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As Prince Rohan's son, Pol, grew into the knowledge of statecraft and Sunrunner magic. But Pol was not the only prince who could lay blood claim to the crown, and soon Rohan's enemies would be ready to light a torch to set a dynastic war of succession sweeping across the land.


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<p class="description">Each of us will know physical pain in our lives, but none of us knows when it will come or how long it will stay. Today as much as 10 percent of the population of the United States suffers from chronic pain. It is more widespread, misdiagnosed, and undertreated than any major disease. While recent research has shown that pain produces pathological changes to the brain and spinal cord, many doctors and patients still labor under misguided cultural notions and outdated scientific dogmas that prevent proper treatment, to devastating effect.In The Pain Chronicles, a singular and deeply humane work, Melanie Thernstrom traces conceptions of pain throughout the ages—from ancient Babylonian pain-banishing spells to modern brain imaging—to reveal the elusive, mysterious nature of pain itself. Interweaving first-person reflections on her own battle with chronic pain, incisive reportage from leading-edge pain clinics and medical research, and insights from a wide range of disciplines—science, history, religion, philosophy, anthropology, literature, and art—Thernstrom shows that when dealing with pain we are neither as advanced as we imagine nor as helpless as we may fear.Both a personal meditation and an intellectual exploration, The Pain Chronicles illuminates and makes sense of the all-too-human experience of pain—and confronts with extraordinary grace and empathy its peculiar traits, its harrowing effects, and its various antidotes.</p>


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<p class="description">It began with the discovery of The Star Scroll--the last repository of forgotten spells of sorcery. Now, as Andry, the new Sunrunner Lord of Goddess Keep, begins to master this potentially deadly knowledge and Pol, son of High Prince Rohan, seeks to touch the minds of dragons, their enemy is mobilizes to strike with forbidden lore and treachery.</p>


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What enables individually simple insects like ants to act with such precision and purpose as a group? How do trillions of neurons produce something as extraordinarily complex as consciousness? In this remarkably clear and companionable book, leading complex systems scientist Melanie Mitchell provides an intimate tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. Based on her work at the Santa Fe Institute and drawing on its interdisciplinary strategies, Mitchell brings clarity to the workings of complexity across a broad range of biological, technological, and social phenomena, seeking out the general principles or laws that apply to all of them. Richly illustrated, Complexity: A Guided Tour--winner of the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science--offers a wide-ranging overview of the ideas underlying complex systems science, the current research at the forefront of this field, and the prospects for its contribution to solving some of the most important scientific questions of our time.


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<p class="description">Melanie Rawn's best-selling debut is a novel of love and war, magic and madness, and deadly dangerous dragons that hold the secret to unimaginable wealth that could prove key to mutual peace-or a bloody tyrant's reign. And among it all, an idealistic young ruler struggles to civilize a culture that understands the strength of the sword-but has yet to discover the true power of knowledge.</p>


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


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<p>This is a hypnotic detective adventure story set in the mysterious Arctic. Nothing on the tundra rotted...The whole history of human settlement lay exposed there, under that big northern sky. There was nowhere here for bones to hide. On Craig Island, a vast landscape of ice north of the Arctic Circle, three travellers are hunting duck. Among them is expert Inuit hunter and guide, Edie Kiglatuk; a woman born of this harsh, beautiful terrain. The two men are tourists, experiencing Arctic life in the raw, but when one of the men is shot dead in mysterious circumstances, the local Council of Elders in the tiny settlement of Autisaq is keen to dismiss it as an accident. Then two adventurers arrive in Autisaq hoping to search for the remains of the legendary Victorian explorer Sir James Fairfax. The men hire Edie - whose ancestor Welatok guided Fairfax - along with Edie's stepson Joe, and two parties set off in different directions. Four days later, Joe returns to Autisaq frostbitten, hypothermic and disoriented, to report his man missing. And when things take an even darker turn, Edie finds herself heartbroken, and facing the greatest challenge of her life...</p>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">An American reporter takes in one Middle East cataclysm after another in this searing memoir. <em>Los Angeles Times</em> correspondent Stack covered the war in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, then bounced around to other hot-spot postings, including Israel during the second Intifada, occupied Baghdad, and southern Lebanon during the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Stack offers gripping accounts of the sorrows of war, especially of the traumas Afghan and Lebanese civilians endured under American and Israeli bombing, but she also writes evocatively of quieter pathologies: Libya's jovially sinister totalitarian regime, corruption under Egypt's quasi-dictatorship, and lyric anti-Semitism at a Yemeni poetry slam. Dropping journalistic detachment in favor of a novelistic style, she enters the story as a protagonist whose travails—fending off a lecherous Afghan warlord, seething under the humiliating restrictions of Saudi Arabia's gender apartheid system—illuminate the societies she encounters. The big-picture lessons Stack draws—The Middle East goes crazy and we go along with it—are none too cogent, but her vivid, atmospheric prose and keen empathy make her a superb observer of the region's horrific particulars. </span></h3>


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Meghan McCain came to prominence as the straight-talking, progressive daughter of the 2008 Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain. And her profile has only risen since the election ended in favor of the other guy. What makes Meghan so appealing? As a new role model for young, creative, and vocal members of the GOP, she's unafraid to mix it up and speak her mind. In Dirty Sexy Politics she takes a hard look at the future of her party. She doesn't shy away from serious issues and her raucous humor and down-to-earth style keep her positions accessible. In this witty, candid, and boisterous book, Meghan takes us deep behind the scenes of the campaign trail. She steals campaign signs in New Hampshire, tastes the nightlife in Nashville, and has a strange encounter with Laura and Jenna Bush at the White House. Along the way, she falls in love with America - while seeing how far the Republican Party has veered from its core values of freedom, honesty, and individuality. In Dirty Sexy Politics, Meghan McCain gives us a true insider's account of life on a campaign trail.


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<p>As befits a future President of the United States of America, Maggie Mayfield has decided to write a memoir of the past year of her life. And what a banner year it's been! During this period, she's Student of the Month on a regular basis, an official shareholder in Coca-Cola stock, and defending Science Fair champion. Most importantly, though, this is the year Maggie has to pull up her bootstraps (the family motto) and finally learn why her cool dude dad is in a wheelchair, no matter how scary that is. Author Megan Jean Sovern, herself the daughter of a dad with multiple sclerosis, writes with the funny grace and assured prose of a new literary star.  </p><p><em>A portion of the proceeds of the sale of this book will be donated to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.</em></p><p>**</p>


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<p class="description">Proving once again that she is a master of suspense, bestselling author Colleen McCullough returns with a riveting sequel to On, Off.The year is 1967, and the world teeters on the brink of nuclear holocaust as the Cold War goes relentlessly on. On a beautiful spring day in the little city of Holloman, Connecticut, home to prestigious Chubb University and armaments giant Cornucopia, chief of detectives Captain Carmine Delmonico has more pressing concerns than finding a name for his infant son: twelve murders have taken place in one day, and Delmonico is drawn into a gruesome web of secrets and lies.Supported by his detective sergeants Abe Goldberg and Corey Marshall and new team member the meticulous Delia Carstairs, Delmonico embarks on what looks like an unsolvable mystery. All the murders are different and they all seem unconnected. Are they dealing with one killer, or many? How is the murder of Dee-Dee Hall, a local prostitute, related to the deaths of a mother and her disabled child? How is Chubb student Evan Pugh connected to Desmond Skeps, head of Cornucopia? And as if twelve murders were not enough, Carmine soon finds himself pitted against the mysterious Ulysses, a spy giving Cornucopia's armaments secrets to the Russians. Are the murders and espionage different cases, or are they somehow linked?When FBI special agent Ted Kelly makes himself part of the investigation, it appears the stakes are far higher than anyone had imagined, and murder is only one part of the puzzle in the set of crimes that has sent Holloman into a panic. As the overtaxed police force contends with small town politics, academic rivalry and corporate greed, the death toll mounts, and Carmine and his team discover that the answers are not what they seem -- but then, are they ever?</p>


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<p class="description">Not since "The Thorn Birds" has Colleen McCullough written a novel of such broad appeal about a family and the Australian experience as "The Touch." At its center is Alexander Kinross, remembered as a young man in his native Scotland only as a shiftless boilermaker's apprentice and a godless rebel. But when, years later, he writes from Australia to summon his bride, his Scottish relatives quickly realize that he has made a fortune in the gold fields and is now a man to be reckoned with.  Arriving in Sydney after a difficult voyage, the sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Drummond meets her husband-to-be and discovers to her dismay that he frightens and repels her. Offered no choice, she marries him and is whisked at once across a wild, uninhabited countryside to Alexander's own town, named Kinross after himself. In the crags above it lies the world's richest gold mine.  Isolated in Alexander's great house, with no company save Chinese servants, Elizabeth finds that the intimacies of marriage do not prompt her husband to enlighten her about his past life -- or even his present one. She has no idea that he still has a mistress, the sensual, tough, outspoken Ruby Costevan, whom Alexander has established in his town, nor that he has also made Ruby a partner in his company, rapidly expanding its interests far beyond gold. Ruby has a son, Lee, whose father is the head of the beleaguered Chinese community; the boy becomes dear to Alexander, who fosters his education as a gentleman.  Captured by the very different natures of Elizabeth and Ruby, Alexander resolves to have both of them. Why should he not? He has the fabled "Midas Touch" -- a combination of curiosity, boldness and intelligence that he applies to every situation, and which fails him only when it comes to these two women.  Although Ruby loves Alexander desperately, Elizabeth does not. Elizabeth bears him two daughters: the brilliant Nell, so much like her father; and the beautiful, haunting Anna, who is to present her father with a torment out of which for once he cannot buy his way. Thwarted in his desire for a son, Alexander turns to Ruby's boy as a possible heir to his empire, unaware that by keeping Lee with him, he is courting disaster.  The stories of the lives of Alexander, Elizabeth and Ruby are intermingled with those of a rich cast of characters, and, after many twists and turns, come to a stunning and shocking climax. Like "The Thorn Birds," Colleen McCullough's new novel is at once a love story and a family saga, replete with tragedy, pathos, history and passion. As few other novelists can, she conveys a sense of place: the desperate need of her characters, men and women, rootless in a strange land, to create new beginnings.</p>


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<p class="description">Colleen McCullough's sweeping saga of dreams, struggles, dark passions, and forbidden love in the Australian Outback has enthralled readers the world over. This is the chronicle of three generations of Clearys, ranchers carving lives from a beautiful, hard land while contending with the bitterness, frailty, and secrets that penetrate their family. Most of all, it is the story of only daughter Meggie and her lifelong relationship with the haunted priest Father Ralph de Bricassart—an intense joining of two hearts and souls that dangerously oversteps sacred boundaries of ethics and dogma. A poignant love story, a powerful epic of struggle and sacrifice, a celebration of individuality and spirit, Colleen McCullough's acclaimed masterwork remains a monumental literary achievement—a landmark novel to be cherished and read again and again.</p>


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<div><p>Grand in scope and vivid in detail, McCullough's gripping narrative thrusts readers headlong into the complex and fascinating world of Rome in the tumultuous last days of the Republic. At the height of his power, Gaius Julius Caesar becomes embroiled in a civil war in Egypt, where he finds himself enraptured by Cleopatra, the nation's golden-eyed queen. To do his duty as a Roman, however, he must forsake his love and return to the capital to rule.</p><p>Though Caesar's grip on power seems unshakable, the political landscape is treacherous — the returning hero has no obvious successor, and his legacy seems to be the prize for any man with the courage and cunning to fell Rome's laurelled leader. Caesar's jealous enemies masquerade as friends and scheme to oust the autocrat from power and restore true republican government to Rome. But as the plot races to its dramatic conclusion, it becomes clear that with the stakes this high, no alliance is sacred and no motives are pure.</p><p>Featuring Rome, Egypt, and what is now the Middle East, <em>The October Horse</em> is the story of Julius Caesar's brutal murder and the bloody aft4ermath-set against the backdrop of a Roman empire akin to the United States today as the world's only superpower. Colleen McCullough fills her work with instantly familiar characters-as memorable and individually alive as those in her vastly successful novel, <em>The Thorn Birds</em>. Listeners will be delighted to untangle the characters' motives as McCullough concludes her brilliant retelling of one of the most crucial periods in history wit the sixth and most compelling work in the series. </p></div>


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<p class="description">The captivating new novel from the international bestselling author of The Thorn Birds. Innocence is no protection. In Holloman, Connecticut, someone is preying on the innocent. At a prestigious research centre fondly known by its staff as the 'Hug', parts of a mutilated body are found. Lieutenant Carmine Delmonico of the Holloman Police learns that a string of horrifying murders, each with the same modus operandi as the one at the Hug have been commited throughout the state. When another body is found, the medical staff become prime suspects. With the powers that be in turmoil and every member of staff hiding something, Delmonico must delve into the lives of each and every Hug employee. This is the case of his career and he is determined to solve it. But how, when he is hunting a monster who leaves no clues and is always two steps ahead.</p>


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<p class="description">New York Times bestselling author Colleen McCullough returns us to an age of magnificent triumphs, volcanic passions, and barbaric cruelties.   Throughout the Western world, great kingdoms have fallen and despots lay crushed beneath the heels of Rome's advancing legions. But now internal rebellion threatens the stability of the mighty Republic. An aging, ailing Gaius Marius, heralded conqueror of Germany and Numidia, longs for that which was prophesied many years before: an unprecedented seventh consulship of Rome. It is a prize to be won only through treachery and with blood, pitting Marius against a new generation of assassins, power-seekers, and Senate intriguers—and setting him at odds with the ambitious, tormented Lucius Cornelius Sulla, once Marius's most trusted right-hand man, now his most dangerous rival.</p>


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<p class="description">Fortune's Favourites witnesses the power, mastery and cunning of two enigmatic Rulers of Rome - Sulla, returning from exile, and the 22-year-old Pompey, who designates himself Magnus "The Great". And in the background is the young soldier, Caesar, who begins to show the expert qualities that will one day culminate in him becoming the unparalleled leader of ancient Rome.And at the heart of this sumptuous tale is the unforgettable story of Spartacus and his doomed slave revolt - the true story, as no modern reader has ever before encountered it.</p>


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<div><p>With astounding narrative power,Colleen Mccullough — author of the internationallyacclaimed #1 bestseller <em>THE THORN BIRDS</em> — sweeps the reader into the whirlpool of pageantry, passion, splendor, chaos and earth-shattering upheaval that was ancient Rome. Here is the story of Marius, wealthy but lowborn, and Sulla, an stocratic but, perinfless and debauched — extraordinary men of visionwhose ruthless ambition will lay the foundations of the most awesome and enduring enmpire known to humankind. A towering saga of great events and mortal frailties, it is peopled with a vast, and vivid cast of unforgettable men and women — soldiers and senators, mistresses and wives, kings and commoners — combined in a richly embroidered human tapestrV to bring a remarkable era to bold and breathtaking life.</p></div>


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<div><p><em>New York Times</em> bestselling author Colleen McCullough re-creates an extraordinary epoch before the mighty Republic belonged to Julius Caesar—when Rome's noblewomen were his greatest conquest.</p><p>His victories were legend—in battle and bedchamber alike. Love was a political weapon he wielded cunningly and ruthlessly in his private war against enemies in the forum. Genius, general, patrician, Gaius Julius Caesar was history. His wives bought him influence. He sacrificed his beloved daughter on the altar of ambition. He burned for the cold-hearted mistress he could never dare trust. Caesar's women all knew—and feared—his power. He adored them, used them, destroyed them on his irresistible rise to prominence. And one of them would seal his fate.</p><p>The first three novels in McCullough's Masters of Rome series--First Man in Rome, The Grass Crown, and Fortune's Favorites--have all led to this book: Caesar in his ascension. This dramatic novel tells the story of Julius Caesar and the Republic of Rome: a world that loved him, resented him, fought to destroy him--but never managed to ignore him. </p></div>


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<p class="description">Colleen McCullough's track record in publishing reads like Caesar's triumphs in battlewide-ranging in scope, masterful in style, unequaled in achievement. From her almost twelve-million-copy-selling Thorn Birds through her four novels in the Masters of Rome series, McCullough has never faltered. Here she turns her attentions to Caesar's conquest of Gaul and to his momentous decision at the river Rubicon to claim his place in the government of Rome. At a time that preceded the technology of any firearm, when military acumen, strategy, and leadership were all, it was Caesar's genius that prevailed, over and over. What Caesar accomplished in Gaul is the stuff of historical epic, of military academies, and of this novel. He was utterly awesome. Yet history forgets that Caesar was also a man, not immune to the human condition. He succeeded brilliantly, but he also suffered great personal grief and disappointment. It is the full portrait of Caesar, a man destined to inspire an empire, that Colleen McCullough paints here--faithfully, magnificently, and in radiant light. </p>


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<div>
 
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   Passion, politics, love and death combine in a novel of the legendary
 love triangle between the three leaders of Rome: Cleopatra, Mark Antony
 and Octavian. This is a truly epic story of power and scandal, battle 
and passion, political spin and inexorable fate with a rich historical 
background and a remarkable cast of characters, all brought brilliantly 
to life by Colleen McCullough.</div></div>


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<p class="description">To the battle-broken soldiers In her care, nurseHonour Langtry is a precious, adored reminder of theworld before war. Then Michael Wilson arrives under acloud of mystery and shame to change everything. Adamaged and decorated hero, a man of secrets andsilent pain, soon he alone possesses Honour's selflessheart -- inciting tense and volatile passions that canonly lead to jealousy, violence, and death.</p>


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<p class="description">Tomorrow's America is a cold and ravaged place, a nation devastated by despair and enduring winter. In a small New England city, senior government official Dr. Judith Carriol finds the man she has been seeking: a deliverer of hope in a hopeless time who can revive the dreams of a shattered people; a magnetic, compassionate idealist whom Judith can mold, manipulate and carry to undreamed-of heights; a healer who must ultimately face damnation through the destructive power of love.</p>


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<div><p>When Maziar Bahari left London in June 2009 to cover Iran’s presidential election, he assured his pregnant fiancée, Paola, that he’d be back in just a few days, a week at most. Little did he know, as he kissed her good-bye, that he would spend the next three months in Iran’s most notorious prison, enduring brutal interrogation sessions at the hands of a man he knew only by his smell: Rosewater. <br></p><p>For the Bahari family, wars, coups, and revolutions are not distant concepts but intimate realities they have suffered for generations: Maziar’s father was imprisoned by the shah in the 1950s, and his sister by Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s. Alone in his cell at Evin Prison, fearing the worst, Maziar draws strength from his memories of the courage of his father and sister in the face of torture, and hears their voices speaking to him across the years. He dreams of being with Paola in London, and imagines all that she and his rambunctious, resilient eighty-four-year-old mother must be doing to campaign for his release. During the worst of his encounters with Rosewater, he silently repeats the names of his loved ones, calling on their strength and love to protect him and praying he will be released in time for the birth of his first child. <br></p><p>A riveting, heart-wrenching memoir, <em>Then They Came for Me</em> offers insight into the past fifty years of regime change in Iran, as well as the future of a country where the democratic impulses of the youth continually clash with a government that becomes more totalitarian with each passing day. An intimate and fascinating account of contemporary Iran, it is also the moving and wonderfully written story of one family’s extraordinary courage in the face of repression.</p></div>


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<p class="description">Intelligence: high. Body: hard. Mission: what no one else can do.   It's been a year since ex-Navy SEAL Ethan Kelly saw his wife Rachel alive. Now he's received an anonymous phone call claiming Rachel is alive. To find her, Ethan will have to doge bullets, cross a jungle, and risk falling captive to a deadly drug cartel that threatens his own demise.</p>


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<div><p>In her sensational Breathless Trilogy, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author Maya Banks tested the boundaries of desire. In her new trilogy, there’s only one thing left to do: cross them. And for a married couple taking steps to renew their marriage, the consequences of one single moment of inattention may come at a price the husband never expects</p><p>Chessy and Tate have been married for several years. In the beginning, their relationship was everything she wanted. Passionate. All-consuming. She offered her submission freely and Tate cherished her gift with a tenderness that made her feel safe. Content. Wanted. Loved beyond all measure. But as the years have gone by, Tate has become more immersed in making his business a success, and Chessy has taken a back seat to his business obligations. Growing unhappy with the status of their once blissful marriage, Chessy knows that something has to give, or they stand to lose it all.</p><p>Tate loves his wife. Has always loved her. Providing for her has always been his number-one priority. But lately she’s seemed unhappy, and he’s worried. Worried enough that he arranges for a night together that he hopes will reignite the fire that once burned like an inferno between them.</p><p>But a business call at the wrong time threatens everything. Chessy’s safety, his concentration, his wife’s faith in him as her husband—a man sworn to love and protect her above all else. Gutted with the realization that he’s going to lose her—has already lost her—he readies for the fight of his life. Whatever it takes, he’ll get her back, show her that nothing is more important than her love. And that if she’ll allow him to prove himself one more time, he’ll take it all. Everything. But he’ll give back far more: Himself. His undying love.</p></div>


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<div><p>Gabe, Jace, and Ash: three of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the country. They’re accustomed to getting anything they want. Anything at all. For Gabe, it’s making one particular fantasy come true with a woman who was forbidden fruit. Now she’s ripe for the picking... <br></p><p>When Gabe Hamilton saw Mia Crestwell walk into the ballroom for his hotel’s grand opening, he knew he was going to hell for what he had planned. After all, Mia is his best friend’s little sister. Except she’s not so little anymore. And Gabe has waited a long time to act on his desires. <br></p><p>Gabe has starred in Mia’s fantasies more than once, ever since she was a teenager with a huge crush on her brother’s best friend. So what if Gabe’s fourteen years older? Mia knows he’s way out of her league, but her attraction has only grown stronger with time. She’s an adult now, and there’s no reason not to act on her most secret desires. <br></p><p>As Gabe pulls her into his provocative world, she realizes there’s a lot she doesn’t know about him or how exacting his demands can be. Their relationship is intense and obsessive, but as they cross the line from secret sexual odyssey to something deeper, their affair runs the risk of being exposed—and vulnerable to a betrayal far more intimate than either expected.</p></div>


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<div><p>Jace, Ash, and Gabe: three of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the country. They’re accustomed to getting anything they want. Anything at all. For Jace, it’s a woman whose allure takes him completely by surprise... <br></p><p>Jace Crestwell, Ash McIntyre, and Gabe Hamilton have been best friends and successful business partners for years. They’re powerful, they’re imposing, they’re irresistibly sexy, and Jace and Ash share everything—including their women. <br></p><p>When they meet Bethany, Jace begins to feel things he’s never experienced before: jealousy, and a powerful obsession that threatens him, overwhelms him—and excites him beyond control. <br></p><p>Jace isn’t sharing Bethany—with anyone. He’s determined to be the only man in her life, and it’s jeopardizing a lifelong friendship with Ash. Bethany will be his and his alone. Even if it means turning his back on his best friend. </p></div>


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<div><p>In The Heart of a Woman Maya Angelou leaves California with her son, Guy, to go to New York. There she enters the society and world of black artists and writers. Not since her childhood has she lived in an almost black environment, and she is surprised at the obsession her new friends have with the white world around them. She stays for a while with John and Grace Killens and begins to read her writing at the Harlem Writers Guild. She continues to sing, most notably at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, but more and more she begins to take part in the struggle of black Americans for their rightful place in the world. She helps organize a benefit cabaret for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and then is appointed Martin Luther Kings Northern Coordinator.</p><p>Shortly after that, through her friend Abbey Lincoln, she takes one of the lead parts in Genet's The Blacks (it was a remarkable cast, including Godfrey Cambridge, Roscoe Lee Brown, James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Raymond St. Jacques, and Lou Gossett), and even writes music for the production.</p><p>In the meantime her personal life has taken a tempestuous turn. She has left the New York bail bondsman she was intending to marry and has fallen in love with a South African freedom fighter named Vusumzi Make, who sweeps her off her feet and eventually takes her to London and then to Cairo, where, as her marriage begins to break up, she becomes the first female editor of the English-language magazine.</p><p>The Heart of a Woman is filled with unforgettable vignettes of famous people, from Billie Holiday to Malcolm X, but perhaps most important is the story of Maya Angelou's relationship with her son. Because this book chronicles, finally, the joys and the burdens of a black mother in America and how the son she had cherished so intensely and worked for so devotedly finally grows to be a man.</p><p>The fourth volume in Angelou's highly acclaimed autobiography breaks her turbulent life wide open with joy as the singer-dancer enters the razzle-dazzle of fabulous New York City. There, at the Harlem Writers Guild, her love for writing blazes anew. </p></div>


