men and his heroines emotional swamis, but it's easy to overlook the traditional roles when the complexities of human relationships are so beautifully described. Sparks has found his forte, and this novel is sure to be as popular as his earlier works. <em>--Nancy R.E. O'Brien</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Secret traumas again haunt Sparks's characters, in the author's fourth novel (after The Notebook; Message in a Bottle; A Walk to Remember). Denise Holden, the 29-year-old heroine, is destitute and forced to live in her mother's old house in Edenton, N.C. She's also the single mother of a handicapped child, Kyle, a four-year-old with "auditory processing problems" that render him unable to express himself or to fully understand others. Though she doesn't suspect it, Denise is on a literal collision course with true love. After she smashes her car into a tree and wakes up to discover Kyle missing, she finds deliverance in the form of Taylor McAden, dashing firefighter and compulsive risk taker, who rescues Kyle, too. Since Taylor enjoys an instant, unprecedented rapport with Kyle, there is little standing in the way of burgeoning romance. Trouble comes, however, when Denise learns of Taylor's checkered romantic past. Taylor's inability to commit, it seems, is somehow tied to his compulsive heroism, of which numerous histrionic examples are described. Denise's quest to find the source of Taylor's emotional distance takes up the final third of the book. The story here is mostly a pretext for the emotional assault that Sparks delivers, but when he manages to link affect to action, the result is cunningly crafted melodrama. These occasions are rare, though; more often Sparks gets bogged down in interminable interior monologue. Because these characters are preordained lovers, their feelings prescribed by fiction conventions, their psychology amounts to little more than a profusion of banality. Yet Sparks's narrative acquires immediacy when his characters' exaggerated emotions compel immoderate actions, and his readers will surely delight at these moments of heightened expressiveness. 1 million first printing; 24-city author tour. (Sept.) <br>Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Gr 5-8–Building on the success of Guys Write for Guys Read (Viking, 2005), Scieszka continues his mission to take the “reluctant” out of readers with this first volume of the “Guys Read Library.” For this title, Scieszka invited some of today's top writers of children's fiction to contribute a humorous short story. Not surprisingly, the resulting compilation has something for everyone. Looking for a story heavy on the ick-factor? Suggest Jack Gantos's “The Bloody Souvenir,” in which the Pagoda brothers return to wreak more havoc. David Yoo's “A Fistful of Feathers” features a bloodthirsty turkey intent on destroying the narrator's life. Eoin Colfer offers an autobiographical piece that shares how his younger brother was his real-life inspiration for Artemis Fowl. Kate DiCamillo and Scieszka team up to offer a hilarious correspondence between Joe and an author who knows how to hold her own with unmotivated students. While these shorter stories may not have the liveliness of the authors' full novels, each one is solid, and more importantly, it offers an introduction to that author's style and voice. Don't be surprised if students come seeking longer works by David Lubar, Christopher Paul Curtis, and other contributors after sampling them in this collection. Scieszka promises future volumes featuring other genres, among them nonfiction, sports, and action/adventure._Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA_<br />© Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. </p><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> The funny fellow (Jon Scieszka) with the impressive title (Emeritus National Ambassador for Children’s Literature) presents a collection of 10 humorous (you were expecting tragedy?) stories by some leading lights in literature for young readers. This is the first volume of the promised official Guys Read library, which is named for Scieszka’s well-known Web site, designed, like this book, to encourage boys to read. And what better way to start than with this collection of howlers by the likes of Eoin Colfer, David Lubar, Christopher Paul Curtis, and other yuk-inducing luminaries. Standouts include Kate DiCamillo (the lone female among the authors) and editor Scieszka’s charmer of a story in letters between a famous author named Maureen O’Toople and a boy named Joe; David Yoo’s wacky, laugh-out-loud story about a disappointed father and an evil turkey; and from the diabolical imagination of Jack Gantos, a cautionary tale about dangerous friends and rusty pliers. A must-have collection for the boys in your library—and while you’re at it, get a copy for the girls, too! Grades 4-7. --Michael Cart </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Fought with thunderclouds of war on the horizon, the 1938 heavyweight rematch between Detroit's Joe Louis and Germany's Max Schmeling qualifies as the sort of sporting event that coalesces into a symbolic moment with much larger themes. The African-American Louis's success and demeanor were an unsubtle rebuke to the Aryan theories of race; the affable Schmeling, for his part, would be shoehorned into the role of "Nazi Max," despite the uneasiness of the fit—later that year, on Kristallnacht, he would courageously protect two German Jews. _Vanity Fair <em>contributor Margolick (</em>Strange Fruit_) keeps his bold, colorful focus squarely on the hubbub leading up to the bout; the all-consuming welter of hype—almost every utterance in the book is tinged by race or geopolitics—makes for compelling reading. The fight pitted talent against tactics: Schmeling's previous defeat of the hitherto "unbeatable" Louis depended on Schmeling's shrewd perception of a flaw in Louis's technique. Louis was a critical transitional figure between the controversial first African-American champ, Jack Johnson, and the equally polarizing Muhammad Ali. Schmeling, in turn, was truly the antithesis of the thugs who were running his country. Every chapter in the company of such estimable and likable stalwarts is an unalloyed pleasure. Photos. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p><em>Starred Review</em> In 1938, radio announcer Clem McCarthy called the rematch between German Max Schmeling and American Joe Louis "the greatest fight of our generation." The greatest fight, as it turned out, was still to come and would be contested outside the boxing ring. This new book examines a world near war and grapple with the lasting importance of Louis versus Schmeling. Margolick provides a roaring ride through Nazi Germany and Depression-era America, as seen in the lives of Louis and Schmeling. Written with all the verve and wit of the best 1930s sportswriters (whom Margolis often quotes to great effect), <em>Beyond Glory</em> contains gripping accounts of Louis and Schmeling's two fights with each other and their bouts with other top contenders. But the greatest strength of Margolick's narrative is the larger history it supplies. For two boxers who claimed no interest in politics, Schmeling and Louis got caught up in one of the great political conflicts of the century. Margolick magnificently captures the tension--between white and black, American and German, Jew and Gentile, Fascist and Democrat--that defined the time. Readers emerge with nuanced characterizations of the fighters and the nations they represented. With its balance of popular history and riveting comeback story, <em>Beyond Glory</em> will be the definitive account of Louis versus Schmeling. And it's a hell of a good read besides. <em>John Green</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-Iselle, the royesse (princess) of Chalion, and her lady-in-waiting, Bertriz, need a new tutor. Cazaril, the man chosen for the job, has been scarred, physically and mentally, from secret betrayals by the very people who now rule Chalion through Iselle's uncle, and who seek to control her younger brother, the heir, as well. To rescue the royesse, and save Chalion, Cazaril must play matchmaker between Iselle and the prince of another realm, fight off assassins, lift a century-old curse, and risk everything-learning not to run from his own love for Bertriz-along the way. Bujold weaves a convincing and captivating fantasy world, well researched, with magic that works and gods that live without destroying the balance of this medieval society. Cazaril's life is rich with detail, and plays a part in the conclusion. The villains are believably motivated. The young heroines are deeply sympathetic characters as well. Readers will find themselves rooting for the good guys, while still uncertain that all can end without at least one of them suffering a dire fate. A finely balanced mixture of adventure, swordplay, court intrigue, romance, magic, and religion makes this book a delightful read.</p><p><em>Paul Brink, Fairfax County Public Library System, VA</em></p><p>Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Betrayed by an unknown enemy into slavery, former soldier and courtier Lupe dy Cazaril escapes his bondage and returns to the royal household he once served. Entrusted with the teaching of the sister to the heir to the throne of Chalion, Cazaril finds himself drawn into a tangled web of politics and dark magic as he battles a curse that threatens the lives and souls of a family he has come to love. The author of the "Vorkosigan" series of dynastic sf turns her hand as competently and engagingly to the fantasy genre in a tale of quiet heroism and self-sacrifice. Compelling characters and richly detailed world building make this a strong addition to fantasy collections. <br />Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Vituperative standup comedian Black (Me of Little Faith) delivers a caustic Christmas diatribe. Warning readers to ignore the book if they have a deep attachment to Christmastime, he notes, "This book contains, like the celebration of Christmas, only 2 percent religion. Think of it as the yuletide equivalent of low-fat milk." After recalling how he argued with the editor who urged him to write a Christmas book, Black delivers a full-scale Scrooge-styled screed. With chapters such as "Meditations of a Jewish Santa," "The Hooker at Rockefeller Center," and "The Carol from Hell," he rips into such seasonal traditions as Christmas cards, dinners, toys, advertising ("a primal scream of sales"), shopping ("Why don't you folks wait until the 26th of December when things are the cheapest?"), trees ("something magical about a Christmas tree all dazzled up in lights... almost as breathtaking as a hooker gone wild in spangles"), carols ("A shower is a place for singing, and on Christmas, it's where you should be caroling"), and gifts: "At Chanukah we get nothing. We don't even get stockings." With digressions on the human comedy and his personal life, Black spews forth much invective, but successfully exposes societal truths with riotous ripostes. (Nov.) (c) <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>From Lewis Black, the uproarious and perpetually apoplectic <em>New York Times</em>-bestselling author and Daily Show regular, comes a ferociously funny book about his least favorite holiday, Christmas. </strong>   </p><p>For most people, Christmas is a time of peace and goodwill. But most people are not Lewis Black. Like Dickens's most famous curmudgeon, Black says Humbug! to carols, holiday dinners, Christmas trees, decked halls, and boughs of holly. In <em>I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas</em>, he dares to celebrate the holiday season the only way he knows how: by letting loose on all things Yule.   </p><p>From Thanksgiving, when the holiday really begins, through Christmas Eve, when Black takes a moment to determine who in his life has been naughty (nearly everyone), to the saga of his annual visits to friends and their families every Christmas Day, the comedian reveals his most harrowing and hilarious holiday moments, not only inspiring laughter but also bringing into focus the true reason we gather together at this time of year.   </p><p>All new, and sure to delight fans both new and old, <em>I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas</em> is an instant holiday classic: funny, razor- sharp, the insightful, and quintessential Lewis Black. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>A serial killer with an urge to break into print propels this thriller from bestseller Patterson and collaborator Paetro (4th of July). Ben Hawkins, a former L.A. cop turned reporter and author, travels to Hawaii to look into the disappearance of model Kim McDaniels, who has fallen victim to a sadistic fiend who calls himself Henri Benoit. Ben meets with Kim's distraught parents, but the investigation soon runs into dead ends, even as the body count rises. Back in Los Angeles, Henri gets in touch with Ben, and offers the story of his life and the reasons he continues with his murderous spree. As part of the deal, Henri asks the reporter to write his tell-all book. Ben can't refuse given the killer's threat to his life as well as his girlfriend's. In just one of many clever twists, Henri proves to be the consummate storyteller. Patterson fans will devour this one in a single sitting. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Patterson never, and I mean never, disappoints." (<strong>USA TODAY</strong> _<strong>Larry King</strong>_ )  </p><p>"James Patterson is king of the bestseller hill." (<strong>Publishers Weekly</strong> )  </p><p>"Patterson has mastered the art of writing page-turning bestsellers." (<strong>Chicago Sun-Times</strong> )  </p><p>"The Man Who Can't Miss." (<strong>Time</strong> _<strong>Lev Grossman</strong>_ )  </p><p>"When it comes to construction a harrowing plot, author James Patterson can turn a screw all right." (<strong>New York Daily News</strong> )  </p><p>"America's #1 storyteller." (<strong>Forbes</strong> ) </p>


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<div><h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>This scholarly analysis of our modern celebration of Christmas pulls together a thoroughly convincing case for the widely accepted notion that it is a 19th-century creation, indeed a deliberate reformation and taming of a holiday with wilder pagan origins. Christmas was set at December 25 in the fourth century, not for any biblical link with Christ's birth, but because the church hoped to annex and Christianize the existing midwinter pagan feast. This latter was based on the seasonal agricultural plenty, with the year's food supply newly in store, and nothing to do in the fields. It was a time of drinking and debauchery from the Roman Saturnalia to the English Mummers. The Victorians hijacked the holiday, and Victorian writers helped turn it into a feast of safe domesticity and a cacophonous chime of retail cash registers. </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Christmas in America hasn't always been the benevolent, family-centered holiday we idealize. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony so feared the day's association with pagan winter solstice revels, replete with public drunkenness, licentiousness and violence, that they banned Christmas celebrations. In this ever-surprising work, Nissenbaum (Sex, Diet, and Debility in Jacksonian America), a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, conducts a vivid historical tour of the holiday's social evolution. Nissenbaum maintains that not until the 1820s in New York City, among the mercantile Episcopalian Knickerbockers, was Christmas as we know it celebrated. Before Washington Irving and Clement Clarke Moore ("A Visit from St. Nicholas") popularized the genteel version, he explains, the holiday was more of a raucous festival and included demands for tribute from the wealthy by roaming bands of lower-class extortionists. Peppering his insights with analysis of period literature, art and journalism, Nissenbaum constructs his theory. Taming Christmas, he contends, was a way to contain the chaos of social dislocation in a developing consumer-capitalist culture. Later, under the influence of Unitarian writers, the Christmas season became a living object lesson in familial stability and charity, centering on the ideals of bourgeois childhood. From colonial New England, through 18th- and 19th-century New York's and Philadelphia's urban Yuletide contributions, to Christmas traditions in the antebellum South, Nissenbaum's excursion is fascinating, and will startle even those who thought they knew all there was to know about Christmas. Illustrations. <br>Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century and the First World War.  </p><p>The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.  </p><p>The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hardbound editions of important works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torch-bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inaugurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices. </p><h3>From the Inside Flap</h3><p>Published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century and the First World War.<br />   The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home <br />of an affluent American family. <br />One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disap-<br />pears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sig- mund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.