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<div><p>In this third self-contained volume of her autobiography, which began with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou moves into the adult world, and the white world as well, as she marries, enters show business, and tours Europe and Africa in Porgy and Bess. </p><p>As the book opens, Maya, in order to support herself and her young son, gets a job in a record shop run by a white woman. Suspicious of almost any kindness shown her, she is particularly confused by the special attentions of a young white customer. Soon the relationship grows into love and then marriage, and Maya believes a permanent relationship is finally possible. But it is not to be, and she is again forced to look for work.</p><p>This time she finds a job as a dancer in a sleazy San Francisco bar. Her remarkable talent, however, soon brings her attention of a different kind, and before long she is singing in one of the most popular nightclubs on the coast. From there, she is called to New York to join the cast of Porgy and Bess, which is just about to begin another tour abroad.</p><p>The troupe's joyous and dramatic adventure through Italy, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Egypt becomes the centerpiece of Singin' and Swingin'. This remarkable portrayal of one of the most exciting and talented casts ever put together, and of the encounters between these larger-than-life personalities and audiences who had rarely seen black people before, makes a hilarious and poignant story. The excitement of the journey -- full of camaraderie, love affairs, and memorable personalities -- is dampened only by Maya's nagging guilt that she has once again abandoned the person she loves most in life, her son.</p><p>Back home, and driven close to suicide by her guilt and concern, she takes her son with her to Hawaii, where she discovers that devotion and love, in spite of forced absence, have the power to heal and sustain.</p><p>As always, Maya Angelou's writing is charged with that remarkable sense of life and love and unique celebration of the human condition that have won her such a loyal following.</p></div>


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<div><p><strong><em>NEW YORK TIMES</em> BESTSELLER</strong><br></p><p>The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple bestselling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother.<br><br>For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence—a presence absent during much of Angelou’s early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told. In <em>Mom &amp; Me &amp; Mom</em>, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them.<br><br>Delving into one of her life’s most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships, <em>Mom &amp; Me &amp; Mom</em> explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou’s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights.</p></div>


text:
<p class="description">For a world of devoted readers, a much-awaited new volume of absorbing stories and inspirational wisdom from one of our best-loved writers.Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter reveals Maya Angelou’s path to living well and living a life with meaning. Told in her own inimitable style, this book transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight.Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and fortitude: how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward, six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son.Whether she is recalling such lost friends as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a “lifelong endeavor,” or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice–Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family. Like the rest of her remarkable work, Letter to My Daughter entertains and teaches; it is a book to cherish, savor, re-read, and share.“I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.</p>


text:
<p class="description">Memoirist, novelist, poet, and dramatist, Maya Angelou is one of the best-loved writers of our time. She is widely acclaimed for her searing, inspiring writings--and she has been praised for confronting both the racial and sexual pressures on black women, and for infusing her work with a perspective on larger social and political movements, including civil rights. In the volumes of her bestselling personal story--one of the most remarkable narratives ever shared--Maya Angelou writes about the struggles and triumphs of her extraordinary life with candor, humor, poignancy, and grace. These include: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings The classic autobiography of her young years. Gather Together In My Name The coming-of-age story of her struggle for survival as a young unwed mother. Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas The saga of her show business career, her failed marriage, and her early motherhood. The Heart of a Woman The turbulent story of her emergence as a writer and a political activist. Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now Her exhilarating collection of wisdom, spirituality, and life lessons.</p>


text:
<p class="description">It's been a long time coming, but A Song Flung Up to Heaven triumphantly completes the six volumes of autobiography that began nearly 30 years ago with Maya Angelou's astonishingly successful I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a work that changed readers' perceptions of what autobiographical writing could achieve. The impact of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (which evoked the author's adolescence and sexual abuse in Arkansas) was unprecedented. It combined frankness and emotional force with a nuanced, poetic style--a style that Angelou has perhaps found more elusive recently. But it's here again, as affecting as ever. The book deals with the years 1964-68, a turbulent period in which Angelou came back to America after her African sojourn. This, of course, was the time of the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King; Angelou was on the point of working with the latter in the civil rights movement. Her voice is fresh and exhilarating as she deals with the tragedies and triumphs of a packed life, and there are some set-piece moments, such as her account of the misguided revenge she took on an ex-lover. Many women have become celebrated as writers and poets, but Angelou has also enjoyed a distinguished career as a civil rights activist, producer, performer, actress, and filmmaker. With all of this under her belt, she can be forgiven for the note of self-congratulation that creeps in at times. But for those who've followed her unique writing, this is a journey into a fascinating life and a riveting picture of a divided America, always informed with that clear-sighted vision Angelou is famous for.</p>


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<p>In this incredible second book in a series of autobiographies, the poet, still in her teens, gives birth to a son, tries to keep a job, falls in love, dances, falls out of love, chases after her kidnapped baby, and goes to work in a house of prostitution thinking she is helping the man she loves.</p>


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<div><p>Throughout Maya Angelou’s life, from her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, to her world travels as a bestselling writer, good food has played a central role. Preparing and enjoying homemade meals provides a sense of purpose and calm, accomplishment and connection. Now in <em>Hallelujah! The Welcome Table,</em> Angelou shares memories pithy and poignant–and the recipes that helped to make them both indelible and irreplaceable.</p><p>Angelou tells us about the time she was expelled from school for being afraid to speak–and her mother baked a delicious maple cake to brighten her spirits. She gives us her recipe for short ribs along with a story about a job she had as a cook at a Creole restaurant (never mind that she didn’t know how to cook and had no idea what Creole food might entail). There was the time in London when she attended a wretched dinner party full of wretched people; but all wasn’t lost–she did experience her initial taste of a savory onion tart. She recounts her very first night in her new home in Sonoma, California, when she invited M. F. K. Fisher over for cassoulet, and the evening Deca Mitford roasted a chicken when she was beyond tipsy–and created Chicken Drunkard Style. And then there was the hearty brunch Angelou made for a homesick Southerner, a meal that earned her both a job offer and a prophetic compliment: “If you can write half as good as you can cook, you are going to be famous.”</p><p><br></p></div>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Told in free verse reminiscent of one of Kingston's idols, Walt Whitman, this uncommon memoir of the artist at 65 is informed by the wide margins on the pages of the Chinese editions of her works (margins her father used to write in). Kingston revisits characters, like Wittman Ah Sing, the monkey from her first novel, and themes from her books: her pacifist, feminist activism; the challenge of stereotypes; East and West. Though this homage to aging, with wisdom gained through a freewheeling reflection on family, the past, fate (karma, we're reminded, means "work," not "doom"), and self-reliance (which is a translation of Kingston's Chinese name, Ting Ting), often rambles, it also has the cohesion and intricate logic of a musical composition. The artist is a mental traveler, presenting her life as a dreamlike journey that culminates in a listing of "my dead," some 50 names, which both pulls Kingston toward oblivion ("Each one who dies, I want to go with you") and inspires seven reasons to live. The desire to create recedes ("I regret always writing, writing") as the memoirist sees herself becoming "reader of the world," a "surprise world" that frees her from the need to create it with words.</span></h3>

</div>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">Maxine Hong Kingston grew up in two worlds. There was "solid America," the place her parents emigrated to, and the China of her mother's "talk-stories." In talk-stories women were warriors and her mother was still a doctor in China who could cure the sick and scare away ghosts, not a harried and frustrated woman running a stifling laundromat in California. But what is story and what is truth? In China, a ghost is a supernatural being; in America it is anyone who is not Chinese. In addition, underlying even the most exciting talk-stories of Chinese women warriors is the real oppression of Chinese women: "There is a Chinese word for the female 'I' - which is 'slave.' " In an attempt to figure out her world, Maxine Hong Kingston finds herself creating stories of her own, filling in the blanks her mother has not told her because her daughter is, after all, not true Chinese and thus cannot be completely trusted. Can these new stories explain why she had trouble speaking in the American schools? Can they help her understand the aunt who committed adultery and whose existence is denied? The new stories refuse to fall into traditional forms, and the realizations that come from them often bring out a beautiful, passionate anger that practically burns through the pages. This is powerful, experimental writing, a combination of love, hate, frustration, and sheer beauty. </span></h3></div>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Military historian Hastings (<em>Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45</em>) adds to his illustrious reputation with this magnificent analysis of Winston Churchill's years of greatness. In 1938 Churchill seemed a man bypassed by history. By 1945 he had become the greatest war leader Britain ever knew and has since achieved mythic status, standing higher than any other single human being at the head of the forces of light. During WWII Churchill wielded more power than any British prime minister in history but remained a democrat. He raised his nation far higher in the Grand Alliance than its material contributions justified. Hastings recognizes Churchill's strategic errors, his misplaced enthusiasms. Britain'smilitary leaders and military systems often disappointed his soaring hopes. His understanding of the empire and its peoples was limited and unenlightened. His indifference to building a new society resulted in his being turned out of office as the guns fell silent. But the outcome justified all, in his eyes. Churchill's strength of will, rhetoric, and personality enabled the British to understand the reasons for their sacrifices and made Britain's end as a great power a heroic one. </span></h3></div>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">Hailed in Britain as “Spectacular . . . Searingly powerful” (Andrew Roberts, <em>The Sunday Telegraph</em>), a riveting, impeccably informed chronicle of the final year of the Pacific war. In his critically acclaimed <em>Armageddon</em>, Hastings detailed the last twelve months of the struggle for Germany. Here, in what can be considered a companion volume, he covers the horrific story of the war against Japan.</span></h3><p>By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan’s defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained to be seen. The ensuing drama—that ended in Japan’s utter devastation—was acted out across the vast stage of Asia, with massive clashes of naval and air forces, fighting through jungles, and barbarities by an apparently incomprehensible foe. In recounting the saga of this time and place, Max Hastings gives us incisive portraits of the theater’s key figures—MacArthur, Nimitz, Mountbatten, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. But he is equally adept in his portrayals of the ordinary soldiers and sailors—American, British, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese—caught in some of the war’s bloodiest campaigns.  </p><p>With unprecedented insight, Hastings discusses Japan’s war against China, now all but forgotten in the West, MacArthur’s follies in the Philippines, the Marines at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the Soviet blitzkrieg in Manchuria. He analyzes the decision-making process that led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—which, he convincingly argues, ultimately saved lives. Finally, he delves into the Japanese wartime mind-set, which caused an otherwise civilized society to carry out atrocities that haunt the nation to this day.  </p><p><em>Retribution</em> is a brilliant telling of an epic conflict from a master military historian at the height of his powers. </p></div>


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<div><p><em>Armageddon</em> is the epic story of the last eight months of World War II in Europe by Max Hastings–one of Britain’s most highly regarded military historians, whose accounts of past battles John Keegan has described as worthy “to stand with that of the best journalists and writers” (<em>New York Times Book Review</em>).</p><p>In September 1944, the Allies believed that Hitler’s army was beaten, and expected that the war would be over by Christmas. But the disastrous Allied airborne landing in Holland, American setbacks on the German border and in the Hürtgen Forest, together with the bitter Battle of the Bulge, drastically altered that timetable. Hastings tells the story of both the Eastern and Western Fronts, and paints a vivid portrait of the Red Army’s onslaught on Hitler’s empire. He has searched the archives of the major combatants and interviewed 170 survivors to give us an unprecedented understanding of how the great battles were fought, and of their human impact on American, British, German, and Russian soldiers and civilians. </p><p>Hastings raises provocative questions: Were the Western Allied cause and campaign compromised by a desire to get the Soviets to do most of the fighting? Why were the Russians and Germans more effective soldiers than the Americans and British? Why did the bombing of Germany’s cities continue until the last weeks of the war, when it could no longer influence the outcome? Why did the Germans prove more fanatical foes than the Japanese, fighting to the bitter end? This book also contains vivid portraits of Stalin, Churchill, Eisenhower, Montgomery, and the other giants of the struggle. </p><p>The crucial final months of the twentieth century’s greatest global conflict come alive in this rousing and revelatory chronicle. </p></div>


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<p>From one of our finest military historians, a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences.brbr World War II involved tens of millions of soldiers and cost sixty million livesmdash;an average of twenty-seven thousand a day. For thirty-five years, Max Hastings has researched and written about different aspects of the war. Now, for the first time, he gives us a magnificent, single-volume history of the entire war. brbr Through his strikingly detailed stories of everyday peoplemdash;of soldiers, sailors and airmen; British housewives and Indian peasants; SS killers and the citizens of Leningrad, some of whom resorted to cannibalism during the two-year siege; Japanese suicide pilots and American carrier crewsmdash;Hastings provides a singularly intimate portrait of the world at war. He simultaneously traces the major developmentsmdash;Hitlerrsquo;s refusal to retreat from the Soviet Union until it was too late; Stalinrsquo;s ruthlessness in using his greater population to wear down the German army; Churchillrsquo;s leadership in the dark days of 1940 and 1941; Rooseveltrsquo;s steady hand before and after the United States entered the warmdash;and puts them in real human context.brbrHastings also illuminates some of the darker and less explored regions under the warrsquo;s penumbra, including the conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland, during which the Finns fiercely and surprisingly resisted Stalinrsquo;s invading Red Army; and the Bengal famine in 1943 and 1944, when at least one million people died in what turned out to be, in Nehrursquo;s words, ldquo;the final epitaph of British rulerdquo; in India. brbrRemarkably informed and wide-ranging, iInferno/i is both elegantly written and cogently argued. Above all, it is a new and essential understanding of one of the greatest and bloodiest events of the twentieth century.brbrbri/i</p>


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<div><p>Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.</p><p>From the Stone Age to the information age, the undead have threatened to engulf the human race. They’re coming. They’re hungry.</p><p>Don’t wait for them to come to you! </p><p>This is the graphic novel the fans demanded: major zombie attacks from the dawn of humanity. On the African savannas, against the legions of ancient Rome, on the high seas with Francis Drake . . . every civilization has faced them. Here are the grisly and heroic stories–complete with eye-popping artwork that pulsates with the hideous faces of the undead. </p><p>Organize before they rise!</p><p>Scripted by the world’s leading zombie authority, Max Brooks, <em>Recorded Attacks</em> reveals how other eras and cultures have dealt with–and survived–the ancient viral plague. By immersing ourselves in past horror we may yet prevail over the coming outbreak in our time. </p></div>


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<p class="description">The Zombie Survival Guide is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now. Fully illustrated and exhaustively comprehensive, this book covers everything you need to know, including how to understand zombie physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain.Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack 1. Organize before they rise! 2. They feel no fear, why should you?3. Use your head: cut off theirs.4. Blades don’t need reloading.5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it. 7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!9. No place is safe, only safer. 10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on. Don’t be carefree and foolish with your most precious asset—life. This book is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now without your even knowing it. The Zombie Survival Guide offers complete protection through trusted, proven tips for safeguarding yourself and your loved ones against the living dead. It is a book that can save your life.</p>


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<div><p class="description">“The end was near.” —Voices from the Zombie War</p><p class="description">The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War. Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.Eyewitness reports from the first truly global war“I found ‘Patient Zero’ behind the locked door of an abandoned apartment across town. . . . His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he’d rubbed off the skin around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also no blood on his other wounds. . . . He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls. At first the villagers tried to hold me back. They warned me not to touch him, that he was ‘cursed.’ I shrugged them off and reached for my mask and gloves. The boy’s skin was . . . cold and gray . . . I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse.” —Dr. Kwang Jingshu, Greater Chongqing, United Federation of China“‘Shock and Awe’? Perfect name. . . . But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!” —Todd Wainio, former U.S. Army infantryman and veteran of the Battle of Yonkers“Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it? . . . For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth</p></div>


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


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<p>In the forty years since Max first cried "Let the wild rumpus start," Maurice Sendak's classic picture book has become one of the most highly acclaimed and best-loved children's books of all time. Now, in celebration of this special anniversary, introduce a new generation to Max's imaginative journey to <em>Where the Wild Things Are</em>.</p><p>**</p>


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


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


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


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<p>In Brussels at the height of WWI, a small, underground newspaper is the only thing offering the occupied city hope—and real news of the war. The paper may be a small whisper amid the shouts of the German army, but Edward Kirkland will do anything to keep it in print. Meanwhile, Isa Lassone, a Belgian-American socialite whose parents whisked her to safety at the start of the war, sneaks back into the country to rescue those dearest to her: Edward and his mother. But Edward refuses to go, and soon Isa is drawn into his secret life printing the newspaper . . . And into his heart. </p>


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Maureen Howard's new novel is the last in a beautifully written and boldly structured cycle of four books, woven as a tapestry of the seasons, that critics have praised as "brazenly intelligent," "daredevil clever," and "raptly adventurous."

The Rags of Time tells of an aging Manhattan writer with an ailing heart who lives near Central Park, who is reviewing and examining both her own history and the lives she has imagined in her fiction. Interlaced are private rambles and public facts: daily strolls through the park; the tough love between her and the two men in her life, her husband and her brother; three mythmaking figures from history (Columbus, Walter Raleigh, and Frederick Law Olmstead) who matter prominently to her and her work; and updates on the lives of her fictional characters (an improbable mathematician, his lapsed artist wife, a woman historian in mourning).

A moving meditation on aging and death, on memory, forgiveness, and redemption, The Rags of Time is also, in its ambitious interplay of history, politics, art, and life, a book that explores the very necessity of telling stories.


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<div><p>In just a two-year span, Stefani Germanotta, a struggling performer in New York's Lower East Side burlesque scene, has become the global demographic-smashing pop icon known as Lady Gaga. She is a once-in-a-decade artist, a gifted singer, composer, designer, and performance artist who mixes high and low culture, the avant-garde with the accessible, authenticity with artifice.</p><p>Who is Lady Gaga? She is a twenty-five-year-old woman whose stage mantra--"I'm a free bitch!"--is the polar opposite of who she is offstage: isolated, insecure, and unable to be alone. She is an outré artist who wanted to be a sensitive singer-songwriter. She is a woman who says no man can ever compete with her career, but who goes back and forth with the ex-boyfriend who said she was too ambitious. She claims not to care what people think, but spends her downtime online, reading what people have to say about her. She claims to be a con artist and utterly authentic. She is never less than compelling.</p><p>Based on more than fifty original interviews with friends, employees, rivals, and music industry veterans, <em>Poker Face</em> is the first in-depth biography of the extraordinary cultural phenomenon that is Lady Gaga.</p></div>


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<p class="description">The town of Lincoln is covered in snow-concealing the mortal remains of a clerk who worked in the local mint. The only clue is a pristine coin stamped with the visage of King Stephen. But Templar Bascot de Marins soon discovers that the motive goes beyond money-and beyond mere murder.</p>


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<div><p>Many were the miles that the Story-Teller had traveled, and many were the places where he had been; and many were the tales he had to tell of what he had seen and what he had heard in the wide world.</p><p>Sometimes his voice was deep and sweet as the organ in church on Sunday; and sometimes it rang out clear as a bugle; and sometimes as the tale went on he would take the harp which was ever by his side, and touching it with skillful fingers, would weave a gay little song or a tender strain of music into his story, like a jeweled thread in a golden web.<br></p><p>All the children gathered around him, sturdy Gilbert and rosy Jocelyn, roguish Giles and slender Rosalind, eager for a story. Mother and father drew near, and in the background stood the servants, smiling but silent. Oh, everything was still as the house at midnight as the Story-Teller began his magic words: "Once upon a time."<br></p><p>Perhaps the story brought with it laughter, or perhaps a tear, but Life, said the Story-Teller, is made up of smiles and tears; and the little ones, listening to him, learned to rejoice with those whose joy was great, and to mourn with the sorrowful; and were the better and not the worse for it. And so in due time grew into noble men and good women.<br></p><p>The Stories are composed of:<br></p><p>The Two Brothers <br>The Jar of Rosemary <br>The Promise <br>The Plate of Pancakes <br>Little Maid Hildegarde <br>The Apple Dumpling <br>The King's Servant <br>The Great White Bear <br>The Song that Traveled <br>The Quest for the Nightingale <br>The Magic Flower <br>The Lions in the Way</p></div>


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When Johnny Richardson returns to Oakridge he has one thing on his mind--correcting a terrible mistake that caused him to flee his hometown eight years ago. Revisiting the past, though, is a dark and dangerous game in small-town America. When a careless sexual episode leads to the suicide of the town's first lady, Johnny finds himself the target of a revenge campaign that threatens to tear apart the fragile world he's built among the gold-bearing mountains of Northern California.Left an unexplained piece of land when his father mysteriously disappears, Johnny must unravel its secrets in a desperate bid to protect those he loves. But his efforts to do this have deadly consequences and will ultimately force him to confront not only his own failings, but the very nature of guilt.A searing meditation on the futility of trying to right the wrongs of the past, "Empty Mile" blends elements of thrilling urban noir with the wide-open spaces of outdoor adventure in a story that reflects America's contemporary uncertainty about itself.


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">One of the most popular words in American politics today is "character." Authors Spalding and Garrity present George Washington not only as a president of impeccable personal credentials, but also as a man who had important lessons for the American people regarding the character of their leaders. These lessons are embodied in his Farewell Address, which is best remembered for its warning against foreign entanglements. Yet it's really a meditation on how a nation can cultivate the habits, morals and civic virtues necessary for stable self-government. Bonus for history buffs: Daniel Boorstin writes the introduction.</span></h3>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">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. </span></h3>


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<p class="description">London, 1783. Orphan Cirrus Flux is being watched. Merciless villains are conniving to steal the world’s most divine power—The Breath of God—which they believe Cirrus has inherited. Now he faces a perilous journey through the dirty backstreets of the city as a sinister mesmerist, a tiny man with an all-seeing eye, and a skull-collecting scoundrel pursue him. Cirrus must escape them, but he’ll need to trust some unlikely allies if he hopes to thwart his foes . . . and survive a grand and terrifying showdown.</p>


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<p class="description">Meet Pat Peoples. Pat has a theory: his life is a movie produced by God. And his God-given mission is to become physically fit and emotionally literate, whereupon God will ensure him a happy ending—the return of his estranged wife, Nikki. (It might not come as a surprise to learn that Pat has spent several years in a mental health facility.) The problem is, Pat’s now home, and everything feels off. No one will talk to him about Nikki; his beloved Philadelphia Eagles keep losing; he’s being pursued by the deeply odd Tiffany; his new therapist seems to recommend adultery as a form of therapy. Plus, he’s being haunted by Kenny G!</p>


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There was another war, some 150 years ago, which was unpopular at home ' the death rate shocking, the military strategy confused ' and the first on which the media had a major influence. The Street Philosopher ' the nineteenth-century term for a society writer, a gossip columnist ' captures this scene brilliantly.Ambitious young journalist Thomas Kitson arrives at the battlefields of the Crimea as the London Courier's man on the ground. It is a dangerous place, full of the worst horrors of war but Kitson is determined to make his mark. Under the tutelage of his hard-bitten Irish boss Cracknell, and assisted by artist Robert Styles, he sets about exposing the incompetence of the army generals.Two years later, as Sebastopol burns, Thomas returns to England under mysterious circumstances. Desperate to forget the atrocities of the Crimea, he takes a job as a 'street philosopher', a society writer reporting on the gossip of the day. But on the eve of the great Art Treasures Exhibition, as Manchester prepares to welcome Queen Victoria, Thomas's past returns to haunt him in the most horrifying way...


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A thrilling tale of exploration, conquest, money, politics, and medicineThe Panama Canal was the costliest undertaking in human history. It literally required moving mountains, breaking the back of the great range that connects North and South America. Begun by the French in 1880, its successful completion in 1914 by the Americans marked the end of the Victorian Age and the beginning of the “American Century.” The building of the Panama Canal was a project whose gestation spanned hundreds of years. Columbus himself searched for a way to get to the Pacific across the narrow isthmus of Central America. For centuries, monarchs, presidents, businessmen, and explorers all struggled to find such a passage, knowing that whoever controlled it would exert unsurpassed control over global trade, and therefore the fate of nations.The first history of this mighty achievement in nearly thirty years, Panama Fever draws on diaries, memoirs, letters, and other contemporary accounts, bringing the experience of those who built the canal vividly to life. The massive project riveted public attention: “Panama Fever” spread throughout the Western world. Politicians and businessmen engaged in high-stakes international diplomacy in order to influence its location, path, ownership, and construction. Meanwhile, ditch-diggers, machinists, drivers, engineers, and foremen from all over the world rushed to take advantage of high wages and the chance to be a part of history. But the grim reality of Panama – searing heat, torrential rains, fatal mud slides, and malarial mosquitoes – soon caught up with them. More than 25,000 of those who enthusiastically signed on as workers succumbed to dysentery, yellow fever, and malaria, giving a fatal twist to the meaning of “Panama Fever.” The truly horrific toll unleashed a second race to find a cure so the canal could be completed. The discoveries of the heroic doctors who battled these diseases would lead to a sea change in the way infectious diseases were treated, thus paving the way for the tremendous medical advances of the twentieth century.Filled with remarkable characters, including Teddy Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, and Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French genius who built the Suez Canal and almost snatched Panama out from under American control, Panama Fever is an epic historical adventure that shows how a small but fiercely contested strip of land in a largely unknown Central American nation suddenly made the world a smaller place and launched the era of American global dominance.