<br />The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with afford-<br />able hardbound editions of impor-<br />tant works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-<br />fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring<br />as its emblem the running torch-<br />bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-<br />gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.  </p><p><em>From the Hardcover edition.</em></p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>"Blanding roots his tale in the birth of the advertising era, and he is particularly effective in telling the story of how Coke fought to monopolize the sale of soft drinks to school children." --Salon.com  </p><p>"Like Morgan Spurlock's <em>Super Size Me</em> and Eric Schlosser's <em>Fast Food Nation</em>, <em>The Coke Machine</em> embeds current issues with history, policy, and interviews to reveal the wizard behind the curtain." --Suite101.com  </p><p>"An eye opening expose which blows the plastic lids off a company known to associate itself with love and happiness... The book lays out the case against Coke in startling clarity." --TowerReview.com  </p><p>"The book's sixty-three pages of notes attest to [Blanding's] careful research, and lend a vital legitimacy to his allegations--this is much more than an activist's polemic." --[tk] review  </p><p>"Important and readable... Blanding's painstakingly reported book reminds us that Coke's global success--perhaps like all spectacular global success--came at a price" --The Atlantic  </p><p>"Every company has a dark side, and you won't believe how dark Coca-Cola's is. After reading this book, good luck having a Coke and smile." --Morgan Spurlock, director of Super Size Me  </p><p>"Coca-Cola wants to teach the world to sing, but in the process they've trashed water supplies, peddled sugar to generations of kids, and undermined worker rights around the world. Put down your soda, read <em>The Coke Machine</em> and join the global movement to rein in unaccountable corporations." --Barbara Ehrenreich, author of <em>Nickel and Dimed</em> and <em>Brightsided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America</em>  </p><p>"In <em>The Coke Machine</em>, Michael Blanding takes a tough, unsweetened look at the business practices of this iconic American company. His investigations reveal the costs--in ethics, health, public resources, and sometimes even human life--of Coca-Cola's relentless pressure to expand sales of its products. This book is a terrific introduction to the inner workings of corporate capitalism as it plays out on a global scale." --Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, and author of <em>Food Politics</em> and <em>What to Eat</em>  </p><p>"In shocking detail, Blanding uncovers Coke's numerous transgressions against humanity and nature... Blanding's thoroughly detailed, stimulating and challenging study will have many readers saying, 'Give me a Pepsi.'" --<strong>BookPage</strong>, September 2010  </p><p>"By this account, Coke's domination of the market begins to look less like a triumph of advertising and more like a symptom of the dark side of globalisation." --<strong>The Financial Times</strong>, September 20, 2010 </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong><em>The Coke Machine</em> takes readers deep inside the Coca-Cola Company and its international franchisees to reveal how they became the number one brand in the world, and just how far they'll go to stay there. </strong>   </p><p>Ever since its "I'd like to teach the world to sing" commercials from the 1970s, Coca-Cola has billed itself as the world's beverage, uniting all colors and cultures in a mutual love of its caramel-sweet sugar water. The formula has worked incredibly well-making it one of the most profitable companies on the planet and "Coca-Cola" the world's second- most recognized word after "hello." However, as the company expands its reach into both domestic and foreign markets, an increasing number of the world's citizens are finding the taste of Coke more bitter than sweet.   </p><p>Journalist Michael Blanding's <em>The Coke Machine</em> probes shocking accusations about the company's global impact, including:   </p><p>• Coca-Cola's history of winning at any cost, even if it meant that its franchisees were making deals with the Nazis and Guatemalan paramilitary squads   </p><p>• How Coke has harmed children's health and contributed to an obesity epidemic through exclusive soda contracts in schools   </p><p>• The horrific environmental impact of Coke bottling plants in India and Mexico, where water supplies have been decimated while toxic pollution has escalated   </p><p>• That Coke bottlers stand accused of conspiring with paramilitaries to threaten, kidnap, and murder union leaders in their bottling plants in Colombia   </p><p>A disturbing portrait drawn from an award-winning journalist's daring, in-depth research, <em>The Coke Machine</em> is the first comprehensive probe of the company and its secret formula for greed.   </p><p>COKE is a registered trademark of The Coca-Cola Company.<br />This book is not authorized by or endorsed by The Coca-Cola Company. </p>


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<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Repercussions from the dark side’s fatal seduction of Jacen Solo and the mysterious plague of madness afflicting young Jedi continue to wreak havoc galaxy-wide. Having narrowly escaped the deranged Force worshippers known as the Mind Walkers and a deadly Sith hit squad, Luke and Ben Skywalker are in pursuit of the now Masterless Sith apprentice. It is a chase that leads to the forbidding planet Dathomir, where an enclave of powerful dark side Force-wielders will give Vestara the edge she needs to escape—and where the Skywalkers will be forced into combat for their quarry and their lives.  </p><p>Meanwhile, Han and Leia have completed their own desperate mission, shuttling madness-stricken Jedi from Coruscant to safe haven in the Transitory Mists and beyond the grasp of Galactic Alliance Chief of State Natasi Daala. But the bold maneuver has intensified Daala’s fury, and she is determined to shatter Jedi Order resistance once and for all.  </p><p>Yet no greater threat exists than that which still waits in the depths of the distant Maw Cluster: A being of pure, ravenous dark-side energy named Abeloth calls out across the stars to Jedi and Sith alike. For some it may be the ultimate source of answers crucial to their survival. For others it could be the ultimate weapon of conquest. But for all, it is a game-changing—and life-altering—encounter of untold magnitude and a tactical gambit with unimaginable consequences. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Aaron Allston is the_ New York Times_ bestselling author of the Star Wars: Legacy of the Force novels<strong> Betrayal, Exile,</strong> and <strong>Fury</strong>; the Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Enemy Lines adventures <strong>Rebel Dream</strong> and <strong>Rebel Stand</strong>; novels in the popular Star Wars X-Wing series; and the Doc Sidhe novels, which combine 1930s-style hero-pulps with Celtic myth. He is also a longtime game designer and was recently inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts &amp; Design (AAGAD) Hall of Fame. He lives in Central Texas. </p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p><em>Starred Review.</em> According to Nietzsche, "Every great philosophy is... a personal confession of its creator and a kind of involuntary and unperceived memoir.". Stewart affirms this maxim in his colorful reinterpretation of the lives and works of 17th-century philosophers Spinoza and Leibniz. In November 1676, the foppish courtier Leibniz, "the ultimate insider... an orthodox Lutheran from conservative Germany," journeyed to The Hague to visit the self-sufficient, freethinking Spinoza, "a double exile... an apostate Jew from licentious Holland." A prodigious polymath, Leibniz understood Spinoza's insight that "science was in the process of rendering the God of revelation obsolete; that it had already undermined the special place of the human individual in nature." Spinoza embraced this new world. Seeing the orthodox God as a "prop for theocratic tyranny," he articulated the basic theory for the modern secular state. Leibniz, on the other hand, spent the rest of his life championing God and theocracy like a defense lawyer defending a client he knows is guilty. He elaborated a metaphysics that was, at bottom, a reaction to Spinoza and collapses into Spinozism, as Stewart deftly shows. For Stewart, Leibniz's reaction to Spinoza and modernity set the tone for "the dominant form of modern philosophy"—a category that includes Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Heidegger and "the whole 'postmodern' project of deconstructing the phallogocentric tradition of western thought." Readers of philosophy may find much to disagree with in these arguments, but Stewart's wit and profluent prose make this book a fascinating read. <em>(Jan. 2006)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>A mere footnote for most historians, the meeting in 1676 between Leibniz and Spinoza opens to a discerning eye the intellectual forces destined to reshape the entire Western world. Stewart supplies that discerning eye as he chronicles the events and arguments linking the illustrious German polymath to the controversial Dutch lens grinder. In refreshingly lucid terms, he explains the controversies surrounding Spinoza as the consequence of the radical religious and political doctrines he articulated in works fiercely debated throughout Europe. By highlighting the way Spinoza's metaphysics justified secular and democratic challenges to traditional regimes, Stewart also reveals the piquant irony in the way that metaphysics hypnotized the most brilliant of the status quo's defenders--Gottfried Leibniz, who first eagerly absorbed Spinoza's thought, then recognized in it a perilous threat to traditional beliefs in God and immortality. Because Spinoza's doctrines have won acceptance from the architects of the modern world even as Leibniz's traditional religious beliefs have persisted among many who inhabit that world, the drama Stewart recounts will rivet readers skeptical and devout alike. <em>Bryce Christensen</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<h3>Review</h3><p>"The previous English-language translation of Boris Pasternak’s <em>Doctor Zhivago</em> was made and brought out in England and the U.S. in extreme haste, on the eve of the 1958 Nobel Prize award to its author that triggered one of the fiercest political storms of the Cold War era. This new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is for the first time based on the authentic original text, reflects the present, deeper level of understanding of the great masterpiece of 20th century Russian literature and conveys its whole artistic richness with all its complexities and subtleties that had escaped the attention of the earlier translators and readers.   </p><p>"In faithfulness to the original, attention to stylistic details and nuances, lucidity, and brilliance it matches Pevear and Volokhonsky’s superb translations of such monumental works of the classics of Russian literature as Tolstoy’s <em>War and Peace</em> and Dostoevsky’s <em>The Brothers Karamazov</em>. The new edition will have an even more profound effect on our understanding of 20th century Russia that the first appearance of the novel had more than half a century ago."