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Matt and Liz Logelin were high school sweethearts. After years of long-distance dating, the pair finally settled together in Los Angeles, and they had it all: a perfect marriage, a gorgeous new home, and a baby girl on the way. Liz's pregnancy was rocky, but they welcomed Madeline, beautiful and healthy, into the world on March 24, 2008.</span></h3><p>Just twenty-seven hours later, Liz suffered a pulmonary embolism and died instantly, without ever holding the daughter whose arrival she had so eagerly awaited. Though confronted with devastating grief and the responsibilities of a new and single father, Matt did not surrender to devastation; he chose to keep moving forward-- to make a life for Maddy.   </p><p>In this memoir, Matt shares bittersweet and often humorous anecdotes of his courtship and marriage to Liz; of relying on his newborn daughter for the support that she unknowingly provided; and of the extraordinary online community of strangers who have become his friends. In honoring Liz's legacy, heartache has become solace.  </p></div>


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In 1857 when Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his band of rum smugglers from the Isle of Man have most of their contraband confiscated by British Customs, they are forced to put their ship up for charter. The only takers are two eccentric Englishmen who want to embark for the other side of the globe. The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson believes the Garden of Eden was on the island of Tasmania. His traveling partner, Dr. Thomas Potter, unbeknownst to Wilson, is developing a sinister thesis about the races of men. Meanwhile, an aboriginal in Tasmania named Peevay recounts his people’s struggles against the invading British, a story that begins in 1824, moves into the present with approach of the English passengers in 1857, and extends into the future in 1870. These characters and many others come together in a storm of voices that vividly bring a past age to life.


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


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<p class="description">"After a global crisis causes crops to fail and species to disappear, something even more deadly happens. Masses around the world suddenly became predators, feeding off their own kind. These 'Can Heads' grow to such a threat that fences, gated compounds,and SWAT-style police protection become absolutely necessary to live. And after one attack leaves NYPD cop Jack Murphy wounded and his partner dead, Jack takes his wife and kids on a vacation. Far up north, to the Paterville Family Camp, a fortress-like compound in the mountains, where families can still swim and take boats out on a lake. At first, it's idyllic. There's plenty of food, fun stuff for their children, and another nice young couple with kids of their own. And when the camp suffers a Can Headattack, Jack even helps defend it. He's immediately offers Jack a job in security. Jack's family wants to stay. But Jack slowly comes to realize that there's something else going on at Paterville Family Camp... and when he makes a gruesome discovery, he will be forced to get his family out, no matter who... or what... stands in his way"--</p>


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<p>Nobody knows Costa Rica like Lonely Planet, and our 9th edition helps you build the perfect itinerary. Whether that's whitewater rafting down the Río Reventazón, sunbathing in laid-back Montezuma, quetzal-spotting in the Monteverde Cloud Forest, or swaying to reggaetón at an open-air bar in Cahuita &#8211; you decide.<p>Lonely Planet guides are written by experts who get to the heart of every destination they visit. This fully updated edition is packed with accurate, practical and honest advice, designed to give you the information you need to make the most of your trip.<p><B>In this Guide:</B><p>Essential highlights chapter showcases the very best of Costa Rica<p>Tailored itineraries for easy trip planning<p>Unique Green Index helps you step lightly on your travels


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<div><p>Will Cochrane is the CIA's and MI6's most prized asset ... and their deadliest weapon. Since childhood, the only world he has ever known is a clandestine realm of elaborate lies and unholy alliances—where trust is rare, betrayal comes cheap, and a violent death is often the penalty for being outplayed by an opponent. Cochrane has never been outplayed ... so far.</p><p>Now his controllers have a new game: neutralize one of the world's most wanted terrorists, believed to be a general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Cochrane's unpredictability makes him the one agent capable of catching his adversary off guard, and he believes he has the perfect plan. But on a breakneck race through the capitals of Europe and into America's northeast, the spycatcher will discover that his prey knows the game all too well ... and his agenda is more terrifying than anyone could have imagined.</p></div>


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<div><p>After the loss of his family farm, John Moon is a desperate man. A master hunter, his ability to poach game in-season or out is the only thing that stands between him and the soup kitchen line. Until Moon trespasses on the wrong land, hears a rustle in the brush, and fires a single fateful shot. <br></p><p>Following the bloody trail, he comes upon a shocking scene: an illegal, deep woods campground filled with drugs, bundles of cash and the body of a dead young woman, killed by Moon's stray bullet. <br></p><p>Faced with an ultimate dilemma, Moon has to make a choice: does he take the money and ignore his responsibility for the girl's death? Or confess? <br></p><p>But before he has a chance to decide, Moon finds himself on the run, pursued by those who think the money is theirs. Men who don't care about right and wrong and who want only one thing from John Moon: his body, face down in a ditch. <br></p><p>Matthew F. Jones' <em>A Single Shot</em> is a rare, visionary thriller reminiscent of the work of Tom Franklin, Ron Rash, Daniel Woodrell, and Cormac McCarthy. </p></div>


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Two fascinating questions lie at the heart of The Red Queen: Why is Homo sapiens a sexual species, and what implications does this have for human nature? That man is sexual may seem unremarkable, yet in fact not all plants and animals need to have sex to reproduce; simple cloning is practiced by many animals with much greater efficiency. To understand how life evolves, and what benefit sex provides for humans, we must think like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, who had to keep running just to stay in place. According to a controversial yet persuasive new theory, evolution is not about progress, but about changing in order to survive. Because humans are in a perpetual battle with the parasites lurking within our bodies, we need to be able to change molecular locks as fast as parasites invent new keys. Sex enables us to alter genetic combinations every generation. Sex, then, is a vital weapon in disease resistance. It enables us to change, not so we progress ahead, but so we avoid falling behind. But what does all this mean for human nature? From a lucid overview of the Red Queen theory, Matt Ridley follows the logic of its argument into the heart of human behavior. For just as the human eye is a product of evolution, so is human nature. Evolutionary theory provides the clues to help us understand fundamental facts about human beings, from our fashion consciousness to our "system of monogamy plagued by adultery". Ridley's probing mind asks a series of provocative questions. Is mankind naturally polygamous like most of our ape relatives? Are men and women mentally different as well as physically, and if so why? Why do people share so many sexual habits withswallows? Are our notions of human beauty arbitrary, or is there method in them? Jumping into the middle of the debate over the definition of "human nature", The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved. It throws fresh light on seduction and sexism, beauty and polygamy, attraction and adultery - even intelligence itself. This is a brilliantly written book of considerable intrigue and uncommon sense.


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">250 years ago, Ascalon burned . . .</span></h3><p>Desperate to defend his land from advancing hordes of bestial charr, King Adelbern summoned the all-powerful Foefire to repel the invaders. But magic can be a double-edged sword—the Foefire burned both charr and human alike. While the charr corpses smoldered, the slain Ascalonians arose again, transformed by their king’s rage into ghostly protectors and charged with guarding the realm . . . forever. The once mighty kingdom became a haunted shadow of its former glory.</p><p>Centuries later, the descendants of Ascalon, exiled to the nation of Kryta, are besieged on all sides. To save humankind, Queen Jennah seeks to negotiate a treaty with the hated charr. But one obstacle remains. The charr legions won’t sign the truce until their most prized possession, the Claw of the Khan-Ur,is returned from the ruins of fallen Ascalon.</p><p>Now a mismatched band of adventurers, each plagued by ghosts of their own, sets forth into a haunted, war-torn land to retrieve the Claw. Without the artifact, there is no hope for peace between human and charr—but the undead king who rules Ascalon won’t give it up easily, and not everyone wants peace!</p></div>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">The ninth tale in the life of Betsy Taylor, Vampire Queen, sees her chafing against domesticity while living in a mansion with her gorgeous vampire consort Eric Sinclair and their adopted son, who is Betsy’s orphaned biological half-brother. After realizing that she really doesn’t know that much about Eric or his assistant, Tina, Betsy is persuaded by her sister, Laura, the Spawn of Satan, to accompany her to Hell. Hell is a waiting room with lots of doors, and when they venture through the first door they find themselves in Salem during the witch trials and Betsy butts in. Other doors take them to other times and places where Betsy sees Eric’s past, including an incident from his childhood. Readers will be happy to know that the passion the sassy, foul-mouthed queen of the undead has for designer shoes has not diminished in this amusing episode in Davidson’s popular series. -</span></h3>

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


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<p class="description">From an award-winning author whose debut story collection received unprecedented praise, comes an elegant novel about mothers and daughters, secrets and silences, and familial bonds in a culture where custom dictates behavior. In her exquisite first novel, Mary Yukari Waters explores the complex relationships among three generations of women bound by a painful family history. Fourteen-year-old Sarah Rexford, half-Japanese and half- American, feels like an outsider when she visits her family in Japan. She quickly learns that in traditional Kyoto, personal boundaries are firmly drawn and actions are not always what they appear. In the midst of her acculturation, Sarah learns of a family secret. During World War II, her grandmother was forced to give up one of her daughters for adoption. The child was adopted by the grandmother's sister-in-law, and the siblings were brought up as cousins, growing up on the same lane where both the biological and adoptive mother lived. Even into the present, the arrangement is never discussed. But as Sarah learns, its presence looms over the two houses. In this carefully articulated world, where every gesture and look has meaning, Sarah must learn the rules by which her mother, aunts, and grandmother live. Delicately balancing drama and restraint as only few writ- ers can, Waters captures these womentheir deep passions and tumultuous historiesin this tender and moving novel about the power, beauty, and importance of mother-daughter relationships.</p>


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<p class="description">Laird Keir McQuade is a newcomer to his title, and has much work before him to restore the McQuade honor. Finding a wife is an excellent start. He's duty-bound to go to court and swear homage to his king anyway, a perfect opportunity - were not court women trussed in stupid fashions and corrupted with false mannerisms. Of course, not every lady hides behind a powdered face... Helena Knyvett may be a daughter of the aristocracy, but in truth she is little but a pawn in her brother's ploys for power. Her smallest acts of defiance carry a heavy price. But one honorable man among a crowd of dandies could give her all she needs to change her fortunes - and set her free... Among the ruthless ambitions of England's powerful, love at first sight is a dangerous game. But the treachery, scandal, and treason that follow can unleash as much passion as it does adventure...</p>


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<p>A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator.</p>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">A mid-life crisis and a latent sense of adventure caused book editor South to give up her life in publishing and take up residence on the Bossanova, a steel-hull trawler she bought before knowing how to captain it. The subtitle is largely hyperbolic-South's time "at sea" was really a short, if perilous, sail from Florida to Sag Harbor, where the boat is now docked-but South makes an interesting memoir from her skillful observation of the sailing life: "Good seamanship isn't the thoughtless instinct that salty dogs make it seem to be. It's the good habit of always asking yourself the right questions in the right order and answering them thoughtfully." Sometimes, she seems to have forgotten landlubbers might pick up her book; a sentences like, "One danger is that your bow will slow and your stern will get kicked out to the side, causing you to be beam-to," is just one head-scratcher of many for the uninitiated. She can be clumsy when transitioning between sailing stories and other aspects of her life ("This sailing was happiness. For a time, happiness, too, had been Leslie."), but her clear-eyed perspective and involving stories keep the narrative moving. This small but well-observed memoir is a worthwhile read for anyone stuck in the workaday rut. </span></h3></div>


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The past is another country, in Mary Robinette Kowal's Tor.com tale of time travel and aviation history. "First Flight" is a finalist for the 2010 Locus Award. The winner of the 2008 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of short fiction published in Strange Horizons, Cosmos, and Asimov's. Her first novel, Shades of Milk and Honey, will be published by Tor in 2010.


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<p class="description">Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can't walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space simulations. As Mary Roach discovers, it's possible to preview space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA's new space capsule (cadaver filling in for astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth.</p>


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<div><p>The irresistible, ever-curious, and always best-selling Mary Roach returns with a new adventure to the invisible realm we carry around inside.</p><p>“America’s funniest science writer” (<em>Washington Post</em>) takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in <em>Gulp</em> are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in <em>Stiff</em> and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in <em>Packing for Mars</em>. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? In <em>Gulp</em> we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of—or has the courage to ask. We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. With Roach at our side, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists, Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally), rabbis and terrorists—who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts.<br></p><p>Like all of Roach’s books, <em>Gulp</em> is as much about human beings as it is about human bodies.</p></div>


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<div><p><strong>A <em>New York Times </em>bestselling collection of new and favorite poems, celebrating the dogs that have enriched the poet’s world</strong>  </p><p>Beloved by her readers, special to the poet’s own heart, Mary Oliver’s dog poems offer a special window into her world. <em>Dog Songs </em>collects some of the most cherished poems together with new works, offering a portrait of Oliver’s relationship to the companions that have accompanied her daily walks, warmed her home, and inspired her work. To be illustrated with images of the dogs themselves, the subjects will come to colorful life here.  </p><p>These are poems of love and laughter, heartbreak and grief. In these pages we visit with old friends, including Oliver’s well-loved Percy, and meet still others. Throughout, the many dogs of Oliver’s life emerge as fellow travelers, but also as guides, spirits capable of opening our eyes to the lessons of the moment and the joys of nature and connection.  </p><p><em>Dog Songs </em>is a testament to the power and depth of the human-animal exchange, from an observer of extraordinary vision.</p></div>


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Norfolk, 1920. Barbara Bosgrove has lived in the in the charming market town of Melsham all her life, and is looking forward to the annual Harvest Supper dinner and ball - the first since the dark days of the First World War. It isn't long before George Kennett seeks her out for a dance. He has had his eye on her since spotting her punting on the Cam with her great friend Penny. George vows to win Barbara's hand in marriage - a woman of her prestige would help raise his prospects considerably, and George is nothing if not a man of ambition. Barbara agrees to marry George; although he can be rather serious at times - she believes he is a man she can rely on. Little does she realise how wrong she can be.


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<div><p>Take a splash of betrayal, add a few drops of outrage, give a good shake to proper behavior and take a big sip of a cocktail called…<em>Ladies' Night</em>!</p><p>Grace Stanton’s life as a rising media star and beloved lifestyle blogger takes a surprising turn when she catches her husband cheating and torpedoes his pricey sports car straight into the family swimming pool.  Grace suddenly finds herself locked out of her palatial home, checking account, and even the blog she has worked so hard to develop in her signature style.  Moving in with her widowed mother, who owns and lives above a rundown beach bar called The Sandbox, is less than ideal.  So is attending court-mandated weekly "divorce recovery" therapy sessions with three other women and one man for whom betrayal seems to be the only commonality.  When their “divorce coach” starts to act suspiciously, they decide to start having their own Wednesday "Ladies' Night" sessions at The Sandbox, and the unanticipated bonds that develop lead the members of the group to try and find closure in ways they never imagined.  Can Grace figure out a new way home and discover how strong she needs to be to get there?  </p><p>Heartache, humor, and a little bit of mystery come together in a story about life’s unpredictable twists and turns.  Mary Kay Andrews' <em>Ladies' Night</em> will have you raising a glass and cheering these characters on. </p></div>


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In this richly drawn novel set on the streets, porches and in the parlors of 1960s Ohio, Mary Monroe brings to life the bond between two girls from opposite sides of the tracks--and the shattering event that changes their lives forever. At the heart of the story is Annette Goode, a shy, awkward girl who keeps a terrible secret. Mr. Boatwright, the boarder her hardworking mother has taken in, abuses her daily. Frightened and ashamed, Annette withdraws into a world of books and food. But the summer Annette turns thirteen, something incredible happens: Rhoda Nelson chooses her as a friend. Rhoda, who is everything Annette is not--gorgeous, slim, and worldly--welcomes Annette into the heart of her eccentric family, which includes her handsome and dignified father; her lovely, fragile, Muh'Dear; her brooding, dangerous brother Jock; and her colorful white relatives--half-crazy Uncle Johnny; sultry Aunt Lola; and scary, surly Granny Goose. With Rhoda's help, Annette survives adolescence and blossoms into a woman. But after her beautiful best friend makes a stunning confession about a horrific childhood crime, Annette's world will never be the same. A moving tale of the intricacies of friendship, the awful devastation of silence, and the renewing spirit of survival.--Ebony Watch out Toni Morrison, there is a new sister in town. --Rapport


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'Lit' follows the self-professed blackbelt sinner's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness and to the author's resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting blueblood poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in 'The Mental Marriott', with an oddball tribe of gurus and saviors, awakens her to the possibility of joy and leads her to an unlikely faith. 'Lit' is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live.


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<div><p>Bribed by Kyle, his twin brother, Dominic Renbourne agrees to take his twin's place for a few weeks at Warfield Manor, where he is to pay court to Lady Meriel Grahame, the orphaned heiress Kyle intends to marry. The last thing Dominic expects is to be entranced by a silent sprite whose ethereal beauty is as intoxicating as the flowers and trees that surround her. </p><p>For much of her life Meriel has lived outside normal society, finding joy and peace in her garden, safe from the nightmare that nearly destroyed her as a child. She is content with solitude until the handsome intruder begins to inspire dreams of life beyond her sanctuary. Despite his longing, Dominic's sense of duty keeps him away from his brother's future bride, but Meriel's untamed spirit proves more powerful than Dominic can resist . . .</p></div>


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<p class="description">Piper Donovan never imagined decorating wedding cakes could be so dangerous!   A struggling actress with no immediate prospects and a recently broken engagement, Piper needs to take stock of her life—so she moves back home with her parents in New Jersey and steps tentatively into the family bakery business. Soon, she’s creating a wedding cake for a friend, the star of a daytime television drama. But someone is ruthlessly determined that this wedding will never happen.   It begins with the horrific murder of the bride-to-be’s co-star—but a psychopathic wedding-crasher isn’t about to stop there. Before Piper knows it, she’s joining forces with FBI agent Jack Lombardi—a handsome neighbor with a soft spot for the inquisitive cake-maker—to sift through the suspects and find a killer. But Piper’s about to discover that it may be a lot hotter in the kitchen than she’s able to handle . . .   Suspense. Romance. Family. Cake.   There is something for every reader in To Have and to Kill.</p>


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<div><p>A killer who targets lonely women on cruise ships is at the center of Mary Higgins Clark's newest thriller <em>You Belong to Me,</em> a masterful combination of page-turning suspense and classic mystery.</p><p>When Dr. Susan Chandler decides to use her daily radio talk show to explore the phenomenon of women who disappear and are later found to have become victims of killers who prey on the lonely and insecure, she has no idea that she is exposing herself -- and those closest to her -- to the very terror that she hopes to warn others against.</p><p>Susan sets out to determine who is responsible for an attempt on the life of a woman who called in to the show offering information on the mysterious disappearance from a cruise ship, years before, of Regina Clausen, a wealthy investment advisor. Soon Susan finds herself in a race against time, for not only does the killer stalk these lonely women, but he seems intent on eliminating anyone who can possibly further Susan's investigation.</p><p>As her search intensifies, Susan finds herself confronted with the realization that one of the men who have become important figures in her life might actually be the killer. And as she gets closer to uncovering his identity, she realizes almost too late that the hunter has become the hunted, and that she herself is marked for murder.</p><p>In its review of her previous novel <em>Pretend You Don't See Her,</em> the <em>Detroit News</em> said of Mary Higgins Clark, "What's amazing...is how expertly [she] manages to keep us hooked time after time, and even better, create new plots, each as fresh as a mountain stream."</p><p><em>You Belong to Me</em> is Mary Higgins Clark at her thrilling best.</p></div>


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<div><p>Neeve Kearny may be the only person in New York worried about the disappearance of Ethel Lambston. </p><p>Ethel, a bestselling author famous for her juicy exposÉs, is one of the best customers at Neeve’s exclusive Madison Avenue boutique. But Ethel’s ex-husband, her parasitical nephew, and the fashion moguls skewered in her latest article all have reason to be glad she’s no longer around.</p><p>When Ethel Lambston is found with her throat cut, Neeve’s memories of her mother’s long-unsolved murder loom up once again. Now, as an innocent witness in the Lambston investigation, Neeve is drawn into a new nightmare . . . a sinister labyrinth of greed and ambition that will lead her into mortal danger.</p></div>


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<div><p><strong>From America's Queen of Suspense comes a gripping tale of a young woman trying to unravel the mystery of a family tragedy -- a quest with terrifying repercussions. </strong></p><p>It has been ten years since twenty-one-year-old Charles MacKenzie Jr. ("Mack") went missing. A Columbia University senior, about to graduate and already accepted at Duke University Law School, he walked out of his apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side without a word to his college roommates and has never been seen again. However, he does make one ritual phone call to his mother every year: on Mother's Day. Each time, he assures her he is fine, refuses to answer her frantic questions, then hangs up. Even the death of his father, a corporate lawyer, in the tragedy of 9/11 does not bring him home or break the pattern of his calls. </p><p>Mack's sister, Carolyn, is now twenty-six, a law school graduate, and has just finished her clerkship for a civil court judge in Manhattan. She has endured two family tragedies, yet she realizes that she will never be able to have closure and get on with her life until she finds her brother. She resolves to discover what happened to Mack and why he has found it necessary to hide from them. So this year when Mack makes his annual Mother's Day call, Carolyn interrupts to announce her intention to track him down, no matter what it takes. The next morning after Mass, her uncle, Monsignor Devon MacKenzie, receives a scrawled message left in the collection basket: "Uncle Devon, tell Carolyn she must not look for me." </p><p>Mack's cryptic warning does nothing to deter his sister from taking up the search, despite the angry reaction of her mother, Olivia, and the polite disapproval of Elliott Wallace, Carolyn's honorary uncle, who is clearly in love with Olivia. </p><p>Carolyn's pursuit of the truth about Mack's disappearance swiftly plunges her into a world of unexpected danger and unanswered questions. What is the secret that Gus and Lil Kramer, the superintendents of the building in which Mack was living, have to hide? What do Mack's old roommates, the charismatic club owner Nick DeMarco and the cold and wealthy real estate tycoon Bruce Galbraith, know about Mack's disappearance? Is Nick connected to the disappearance of Leesey Andrews, who had last been seen in his trendy club? Can the police possibly believe that Mack is not only alive, but a serial killer, a shadowy predator of young women? Was Mack also guilty of the brutal murder of his drama teacher and the theft of his taped sessions with her? </p><p>Carolyn's passionate search for the truth about her brother -- and for her brother himself -- leads her into a deadly confrontation with someone close to her whose secret he cannot allow her to reveal.</p></div>


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<div><p>Elizabeth Lange has arrived at Cypress Point Spa in Pebble Beach, California, weary of heart and soul. Still grieving for her beloved sister, a famous actress who plunged to her death from her Manhattan penthouse, Elizabeth is determined to unearth the truth about how Leila died. Dashing multimillionaire Ted Winters stands accused of her murder, but Elizabeth has doubts. </p><p>Along the windswept cliffs of the Monterey coast, in luxurious bungalows, between gourmet meals and beachfront walks, uneasiness stalks Elizabeth while she begins opening doors to the past. As glimpses of the dark truth about Leila's life and death -- and about Elizabeth herself -- start to crash against her mind, an ominous wave from an unexpected source threatens to engulf her entirely.</p></div>


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<div><p><strong>IN WORLDWIDE BESTSELLING SUSPENSE WRITER MARY HIGGINS CLARK’S SPELLBINDING NEW THRILLER, A BROADWAY STAR’S MURDER IGNITES A SHOCKING SERIES OF DEADLY EVENTS. . . . </strong></p><hr><p>After famous actress Natalie Raines is found in her home, dying from a gunshot wound, police immediately suspect her theatrical agent and jealous soon-to-be-ex-husband, Gregg Aldrich. But no charges are brought against him until two years later, when a career criminal suddenly claims Aldrich had tried to hire him to kill her. The case is a plum assignment for attractive thirty-two-year-old assistant prosecutor Emily Wallace. She spends long hours preparing for the trial, and unaware of a seemingly well-meaning neighbor’s violent past, gives him a key to her home to care for her dog. The high-profile trial makes headlines, threatening to reveal personal matters about Emily, such as the fact that she had a heart transplant— especially when she experiences eerie sentiments that defy all reason and continue even after the jury decides Gregg Aldrich’s fate. But little does she know, now her <em>own </em>life is at risk.</p></div>


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<div><p>In a riveting new thriller, worldwide bestselling suspense writer Mary Higgins Clark weaves the mystery of twin telepathy into a mother's search for a kidnapped child, presumed dead.</p><p>Margaret and Steve Frawley celebrate the third birthday of their twin girls, Kelly and Kathy, with an afternoon party in their new home, a modest fixer-upper in Ridgefield, Connecticut.</p><p>The evening of the twins' birthday party, Steve and Margaret attend a black-tie dinner in New York. When they return home, the police are in the house, and they are told that the babysitter had been found unconscious, the children are gone, and a note demanding an eight-million-dollar ransom had been left in their room.</p><p>Steve Frawley's firm, a global investment company, agrees to pay the ransom. The kidnapper, who identifies himself as the "Pied Piper," makes his terms known — on delivery of the ransom, a call will come, revealing the girls' whereabouts. The call comes, but only Kelly is in the car parked behind a deserted restaurant. The driver is dead from a gunshot wound and has left a suicide note, saying he had inadvertently killed Kathy and had dumped her body in the ocean.</p><p>At the private memorial Mass for Kathy, Kelly tugs Margaret's arm and says: "Mommy, Kathy is very scared of that lady. She wants to come home right now." More unexplainable occurrences follow, indicating that Kelly is in touch with Kathy. At first, no one except the mother believes that the twins are communicating and that Kathy is still alive. As Kelly's warnings become increasingly specific and alarming, however, FBI agents set out on a search for Kathy. The novel reaches a breathtaking climax as they close in on the Pied Piper and his accomplices, while Kathy's life hangs by a thread.</p><p>In delving into the well-documented but still unexplained phenomenon of twin telepathy, Mary Higgins Clark tells a spellbinding tale that takes us deep into the minds of her characters while lifting us to the heights of suspense.</p></div>