<br />—Lazar Fleishman, Professor of Russian Literature, Stanford University  </p><p>“Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have once again provided an outstanding translation of a major Russian novel. They capture Pasternak’s ‘voice’ with great skill. Thanks to their sensitive rendering, those reading <em>Doctor Zhivago</em> in English can now get a far better sense of Pasternak’s style, for they have produced an English text that conveys the nuances (along with the occasional idiosyncrasies) of Pasternak’s writing. Notably as well, their version includes some phrases and sentences that inexplicably were omitted by the original translators. The text is accompanied by useful (but not overwhelming) notes in the back that provide information about many historical and cultural references that would otherwise be obscure for those coming to the novel for the first time. Without a doubt, their version will become the standard translation of the novel for years to come.” <br />—Barry Scherr, Mandel Family Professor of Russian, Dartmouth College </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Boris Pasternak’s widely acclaimed novel comes gloriously to life in a magnificent new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the award-winning translators of _War and Peace <em>and</em> Anna Karenina, <em>and to whom,</em> The New York Review of Books_ declared, “the English-speaking world is indebted.”<br /><em> </em><br />First published in Italy in 1957 amid international controversy—the novel was banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, and Pasternak declined the Nobel Prize a year later under intense pressure from Soviet authorities—_Doctor Zhivago_ is the story of the life and loves of a poet-physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago’s love for the tender and beautiful Lara: pursued, found, and lost again, Lara is the very embodiment of the pain and chaos of those cataclysmic times.  </p><p>Stunningly rendered in the spirit of Pasternak’s original—resurrecting his style, rhythms, voicings, and tone—and including an introduction, textual annotations, and a translators’ note, this edition of <em>Doctor Zhivago</em> is destined to become the definitive English translation of our time.</p>


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<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>This closing volume of Friedman's Coldfire trilogy (When True Night Falls; Black Sun Rising) ably concludes one of the better fantasy series in recent memory. Even readers unfamiliar with the earlier volumes will quickly be enmeshed in the struggles of the Reverend Damien Vryce and The Hunter, Gerald Tarrant, to maintain the order of the planet Erna against the forces of the demon Calesta. The battle is made more complicated in this volume by the development of an allegiance between Calesta and Andrys Tarrant, a descendant of Gerald's who vows vengeance on his ancestor. Andrys is a bit too inept to ever seem threatening, however, and a bit too lacking in joie de vivre to come off as a classic Pretender/Fool. But the sections without Andrys, especially those focusing on The Hunter, are interesting enough, and as the final battles?involving The Church, The Hunter, the forces of Calesta and various people and factions whose alignments vary throughout the novel?are held around The Hunter's keep, readers will be enthralled. While Friedman introduces a science fictional raising-of-the-stakes gambit here that isn't entirely satisfying, her general mastery of her material should delight her fans. <br>Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Despite opposition by his Patriarch, warrior priest Damien Vryce again seeks the assistance of the immortal sorcerer Gerald Tarrant. While racing against time to prevent the enslavement of their world, the two men find themselves trapped between justice and retribution. Betrayal and loyalty assume ironic forms in this conclusion to Friedman's complex and compelling "Cold Fire Trilogy." The richly detailed setting and strong supporting characters give substance to a tale that explores the consequences of embracing evil in hopes of achieving its redemption. A priority purchase for fantasy collections.<br>Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>

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<div><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>Published in 1984, 1981, and 1982, respectively, these novels feature action, intrigue, violence, and murder. In the Hitchcock vein, they also portray protagonists who are just ordinary people?a professor, an architect, and a fishing-boat captain?who are dragged into extraordinary circumstances. LJ's reviewer found Death in China "tautly written," adding that Montalbano and Hiaasen have a "fine flair for characters and settings" (LJ 4/1/84).<br>Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>“An expertly plotted novel.” —_The New York Times Book Review_</p><p>"Explosive . . . authentic, compelling, and frightening." —_The_ <em>Atlanta Journal-Constitution</em></p>

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<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>With its dozens of outlying islands and the native Conch's historically low regard for the law, Key West is a smuggler's paradise. All that's needed are the captains to run the contraband. Breeze Albury is one of the best fishing captains on the Rock, and he's in no mood to become the Machine's delivery boy. So the Machine sets out to persuade him. It starts out by taking away Albury's livelihood. Then it robs him of his freedom. But when the Machine threatens Albury's son, the washed-out wharf rat turns into a raging, sea-going vigilante. In Trap Line, Carl Hiaasen and Bill Montalbano pit a handful of scruffy Conchs against an armada of drug lords, crooked cops, and homicidal marine lowlife. The result is a crime novel of dizzying velocity, filled with wrenching plot twists, grimily authentic characters, and enough local color for a hundred tropical shirts. It's the Key West the tourist brochures won't tell you about: a place as crooked as Al Capone's Chicago and as irredeemably violent as Wyatt Earp's Tombstone.</p>