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<div><p>In The Shadow of Your Smile, worldwide bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark weaves a spellbinding thriller revolving around a long-held family secret that threatens to emerge and take the life of an unsuspecting heiress. </p><p>At age eighty-two and in failing health, Olivia Morrow knows she has little time left. The last of her line, she faces a momentous choice: expose a long-held family secret, or take it with her to her grave. </p><p>Olivia has in her possession letters from her deceased cousin Catherine, a nun, now being considered for beatification by the Catholic Church—the final step before sainthood. In her lifetime, Sister Catherine had founded seven hospitals for disabled children. Now the cure of a four-year-old boy dying of brain cancer is being attributed to her. After his case was pronounced medically hopeless, the boy’s desperate mother had organized a prayer crusade to Sister Catherine, leading to his miraculous recovery. </p><p>The letters Olivia holds are the evidence that Catherine gave birth at age seventeen to a child, a son, and gave him up for adoption. Olivia knows the identity of the young man who fathered Catherine’s child: Alex Gannon, who went on to become a world-famous doctor, scientist, and inventor holding medical patents. </p><p>Now, two generations later, thirty-one-year-old pediatrician Dr. Monica Farrell, Catherine’s granddaughter, stands as the rightful heir to what remains of the family fortune. But in telling Monica who she really is, Olivia would have to betray Catherine’s wishes and reveal the story behind Monica’s ancestry. </p><p>The Gannon fortune is being squandered by Alex’s nephews Greg and Peter Gannon, and other board members of the Gannon Foundation, who camouflage their profligate lifestyles with philanthropy. </p><p>Now their carefully constructed image is cracking. Greg, a prominent financier, is under criminal investigation, and Peter, a Broadway producer, is a</p><p>suspect in the murder of a young woman who has been extorting money from him. </p><p>The only people aware of Olivia’s impending choice are those exploiting the Gannon inheritance. To silence Olivia and prevent Monica from learning the secret, some of them will stop at nothing—even murder. </p><p>Clark’s riveting new novel explores the juxtaposition of medical science and religious faith, and the search for identity by the daughter of a man adopted at birth.</p></div>


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<div><p>The "Queen of Suspense," Mary Higgins Clark, delivers a gripping tale of deception and tantalizing twists that might have been ripped from today's headlines.</p><p>When Nicholas Spencer, the charismatic head of a company that has developed an anticancer vaccine, disappears without a trace, reporter Marcia "Carley" DeCarlo is assigned the story. Word that Spencer, if alive, has made off with huge sums of money — including the life savings of many employees — doesn't do much to change Carley's already low opinion of Spencer's wife, Lynn, who is also Carley's stepsister and whom everyone believes is involved. But when Lynn's life is threatened, she asks Carley to help her prove that she wasn't her husband's accomplice. As the facts unfold, however, Carley herself becomes the target of a dangerous, sinister group that will stop at nothing to get what they want.</p></div>


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<div><p>Alvirah Meehan, one of Mary Higgins Clark's most beloved characters, returns in these dazzling, intertwined tales of sleuthing and suspense. Alvirah, the former cleaning lady who struck it rich in the lottery, made her first appearance in <em>Weep No More, My Lady</em>. Now, with her devoted mate, Willy, the ever-resourceful Alvirah delves into crime-solving on a grand scale -- and with her own inimitable style. </p><p>Among their many adventures, Alvirah and Willy find a dead actress in their Central Park South condominium upon their return from London in "The Body in the Closet." Needing a break from the big city, they escape to Cape Cod -- only to meet a would-be heiress framed for murder in "Death on the Cape." When Alvirah and Willy seek the tranquillity of the Cypress Point Spa, it's the perfect getaway -- until a jewel thief turns up in "The Lottery Winner." Back in Manhattan, the search for a neighbor's missing newborn makes for a suspense-filled Christmas in "Bye, Baby Bunting."</p></div>


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<div><p>In <em>The Lost Years, </em>Mary Higgins Clark, America’s Queen of Suspense, has written her most astonishing novel to date. At its center is a discovery that, if authenticated, may be the most revered document in human history—“the holiest of the holy”—and certainly the most coveted and valuable object in the world. </p><p>Biblical scholar Jonathan Lyons believes he has found the rarest of parchments—a letter that may have been written by Jesus Christ. Stolen from the Vatican Library in the 1500s, the letter was assumed to be lost forever. </p><p>Now, under the promise of secrecy, Jonathan is able to confirm his findings with several other experts. But he also confides in a family friend his suspicion that someone he once trusted wants to sell the parchment and cash in. </p><p>Within days Jonathan is found shot to death in his study. At the same time, his wife, Kathleen, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, is found hiding in the study closet, incoherent and clutching the murder weapon. Even in her dementia, Kathleen has known that her husband was carrying on a long-term affair. Did Kathleen kill her husband in a jealous rage, as the police contend? Or is his death tied to the larger question: Who has possession of the priceless parchment that has now gone missing? </p><p>It is up to their daughter, twenty-eight-year-old Mariah, to clear her mother of murder charges and unravel the real mystery behind her father’s death. Mary Higgins Clark’s <em>The Lost Years </em>is at once a breathless murder mystery and a hunt for what may be the most precious religious and archaeological treasure of all time.</p></div>


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<p>A minor road accident landed county prosecutor Katie DeMaio in Westlake Hospital. That night, from her window, she thought she saw a man load a woman's body into the trunk of a car...or was it just a sleeping pill induced nightmare? At work the next day, Katie began investigating a suicide that looked more like murder. Initial evidence pointed elsewhere, but medical examiner Richard Carroll saw a trail leading to Dr. Edgar Highley. He suspected that the famous doctor's work "curing" infertile women was more than controversial -- that it was deceitful, depraved, and often deadly. But before Richard could tell Katie his fears, she left the office for the weekend and an appointment for routine surgery...in Dr. Highley's operating room.</p>


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<p>In a first-time collaboration, “Queen of Suspense” Mary Higgins Clark partners with bestselling author Alafair Burke to deliver a brand new suspense series about a television program featuring cold case murders.  </p><p>Television producer Laurie Moran is delighted when the pilot for her reality drama, <em>Under Suspicion</em>, is a success. Even more, the program—a cold case series that revisits unsolved crimes by recreating them with those affected—is off to a fantastic start when it helps solve an infamous murder in the very first episode.  </p><p>Now Laurie has the ideal case to feature in the next episode of <em>Under Suspicion</em>: the Cinderella Murder. When Susan Dempsey, a beautiful and multi-talented UCLA student, was found dead, her murder raised numerous questions. Why was her car parked miles from her body? Had she ever shown up for the acting audition she was due to attend at the home of an up-and-coming director? Why does Susan’s boyfriend want to avoid questions about their relationship? Was her disappearance connected to a controversial church that was active on campus? Was she close to her computer science professor because of her technological brilliance, or something more? And why was Susan missing one of her shoes when her body was discovered?  </p><p>With the help of lawyer and <em>Under Suspicion</em> host Alex Buckley, Laurie knows the case will attract great ratings, especially when the former suspects include Hollywood’s elite and tech billionaires. The suspense and drama are perfect for the silver screen—but is Cinderella’s murderer ready for a close-up?  </p><p>Together Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke deliver an exciting publishing event: the start of a thrilling new series guaranteed to keep you guessing until the last suspenseful page.</p><p>**</p>


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<div><p>In the short novel <em>The Anastasia Syndrome,</em> prominent historical writer Judith Chase is living in London and preparing for her marriage to Sir Stephen Hallett, expected to become England's next Prime Minister. Orphaned during World War II, Judith wants to trace her origins. In this quest, she goes to a renowned psychiatrist and becomes the victim of his experiments in regression. When a woman in a dark green cape sets off bombs in London, Sir Stephen and Judith are faced with an intangible, mysterious force threatening their very existence.</p><p>Obsessive love is the subject of <em>Terror Stalks the Class Reunion;</em> psychic contact with a dead twin sister is the only defense against a murder in <em>Double Vision; Lucky Day,</em> compared to O. Henry's <em>The Gift of the Magi,</em> begins premonition of imminent danger; in <em>The Lost Angel,</em> mother follows her intuition in a harrowing search for her missing child.</p></div>


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<div><p>Mary Higgins Clark sends chills down readers' spines with the story of Lacey Farrell, a rising star on the Manhattan real estate scene. One day, while showing a luxurious skyline co-op, Lacey is witness to a murder -- and to the dying words of the victim.... The dying woman is convinced that the attacker was after her dead daughter's journal -- which Lacey gives to the police, but not before making a copy for herself. It's an impulse that later proves nearly fatal. </p><p>Placed in the witness protection program and sent to live in the Minneapolis area, Lacey must assume a fake identity, at least until the killer can be brought to trial. There she meets Tom Lynch, a radio talk-show host whom she tentatively begins to date -- until the strain of deception makes her break it off. Then she discovers the killer has traced her to Minneapolis. Armed with nothing more than her own courage and clues from the journal, Lacey heads back to New York, determined to uncover who's behind the deaths of the two women -- before she's the next casualty. </p><p>At once seductive and frightening, <em>Pretend You Don't See Her</em> is the "mistress of high tension" <em>(The New Yorker)</em> at her ingenious best.</p></div>


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<p>In <em>Remember Me,</em> Menley Nichols and her husband, Adam, a criminal attorney, rent a house on serene Cape Cod, in the hope of restoring their faltering marriage. The birth of their daughter, Hannah, has revitalized their relationship, but Menley has never stopped blaming herself for the accidental death of her two-year-old son. In Remember House, an eighteenth-century landmark with a sinister past, strange incidents force Menley to relive the fatal accident, and she begins to fear for Hannah’s safety. Then Adam takes on a client suspected of murder when his wealthy young bride of only three months drowns in a storm—and the family is drawn into a rising tide of terror. A confrontation on a dark, rain-swept beach leads to a harrowing climax that only Mary Higgins Clark could have created.</p>


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<div><p>In the gripping new novel from the Queen of Suspense, a woman is haunted by two grisly murders separated by more than a century, yet somehow, inextricably linked... </p><p>ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE </p><p>Following a nasty divorce and the trauma of being stalked, criminal defense attorney Emily Graham leaves Albany to work in Manhattan. Craving roots, she buys her ancestral home, a Victorian house in the seaside resort town of Spring Lake, New Jersey. Her family sold the house in 1892, after one of Emily's forebears, Madeline Shapley, then a young girl, disappeared. </p><p>As the house is renovated and a pool dug, a skeleton is found and identiWed as Martha Lawrence, a young Spring Lake woman who vanished several years ago. Within her hand is the Wnger bone of another woman, with a ring -- a Shapley family heirloom -- still on it. Determined to Wnd the connection between the two murders, Emily becomes a threat to a seductive killer...who chooses <em>her</em> as the next victim.</p></div>


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<div><p>"I TOLD YOU NOT TO COME..."</p><p>Slipped under the door of her Georgetown home, the note was an ominous reminder of Pat Traymore's past. The beautiful young television journalist had come to glamorous, high-powered Washington to produce a TV series. Her subject: Senator Abigail Jennings, slated for nomination as the first woman vice president of the United States.</p><p>With the help of an old flame, Congresman Sam Kingsley, Pat delves into Abigail's life, only to turn up horrifying facts that threaten to destroy senator's reputation and her career. Worse still, sinister connections to Pat's own childhood and the nightmare secrets hidden within are surfacing — secrets waiting to destroy her.</p></div>


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<div><p>In a riveting thriller from the #1 bestselling Queen of Suspense, a young woman is ensnared into returning to the childhood home she wanted to leave behind forever — and where her hidden past emerges with a new and deadly twist.</p><p>Ten-year-old Liza Barton shoots her mother while trying to protect her from her violent husband — Liza's stepfather. While the death is ruled accidental, the tabloids still compare Liza to the child murderess Lizzie Borden.</p><p>Liza's adoptive parents change her name to Celia and try to erase all traces of her past. Widowed after a brief marriage in which she had a son, Jack, she remarries a young lawyer. Celia is happy until, on her birthday, he presents her with a gift — the house where she killed her mother. On moving in, they find the words LITTLE LIZZIE'S PLACE - BEWARE painted in red letters on the lawn. When the real estate agent who sold the house to her husband is murdered, she becomes a suspect. As she struggles to prove her innocence, Celia and her little son are being stalked by the killer.</p></div>


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<p class="description">"The definition of an owl had always pleased him: a night bird of prey...sharp talons and soft plumage which permits noiseless flight...applied figuratively to a person of nocturnal habits. 'I am The Owl,' he would whisper to himself after he had selected his prey, 'and nighttime is my time.'"  Jean Sheridan, a college dean and prominent historian, sets out to her hometown in Cornwall-on- Hudson, New York, to attend the twenty-year reunion of alumni of Stonecroft Academy, where she is to be honored along with six other members of her class. There is, however, something uneasy in the air: one woman in the group about to be feted, Alison Kendall, a beautiful, high-powered Hollywood agent, died just a few days before, drowned in her pool during an early- morning swim, the fifth woman in the class whose life has come to a sudden, mysterious end.  Also adding to Jean's sense of unease is a taunting, anonymous fax she has just received, referring to her daughter, Lily, a child she had given up for adoption twenty years ago, the offspring of a romance between her and a West Point cadet killed in an accident a week before graduation. She had always kept the child's existence a secret, so who has found out? And why the implied threat now?  Struggling to conceal her fears, Jean arrives at the hotel where the reunion is being held. One by one she sees the other honorees, including Laura Wilcox, the class beauty, whose dazzling exterior belies the fact that her television career is sinking, and the four men who, like Jean, had spent four bitterly unhappy years at Stonecroft: Carter (formerly Howie) Stewart, an acerbic and successful playwright, once the class nerd; renowned child psychiatrist and talk-show celebrity Mark Fleischman, who has never been able to resolve the pain of his own adolescence; Gordon Amory, a media mogul, hardly recognizable as the awkward boy who was the butt of cruel jokes; Robby Brent, a popular comedian, whose caustic humor emanates from a childhood of rejection. Omnipresent is an old classmate, Jack Emerson, the chairman of the reunion, whose reasons for spearheading the event may be motivated by something other than class spirit.  At the award dinner, Jean is introduced to Sam Deegan, a detective obsessed for years by the unsolved murder of a young woman in Cornwall, who may also hold the key to the identity of the Stonecroft killer and the source of the anonymous threat to her child. She does not suspect that among the distinguished people she is greeting is The Owl, a murderer nearing the countdown on his mission of vengeance against the Stonecroft women who had mocked and humiliated him, with Jean his final intended victim.  In Nighttime Is My Time, Mary Higgins Clark creates a riveting novel of psychological suspense, penetrating behind the pervading façade of status and respectability to depict the mind of a killer. "The definition of an owl had always pleased him: a night bird of prey...sharp talons and soft plumage which permits noiseless flight...applied figuratively to a person of nocturnal habits. 'I am The Owl,' he would whisper to himself after he had selected his prey, 'and nighttime is my time.'"  Jean Sheridan, a college dean and prominent historian, sets out to her hometown in Cornwall-on- Hudson, New York, to attend the twenty-year reunion of alumni of Stonecroft Academy, where she is to be honored along with six other members of her class. There is, however, something uneasy in the air: one woman in the group about to be feted, Alison Kendall, a beautiful, high-powered Hollywood agent, died just a few days before, drowned in her pool during an early- morning swim, the fifth woman in the class whose life has come to a sudden, mysterious end.  Also adding to Jean's sense of unease is a taunting, anonymous fax she has just received, referring to her daughter, Lily, a child she had given up for adoption twenty years ago, the offspring of a romance between her and a West Point cadet killed in an accident a week before graduation. She had always kept the child's existence a secret, so who has found out? And why the implied threat now?  Struggling to conceal her fears, Jean arrives at the hotel where the reunion is being held. One by one she sees the other honorees, including Laura Wilcox, the class beauty, whose dazzling exterior belies the fact that her television career is sinking, and the four men who, like Jean, had spent four bitterly unhappy years at Stonecroft: Carter (formerly Howie) Stewart, an acerbic and successful playwright, once the class nerd; renowned child psychiatrist and talk-show celebrity Mark Fleischman, who has never been able to resolve the pain of his own adolescence; Gordon Amory, a media mogul, hardly recognizable as the awkward boy who was the butt of cruel jokes; Robby Brent, a popular comedian, whose caustic humor emanates from a childhood of rejection. Omnipresent is an old classmate, Jack Emerson, the chairman of the reunion, whose reasons for spearheading the event may be motivated by something other than class spirit.  At the award dinner, Jean is introduced to Sam Deegan, a detective obsessed for years by the unsolved murder of a young woman in Cornwall, who may also hold the key to the identity of the Stonecroft killer and the source of the anonymous threat to her child. She does not suspect that among the distinguished people she is greeting is The Owl, a murderer nearing the countdown on his mission of vengeance against the Stonecroft women who had mocked and humiliated him, with Jean his final intended victim.  In Nighttime Is My Time, Mary Higgins Clark creates a riveting novel of psychological suspense, penetrating behind the pervading façade of status and respectability to depict the mind of a killer.</p>


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<p>Darcy Scott, the plucky heroine of Clark's disappointing latest suspense novel, is a promising young decorator whose best friend, Erin Kelley, has disappeared. At Darcy's behest, Erin had agreed to participate in research for a mutual friend's documentary on personal ads. When her body is found on an abandoned Manhattan pier, she is wearing two different shoes--her own boot and a high-heeled dancing slipper. Once the investigation into her death begins, two facts stand out: first, that this is the work of a serial killer whose MO includes adorning the victim with a dancing shoe, and second, that Erin met her killer through the personals. Guilt-ridden, Darcy sets out to meet the men Erin dated, hoping to find the killer herself. A hazardous pursuit, to say the least, but one which might thrill Clark fans, so great is the potential for terror as unwitting heroine stalks madman. Unfortunately, too much is revealed too soon and the reader, generally one step ahead of Darcy, is more frustrated than frightened. A surfeit of insignificant minor characters and one too many red herrings make the novel's sleight-of-hand ending seem very forced indeed. </p>


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<div><p>At a party in Manhattan, Maggie Holloway -- one of the fashion world's most successful photographers -- is thrilled to be reunited with her beloved stepmother. A widow now, Nuala Moore is equally delighted to see her long-lost stepdaughter, and invites Maggie to spend a few weeks at her home in Newport, Rhode Island. </p><p>But when Maggie arrives, she finds Nuala murdered, apparently by a burglar. Heartbroken, Maggie is stunned to learn she had inherited Nuala's stunning Victorian home...and horrified when she begins to suspect that Nuala's death was not random, but part of a diabolical plot conceived by a twisted mind. When Nuala's dear old friend, Greta Shipley, does suddenly of supoosedly natural causes, Maggie is convinced that there is a link between these two and other recent deaths among the older women of Newport. What she doesn't realize is that she has now become a target for the killer as well, and that each clue she uncovers brings her closer to an unimaginable fate. In her most chillingly suspenseful novel yet, the Queen of Suspense delivers a tale of brilliantly sustained terror, woven with the skill and insight into human nature that have made all of Mary Higgins Clark's books major bestsellers.</p></div>


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<div><p>In this mass market reissue from America’s Queen of Suspense, an investigation into the connection between a long-ago murder and a plastic surgeon’s obsession with a perfect face catapults prosecutor Kerry McGrath into the strange and ominous territory of those so hungry for beauty they’ll kill for it. </p><p>It’s a minor accident that brings prosecutor Kerry McGrath to the plastic surgeon’s office with her beloved daughter, Robin. But even as the doctor assures Kerry that her daughter’s scars will heal, she spies a familiar-looking beautiful woman in the waiting room and is seized by an overpowering sense of deja vu. When, on a return visit, she sees the same haunting face—on another woman—she has an intense flash of recognition: it’s the face of Suzanne Reardon, the “Sweetheart Murder” victim, killed more than ten years ago! But for what possible reason would Dr. Smith be giving his patients the face of a dead woman? </p><p>As Kerry immerses herself in a fresh investigation, each new piece of evidence she unearths reveals a disturbing cache of questions. Not only does everyone involved want to keep the case closed, it’s clear somebody will stop at nothing to keep it sealed forever. </p><p>Interweaving fascinating characters with deeply daring, staggeringly unpredictable plot twists, Mary Higgins Clark reminds us that she is, indeed, America’s Queen of Suspense.</p></div>


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<p>When Natalie Raines, famous Broadway star, is found in her home in Closter, New Jersey, dying from a gunshot wound, her former husband, Gregg Aldrich, whom she was in the process of divorcing, is the chief suspect. What no one knows is that, only days before she was murdered, Natalie accidentally came face to face with the man who killed her former roommate, Jamie Evans. Two years later, career criminal Jimmy Easton, comes forward to claim that Aldrich hired him to kill his wife, but he turned the job down. Based on Easton's testimony, Gregg is charged with the murder of his wife. Handling the case is Emily Wallace, an attractive thirty-two-year-old widowed assistant prosecutor. As Aldrich's trial is making headlines, Emily's boss, Ted Wesley, warns her that this high-profile case will reveal personal matters about her, such as the fact that she had a heart transplant. And, during the trial, Emily experiences sentiments which defy all reason and continue after Gregg Aldrich's fate is decided by the jury. In the meantime, she does not realize that her own life is now at risk.</p>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; "><strong><em>THE QUEEN OF SUSPENSE IS BACK! </em></strong><strong>Mary Higgins Clark’s new novel—the thirtieth and most spine-chilling of her long career as America’s most beloved author of suspense fiction— is about the newest and most up-to-date of crimes: identity theft.</strong></span></h3><p>Who has not read about—or experienced—with a sinking feeling the fear that someone else out there may be using your credit cards, accessing your bank account, even stealing your identity. </p><p>In <em>I ll Walk Alone</em>, Alexandra “Zan” Moreland, a gifted, beautiful interior designer on the threshold of a successful Manhattan career, is terrified to discover that somebody is not only using her credit cards and manipulating her financial accounts to bankrupt her and destroy her reputation, but may also be impersonating her in a scheme that may involve the much more brutal crimes of kidnapping and murder. Zan is already haunted by the disappearance of her own son, Matthew, kidnapped in broad daylight two years ago in Central Park—a tragedy that has left her torn between hope and despair. </p><p>Now, on what would be Matthew’s fifth birthday, photos surface that seem to show Zan kidnapping her own child, followed by a chain of events that suggests somebody—but who? Zan asks herself desperately, and why?—has stolen her identity. </p><p>Hounded by the press, under investigation by the police, attacked by both her angry ex-husband and a vindictive business rival, Zan, wracked by fear and pain and sustained only by her belief, which nobody else shares, that Matthew is still alive, sets out to discover who is behind this cruel hoax. </p><p>What she does not realize is that with every step she takes toward the truth, she is putting herself— and those she loves most—in mortal danger from the person who has ingeniously plotted out her destruction. </p><p>Even Zan’s supporters, who include Alvirah Meehan, the lottery winner and amateur detective, and Father Aiden O’Brien, who thinks that Zan may have confessed to him a secret he cannot reveal, believe she may have kidnapped little Matthew. Zan herself begins to doubt her own sanity, until, in the kind of fast-paced explosive ending that is Mary Higgins Clark’s trademark, the pieces of the puzzle fall into place with an unexpected and shocking revelation. </p><p>Deeply satisfying, <em>I’ll Walk Alone </em>is Mary Higgins Clark at the top of her form. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>Mary Higgins Clark</strong>'s books are world-wide bestsellers. In the U.S. alone, her books have sold over one hundred million copies. </p><p>She is the author of twenty-nine previous suspense novels. Her first book, a biographical novel about George Washington, was re-issued with the title, <em>Mount Vernon Love Story</em>, in June 2002. Her memoir, <em>Kitchen Privileges</em>, was published by Simon &amp; Schuster in November 2002. Her first children's book, <em>Ghost Ship</em>, illustrated by Wendell Minor, was published in April 2007 as a Paula Wiseman Book/Simon &amp; Schuster Books for Young Readers. </p><p>She is co-author, with her daughter Carol Higgins Clark, of five holiday suspense novels <em>Deck the Halls</em> (2000), <em>He Sees You When You're Sleeping</em> (2001), <em>The Christmas Thief</em> (2004), <em>Santa Cruise</em> (2006), and <em>Dashing through the Snow </em>(2008). </p><p>Mary Higgins Clark was chosen by Mystery Writers of America as Grand Master of the 2000 Edgar Awards. An annual Mary Higgins Clark Award sponsored by Simon &amp; Schuster, to be given to authors of suspense fiction writing in the Mary Higgins Clark tradition, was launched by Mystery Writers of America during Edgars week in April 2001. She was the 1987 president of Mystery Writers of America and, for many years, served on their Board of Directors. In May 1988, she was Chairman of the International Crime Congress. </p></div>


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<div><p><strong>In a riveting psychological thriller, Mary Higgins Clark takes the reader deep into the mysteries of the human mind, where memories may be the most dangerous things of all.</strong></p><p>At the center of her novel is Kay Lansing, who has grown up in Englewood, New Jersey, daughter of the landscaper to the wealthy and powerful Carrington family. Their mansion -- a historic seventeenth-century manor house transported stone by stone from Wales in 1848 -- has a hidden chapel. One day, accompanying her father to work, six-year-old Kay succumbs to curiosity and sneaks into the chapel. There, she overhears a quarrel between a man and a woman who is demanding money from him. When she says that this will be the last time, his caustic response is: "I heard that song before." </p><p>That same evening, the Carringtons hold a formal dinner dance after which Peter Carrington, a student at Princeton, drives home Susan Althorp, the eighteen-year-old daughter of neighbors. While her parents hear her come in, she is not in her room the next morning and is never seen or heard from again. </p><p>Throughout the years, a cloud of suspicion hangs over Peter Carrington. At age forty-two, head of the family business empire, he is still "a person of interest" in the eyes of the police, not only for Susan Althorp's disappearance but also for the subsequent drowning death of his own pregnant wife in their swimming pool. </p><p>Kay Lansing, now living in New York and working as a librarian in Englewood, goes to see Peter Carrington to ask for permission to hold a cocktail party on his estate to benefit a literacy program, which he later grants. Kay comes to see Peter as maligned and misunderstood, and when he begins to court her after the cocktail party, she falls in love with him. Over the objections of her beloved grandmother Margaret O'Neil, who raised her after her parents' early deaths, she marries him. To her dismay, she soon finds that he is a sleepwalker whose nocturnal wanderings draw him to the spot at the pool where his wife met her end. </p><p>Susan Althorp's mother, Gladys, has always been convinced that Peter Carrington is responsible for her daughter's disappearance, a belief shared by many in the community. Disregarding her husband's protests about reopening the case, Gladys, now terminally ill, has hired a retired New York City detective to try to find out what happened to her daughter. Gladys wants to know before she dies. </p><p>Kay, too, has developed gnawing doubts about her husband. She believes that the key to the truth about his guilt or innocence lies in the scene she witnessed as a child in the chapel and knows she must learn the identity of the man and woman who quarreled there that day. Yet, she plunges into this pursuit realizing that "that knowledge may not be enough to save my husband's life, if indeed it deserves to be saved." What Kay does not even remotely suspect is that uncovering what lies behind these memories may cost her her own life. </p><p><em>I Heard That Song Before</em> once again dramatically reconfirms Mary Higgins Clark's worldwide reputation as a master storyteller.</p></div>


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<p>The murdered woman could have been her double. When reporter Meghan Collins sees the sheet-wrapped corpse in a New York City hospital, she feels as if she's staring into her own face. And Meghan has troubles enough already without this bizarre experience. Nine months ago, her much-loved father's car spun off a New York bridge. Now, investigators are saying that there's no trace of his car in the river, and they suspect he faked his own death. With frightening speed, links start to appear between Meghan's father and her dead lookalike. Meghan may be in danger herself, but she's determined to find the truth to the mystery. In a nightmare journey spiraling from New York to Connecticut to Arizona, Meghan finds that the truth can sometimes be deadly.</p>


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<div><p>Meet Sterling Brooks. His was not an exemplary life -- he was too self-absorbed to ever really think about anyone else or make a commitment to the woman he loved. On the other hand, he had endearing qualities. His actual misdeeds were few -- his were sins of omission, not commission.</p><p>It is a few days before Christmas. For forty-six years Sterling has lingered in the celestial waiting room outside the heavenly gates, awaiting summons by the Heavenly Council. Will he be deemed fit for entrance into heaven? At last the day comes and the council settles on a test for Sterling -- he will be sent back to earth and given an opportunity to prove his worthiness by helping someone else.</p><p>Sterling Brooks finds himself in Manhattan, at the skating rink in Rockefeller Center. Among the skaters is a heartbroken seven-year-old named Marissa, and as Sterling soon realizes, it is <em>she</em> he has been sent to help. Marissa's sadness comes from her separation from the father she adores, a talented young singer, and her sparkling grandmother, owner of a popular restaurant. Both have been forced into the Witness Protection Program because two mobsters, the Badgett brothers, have put a price on their heads to prevent their testifying against them in an arson case.</p><p>Sterling, able to move back and forth in time and place, masterminds a plan to eliminate the threat from the Badgett brothers and reunite Marissa with her loved ones.</p><p>Filled with suspense and humor, <em>He Sees You When You're Sleeping</em> is a perfect story for the holidays, a delightful and warmhearted tale of perseverance, redemption, and love.</p></div>


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<p>Writing in the first person a rarity for this veteran author has inspired and energized Clark. Her 21st novel of intrigue is her best in years, a tightly woven, emotionally potent tale of suspense and revenge. Clark's new heroine is Atlanta investigative journalist Ellie Cavanaugh, who was seven when her sister, Andrea, 15, was beaten to death by 20-year-old Rob Westerfield, scion of the wealthiest family in a small Westchester town. Now Westerfield is up for parole, so Ellie, now 30, returns home to speak out against him. When Westerfield is released, Ellie begins to write a book aimed at re-proving his guilt. Digging for evidence, she uncovers clues that Westerfield may have committed another murder as a youth, but that digging also enrages the Westerfields and other town members who think the man was railroaded. Before long, Ellie's life is in danger, as someone breaks into the house she's staying in, then later sets fire to it, nearly killing her, and as Westerfield himself begins to shadow her moves. What makes this novel work isn't only the considerable tension Clark teases from Ellie's precarious position, but the thoughtful backgrounding to the action. Ellie is cast as a lonely woman, without a lover and estranged from her father and half-brother: will she accept one or the other into her guarded life?; and she carries a heavy load of guilt for her sister's death, wondering at times if she is blinded by her thirst for vengeance. With its textured plot, well-sketched secondary characters, strong pacing and appealing heroine, this is Clark at her most winning.</p>


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<p>An airline stewardess is entrusted with a list of names which could threaten the lives of her 700 passengers...A young woman is tortured by terrifying nightmares, until she finds a gramophone record that unlocks the door concealing a dark memory...Lottery-winner turned amateur detective, Alvirah Meehan returns from a trip to England to find the body of a Broadway starlet in their wardrobe...Peopled by a colourful cast of characters and brimming over with bizarre twists and turns, this collection is further proof of Mary Higgins Clark's ingenious touch and superlative skill. Start reading - and you won't be able to stop.</p>


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<div><p>In her latest novel Mary Higgins Clark, the beloved, bestselling “Queen of Suspense,” exposes a dark secret from a family’s past that threatens the lives of two sisters, Kate and Hannah Connelly, when the family-owned furniture firm in Long Island City, founded by their grandfather and famous for its fine reproductions of antiques, explodes into flames in the middle of the night, leveling the buildings to the ground, including the museum where priceless antiques have been on permanent display for years. </p><p>The ashes reveal a startling and grisly discovery, and provoke a host of suspicions and questions. Was the explosion deliberately set? What was Kate—tall, gorgeous, blond, a CPA for one of the biggest accounting firms in the country, and sister of a rising fashion designer—doing in the museum when it burst into flames? Why was Gus, a retired and disgruntled craftsman, with her at that time of night? What if someone <em>isn’t </em>who he claims to be? </p><p>Now Gus is dead, and Kate lies in the hospital badly injured and in a coma, so neither can tell what drew them there, or what the tragedy may have to do with the hunt for a young woman missing for many years, nor can they warn that somebody may be covering his tracks, willing to kill to save himself . . . </p><p>Step by step, in a novel of dazzling suspense and excitement, Mary Higgins Clark once again demonstrates the mastery of her craft that has made her books international bestsellers for years. She presents the reader with a perplexing mystery, a puzzling question of identity, and a fascinating cast of characters—one of whom may just be a ruthless killer.</p></div>


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<div><p>A young woman probing into the mysterious circumstances of her husband's death receives a message from a medium claiming to be his channel in Mary Higgins Clark's #1 bestselling thriller, </p><p><em>BEFORE I SAY GOOD-BYE.</em></p><p>When Nell MacDermott learns that her husband, architect Adam Cauliff, and three of his business associates have died in an explosion of his new cabin cruiser, she is not only devastated but wracked with guilt. The last time she saw Adam, they had a bitter quarrel over her plan to run for the congressional seat long held by her grandfather; she had told him not to come home. </p><p>As the investigation into the boat's explosion proceeds, Nell learns that it was not an accident but a bomb. Despite her skepticism, Nell is swayed by her great-aunt Gert, a believer in psychic powers, to see a medium claiming to be Adam's channel. </p><p>While trying to unravel the threads of Adam's past and his violent end, Nell consults the medium, who transmits messages to her with instructions from Adam. The story reaches a powerful climax in Nell's final encounter with the medium, in which she learns the truth about the explosion -- truth she can't be allowed to live and tell.</p></div>


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<p>All of Alvirah's deductive powers and Willy's world-class common sense are called upon as the two stumble into a Christmas mystery. A woman abandons her newborn at a Manhattan church. Simultaneously, a thief is absconding with a treasured artifact, a chalice adorned with a star-shaped diamond. To elude police, he grabs the stroller and disappears. Seven years later, the mother returns to the scene and finds Alvirah and Willy helping neighborhood kids prepare for a Christmas pageant at an after-school shelter. Soon the savvy sleuths set out to solve the puzzle of the missing child and chalice -- and to unmask scam artists threatening to shut down the shelter.</p>


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<p>When Laurie Kenyon, a twenty-one-year-old student, is accused of murdering her English professor, she has no memory of the crime. Her fingerprints, however, are everywhere. When she asks her sister, attorney Sarah, to mount her defense, Sarah in turn brings in psychiatrist Justin Donnelly. Kidnapped at the age of four and victimized for two years, Laurie has developed astounding coping skills. Only when the unbearable memories of those lost years are released can the truth of the crime come out -- and only then can the final sadistic plan of her abductor, whose obsession is stronger than ever, be revealed.</p>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Weiland's lively, vernacular memoir tells the sadly wasted but ultimately self-directed tale of her meteoric rise as a model from impoverished, half-Mexican roots to a precipitous plunge into drug addiction. Growing up in a broken Southern California home in the 1980s, where she lived mostly with her working Mexican mother in near poverty, the author, née Forsberg, found autonomy and financial independence early on in modeling; by age 14 she was a finalist for a <em>Seventeen</em> magazine modeling contest and traveling to New York; by 16, she had quit school, been legally emancipated and booked overseas jobs. She also became infatuated with aspiring rock and roller Scott Weiland, who was briefly her driver, and as he became hugely successful with his band, Stone Temple Pilots, he slid into heroin addiction and dragged her along with him. He was also involved with another woman, and the author's account is a painful re-enactment of her youthful abasement. From partying scene to junkie desperation to psychiatrist's office, jail and rehab, Forsberg Weiland battled her demons, learning with some surprise that she suffered from bipolar disorder. Having two children with Scott turned her around, though her marriage crumbled when he didn't change. Weiland's forthright, resilient can-do spirit injects this sad story with a healthy moral. </span></h3>


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From USA Today bestselling author Mary Daheim comes her latest Bed-and-Breakfast book featuring innkeeper Judith McMonigle Flynn and her irrepressible cousin Renie in a mystery that takes them on the wrong side of the tracks. . . . Loco Motive   It's autumn at Hillside Manor B&B, and with the changing leaves come some unexpected guests. There's Judith's son and daughter-in-law, with their two children in tow, a couple with an impossible (and unbelievable?) last name who show up from nowhere, and a pair of giggly young women who don't seem to know where they're going.   As Halloween draws nigh, Judith can barely cope with her gala of guests, but at least the worst guest from the first part of the week checks out—almost permanently. Wee Willie Weevil, infamous daredevil and martial-arts movie icon, insisted on performing his dangerous stunts from Judith's roof and left the B&B via an ambulance.   Hoping to escape the domestic mayhem, Judith agrees to accompany Renie on a cross-country train trip to Boston with first-class accommodations on the Empire Builder. Judith's bubble bursts when she discovers that Wee Willie and his entourage are fellow travelers. Although confined to a wheelchair, the diminutive stunt man seems capable of derailing the cousins' vacation.   Cousin Renie does her best to ease Judith's mind until the train collides with a truckload of sugar beets. Forced to wait for a new engine in a small Montana town in the middle of nowhere, the passengers can do nothing but watch and wait. Even before the train can get back on track, the cousins discover that their sleeper attendant has gone missing. Worse yet, another passenger's final destination is the nearest morgue.   Judith and Renie have to move full speed ahead if they want to blow the whistle on the killer before death strikes again. Can the train continue its journey? Will the cousins ever get to Boston? Stay aboard!


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<p class="description">Can a man fall in love with a painting? The girl in the blue dress was in a portrait that Franklin Lowell had owned and admired for years. And when, at last, he met the original model for the picture, it seemed to be too late. Not only was she in love with the artist who had painted her, but Franklin himself was engaged to another woman.</p>


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


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">One year after her husband’s death, Hannah Reid, Duchess of Dunbarton, decides it’s time to take a lover. Of course, being Hannah, she has already chosen her paramour: tall, dark, and sinfully sexy Constantine Huxtable. Hannah may have already decided they were meant to be together, but Con is a man used to making up his own mind. At first Con is amused by Hannah’s blatant campaign of seduction. Then he becomes intrigued by the enigmatic beauty. Finally, because he always takes a lover during London’s social season, he begins to ask himself why shouldn’t it be Hannah? Although Hannah and Con might have agreed to become lovers, neither one expected to fall in love, which, of course, greatly complicates their secret affair. The exquisitely crafted chemistry that develops between Hannah and Con is pure passion deftly leavened with tart wit, which ensures that A Secret Affair, the concluding volume in Balogh’s Regency historical Huxtable series, is a sweetly romantic, deliciously sexy triumph.</span></h3>

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


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<p class="description">The Will of the People is an incisive, in-depth look at Winston Churchill’s lifelong commitment to parliamentary democracy. First elected at twenty-five, Churchill was still in the House of Commons sixty-four years later. By far the largest part of his life – of his working days and nights – was spent in the cut and thrust of debate in the service of the people, whose instrument he believed Parliament to be. “I am a child of the House of Commons,” he told a joint session of the US Congress in December 1941. “I was brought up in my father’s house to believe in democracy. Trust the people – that was his message….”Throughout his career, Churchill did his utmost to ensure that Parliament was effective and that it was not undermined by either adversarial party politics or by elected members who sought to manipulate it. Even the defeat of the Conservative Party in the General Election of 1945, which ended his wartime premiership, in no way altered his faith in parliamentary democracy. “It is the will of the people,” he told a small gathering of friends and family the day after the results were announced. And he meant it. Reflecting on the importance of the Second World War as a means of restoring democracy, Churchill told the House of Commons: “At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper – no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.”Today’s readers will readily compare Churchill’s regard for democracy and the importance of that “little man” with the attitudes of contemporary leaders, and of those who seek leadership.</p>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Invited to lecture at the White House in February 2002, Gilbert, known as Winston Churchill's official biographer, hopes this commentary "can be of service" to the leaders of the war on terror. Whether George W. Bush and Tony Blair have been consciously imitating Churchill will be left for future historians to discover; Gilbert, for his part, cautions that "Churchill's war leadership can have no parallel," except during a war conducted on the scale of World War II. Caveat announced, Gilbert proceeds point by point to Churchill's direction of affairs, of which his celebrated speeches and buoyancy in public (depicted in the author's photo album <em>Churchill at War</em> [BKL F 15 04]) was only one praiseworthy aspect. Above all, Gilbert credits Churchill's refusal to deal with Hitler in 1940 and rates highly as well Churchill's articulation of the war's aim as the defense of democracy. Beneath the public plane, Churchill's day-to-day activity (such as attending to intelligence and logistical details) was, according to Gilbert, equally integral to his leadership. </span></h3>


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<div><p>In the climate of self-improvement that pervades our culture, there is an overwhelming amount of information about treatments for everything from alcohol abuse to sexual dysfunction. Much of this information is exaggerated if not wholly inaccurate. As a result, people who try to change their own troubling conditions often experience the frustration of mixed success, success followed by a relapse, or outright failure. </p><p>To address this confusion, Martin Seligman has meticulously analyzed the most authoritative scientific research on treatments for alcoholism, anxiety, weight loss, anger, depression, and a range of phobias and obsessions to discover what is the most effective way to address each condition. He frankly reports what does not work, and pinpoints the techniques and therapies that work best for each condition, discussing why they work and how you can use them to make long lasting change. Inside you’ll discover the four natural healing factors for recovering from alcoholism; the vital difference between overeating and being overweight; the four therapies that work for depression, the pros and cons of anger--and much more. </p><p>Wise, direct, and very useful, <em>What You Can Change and What You Can’t</em> will help anyone who seeks to change. </p></div>


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A passenger train hurtling through the night. An unwed teenage mother headed to Moscow to seek a new life. A cruel-hearted soldier looking furtively, forcibly, for sex. An infant disappearing without a trace.So begins Martin Cruz Smith's masterful Three Stations, a suspenseful, intricately constructed novel featuring Investigator Arkady Renko. For the last three decades, beginning with the trailblazing Gorky Park, Renko (and Smith) have captivated readers with detective tales set in Russia. Renko is the ironic, brilliantly observant cop who finds solutions to heinous crimes when other lawmen refuse to even acknowledge that crimes have occurred. He uses his biting humor and intuitive leaps to fight not only wrongdoers but the corrupt state apparatus as well. In Three Stations, Renko's skills are put to their most severe test. Though he has been technically suspended from the prosecutor's office for once again turning up unpleasant truths, he strives to solve a last case: the death of an elegant young woman whose body is found in a construction trailer on the perimeter of Moscow's main rail hub. It looks like a simple drug overdose to everyoneexcept to Renko, whose examination of the crime scene turns up some inexplicable clues, most notably an invitation to Russia's premier charity ball, the billionaires' Nijinksy Fair. Thus a sordid death becomes interwoven with the lifestyles of Moscow's rich and famous, many of whom are clinging to their cash in the face of Putin's crackdown on the very oligarchs who placed him in power. Renko uncovers a web of death, money, madness and a kidnapping that threatens the woman he is coming to love and the lives of children he is desperate to protect. In Three Stations, Smith produces a complex and haunting vision of an emergent Russia's secret underclass of street urchins, greedy thugs and a bureaucracy still paralyzed by power and fear.


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A brilliantly witty and intelligent memoir of the adventures, discoveries, rescues, and narrow escapes of Martha Gellhorn, one of America's most important war correspondents and the third wife of Ernest Hemingway. "Gellhorn is incapable of writing a dull sentence". The Times (London) "Martha Gellhorn was so fearless in a male way, and yet utterly capable of making men melt", writes New Yorker literary editor Bill Buford. As a journalist, Gellhorn covered every military conflict from the Spanish Civil War to Vietnam and Nicaragua. She also bewitched Eleanor Roosevelt's secret love and enraptured Ernest Hemingway with her courage as they dodged shell fire together. Hemingway is, of course, the unnamed "other" in the title of this tart memoir, first published in 1979, in which Gellhorn describes her globe-spanning adventures, both accompanied and alone. With razor-sharp humor and exceptional insight into place and character, she tells of a tense week spent among dissidents in Moscow; long days whiled away in a disused water tank with hippies clustered at Eilat on the Red Sea; and her journeys by sampan and horse to the interior of China during the Sino-Japanese War. Now including a foreward by Bill Buford and photographs of Gellhorn with Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Gary Cooper, and others, this new edition rediscovers the voice of an extraordinary woman and brings back into print an irresistibly entertaining classic.


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


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The author of The Blood of Roses presents the dark forests and royal intrigues ues of medieval England. En route to her wedding, Lady Servanne's party is attacked by notorious Black Wolf and his band. Her kingdom's future is changed forever when she and Black Wolf submit to their growing passion, and he claims to be the true heir to her future husband's title.


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Wind is personal for de Villiers, winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for <em>Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource</em>. A gust from a ferocious gale in South Africa came close to blowing him over a cliff when he was a child, a fearful experience that invests this articulate study of the history and nature of moving air with notable immediacy. Winds figure in the creation myths of almost all cultures, he notes. But it wasn't until the mid-18th century that scientists began to develop a cogent theory about wind and its relation to weather. Two centuries later, during WWII, high-altitude flyers discovered the jet stream and "a real understanding of winds was, finally, in place." De Villiers has marshaled an absorbing if daunting array of historical, cultural, environmental and scientific facts to detail that wind, despite its destructive power, makes life on Earth possible. But the book's grace notes lie in entertaining did-you-know nuggets. Among them: a great storm that lashed London in 1703 caused windmill blades to rotate so fast that friction set them on fire; Cuban meteorologists, more advanced at the turn of the last century than Americans, warned fruitlessly about the path of the hurricane that devastated Galveston. </span></h3>


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Determined to disobey the King rather than marry by decree, Ariel de Clare, niece to the Marshal of England, flees to the safety of Wales accompanied by the bastard son of a nobleman.


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<p>This is Marlon Brando's own story, and his reason for telling it is best revealed in his own words: "I have always considered my life a private affair and the business of no one beyond my family and those I love. Except for moral and political issues that aroused in me a desire to speak out, I have done my utmost throughout my life, for the sake of my children and myself, to remain silent...But now, in my seventieth year, I have decided to tell the story of my life as best I can, so that my children can separate the truth from the myths that others have created about me, as myths are created about everyone swept up in the turbulent and distorting maelstrom of celebrity in our culture." To date there have been over a dozen books written about Marlon Brando, and almost all of them have been inaccurate, based on hearsay, sensationalist or prurient in tone. Now, at last, fifty years after his first appearance onstage in New York City, the actor has told his life story, with the help of Robert Lindsey.</p>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Some know her as the star of the 1960s TV show That Girl, or creator of Free to Be... You and Me, or perhaps major fund-raiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Thomas, author of five bestselling books, here focuses on a role she's had her entire life: daughter. Laughter was the soundtrack for Thomas's formative years in 1950s Beverly Hills. Her father, comedian Danny Thomas, regularly had funny friends--including Bob Hope, Sid Caesar, and George Burns--over to the family home. The author, actress, feminist, and philanthropist shares fond memories of enjoying and learning from these comedy luminaries, and of being a Hollywood kid long before game-changers like the Internet and cable TV. She chronicles her path from childhood to adulthood; particularly interesting tidbits include her meeting and marrying Phil Donahue, becoming friends with Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug, and, with her siblings, "producing" her father's funeral. But this book is more than a well-written memoir. Thomas also includes interviews with comedy powerhouses galore, from Tina Fey to Alan Alda, Chris Rock to Ben and Jerry Stiller. On the whole, this book offers a delightful firsthand look at how comedy has become integral to American culture--and the way it's shaped one woman's colorful life. </span></h3></div>


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<div><p>Insects have inspired fear, fascination, and enlightenment for centuries. They are capable of incredibly complex behavior, even with brains often the size of a poppy seed. How do they accomplish feats that look like human activity— personality, language, childcare—with completely different pathways from our own? What is going on inside the mind of those ants that march like boot-camp graduates across your kitchen floor? How does the lead ant know exactly where to take his colony, to that one bread crumb that your nightly sweep missed? Can insects be taught new skills as easily as your new puppy?</p><p><i>Sex on Six Legs</i> is a startling and exciting book that provides answers to these questions and many more. With the humor of Olivia Judson's <i>Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation</i>, Zuk not only examines the bedroom lives of creepy crawlies but also calls into question some of our own longheld assumptions about learning...</p></div>


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FEAR HAS A WAY...Lucy Donovan always gets her man. As a fiercely independent CIA agent, she's survived hundreds of death-defying missions. But her latest may just get her killed. Weighed down with a secret she's desperate to keep, the last thing Lucy needs is to be sent undercover with a man who brings out the best--and the worst--in her.OF GETTING YOU KILLEDNavy SEAL Gus Atwater never turns down an assignment, even if it means working with the only woman he's ever loved and lost. So with a volatile mix of desire and distrust, Lucy and Gus confront their tangled past. Pretending to be man and wife is risky enough, but now the clock is running out. As their mission escalates from desperate to deadly, will Lucy's secret expose them both?


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The Eden Express describes from the inside Mark Vonnegut’s experience in the late ’60s and early ’70s—a recent college grad; in love; living communally on a farm, with a famous and doting father, cherished dog, and prized jalopy—and then the nervous breakdowns in all their slow-motion intimacy, the taste of mortality and opportunity for humor they provided, and the grim despair they afforded as well. That he emerged to write this funny and true book and then moved on to find the meaningful life that for a while had seemed beyond reach is what ultimately happens in The Eden Express. But the real story here is that throughout his harrowing experience his sense of humor let him see the humanity of what he was going through, and his gift of language let him describe it in such a moving way that others could begin to imagine both its utter ordinariness as well as the madness we all share.