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<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>It's no surprise to find plenty of gothic touches in British author Fowler's debut mystery, the first in a series, given the renown of his horror fiction (_Rune_, etc.). When 80-year-old police detective Arthur Bryant gets blown up in an explosion at the North London Peculiar Crimes Unit headquarters, his longtime partner, John May, investigates his death. After some long, lecturing dialogue and an early chapter told from the viewpoint of a character who turns out to be of no consequence, the author reaches the core of his story—a flashback to the duo's first case during the London Blitz. In late 1940, the Palace Theatre is staging a production <em>of Orpheus in the Underworld</em> when the body of a dancer is found, sans feet. From this point forward, the intrigues of the theater murders, which decimate the cast, create considerable drama. The potency of Greek myth, conjured up by the opera being staged, is skillfully played out in the detectives' theories about the killer. The dynamic between May and Bryant makes for compelling reading, while the hubris of a police underling, Sidney Biddle, provides additional tension. Both past and present plots reach satisfying resolutions. Now that Fowler has set the stage, no doubt his second Bryant and May mystery will get off to a better start. <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–This mystery features the impending retirement of a Scotland Yard detective and the death of another. When Arthur Bryant is apparently blown up, his erstwhile partner, John May, begins reflecting on their first case together more than 60 years earlier. May, a raw recruit of 19, and Bryant, a 23-year-old detective, became the core of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, created to handle cases that were too important to ignore, yet that somehow seemed disproportionately insignificant in the face of the hundreds of civilians killed each night during the Blitz. Both men had been hurried through training and were suddenly faced with the strange case of the Palace Phantom, a killer victimizing the cast in an elaborate production of Offenbach's <em>Orpheus in the Underworld</em>. May was both intrigued by and dismayed at Bryant's methods and seeming flights of fancy. He used everything from crime-scene forensics to spiritualists to help him build his case. Fowler skillfully shifts the action between 1940 and the 21st century, building suspense and growing awareness as each case comes to its respective climax. Not surprisingly, they are connected. The details of wartime London and the destruction and deprivation of daily life are vividly conveyed. Today's teens will identify with the young lives so drastically affected by the war while following the clues, and red herrings, to a satisfactory conclusion._–Susan H. Woodcock, Fairfax County Public Library, Chantilly, VA_ <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><strong>Lee Child on <em>Rules of Deception</em></strong> <br />_Lee Child has crafted one of literature's most popular anti-heroes in the form of Jack Reacher, the iconic ex-military policeman of his <em>_Nothing to Lose</em> talks about what makes a good thriller -- and why Christopher Reich is a novelist worthy of a gold medal.   </p><p>I discovered Christopher Reich exactly ten years ago. His first book came out around the same time my second book was published. The modest prosperity that one’s first book deal brings allowed me to pick up hardcovers that caught my eye. And   </p><p>And then he got better. It was always clear that he had talent to burn, but he chose to accompany it with a real work ethic. His second, third and fourth books built and built until the release of the next one was an event to be anticipated. (And right there is my only complaint: Reich doesn’t write fast enough.)   </p><p>His fifth book -   </p><p>So I was really looking forward to <em>Rules of Deception</em>. I got an advance copy. I cracked it open. I started reading. Mostly I read like any other reader, but a small part of me reads like a writer. I think all writers experience the same thing. We sense things between the lines, especially energy and inspiration.   </p><p>And ambition.   </p><p><em>Rules of Deception</em> starts with a short prologue, and then the first chapter introduces Jonathan Ransom, the main character. Two pages, and then nine pages. The prologue is a teaser. It baits the hook. It’s a two-page masterpiece. It’s intriguing, and then it’s really intriguing. It promises big things ahead. Then chapter one introduces the guy who’s going to have to deal with them. And why, indirectly.   </p><p>Eleven pages. The reader in me wanted to race ahead. But the writer in me had to pause a moment. Because between the lines I was sensing something. Maybe because it’s an Olympic year I can only explain it like this: picture the high jump event. Six competitors are still in. Then five, then four. Then three. Then the gold, the silver, and the bronze are settled. But the rules of track and field allow the winner to go on. The bar is raised. A personal best. The Olympic record. The bar is raised again. World record height. The stadium goes quiet. The jumper stills himself on the runway. Intense concentration. The gold medal is already in the bag. Uncharted territory. The jumper rocks from foot to foot, his mind on nothing except jumping higher than he has ever jumped before.   </p><p>That’s exactly the between-the-lines feeling I was getting from Reich, eleven pages into <em>Rules of Deception</em> - a world-class writer preparing to accomplish something truly noteworthy.   </p><p>There are a further 377 pages. They live up to the promise. <em>--Lee Child</em>   </p><p><strong>Amazon Exclusive Essay: Christopher Reich on Thrillers</strong><br /><em>Name your five favorite books.</em>   </p><p>For me they’re all thrillers.   </p><p>About two years ago, I decided that it was my turn to write the thriller I’d always wanted to read. I knew exactly where to start. All I had to do was "write what I know." These days, I know a lot about the intelligence community. Not the stuff you read about in the papers -- the stuff you never read about. Over the years, I’ve made a lot of friends in Washington and overseas. Diplomats, spies, soldiers, politicians – men and women at the highest levels of government. And, I can assure you that what they’ve taught me about how the world really works is a lot more interesting and a lot more frightening than you’d ever imagine.   </p><p>That’s where my newest book, <em>Rules of Deception</em>, comes in. It’s a story about an honest and courageous doctor named Jonathan Ransom. He’s a surgeon who works for Doctors Without Borders in some of the toughest parts of the world. He’s a happily married man with a big heart and a beautiful English wife he deeply loves named Emma who works with him. What Jonathan doesn’t know is that nothing about his life is what it seems. In fact, it’s all a web of lies and he’s caught in the middle of something extraordinarily dangerous.   </p><p>I can’t say more than that, and I shouldn’t have to, because if I’ve done my job right, when you get to page five you’ll be hooked and you won’t come up for air until it’s all said and done. <em>--Christopher Reich</em>   </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In true Hitchcockian tradition, Reich plunges his unsuspecting protagonist, Dr. Jonathan Ransom, into a dangerous world of international intrigue and death. After his wife dies in a skiing accident in the Swiss Alps, Ransom learns she had been leading a double life as a spy. What starts out as a search for answers about his late wife's past quickly escalates into a frantic life and death chase across northern Europe. Paul Michael proves quite adept at narrating this complicated story. Using just the right emphasis on key words, he keeps the listener involved. With solid conviction in his voice, Michael grounds Reich's over-the-top prose. Although his no-frills interpretation of Ransom is a little bland, Michael essays a rogues' gallery of distinctly voiced and accented supporting characters. Reich keeps the action coming, and Michael stays with him chase for chase. <em>A Doubleday hardcover (Reviews, May 5). (July)</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>Money makes the world go round for Jett Gavallon, a high-tech entrepreneur who's on the brink of bringing a Russian telecom startup to market with an IPO worth billions. But when his best friend and second-in-command disappears after Gavallon sends him to Moscow to make sure the new company is on the up and up, Jett begins to have second thoughts, which are exactly what his Russian partners can't afford. Beset by an FBI task force looking into Mercury Broadband's financing by Russian mobsters, rumors of fraud being circulated by a Drudge-like online financial gossip columnist, and the discovery that his former lover is not who he thought she was, Jett puts his fortune on the line in a desperate attempt to save his company--and ultimately, his life. An exciting, fast-paced adventure by an author who puts his experience in international banking to work in the service of this carefully plotted thriller. <em>--Jane Adams</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Reich continues to struggle, trying to recapture his early success. After a rather intriguing setup, this third novel gradually evolves into something more like an unintentional parody than a real thriller. Following the altogether lackluster Allan Folsom-esque Nazi war crimes plot of The Runner, the Swiss banker-turned-thriller writer returns to the more familiar arena of international finance, which provided the intriguing backdrop of his 1998 bestselling debut, Numbered Account. But action and pacing are made to substitute for the authenticity and credibility that distinguished his promising first novel. Borrowing to the hilt in a go-for-broke move, Jett Gavallan, ex-Gulf War fighter pilot turned founding CEO of Frisco-based Black Jet Securities an up-and-coming investment banking firm puts all his chips on the line for the chance to take public Mercury Broadband (Russia's answer to AOL) with shares worth $2 billion. The pot of gold at the end of his rainbow is a cool $70 million, but all is not blue skies. An enigmatic online financial analyst, Private Eye-PO, starts warning investors that the deal is bad, leading Jett to send partner Grafton Byrnes undercover to Moscow to verify the legitimacy of Mercury Broadband. Graf calls in with a coded warning that all is not well, Jett's investigator locates the real Private Eye-PO in Delray Beach, Fla., and bodies begin piling up. Credibility wanes and action spins out of control as Jett and an old flame embark on an intercontinental plane and car chase. Comic-book dialogue ("Kind of you, Mr. Gavallan. It's not often a disloyal, disgraceful slut gets any TLC") makes this thriller read like an old Saturday Night Live skit, which may give it kitsch appeal but undermines its dramatic effect. <br />Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. </p>