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<p class="description">Ed Kennedy is a nineteen-year-old cab driver who doesn't think much of his life. He inadvertently helps stop a bank robbery, and that is when his life starts to change. He begins to receive mysterious messages that instruct him to go to addresses where people need help. Ed becomes the messenger, but who is behind the messages? Meet Ed Kennedy - underage cabdriver, pathetic cardplayer, and useless at romance. He lives in a shack with his coffee-addicted dog, the Doorman, and he's hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence, until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery. That's when the first Ace arrives. That's when Ed becomes the messenger. Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary), until only one question remains: Who's behind Ed's mission?</p>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Two not unrelated challenges--being novelist Kurt Vonnegut's son and suffering episodes of schizophrenia--shape, but don't confine, this mordantly witty, slightly subversive memoir. Vonnegut (The Eden Express) weathered a scruffy childhood with his as yet obscure dad ("I'll always remember my father as the world's worst car salesman") and was hospitalized for three bouts of psychosis in his 20s. He recovered and went on to Harvard Medical School and a successful career in pediatrics--then a fourth psychotic break upended him 14 years after the first one. (Taken to the hospital where he worked, he found himself greeting colleagues while tied to a gurney.) Vonnegut vividly conveys the bizarre logic of the voices and delusions that occasionally plagued him, which he finds not much nuttier than what passes for normalcy. (He's especially incensed by the insurance bureaucracies he thinks are ruining medicine.) His father's son, he writes with a matter-of-fact absurdism--"The patient who just died lies there quietly and everyone else stops rushing around trying to do something about it"--champions misfits, and attacks the system. All his own are Vonnegut's hard-won insights into the value of a humble, useful life picked up from pieces. </span></h3>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">In April 1990, the space shuttle <em>Discovery</em> carried the Hubble Space Telescope to an altitude of some 600 kilometers above the Earth, where it has since been delivering images of the distant heavens to scientists below. Despite disappointing early results--the telescope's mirror and camera were revealed to have significant flaws, which were quickly repaired--Hubble has yielded extraordinary views, including stunning images of the birth, death, and occasional misfortunes of stars and close-up details of our planetary neighbors (such as views of the retreating Martian polar ice cap throughout the summer, exposing the great sand dunes that lie beneath, and of a Neptune beset by upper-atmospheric storms).</span></h3><p>Hubble's work has been an important adjunct to other astronomical research, allowing scientists, for one thing, to age-date star clusters far beyond our own galaxy and to propose an age for the universe of about 12 billion to 16 billion years. It has also inspired lay readers with its trove of magnificent photographs, of which this book gathers more than 100 taken over Hubble's years of duty. (NASA plans to replace Hubble with a larger successor in 2009.) The images are accompanied with a well-written explanatory text, altogether adding up to a volume that rewards repeated visits by readers of all ages. </p></div>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">As part of the Light Division created to act as the advance guard of Wellington's army, the 95th Rifles are the first into battle and the last out. Fighting, thieving and raping their way across Europe, they are clearly no ordinary troops. The 95th are in fact the first British soldiers to take aim at their targets, to take cover when being shot at, to move tactically by fire and manoeuvre. And by the end of the six-year campaign they have not only proved themselves the toughest fighters in the army, they have also - at huge personal cost - created the modern notion of the infantryman.</span></h3>


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


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<div><p>TABLE OF CONTENTS</p><p>INTRODUCTION: <br></p><p>Mark Twain, The Man<br></p><p>THE COMPLETE NOVELS:<br></p><p>The Gilded Age (1873) <br>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)<br>The Prince and the Pauper (1881)<br>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)<br>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)<br>The American Claimant (1892)<br>Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894)<br>Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)<br>Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896)<br>Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896)<br>The Double Barrelled Detective (1902)<br>A Dog's Tale (1904)<br>A Horse's Tale (1907)<br>The Mysterious Stranger (1898 Unfinished by Twain)<br></p><p>CRITICAL ESSAY<br></p><p>Mark Twain’s Humor, Genius and Philosophy</p></div>


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<p>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is an 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. The story is set in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, inspired by Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived. Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother Sid. Tom dirties his clothes in a fight and is made to whitewash the fence the next day as punishment. He cleverly persuades his friends to trade him small treasures for the privilege of doing his work. He then trades the treasures for Sunday School tickets which one normally receives for memorizing verses, redeeming them for a Bible, much to the surprise and bewilderment of the superintendent who thought "it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two thousand sheaves of Scriptural wisdom on his premises—a dozen would strain his capacity, without a doubt." Tom falls in love with Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get "engaged" by kissing him. But their romance collapses when she learns Tom has been "engaged" previously to Amy Lawrence. Shortly after Becky shuns him, he accompanies Huckleberry Finn to the graveyard at night, where they witness the murder of Dr. Robinson.</p><p>**</p>


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<p class="description">This novel of Mark Twain's -- "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" -- gives us an odd view of the American literary genius: it shows is bent twoward science ficional. Twain developed a close and lasting friendship with scientific wunderkind Nikola Tesla, and the two spent quite a bit of time together (in Tesla's laboratory, among other places). Twain's fascination appears in his time traveler (from contemporary America, yet!), using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. </p>


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<div><p>A chance meeting between a member of the royal family and a street urchin triggers a course of events that form the basis of this enthralling story. </p><p>Tom, the pauper; and Edward, the prince, discover that not only do they share the same birthday, but they also look identical. Being the boys that they are, they decide to have some fun and exchange clothes. However, little do they know that this will land them up in the most bizarre of situations.</p><p>Inadvertently, the boys end up swapping places with each other - Tom becomes the prince; and Edward, the pauper. No one believes them when they try to explain their true identities, so they are forced to adapt to their new lifestyles, with very interesting consequences.</p><p>This well-loved novel by Mark Twain takes a humorous look at 16th century society, and the inequalities that existed at that time, and perhaps still do today.</p></div>


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


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Spanning 40 years of love, life, and villainy, this epic novel is a major tour de force from an author at the peak of his powers, the Spillane of Brit Noir Once upon a time in south London, three young men without a future decide to invent their own. The sixties are starting to swing and Jimmy, John, and Billy want it all: the clothes, the pills, the music, and the women. Through drugs, protection, and armed robbery, they start building their crime empire; everything they've always dreamed about is within their grasp. But then Billy changes sides and becomes a cop--and finds that his days are numbered. Now, decades later, Billy's son, Mark, is working for John Jenner and waiting for the day when his father's killer gets out of prison. It's any time now and Mark is determined to be there when the doors swing open.


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In May 1915, Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire. The result was one of the most hopeless and senseless wars of modern times. Nearly 750,000 Italians and half as many Austro-Hungarian troops were killed. To maintain discipline in the face of desperation and low morale, General Luigi Cadorna restored the Roman practice of decimation, executing random members of units that retreated or rebelled.With great skill and pathos, Mark Thompson relates the saga of the Italian front. A work of epic scale, The White War does justice to one of the most remarkable untold stories of the First World War.


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">Was Roger Williams too pure for the Puritans, and what does that have to do with Rhode Island?  Why did Augustine Herman take ten years to complete the map that established Delaware?  How did Rocky Mountain rogues help create the state of Colorado?  All this and more is explained in Mark Stein's new book.</span></h3><p>How the States Got Their Shapes Too follows How the States Got Their Shapes looks at American history through the lens of its borders, but, while How The States Got Their Shapes told us why, this book tells us who.  This personal element in the boundary stories reveals how we today are like those who came before us, and how we differ, and most significantly: how their collective stories reveal not only an historical arc but, as importantly, the often overlooked human dimension in that arc that leads to the nation we are today.<br>The people featured in How the States Got Their Shapes Too lived from the colonial era right up to the present.  They include African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, women, and of course, white men.  Some are famous, such as Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Daniel Webster.  Some are not, such as Bernard Berry, Clarina Nichols, and Robert Steele.   And some are names many of us know but don't really know exactly what they did, such as Ethan Allen (who never made furniture, though he burned a good deal of it).<br>In addition, How the States Got Their Shapes Too tells of individuals involved in the Almost States of America, places we sought to include but ultimately did not: Canada, the rest of Mexico (we did get half), Cuba, and, still an issue, Puerto Rico.  <br>Each chapter is largely driven by voices from the time, in the form of excerpts from congressional debates, newspapers, magazines, personal letters, and diaries.  <br>Told in Mark Stein's humorous voice, How the States Got Their Shapes Too is a historical journey unlike any other you've taken.  The strangers you meet here had more on their minds than simple state lines, and this book makes for a great new way of seeing and understanding the United States.</p></div>


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<p>The definitive book on steak has never been written-until now "Of all the meats, only one merits its own structure. There is no such place as a lamb house or a pork house, but even a small town can have a steak house." So begins Mark Schatzker's ultimate carnivorous quest. Fed up with one too many mediocre steaks, the intrepid journalist set out to track down, define, and eat the perfect specimen. His journey takes him to all the legendary sites of steak excellence-Texas, France, Scotland, Italy, Japan, Argentina, and Idaho's Pahsimeroi Valley-where he discovers the lunatic lengths steak lovers will go to consume the perfect cut. After contemplating the merits of Black Angus, Kobe, Chianina, and the prehistoric aurochs-a breed revived by the Nazis after four hundred years of extinction-Schatzker adopts his own heifer, fattens her on fruit, acorns, and Persian walnuts, and then grapples with ambivalence when this near-pet appears on his plate. Reminiscent of both Bill Bryson's and Bill Buford's writing, Steak is a warm, humorous, and wide-ranging read that introduces a wonderful new travel and food writer to the common table.</p>


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


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<div><hr><p>An airliner’s controls abruptly fail mid-flight over the Atlantic. An oil tanker runs aground in Japan when its navigational system suddenly stops dead. Hospitals everywhere have to abandon their computer databases when patients die after being administered incorrect dosages of their medicine. In the Midwest, a nuclear power plant nearly becomes the next Chernobyl when its cooling systems malfunction.<br>      At first, these random computer failures seem like unrelated events. But Jeff Aiken, a former government analyst who quit in disgust after witnessing the gross errors that led up to 9/11, thinks otherwise. Jeff fears a more serious attack targeting the United States computer infrastructure is already under way. And as other menacing computer malfunctions pop up around the world, some with deadly results, he realizes that there isn’t much time if he hopes to prevent an international catastrophe. <br>    Written by a global authority on cyber security, <em>Zero Day</em> presents a chilling “what if” scenario that, in a world completely reliant on technology, is more than possible today---it’s a cataclysmic disaster just waiting to happen.</p></div>


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<p class="description">Noted vegans and vegetarians love Mark Reinfeld and Jennifer Murray’s food. Food Network host and author Ellie Krieger lauds their recipes as “delicious, exciting, healthful, [and] accessible for everyone,” while Deborah Madison notes their “appealing recipes, good information about food and cooking in general [and] surprisingly realistic approaches to thirty-minute cooking.” Now, Reinfeld and Murray turn their skillets to the East, featuring over 150 vegan versions of favorite cuisine from India, Thailand, China, and Japan. Taste of the East also offers inspired animal-free recipes from Indonesia, Nepal, Vietnam, Korea, Tibet, Iran, and Afghanistan.</p>


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<div><p><em></em></p><p style="display: inline !important; "><em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Hailed by Rush Limbaugh as “the most compelling defense of freedom for our time,” and “the necessary book of the Obama era” by The American Spectator, Mark R. Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny made the most persuasive case for conservatism and against statism in a generation. In this most crucial time, this leading conservative thinker explores the psychology, motivations, and history of the utopian movement, its architects, and its modern-day disciples—and how the individual and American society are being devoured by it.</span></em></p><p></p><p style="font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Levin asks, what is this utopian force that both allures a free people and destroys them? Levin digs deep into the past and draws astoundingly relevant parallels to contemporary America from </span></p><p style="font-style: italic; "></p><ul style="font-style: italic; "><li><p style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Plato’s Republic</span></p></li><li><p style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Thomas More’s Utopia</span></p></li><li><p style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan</span></p></li><li><p style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto</span></p></li></ul><em style="font-style: italic; "><p></p><em><p></p><em><p></p><em><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">. . . as well as from the critical works of </span><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">John Locke, Charles Montesquieu, Alexis de Tocqueville, </span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">and other philosophical pioneers who brilliantly diagnosed the nature of man and government. As Levin meticulously pursues his subject, the reader joins him in an enlightening and compelling journey. And in the end, Levin’s message is clear: the American republic is in great peril. The people must now choose between utopianism or liberty. </span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">President Ronald Reagan warned, “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Levin agrees, and with Ameritopia, delivers another modern political classic, an indispensable guide for America in our time and in the future.</span></p></em></em></em></em></div>


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<p><em>Uncommon Grounds</em> tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks. In this updated edition of the classic work, Mark Pendergrast reviews the dramatic changes in coffee culture over the past decade, from the disastrous "Coffee Crisis" that caused global prices to plummet to the rise of the Fair Trade movement and the "third-wave" of quality-obsessed coffee connoisseurs. As the scope of coffee culture continues to expand, Uncommon Grounds remains more than ever a brilliantly entertaining guide to the currents of one of the world's favorite beverages. </p>


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<div><p>For the first time anywhere, the first-person account of the planning and execution of the Bin Laden raid from a Navy Seal who confronted the terrorist mastermind and witnessed his final moments.</p><p>From the streets of Iraq to the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean, and from the mountaintops of Afghanistan to the third floor of Osama Bin Laden’s compound, operator Mark Owen of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group--commonly known as SEAL Team Six-- has been a part of some of the most memorable special operations in history, as well as countless missions that never made headlines.</p><p><em>No Easy Day</em> puts readers alongside Owen and the other handpicked members of the twenty-four-man team as they train for the biggest mission of their lives. The blow-by-blow narrative of the assault, beginning with the helicopter crash that could have ended Owen’s life straight through to the radio call confirming Bin Laden’s death, is an essential piece of modern history.</p><p>In <em>No Easy Day</em>, Owen also takes readers onto the field of battle in America’s ongoing War on Terror and details the selection and training process for one of the most elite units in the military. Owen’s story draws on his youth in Alaska and describes the SEALs’ quest to challenge themselves at the highest levels of physical and mental endurance. With boots-on-the-ground detail, Owen describes numerous previously unreported missions that illustrate the life and work of a SEAL and the evolution of the team after the events of September 11. In telling the true story of the SEALs whose talents, skills, experiences, and exceptional sacrifices led to one of the greatest victories in the War on Terror, Mark Owen honors the men who risk everything for our country, and he leaves readers with a deep understanding of the warriors who keep America safe.</p></div>


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<p class="description">Eleven months ago, Ray Quinn was a tough, quick-witted Orlando homicide detective at the top of his game-until a barrage of bullets ended his career...and his partner's life. Now medically retired with a painful handicap, Ray battles the haunting guilt for his partner's death. Numbing the pain with alcohol and attitude, Ray takes a job as a night watchman at a swanky Orlando condo. But when a pastor and an exotic dancer are found dead in one of the condos in an apparent murder-suicide, Ray can no longer linger in the shadows. The pastor's sister is convinced her brother was framed and begs Ray to take on an impossible case-to challenge the evidence and clear her brother's name. Ray reluctantly pulls the threads of this supposedly dead-end case only to unravel a murder investigation so deep that it threatens to turn the Orlando political landscape upside down and transform old friends into new enemies. As Ray chases down leads and interrogates suspects, someone is watching his every move, someone determined to keep him from ever finding out the truth-at any cost.</p>


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<p><strong>What would you do if the love of your life, and all your memories, were lost- only to reappear, but with such shocking revelations that you wish you had never remembered... </strong>   </p><p>Emmett Conn is an old man, near the end of his life. A World War I veteran, he's been affected by memory loss since being injured during the war. To those around him, he's simply a confused man, fading in and out of senility. But what they don't know is that Emmett has been beset by memories, of events he and others have denied or purposely forgotten.   </p><p>In Emmett's dreams he's a gendarme, escorting Armenians from Turkey. A young woman among them, Araxie, captivates and enthralls him. But then the trek ends, the war separates them. He is injured. Seven decades later, as his grasp on the boundaries between past and present begins to break down, Emmett sets out on a final journey, to find Araxie and beg her forgiveness.   </p><p>Mark Mustian has written a remarkable novel about the power of memory-and the ability of people, individually and collectively, to forget. Depicting how love can transcend nationalities, politics, and religion, how racism creates divisions where none truly exist, and how the human spirit fights to survive even in the face of hopelessness, <em>The Gendarme</em> is a transcendent novel.</p>


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# When the city sleeps, the dead start to walk! Something has sealed off Cardiff, and living corpses are stalking the streets, leaving a trail of half-eaten bodies. Animals are butchered. A young couple in their car never reach home. A stolen tugboat is brought back to shore, carrying only human remains. And a couple of girls heading back from the pub watch the mysterious drivers of a big black SUV take over a crime scene. Torchwood must now contend with the intangible barrier surrounding Cardiff, and some unidentified space debris that seems to be regenerating itself. Plus, of course, the all-night zombie horror show!


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<p class="description">Summer 1942. A small, windswept island in the Mediterranean has become the most bombed patch of earth on the planet, as a fiercely independent people withstand relentless siege. Max Chadwick is the British officer charged with manipulating the news on Malta to bolster the fragile esprit de corps. Then Max learns of the murder of a young island woman, along with evidence that it was committed by a British officer.</p>


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"The rhythm changed and the chickens came down faster and faster. Sean found it hard to catch up and they piled like corpses in the rain. As he tried to pick one up another would bounce off the back off his hand. Sometimes their legs, or shorn feet, would dig him right in the finger. It was like when you're in a fight and the guy gets a couple in." (p. 16) Most of Sean O'Grady's days are depressingly similar. He not only lives in a town he thought he would leave years ago, but he works a mindless, dead-end job in the fresh meat section at the local chicken processing plant. And as if he needed a reminder of the banality of life, the conveyor belt that flanks the wall where he works beats out a hypnotic rhythm that's inescapable: Bum-titty-bum-titty-bum-titty. But it isn't all bad. Fresh is the least of the gag-inducing departments in the plant and Sean's uncle Albert works alongside him. Albert and his wife, Jessie, took Sean and his brother Archie in after their mother died, and treated them as if they were their own. Sean hasn't turned out too badly either: he has steady work at the plant, a good woman as his wife, and a fine daughter. But Archie is another matter. He got started as a career criminal early on, with stints in jail for teenage joy rides and small-time drug trafficking. That escalated soon enough and Archie is in prison again. Or so Sean thinks. One day Sean discovers that Archie is due out that very same day, and he panics. His brother had given him 1000 to keep while he was away and Sean has spent the money. Sean is certain that if he can't get Archie's money in time, his brother will kill him. And he has good reason to believe the worst. Archie's best friend and de facto henchman has already made it known that Sean had better be ready to hand over the cash or suffer the consequences. Sean has witnessed his brother's brutality first-hand, which confirms his conviction that any brotherly affection Archie might have for Sean won't stand in the way of him getting his money back all of it. With the down-at-heel joie de vivre of Roddy Doyle and the wacko plottings of Irvine Welsh,Freshis a white-knuckle ride through one forgettable day in the life of Sean O'Grady. Mark McNay's debut will leave you bowled-over and breathless and marks the arrival of a major new talent.


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<p class="description">Conrad Labarde, a reclusive, first-generation Basque fisherman, finds his life transformed forever when he pulls up the body of a beautiful young woman in his fishing nets, in a story of love, death, and redemption set against the backdrop of a small Long Island fishing community in 1947. A first novel. Reprint.</p>


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<p class="description">The subject of a major motion picture starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter. One man saved the British Royal Family in the first decades of the 20th century amazingly he was an almost unknown, and certainly unqualified, speech therapist called Lionel Logue, whom one newspaper in the 1930s famously dubbed _The Quack who saved a King_. Logue wasn't a British aristocrat or even an Englishman - he was a commoner and an Australian to boot. Nevertheless it was the outgoing, amiable Logue who single-handedly turned the famously nervous, tongue-tied, Duke of York into the man who was capable of becoming King. Had Logue not saved Bertie (as the man who was to become King George VI was always known) from his debilitating stammer, and pathological nervousness in front of a crowd or microphone, then it is almost certain that the House of Windsor would have collapsed. The King's Speech is the previously untold story of the extraordinary relationship between Logue and the haunted young man who became King George VI, drawn from Logue's unpublished personal diaries. They throw extraordinary light on the intimacy of the two men and the vital role the King's wife, the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, played in bringing them together to save her husband's reputation and his career as King. The King's Speech is an intimate portrait of the British monarchy at a time of its greatest crisis, seen through the eyes of an Australian commoner who was proud to serve, and save, his King.</p>


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<div><p><em>A Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter’s riveting account of the transformation of the CIA and America’s special operations forces into man-hunting and killing machines in the world’s dark spaces: the new American way of war</em><br></p><p>The most momentous change in American warfare over the past decade has taken place away from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, in the corners of the world where large armies can’t go. <em>The Way of the Knife</em> is the untold story of that shadow war: a campaign that has blurred the lines between soldiers and spies and lowered the bar for waging war across the globe. America has pursued its enemies with killer drones and special operations troops; trained privateers for assassination missions and used them to set up clandestine spying networks; and relied on mercurial dictators, untrustworthy foreign intelligence services, and proxy armies.<br></p><p>This new approach to war has been embraced by Washington as a lower risk, lower cost alternative to the messy wars of occupation and has been championed as a clean and surgical way of conflict. But the knife has created enemies just as it has killed them. It has fomented resentments among allies, fueled instability, and created new weapons unbound by the normal rules of accountability during wartime.<br></p><p>Mark Mazzetti tracks an astonishing cast of characters on the ground in the shadow war, from a CIA officer dropped into the tribal areas to learn the hard way how the spy games in Pakistan are played to the chain-smoking Pentagon official running an off-the-books spy operation, from a Virginia socialite whom the Pentagon hired to gather intelligence about militants in Somalia to a CIA contractor imprisoned in Lahore after going off the leash.<br></p><p>At the heart of the book is the story of two proud and rival entities, the CIA and the American military, elbowing each other for supremacy. The CIA, created as a Cold War espionage service, is now more than ever a paramilitary agency ordered by the White House to kill off America’s enemies—in the mountains of Pakistan and the deserts of Yemen, in the tumultuous civil wars of North Africa and the chaos of Somalia. For its part, the Pentagon has become more like the CIA, dramatically expanding spying missions everywhere. Sometimes, as with the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, their efforts have been perfectly coordinated. Other times, including the failed operations disclosed here for the first time, they have not. For better or worse, their struggles will define American national security in the years to come.</p></div>


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<div><p><em>Tune In</em> is the first volume of <em>All These Years—</em>a highly-anticipated, groundbreaking biographical trilogy by the world's leading Beatles historian. Mark Lewisohn uses his unprecedented archival access and hundreds of new interviews to construct the full story of the lives and work of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.   </p><p>Ten years in the making, <em>Tune In</em> takes the Beatles from before their childhoods through the final hour of 1962—when, with breakthrough success just days away, they stand on the cusp of a whole new kind of fame and celebrity. They’ve one hit record ("Love Me Do") behind them and the next ("Please Please Me") primed for release, their first album session is booked, and America is clear on the horizon.  This is the lesser-known Beatles story—the pre-Fab years of Liverpool and Hamburg—and in many respects the most absorbing and incredible period of them all. Here is the complete and true account of their family lives, childhoods, teenage years and their infatuation with American music, here is the riveting narrative of their unforgettable days and nights in the Cavern Club, their laughs, larks and adventures when they could move about freely, before fame closed in.    </p><p>For those who’ve never read a Beatles book before, this is the place to discover the young men behind the icons. For those who think they know John, Paul, George, and Ringo, it’s time to press the Reset button and tune into the real story, the lasting word.</p></div>


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<div><p>Tim Russert is dead.<br>But the room was alive.<br>Big Ticket Washington Funerals can make such great networking opportunities. Power mourners keep stampeding down the red carpets of the Kennedy Center, handing out business cards, touching base. And there is no time to waste in a gold rush, even (or especially) at a solemn tribal event like this.<br></p><p>Washington—This Town—might be loathed from every corner of the nation, yet these are fun and busy days at this nexus of big politics, big money, big media, and big vanity. There are no Democrats and Republicans anymore in the nation’s capital, just millionaires. That is the grubby secret of the place in the twenty-first century. You will always have lunch in This Town again. No matter how many elections you lose, apologies you make, or scandals you endure.<br></p><p>In This Town, Mark Leibovich, chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, presents a blistering, stunning—and often hysterically funny—examination of our ruling class’s incestuous “media industrial complex.” Through his eyes, we discover how the funeral for a beloved newsman becomes the social event of the year. How political reporters are fetishized for their ability to get their names into the predawn e-mail sent out by the city’s most powerful and puzzled-over journalist. How a disgraced Hill aide can overcome ignominy and maybe emerge with a more potent “brand” than many elected members of Congress. And how an administration bent on “changing Washington” can be sucked into the ways of This Town with the same ease with which Tea Party insurgents can, once elected, settle into it like a warm bath.<br></p><p>Outrageous, fascinating, and destined to win Leibovich a whole host of, er, new friends, This Town is must reading, whether you’re inside the Beltway—or just trying to get there.</p></div>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">Western historian Gardner (_Wagons for the Santa Fe Trade_) delivers a dual biography documenting Sheriff Pat Garrett's hunt for the iconic outlaw William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid. As Gardner sees it, the battle between the wily Kid and the determined Garrett is perhaps the greatest of our Old West legends. Digging beneath the myths and melodrama, he begins in Las Vegas during Christmas week, 1880, when the capture and confinement of Billy the Kid made national headlines. Gardner then details the Kid's daring daylight courthouse escape on April 28, 1881, in a hail of gunfire, leaving bloodied bodies behind. I am not going to leave the country, said the Kid, and I am not going to reform, neither am I going to be taken alive again. The chase began, with Garrett finally gunning down the Kid on July 14, 1881. Gardner concludes with a survey of the Kid's robust mythic afterlife in books and films. Gardner's extensive research and authoritative approach ground this compelling historical recreation.</span></h3>


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<div><p class="description">Award-winning *New York Times*-bestselling author Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America: Before the national highway system brought the country closer together; before chain restaurants imposed uniformity and low quality; and before the Frigidaire meant frozen food in mass quantities, the nation's food was seasonal, regional, and traditional. It helped form the distinct character, attitudes, and customs of those who ate it.</p>
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<p class="description"> In the 1930s, with the country gripped by the Great Depression and millions of Americans struggling to get by, FDR created the Federal Writers' Project under the New Deal as a make-work program for artists and authors. A number of writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Nelson Algren, were dispatched all across America to chronicle the eating habits, traditions, and struggles of local people. The project, called "America Eats," was abandoned in the early 1940s because of the World War and never completed.</p>
<p class="description"></p>
<p class="description"> *The Food of a Younger Land* unearths this forgotten literary and historical treasure and brings it to exuberant life. Mark Kurlansky's brilliant book captures these remarkable stories, and combined with authentic recipes, anecdotes, photos, and his own musings and analysis, evokes a bygone era when Americans had never heard of fast food and the grocery superstore was a thing of the future. Kurlansky serves as a guide to this hearty and poignant look at the country's roots.</p>
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<p class="description"> From New York automats to Georgia Coca-Cola parties, from Arkansas possum-eating clubs to Puget Sound salmon feasts, from Choctaw funerals to South Carolina barbecues, the WPA writers found Americans in their regional niches and eating an enormous diversity of meals. From Mississippi chittlins to Indiana persimmon puddings, Maine lobsters, and Montana beavertails, they recorded the curiosities, commonalities, and communities of American food.</p></div>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">A half-century after the Holocaust, Paris has again become a major Jewish center, and traditional Jewish life is thriving in Antwerp and Budapest. Jewish communities in Berlin, Prague and Amsterdam, however, are struggling, and Poland is almost devoid of Jewish life. Kurlansky (A Continent of Islands) visited numerous Jewish communities that had been decimated during the war, interviewing camp survivors, rabbis, atheists, professional people, political activists and writers. Stitching together their personal stories with history and reportage, this keenly observant narrative charts a traumatized people's experiences in rebuilding their lives after unimaginable horrors and the loss of their homes and businesses. Many of Kurlansky's respondents voice anxiety over the resurgence of anti-Semitic and nationalist violence. </span></h3><p>Copyright 1994 Reed </p></div>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">Straddling the border of southern France and northern Spain, the land of the Basques has long been home to a people who had no country of their own but have always viewed themselves as a nation. In this marvelous work of cultural history and appreciation, Kurlansky traces Basque history from pre-Roman times, when Basques worked as the mercenaries of Carthage, to the region's recent renaissance in language and arts. Along the way, he explains how the Basques came to be among Europe's first whalers, capitalists, explorers, industrialists and international traders. As he did in Cod, Kurlansky fuses political and economic history with delightful digressions into cultural and culinary traditions (several delicious recipes are included). The book is as politically loaded with opinion as it is culturally informative: Kurlansky expresses sympathy for the cause of Basque independence, arguing that many of Spain's current policies toward its Basque minority are holdovers from the repressive Franco regime. He also tends to accept the claim that the Basques "are the original Europeans," largely on the ground that Euskera, the Basque language, appears to have no linguistic relative and is likely the oldest European language still spoken. For all the ground it covers, this wildly informative work is a marvel of clarity, glittering with unusual facts and marked by penetrating insights into a people always "making complex choices about the degree of independence that was needed to preserve their way of life, while looking to the rest of the world for commercial opportunities to ensure their prosperity." 56 illustrations, 6 maps, 10 recipes. Agent, Charlotte Sheedy Agency. 5-city author tour.</span></h3></div>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">Given its broad and vibrant subject, it would be quite difficult for a writer of any proficiency to pen a boring book on 1968, and Mark Kurlansky has indeed pulled together an entertaining and enlightening popular history with <em>1968: The Year That Rocked the World</em>. With the Vietnam War and Soviet repression providing sparkplugs in the East and West, student movements heated up in Berkeley, Prague, Mexico City, Paris, and dozens of other hotspots. With youth in ascendancy, music, film, and athletics became generational battlegrounds between opposition forces that couldn't be more appalled with one another. Not so fortuitously, the Summer Olympics in Mexico City and a presidential election in the United States conspired to elevate the tension higher as months passed. Kurlansky is skilled at concisely capturing the personalities behind the conflicts, whether they be heartbroken Czech leader Alexander Dubcek as Eastern Bloc troops violently suppress his nation's uprising or respected veteran newsman Walter Cronkite reluctantly editorializing against the war in Vietnam. The author is more than willing to choose heroes (the doomed Robert Kennedy) and villains (victorious presidential candidate Richard Nixon), and clearly sides with the rebels in most cases. In general, Kurlansky is more adept at covering the political front than he is the equally revolutionary arts world, and it's apparent that any chapter in this book could be expanded into a book of its own. One's expectation is that captivated readers will view <em>1968</em> as a portal into a deeper exploration of a fascinating time.</span></h3>


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<p>Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.<br>    This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.</p>


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<p class="description">One of Tom Clancy's most storied characters, Dominic Caruso, is the only one who can stop America's secrets from falling into enemy hands in this blockbuster new novel written by Clancy's longtime coauthor. Over the course of three decades, Tom Clancy created a world alive with prescient action and remarkable individuals. In "Tom Clancy ""Support and Defend," Dominic Caruso is presented with the deadliest challenge of his career. Dominic Caruso. Nephew of President Jack Ryan. FBI agent and operator for The Campus, a top secret intelligence agency that works off the books for the U.S. government. Already scarred by the death of his brother, Caruso is devastated when he can't save a friend and his family from a terrorist attack Ethan Ross was a mid-level staffer for the National Security Council. Now he's a wanted fugitive on the run with a microdrive that contains enough information to wreck American intelligence efforts around the world. The CIA is desperate to get the drive back, but so are the Russians and various terrorist groups all of whom are closer to catching the fugitive. Only Caruso stands in their way, but can he succeed without the aid of his Campus colleagues?</p>


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<p>A North Korean ICBM crashes into the Sea of Japan. A veteran CIA officer is murdered in Ho Chi Minh City, and a package of forged documents goes missing. The pieces are there, but assembling the puzzle will cost Jack Ryan, Jr. and his fellow Campus agents precious time. Time they don’t have. <br /><br />The challenge facing President Jack Ryan is an old one with a terrifying new twist. The international stalemate with North Korea continues into its seventh decade.  A young, untested dictator is determined to prove his strength by breaking the deadlock. Like his father before him, he hangs his plans on the country’s nuclear ambitions. Until now, that program was impeded by a lack of resources. However, there has been a dramatic change in the nation’s economic fortune. A rich deposit of valuable minerals have been found in the Hermit Kingdom.  Coupled with their nuclear capabilities, the money from this find will make North Korea a dangerous force on the world stage.<br /><br />There’s just one more step needed to complete this perfect plan…the elimination of the president of the United States.</p><h3>Review</h3><p>LOCKED ON<br />“Hard to put down”<br />--<em>Pittsburgh Post-Gazette</em><br />“The action scenes alone come across beautifully, as visual as anything on a movie screen, with the added enticement of crisp, accurate and hard-driving prose.”<br />--<em>Orlando Sentinel</em><br />THREAT VECTOR<br />“Each plotline comes to us mainly in a series of tightly written action scenes...as visual as anything on a movie screen, with the added enticement of crisp, accurate and hard driving prose.”—<em>Chicago Tribune</em><br />“Hard to put down.”—<em>Pittsburgh Post-Gazette</em><br />COMMAND AUTHORITY<br />“Once again, the acrid scent of cordite wafted through my imagination during the climactic gun battle as Clancy’s characters from the world of intelligence achieved yet another victory over the forces of evil.”<br />—<em>The Washington Times</em><br />“Vintage Clancy.”<br />--<em>Kirkus Reviews</em></p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Thirty years ago Tom Clancy was a Maryland insurance broker with a passion for naval history. Years before, he had been an English major at Baltimore's Loyola College and had always dreamed of writing a novel. His first effort, The Hunt for Red October, sold briskly as a result of rave reviews, then catapulted on to the New York Times bestseller list after President Reagan pronounced it 'the perfect yarn'. From that day forward, Clancy established himself as an undisputed master at blending exceptional realism and authenticity, intricate plotting, and razor-sharp suspense. He passed away in October 2013. Mark Greaney is the co-author of three #1 New York Times bestellers with Tom Clancy. He has a degree in international relations and political science. In his research for these novels, Greaney travelled to seven countries and trained alongside military and law enforcement in the use of firearms, battlefield medicine and close-range combat tactics. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee. </p>


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"Courtland Gentry is a good man. But he's a great assassin...To those who lurk in the shadows, he's known as the Gray Man. He is a legend in the covert realm, moving silently from job to job, accomplishing the impossible and then fading away. And he always hits his target. Always. But there are forces more lethal than Gentry in the world. Forces like money. And power. And there are men who hold these as the only currency worth fighting for. And in their eyes, Gentry has just outlived his usefulness. But Court Gentry is going to prove that, for him, there's no gray area between killing for a living and killing to stay alive...."--p.[4] of cover.


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Four years ago, Court Gentry was betrayed by his handlers in the CIA. Now, as a master assassin known as the Gray Man, he makes his living killing other people. But an old comrade Gentry thought was dead returns to haunt him, asking Gentry to carry out a nearly impossible kidnapping-- and then return the quarry to the very CIA team that turned on him.--Cover, p. [4]


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<p class="description">Beck Hardin returns to his Texas hometown - and his estranged father - after the death of his wife leaves him with two children to raise. The town is still reeling from the murder of sixteen-year-old Heidi, whose father - Beck's old college friend - asks Beck to help him find Heidi's killer before the statute of limitations runs out. Meanwhile, Beck is pushed into becoming town Judge, and he makes some powerful enemies amongst the rich white landowners when he refuses to condone their treatment of the Mexican workers of the town. As events escalate, the landowners carefully plot their revenge...</p>


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<div><p>A Texas governor wants to be president . . . his wife wants to escape his suffocating ambition . . . and a Mexican drug lord wants him dead. <br></p><p><br></p></div>


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<p class="description">Andy Prescott is the most laid-back young lawyer in Austin, Texas. Specialising in traffic law, he operates from a small room above a ramshackle tattoo parlour. He rides a trail bike and spends way too much time drinking beer in the sunshine. Ambition has never been Andy's strong point - he prefers to take it easy.That is, until one of Texas's wealthiest men walks into his office. On the spot, billionaire Russell Reeves retains Andy as his lawyer and, in exchange for some easy legal work, pays h more money than he has ever earned before. Andy's life is transformed.But nothing comes for free. Russell is a desperate man whose sole a is to save his eight-year-old son, Zach, who is dying from leukemia. He is prepared to do anything - even if it means putting Andy's life in danger.</p>


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<div><p class="description">Ben Brice lives alone in the New Mexico wilderness where he battles memories of Vietnam with oceans of Jim Beam. Miles away in Texas, his estranged son, John, an Internet geek-turned-billionaire, half watches his daughter Gracie’s soccer game while conducting business on his cell phone. When her mother Elizabeth arrives, the coach reports that her uncle has already collected Gracie. But Gracie has no uncle—she was kidnapped.</p><p class="description">From international best-selling author Mark Gimenez comes a terrifying thriller in which dark family secrets make the finding of ten-year-old Gracie Brice more uncertain with every passing minute. And so begins a furious race against time to save Gracie from unknown kidnappers. With the FBI camped out in the Brice mansion, the family offers a reward of $25 million. Somehow, Ben and John Brice must find Gracie before it is too late. As the story unfolds with riveting twists and turns, the reader discovers that behind the kidnapping is an extraordinary government plot that could change the course of American history. And time is running out.</p></div>


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<p>A partner at a prominent law firm is forced to choose between his enviable lifestyle and doing the right thing. Former college football star Scott Fenney has worked his way to the top of the heap at the Dallas firm of Ford Stevens. But when Clark McCall, wayward son of a Texas politician, gets himself murdered after a night of booze, drugs, and rough sex, Scott is assigned to defend the prime suspect, a heroine-addicted hooker named Shawanda Jones. The powers that be want her convicted—and Scott’s future at the firm may depend on it. But unfortunately for Scott, Shwanada claims she’s innocent, and he believes her.</p>


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<p class="description">'Scott, it's Rebecca. I need you.'After years of silence, Texan lawyer Scott Fenney receives a devastating phonecall from his ex-wife. She has been accused of murdering her boyfriend, Trey - the man she left Scott for - and is being held in a police cell. Now she is begging Scott to defend her.Scott is used to high-stakes cases, but this one is bigger than anything he has handled before. If Rebecca is found guilty, under Texan law she will be sentenced to death. He will have her blood on his hands. As he prepares to take the stand in the most dramatic courtroom appearance of his life, Scott is forced to question everything he believes to get to the truth - to save the life of the ex-wife he still loves.</p>


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<p>Thomas Edison stunned America in 1879 by unveiling a world-changing invention—the light bulb—and then launching the electrification of America's cities. A decade later, despite having been an avowed opponent of the death penalty, Edison threw his laboratory resources and reputation behind the creation of a very different sort of device—the electric chair. Deftly exploring this startling chapter in American history, Edison &amp; the Electric Chair delivers both a vivid portrait of a nation on the cusp of modernity and a provocative new examination of Edison himself. Edison championed the electric chair for reasons that remain controversial to this day. Was Edison genuinely concerned about the suffering of the condemned? Was he waging a campaign to smear his rival George Westinghouse's alternating current and boost his own system? Or was he warning the public of real dangers posed by the high-voltage alternating wires that looped above hundreds of America's streets? Plumbing the fascinating history of electricity, Mark Essig explores America's love of technology and its fascination with violent death, capturing an era when the public was mesmerized and terrified by an invisible force that produced blazing light, powered streetcars, carried telephone conversations—and killed. </p>


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Mark Doty's Fire to Fire collects the best of Mark Doty's seven books of poetry, along with a generous selection of new work. Doty's subjects—our mortal situation, the evanescent beauty of the world, desire's transformative power, and art's ability to give shape to human lives—echo and develop across twenty years of poems. His signature style encompasses both the plainspoken and the artfully wrought; here one of contemporary American poetry's most lauded, recognizable voices speaks to the crises and possibilities of our times.


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<p class="description">The deeper issues surrounding one of the nation's most revered superheroes, unmasked at last Batman has grown from a comic book character into a franchise and merchandise goliath, spinning off live-action and animated TV shows, Hollywood blockbusters, video games, action figures, and an endless array of merchandising. Timed to publish with the release of the new Batman movie in 2008, Batman and Philosophy takes a deeper look at the famous caped crusader, offering entertaining answers to the fascinating ethical questions everyone has always had about the man behind the mask. Mark D. White (Staten Island, NY) is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Economics, and Philosophy, College of Staten Island/CUNY. Robert Arp (Buffalo, NY) currently is a Postdoctoral Research Associate through the National Center for Biomedical Ontology at the University at Buffalo and the editor of South Park and Philosophy (978-1-4051-6160-2).</p>


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<p>Read this before publishing on Smashwords! The Smashwords Style Guide makes it easy to format your manuscript to produce high quality multi-format ebooks. Includes tips on how to gain inclusion into the Smashwords Premium Catalog. This book is updated frequently. Updated October 9, 2009. </p>


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<p>"There is nothing small about Childress's fine novel. It's big in all the ways that matter - big in daring, big in insight, and big-hearted. Really, really big-hearted." -<em>New Orleans</em><em> Times-Picayune</em>  </p><p>This exuberantly acclaimed novel by the author of the bestselling <em>Crazy in Alabama</em> tells an uproarious and moving story about family, best friends, first love, and surviving the scariest years of your life.  </p><p>You need only one best friend, Daniel Musgrove figures, to make it through high school alive. After his family moves to Mississippi just before his junior year, Daniel finds fellow outsider Tim Cousins. The two become inseparable, sharing a fascination with ridicule, <em>The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour,</em> and Arnita Beecham, the most bewitching girl at Minor High. But soon things go terribly wrong. The friends commit a small crime that grows larger and larger, and threatens to engulf the whole town. Arnita, the first black prom queen in the history of the school, is injured and wakes up a different person. And Daniel, Tim, and their families are swept up in a shocking chain of events.  </p><p>"Wise, riveting, hilarious, painful, gentle, and ferocious, <em>One Mississippi </em>is a wonderful read." -Anne Lamott  </p><p>"A Tilt-a-Whirl that flings the reader from comedy to calamity. . . . Childress is a fabulist in the manner of John Irving." -<em>Atlanta</em><em> Journal-Constitution</em>  </p><p>"By turns rollicking and troubling, as provocative as it is droll, <em>One Mississippi </em>is about as easy to resist as a riptide. This critic's advice is to go with its powerful flow." -<em>Raleigh</em> <em>News &amp; Observer</em></p><p>**</p>


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


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In times of trouble, heroes arise! A dragon firebombs a freeway. Shapeshifters stalk the commercial district. The deadly Wild Hunt wreaks havoc on the highway. The Age of Misrule has dawned.


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<p class="description">Already a classic of war reporting and now reissued as a Grove Press paperback, Black Hawk Down is Mark Bowden’s brilliant account of the longest sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. On October 3, 1993, about a hundred elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take an hour. Instead, they found themselves pinned down through a long and terrible night fighting against thousands of heavily armed Somalis. The following morning, eighteen Americans were dead and more than seventy had been badly wounded.Drawing on interviews from both sides, army records, audiotapes, and videos (some of the material is still classified), Bowden’s minute-by-minute narrative is one of the most exciting accounts of modern combat ever written—a riveting story that captures the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle.</p>


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<p class="description">From the award-winning champion of conscious eating and author of the bestselling Food Matterscomes The Food Matters Cookbook, offering the most comprehensive and straightforward ideas yet for cooking easy, delicious foods that are as good for you as they are for the planet. The Food Matters Cookbookis the essential encyclopedia and guidebook to responsible eating, with more than 500 recipes that capture Bittman's typically relaxed approach to everything in the kitchen. There is no finger-wagging here, just a no-nonsense and highly flexible case for eating more plants while cutting back on animal products, processed food, and of course junk. But for Bittman, flipping the ratio of your diet to something more virtuous and better for your body doesn't involve avoiding anyfoodsindeed, there is no sacrifice here. Since his own health prompted him to change his diet, Bittman has perfected cooking tasty, creative, and forward-thinking dishes based on vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. Meat and other animal products are often includedbut no longer as the centerpiece. In fact the majority of these recipes include fish, poultry, meat, eggs, or dairy, using them for their flavor, texture, and satisfying nature without depending on them for bulk. Roasted Pork Shoulder with Potatoes, Apples, and Onions and Linguine with Cherry Tomatoes and Clams are perfect examples. Many sound downright decadent: Pasta with Asparagus, Bacon, and Egg; Stuffed Pizza with Broccoli, White Beans, and Sausage; or Roasted Butternut Chowder with Apples and Bacon, for example. There are vegetarian recipes, too, and they have flair without being complicatedrecipes like Beet Tartare, Lentil "Caviar" with All the Trimmings, Radish-Walnut Tea Sandwiches, and Succotash Salad. Bittman is a firm believer in snacking, but in the right way. Instead of packaged cookies or greasy chips, Bittman suggests Seasoned Popcorn with Grated Parmesan or Fruit and Cereal Bites. Nor does he skimp on desserts; rather, he focuses on fruit, good-quality chocolate, nuts, and whole-grain flours, using minimal amounts of eggs, butter, and other fats. That allows for a whole chapter devoted to sweets, including Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies, Apricot Polenta Cake, Brownie Cake, and Coconut Tart with Chocolate Smear. True to the fuss-free style that has made him famous, Bittman offers plenty of variations and substitutions that let you take advantage of foods that are in seasonor those that just happen to be in the fridge. A quick-but-complete rundown on ingredients tells you how to find sustainable and flavorful meat and shop for dairy products, grains, and vegetables without wasting money on fancy organic labels. He indicates which recipes you can make ahead, those that are sure to become pantry staples, and which ones can be put together in a flash. And because Bittman is always comprehensive, he makes sure to include the building-block recipes for the basics of home cooking: from fast stocks, roasted garlic, pizza dough, and granola to pots of cooked rice and beans and whole-grain quick breads. With a tone that is easygoing and non-doctrinaire, Bittman demonstrates the satisfaction and pleasure in mindful eating. The result is not just better health for you, but for the world we all share.</p>


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<p class="description">Cooking can be one of life's essential pleasures, even when you have to put dinner on the table every night. Now, with Mark Bittman's trusted voice as your guide, quick, easy, and fresh meals are always a realistic option.Presented here are 404 dishes -- 101 for each season -- that will get you in and out of the kitchen in 20 minutes or less. Mark Bittman's recipe sketches provide exactly the directions a home cook needs to prepare a repertoire of eggs, seafood, poultry, meats, vegetables, sandwiches, and even desserts. Add a salad here, a loaf of bread there, and these dishes become full meals that are better than takeout and far less expensive.These 404 recipes are as delicious and sophisticated as they are simple: Make the most of summer produce with Scallop and Peach Ceviche or Apricot Cream Upside-Down Pie. When the air starts to cool, try Salmon and Sweet Potato with Coconut Curry Sauce or Broiled Brussels Sprouts with Hazelnuts. On a cold winter night, warm up with White Bean Stew served over crusty slices of olive oil-brushed baguette. Or welcome spring with Shrimp with Asparagus, Dill, and Spice or Poached Eggs and Truffled Arugula Prosciutto Salad.Because good ingredients are the backbone of delicious home cooking, Bittman includes a guide to the foods you'll want on hand to cook the Kitchen Express way, as well as suggestions for seasonal menus and lists of recipes for specific uses, like brown-bag lunches or the best dishes for reheating. With Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express, you can have dinner on the table in not much more time than it takes to read a traditional recipe.</p>


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<p class="description">From the award-winning champion of culinary simplicity who gave us the bestselling How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian comes Food Matters, a plan for responsible eating that's as good for the planet as it is for your weight and your health.We are finally starting to acknowledge the threat carbon emissions pose to our ozone layer, but few people have focused on the extent to which our consumption of meat contributes to global warming. Think about it this way: In terms of energy consumption, serving a typical family-of-four steak dinner is the rough equivalent of driving around in an SUV for three hours while leaving all the lights on at home.Bittman offers a no-nonsense rundown on how government policy, big business marketing, and global economics influence what we choose to put on the table each evening. He demystifies buzzwords like "organic," "sustainable," and "local" and offers straightforward, budget-conscious advice that will help you make small changes that will shrink your carbon footprint -- and your waistline.Flexible, simple, and non-doctrinaire, the plan is based on hard science but gives you plenty of leeway to tailor your food choices to your lifestyle, schedule, and level of commitment. Bittman, a food writer who loves to eat and eats out frequently, lost thirty-five pounds and saw marked improvement in his blood levels by simply cutting meat and processed foods out of two of his three daily meals. But the simple truth, as he points out, is that as long as you eat more vegetables and whole grains, the result will be better health for you and for the world in which we live.Unlike most things that are virtuous and healthful, Bittman's plan doesn't involve sacrifice. From Spinach and Sweet Potato Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing to Breakfast Bread Pudding, the recipes in Food Matters are flavorful and sophisticated. A month's worth of meal plans shows you how Bittman chooses to eat and offers proof of how satisfying a mindful and responsible diet can be. Cheaper, healthier, and socially sound, Food Matters represents the future of American eating.</p>


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<p class="description">The Hostage. Police officer Helen Weeks walks into her local newsagent's on her way to work. Little does she know that this simple daily ritual will change her life forever. It's the last place she expects to be met with violence, but as she waits innocently at the till, she comes face to face with a gunman. The Demand. The crazed hostage-taker is desperate to know what really happened to his beloved son, who died a year before in youth custody. By holding a police officer at gunpoint, he will force the one man who knows more about the case than any other to re-investigate his son's death. That man is DI Tom Thorne. The Twist. While Helen fights to stay alive and the body-count rises,Thorne must race against time if he is to bring a killer to justice and save a young mother's life.</p>


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Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a mesmerizing debut. As teenager Blue van Meer tells her story we are hurled into a dizzying world of murder and butterflies, womanizing and wandering, American McCulture, The Western Canon, political radicalism and juvenile crushisms. Structured around a syllabus for a Great Works of Literature class (with hand-drawn Visual Aids), Blue's wickedly funny yet poignant tale reveals how the imagination finds meaning in the most bewildering times, the ways people of all ages strive for connection, and how the darkest of secrets can set us free. & lt;br/ & gt;'Special Topics in Calamity Physics made me stay up all night reading; in the morning it seemed like one of those parties where everyone is too cool for you but you desperately want to know them anyway. It reminded me of my lost, bad-girl days. I loved this book.' & lt;br/ & gt;Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveller's Wife


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<div><p>What happens when an unadventurous adventure writer tries to re-create the original expedition to Machu Picchu?<br></p><p>In 1911, Hiram Bingham III climbed into the Andes Mountains of Peru and “discovered” Machu Picchu. While history has recast Bingham as a villain who stole both priceless artifacts and credit for finding the great archeological site, Mark Adams set out to retrace the explorer’s perilous path in search of the truth—except he’d written about adventure far more than he’d actually lived it. In fact, he’d never even slept in a tent.</p><p><em>Turn Right at Machu Picchu</em> is Adams’ fascinating and funny account of his journey through some of the world’s most majestic, historic, and remote landscapes guided only by a hard-as-nails Australian survivalist and one nagging question: Just what <em>was</em> Machu Picchu?  </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Ebullient..seamlessly joins three narrative threads..an engaging and sometimes hilarious book."-New York Times Book Review<br></p><p>"[An] entirely delightful book"-Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post (also chosen as a 2011 Year-End Pick) <br></p><p>"Like all great travelogues (and this is certainly one), 'Turn Right'..should come with a fedora and a rucksack." -Men's Journal, Ten Best Nonfiction Books of 2011</p><p>"Adams deftly weaves together Inca history, Bingham's story and his own less heroic escapade..[A] wry, revealing romp through the Andes."-Wall Street Journal</p><p>"A serious (and seriously funny) travelogue, a smart and tightly written history, and an investigative report into perhaps the greatest archaeological discovery in the last century."-Nationalgeographic.com</p><p>"Like Bill Bryson, Adams peppers his book with interesting anecdotes, trenchant observations and frequently hilarious asides. But..the book's scholarship and its organization also call to mind John McPhee's 'Coming into the Country'..You're guaranteed to be swept up in Adams' vivid descriptions."-BookPage</p><p>"Quite funny and unpretentiously well informed..Short of actually traveling to Machu Picchu yourself, it's the perfect way to acknowledge the lost city's 100th birthday as a modern-day tourist site."-Christian Science Monitor ("Editor's Choice")</p><p>"Adams proves an engaging, informative guide to all things Inca."-Entertainment Weekly</p><p>"Mark Adams crisscrossed the Andes and has returned with a superb and important tale of adventure and archeology."-Sebastian Junger</p><p>"If you haven't been to Machu Picchu and environs, this book will inspire you to drop everything and go. And if you've already been, Turn Right at Machu Picchu will transport you straight back to those soul-soaring heights."-National Geographic Traveler ("Book of the Month")</p><p>"A story that hooks readers early and then sails along so interestingly that it's one of those 'can't put it down' books. What more could armchair adventurers want?"-Associated Press</p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>Mark Adams's</strong> writing has appeared in <em>GQ, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Rolling Stone</em>, and <em>National Geographic Adventure</em>, among other publications. He lives near New York City with his wife and their three sons.</p></div>


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


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Sunny Hathaway--introvert, entrepreneur, inventor, poet, dog lover, and lateral thinker--has a lot on her plate. She's moving to a new house, dealing with step-siblings, and starting a dog entertainment business too. Sunny and her expertly blended, thoroughly modern family are moving into her grandmother's old mansion, Windermere. Sunny wins the turret bedroom from her step-siblings (using her powers of reverse psychology), but is soon tangled up in mischief involving bored dogs, a cranky old gardener, an angel sighting, a match-making mission, and a boy who knits. To make matters worse, over at her dad's house, Sunny's baby half-sister Flora has turned the world upside-down, and Steph can't seem to find a way to turn it right-side-up again. Even with a sunny disposition, storm clouds can gather on the horizon, and this winter Sunny must find ways to offer warmth and shelter to those she cares for most.


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<div><p>The Godfather is an extraordinary novel which has become a modern day classic. Puzo pulls us inside the violent society of the Mafia and its gang wars.<br></p><p>The leader, Vito Corleone, is the Godfather. He is a benevolent despot who stops at nothing to gain and hold power. His command post is a fortress on Long Island from which he presides over a vast underground empire that includes the rackets, gambling, bookmaking, and unions. His influence runs through all levels of American society, from the cop on the beat to the nation's mighty.<br></p><p>Mario Puzo, a master storyteller, introduces us to unforgettable characters, and the elements of this world explode to life in this violent and impassioned chronicle. </p></div>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">Before The Godfather and The Last Don, there was Puzo's classic story about the loves, crimes and struggles confronted by one family of New York City immigrants living in Hell's Kitchen. Fresh from the farms in Italy, Lucia Santa struggles to hold her family together in a strange land. At turns poignant, comic and violent, The Fortunate Pilgrim is Italian-American fiction at its very best.</span></h3></div>


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


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


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A beautiful summer's evening in a Kent field and around their two caravans a group of strawberry pickers celebrates a birthday. But what lies behind the buy-one-get-one-free offers at your supermarket and who picks our strawberries? The Ukrainians: Irina, just off the coach from Kiev, and Andriy, the miner's son from the other Ukraine; the Poles: Tomasz and Yola; two Chinese girls; Emanuel, the round-eyed eighteen-year-old from Malawi. And although he can't pick strawberries, there's also the Dog... Hilarious, gritty, moving and slapstick, Two Caravans has every bit of the extraordinary distinctiveness, wit and heart that made A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian so successful.


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


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A young woman in 15th-century Italy must flee for her life after stumbling upon a deadly secret when she serves as a model for Botticelli in a rip-roaring novel that blends enticing mystery, historical intrigue and romantic adventure. Gloriously fresh and vivid, with a deliciously irreverent heroine, 'The Botticelli Secret' is a masterful concoction of enticing mystery, historical intrigue and romantic adventure. Resplendent fifteenth-century Italy is seen through the eyes of the gorgeous Luciana Vetra, part-time model and full-time prostitute. After a request from one of her most exalted clients to pose for a painter friend, Luciana agrees to model for the central figure of Flora in Botticelli's masterpiece 'Primavera' But when the artist dismisses her without payment, Luciana impulsively steals an unfinished version of the painting - only to find that friends and clients are slaughtered around her in an attempt to get it back. So Luciana turns to the one man who has never desired her beauty, novice monk Brother Guido Della Torre, to discover what could be so valuable about the painting. Fleeing Florence together, Luciana and Guido race through the seven cities of Renaissance Italy pursued by ruthless enemies who are determined to keep them from decoding the painting's secrets.


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<p><strong>Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award</strong><br /><strong>National Book Award Finalist</strong>  </p><hr /><p><strong>A new American classic from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of <em>Gilead </em>and <strong><em>**Housekeeping</em></strong><br /></strong><br />Marilynne Robinson, one of the greatest novelists of our time, returns to the town of Gilead in an unforgettable story of a girlhood lived on the fringes of society in fear, awe, and wonder.<br />Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church-the only available shelter from the rain-and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security.<br />Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood. Together they crafted a life on the run, living hand to mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a ragged blade to protect them. Despite bouts of petty violence and moments of desperation, their shared life was laced with moments of joy and love. When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to reconcile the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle Christian worldview of her husband which paradoxically judges those she loves.<br />Revisiting the beloved characters and setting of Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning <em>Gilead </em>and <em>Home</em>, a National Book Award finalist, <em>Lila</em> is a moving expression of the mysteries of existence that is destined to become an American classic.</p><p>**</p>


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<p><strong>Once, twice, ten times a bridesmaid!</strong></p><p>I, Dana Rose, do solemnly swear to say "I won't" the next time someone asks me to be in their wedding party. My weak will has gained me a closet full of unflattering bridesmaids' dresses in various sizes to accommodate my ever-fluctuating waistline.</p><p>As if that isn't enough, the past is paying me a most unwelcome visit (my prodigal brother, my back-stabbing sis). Then there's Mr. Practically Perfect, the ex who not only married someone else, but opened the business of <em>our</em> dreams -- right across from my new shop! It's no wonder I've got problems! I'm thankful I've got my friends, the Sassy Sisterhood, to rely on . . .</p><p><strong>The Sassy Sisterhood:<br />They get by with a little help from their friends.</strong></p><p>Marilyn Griffith is a deacon's wife and mother of seven children, whom she home schools. They live in Tallahassee, Florida.</p>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; ">Questions are at the core of how we listen, behave, think, and relate--as individuals and organizations. Virtually everything we think and do is generated by questions. Questions push us into new territories. The future begins with our thinking, represented by the questions we ask ourselves.</span></h3><p>"Change Your Questions, Change Your Life" shows readers how to consistently choose the questions that can lead them to success, both personally and professionally. This technique, called "QuestionsThinking," stimulates innovation, accelerate productivity, and create more rewarding relationships. </p><p>"Change Your Questions, Change Your Life" is a personal growth fable that tells how a seasoned executive, Ben Knight, uses QuestionThinking to move into a higher leadership role and how the same methods of change help him and his wife, Grace, enrich their marriage.D.</p></div>


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<p class="description">Recollections, wisdom, and advice from the beloved entertainer, American icon, mother of eight children, and New York Times bestselling author.When the Donny and Marie show ended its award-winning run on ABC in 1979, 19-year-old Marie was ready to leave the stage lights for a secretary's life—she had prepared to say “goodbye” to fleeting fame by studying shorthand and typing! Clearly, life took a different turn. Now, decades later and still a beloved superstar, Marie opens the door to her thoughts on many of her milestones and missteps, both the public and the personal. In a life brimming with a mixture of charm and chaos, blessings and hilarious bungles, victory and vulnerability, Marie recounts for her “family of fans” her greatest successes as well as her most crushing disappointments, career pressures and expectations, marriage and divorce, depression, weight issues, tough choices, honors and awards, and the incredible joys and challenges of raising children. Through it all, Marie has bounced back time and again with unstoppable enthusiasm, resilience, and an unbeatably healthy and positive outlook on life. In Might as Well Laugh About It Now, she imparts her insights on surviving all of life's roadblocks and detours in a collection of friendly musings and heartening advice about learning to survive— and moving forward—with humor and optimism.</p>


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<p class="description">What if the guy in the airplane seat next to you turned out to be the love of your life? Juliana, happy in her career as a hair stylist, is on her way to visit her boyfriend of ten years who's working out of state. She's wondering why they're not engaged yet. Michael is going to his fiance's parents' home for an engagement party he doesn't want. A states' prosecutor, he's about to try the biggest case of his career, he hates the distraction, and he's having doubts about the relationship. They sit together on the plane, and discover they're on the same flight coming back. When the weekend is a disaster for each of them, they bond on the plane ride home. But life is full of complications, including their exes, who don't want to let go, and when Michael's trial turns dangerous, the two must confront what they value most in life... Praise for Line of Scrimmage: "I will definitely be reading more Marie Force." -Revisiting the Moon's Library "It was a book that made me laugh as well as cry. The three-dimensional characters were so vivid... hands down, this is the best romance I've read this year." -J. Kaye's Book Blog "With its humor and endearing characters, Force's charming novel will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers, reaching far beyond sports fans."</p>


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<p class="description">"The Royal Society of London plays home to the greatest minds of England. It has revolutionized philosophy and scientific knowledge. Its fellows map out the laws of the natural world, disproving ancient superstition and ushering in an age of enlightenment. To the fae of the Onyx Court, living in a secret city below London, these scientific developments are less than welcome. Magic is losing its place in the world?and science threatens to expose the court to hostile eyes. In 1666, a Great Fire burned four-fifths of London to the ground. The calamity was caused by a great Dragon?an elemental beast of flame. Incapable of destroying something so powerful, the fae of London banished it to a comet moments before the comet?s light disappeared from the sky. Now the calculations of Sir Edmond Halley have predicted its return in 1759. So begins their race against time. Soon the Dragon?s gaze will fall upon London and it will return to the city it ravaged once before. The fae will have to answer the question that defeated them a century before: How can they kill a being more powerful than all their magic combined? It will take both magic and science to save London?but reconciling the two carries its own danger?</p>


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<p>Here are two vastly different landscapes: Peru—earthquake-prone, charged with ghosts of history and mythology—and the sprawling prairie lands of Wyoming. In these rich terrains resides a colorful cast of family members who bring Arana’s historia to life...her proud grandfather who one day simply stopped coming down the stairs; her dazzling grandmother, “clicking through the house as if she were making her way onstage.” But most important are Arana’s parents: he a brilliant engineer, she a gifted musician. For more than half a century these two passionate, strong-willed people struggled to overcome the bicultural tensions in their marriage and, finally, to prevail.</p>


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<p>Violet Parry is living the quintessential life of luxury in the Hollywood Hills with David, her rock-and-roll manager husband, and her darling toddler, Dot. She has the perfect life--except that she's deeply unhappy. David expects the world of Violet but gives little of himself in return. When she meets Teddy, a roguish small-time bass player, Violet comes alive, and soon she's risking everything for the chance to find herself again. Also in the picture are David's hilariously high-strung sister, Sally, on the prowl for a successful husband, and Jeremy, the ESPN sportscaster savant who falls into her trap. For all their recklessness, Violet and Sally will discover that David and Jeremy have a few surprises of their own. THIS ONE IS MINE is a compassionate and wickedly funny satire about our need for more--and the often disastrous choices we make in the name of happiness.</p>


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<div><p><strong>A leading reporter offers a tour of military working dogs' extraordinary training, heroic accomplishments, and the lasting impacts they have on those who work with them. </strong><br></p><p>People all over the world have been riveted by the story of Cairo, the Belgian Malinois who was a part of the Navy SEAL team that led the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound. A dog's natural intelligence, physical abilities, and pure loyalty contribute more to our military efforts than ever before. You don't have to be a dog lover to be fascinated by the idea that a dog-the cousin of that furry guy begging for scraps under your table-could be one of the heroes who helped execute the most vital and high-tech military mission of the new millennium.<br></p><p>Now Maria Goodavage, editor and featured writer for one of the world's most widely read dog blogs, tells heartwarming stories of modern soldier dogs and the amazing bonds that develop between them and their handlers. Beyond tales of training, operations, retirement, and adoption into the families of fallen soldiers, Goodavage talks to leading dog-cognition experts about why dogs like nothing more than to be on a mission with a handler they trust, no matter how deadly the IEDs they are sniffing, nor how far they must parachute or rappel from aircraft into enemy territory.<br></p><p>"Military working dogs live for love and praise from their handlers," says Ron Aiello, president of the United States War Dogs Association and a former marine scout dog handler. "The work is all a big game, and then they get that pet, that praise. They would do anything for their handler." This is an unprecedented window into the world of these adventurous, loving warriors.</p></div>


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<p>The experts at "Money" magazine offer sound advice on everything involved in buying a house, condo, or co-op in this clear, concise guide. This book helps consumers construct a winning game plan when purchasing a home that's also a financial investment. </p>


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<p class="description">A man hires a woman to spend several weeks with him by the sea. The woman is no one in particular, a "she," a warm, moist body with a beating heart-the enigma of Other. Skilled in the mechanics of sex, he desires through her to penetrate a different mystery: he wants to learn love. It isn't a matter of will, she tells him. Still, he wants to learn to try . . .This beautifully wrought erotic novel is an extended haiku on the meaning of love, "perhaps a sudden lapse in the logic of the universe," and of its absence, "the malady of death." "The whole tragedy of the inability to love is in this work, thanks to Duras' unparalleled art of reinventing the most familiar words, of weighing their meaning." - Le Monde; "Deceptively simple and Racinian in its purity, condensed to the essential.</p>


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<div><p>Margaret Mitchell's epic novel of love and war won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to give rise to two authorized sequels and one of the most popular and celebrated movies of all time.</p><p>Many novels have been written about the Civil War and its aftermath. None take us into the burning fields and cities of the American South as <em>Gone With the Wind</em> does, creating haunting scenes and thrilling portraits of characters so vivid that we remember their words and feel their fear and hunger for the rest of our lives.</p><p>In the two main characters, the white-shouldered, irresistible Scarlett and the flashy, contemptuous Rhett, Margaret Mitchell not only conveyed a timeless story of survival under the harshest of circumstances, she also created two of the most famous lovers in the English-speaking world since Romeo and Juliet.</p><p>A monumental classic considered by many to be not only the greatest love story ever written, but also the greatest Civil War saga. </p></div>


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A winter of discontent...January 1766. A dangerous mishap brings young widow Charlotte Willett unexpectedly to bleak and marshy Boar Island, a few miles from the village of Bracebridge and home to two eccentric elderly women. Some say that arrogant, unpopular Alexander Godwin — the only villager to regularly call upon the island's two residents — hopes to inherit the cavernous house when its owner finally passes on. But when Alexander is brutally murdered after the town's annual winter fête, Charlotte and her neighbor Richard Longfellow can't help but wonder who among Alexander's detractors might be responsible. Is his death connected to his activities on Boar Island — or to the unearthly trickery rumored to take place there? Could the rivalry over a beautiful young woman have sparked a more dangerous passion? And will the answers reveal themselves before death strikes Boar Island again?


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<p class="description">An epic of biblical proportions, The Year of the Flood is a feast of imagination and a journey to the end of the world. Adam One is the leader of the God's Gardeners, a religious group devoted to living under the command of the natural world. They wear beige cloth-sacks, cultivate mushrooms, harvest honey and curse each other by shouting: Pig-Eater! Their community is only tolerated by the CorpSeCorps, the ruling power, because they are not perceived as threatening. But, this is a world where gene-splicing is the norm; where lions and lambs have become Liobams and pigs have human DNA. The times, and species, are changing at a rapid rate, and with loyalites as thin as environmental stability, the future is a dangerous place. And, if the Waterless Flood does indeed arrive, as predicted by the Gardeners, will there even be a future to contemplate? Ren is a trapeze dancer at Scales and Tails, and can work a plank just as well. After a rip in her biofilm she is placed in solitary confinement until they can guarantee she is without disease. Her story is one part of our gateway into this uniquely constructed world. The other is Toby, an ex-counter-girl at SecretBurger ('Because we all love a Secret'), a natural cynic and source of extensive homeopathic knowledge; she knows her aminatas from her puffballs. Their stories weave beneath the holy teachings and saintly-songs of Adam One to create a truly apocalyptic vision, a world that harnesses Atwood's wit, dystopic imagination and sharp insight. The result is a collective blast of a novel and one that will remain with you until the Waterless Flood comes.</p>


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<div><p><em>The internationally acclaimed Myths series brings together some of the finest writers of our time to provide a contemporary take on some of our most enduring stories. Here, the timeless and universal tales that reflect and shape our lives–mirroring our fears and desires, helping us make sense of the world–are revisited, updated, and made new.<br></em><br>Margaret Atwood’s <em>Penelopiad<strong><em> <em>is a sharp, brilliant and tender revision of a story at the heart of our culture:</em> <em>the myths about Penelope and Odysseus. In Homer’s familiar version, </em>*The Odyssey</em></strong>,* Penelope is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes to fight in the Trojan Wars, she manages to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son and, in the face of scandalous rumours, keep over a hundred suitors at bay. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters and sleeping with goddesses, he kills Penelope’s suitors and–curiously–twelve of her maids.<br></em></p><em><p>In Homer the hanging of the maids merits only a fleeting though poignant mention, but Atwood comments in her introduction that she has always been haunted by those deaths. <strong>The Penelopiad</strong>, she adds,<em> </em>begins with two questions: what led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? In the book, these subjects are explored by Penelope herself–telling the story from Hades — the Greek afterworld <strong>-</strong> in wry, sometimes acid tones. But Penelope’s maids also figure as a singing and dancing chorus (and chorus line)<strong>,</strong> commenting on the action in poems, songs,an anthropology lecture and even a videotaped trial. <br></p><p><em>The Penelopiad</em> does several dazzling things at once. First, it delves into a moment of casual brutality and reveals all that the act contains: a practice of sexual violence and gender prejudice our society has not outgrown. But it is also a daring interrogation of Homer’s poem, and its counter-narratives — which draw on mythic material not used by Homer <strong>- </strong>cleverly unbalance the original. This is the case throughout, from the unsettling questions that drive Penelope’s tale forward, to more comic doubts about some of <strong>The Odyssey</strong>’s most famous episodes. (“Odysseus had been in a fight with a giant one-eyed Cyclops, said some; no, it was only a one-eyed tavern keeper, said another, and the fight was over non-payment of the bill.”)<br></p><p>In fact, <strong>The Penelopiad<strong><em> <em>weaves and unweaves the texture of </em>*The Odyssey</em></strong> *in several searching ways. </strong>The Odyssey<strong><em> <em>was originally a set of songs, for example; the new version’s ballads and idylls complement and clash with the original. Thinking more about theme, the maids’ voices add a new and unsettling complex of emotions that is missing from Homer. </em>*The Penelopiad</em></strong> *takes what was marginal and brings it to the centre, where one can see its full complexity. <br></p><p>The same goes for its heroine. Penelope is an important figure in our literary culture, but we have seldom heard her speak for herself. Her sometimes scathing comments in <strong>The Penelopiad </strong>(about her cousin, Helen of Troy, for example) make us think of Penelope differently – and the way she talks about the twenty-first century, which she observes from Hades, makes us see ourselves anew too. <br></p><p>Margaret Atwood is an astonishing storyteller, and <strong>The Penelopiad</strong><em> </em>is, most of all, a haunting and deeply entertaining story. This book plumbs murder and memory, guilt and deceit, in a wise and passionate manner. At time hilarious and at times deeply thought-provoking, it is very much a Myth for our times. </p></em></div>


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A lush, seductive novel of the legendary beauty whose face “launched a thousand ships”  Daughter of a god, wife of a king, prize of antiquity's bloodiest war, Helen of Troy has inspired artists for millennia. Now Margaret George, the highly acclaimed bestselling historical novelist, has turned her intelligent, perceptive eye to the myth that is Helen of Troy.  Margaret George breathes new life into the great Homeric tale by having Helen narrate her own story. Through her eyes and in her voice, we experience the young Helen's discovery of her divine origin and her terrifying beauty. While hardly more than a girl, Helen married the remote Spartan king Menelaus and bore him a daughter. By the age of twenty, the world's most beautiful woman was resigned to a passionless marriage—until she encountered the handsome Trojan prince Paris. And once the lovers flee to Troy, war, murder, and tragedy become inevitable.  In Helen of Troy, Margaret George has captured a timeless legend in a mesmerizing tale of a woman whose life was destined to create strife—and destroy civilizations.


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<p class="description">In June 2005 four US Navy SEALs left their base in Afghanistan for the Pakistani border. Their mission was to capture or kill a notorious al Qaeda leader known to be ensconced in a Taliban stronghold surrounded by a small but heavily armed force. Less than twenty-four hours later, only one of those Navy SEALs was alive.This is the story of team leader Marcus Luttrell, the sole survivor of Operation Redwing, but it is also the story of his team who fought ferociously beside him until he was the last one left, blasted unconscious by a rocket grenade, blown over a cliff, but still armed and still breathing.Over the next four days, badly injured and presumed dead, Luttrell fought off six al Qaeda assassins who were sent to finish him off, then crawled for seven miles through the mountains before he was taken in a a Pashtun tribe who risked everything to protect him from the circling Taliban killers.</p>


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<p class="description">The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura?s story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact.</p>


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<p>Reminiscent of <em>Frankenstein</em> and tales by the Brothers Grimm, this debut novel stands out as a compelling, original story that has the feel of a classic.</p><p>The city of Bryre suffers under the magic of an evil wizard. Because of his curse, girls sicken and disappear without a trace, and all live in fear. No one is allowed outside after dark. Night is when Kymera comes to the city, with a cloak disguising her wings, the bolts in her neck, and her spiky tail. Her mission is to rescue the girls of Bryre. Despite Kym's caution in going secretively, a boy named Ren sees and befriends her . . . but what he knows will change her world forever.</p><p>**</p>


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The two towering achievements of modern physics are quantum theory and Einsteins general theory of relativity. But, almost a century after their advent, most people havent the slightest clue what either is about. Did you know that theres so much empty space inside matter that the entire human race could be squeezed into the volume of a sugar cube? Or that you grow old more quickly on the top floor of a building than on the ground floor? Get set for the most entertaining science book of the year.


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<p class="description">A Comanche whos been in the white world for the last several years struggles to come to terms with his heritage while investigating the wrongful hanging of his best friend.</p>


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<p class="description">Book Description From one of our most acclaimed science writers: a dramatic narrative of the discovery of the true nature and startling size of the universe, delving back past the moment of revelation to trace the decades of work--by a select group of scientists--that made it possible. On January 1, 1925, thity-five-year-old Edwin Hubble announced findings that ultimately established that our universe was a thousand trillion times larger than previously believed, filled with myriad galaxies like our own. It was a realization that reshaped how humans understood their place in the cosmos. Six years later, continuing research by Hubble and others forced Albert Einstein to renounce his own cosmic model and finally accept the astonishing fact that the universe was not immobile but instead expanding. The story of these interwoven discoveries includes battles of will, clever insights, and wrong turns made by the early investigators in this great twentieth-century pursuit, from the luminaries (Einstein, Hubble, Harlow Shapley) to the lesser known: Henrietta Leavitt, who discovered the means to measure the vast dimensions of the cosmos . . . Vesto Slipher, the first and unheralded discoverer of the universe’s expansion... Georges Lemaître, the Jesuit priest who correctly interpreted Einstein’s theories in relation to the universe... Milton Humason, who, with only an eighth-grade education, became a world-renowned expert on galaxy motions... and others. Here is the watershed moment in our cosmic history, splendidly arising from the exceptional combination of human curiosity, intelligence, and enterprise. Amazon Exclusive: A Q&amp;A with Marcia Bartusiak Question: Was there really a single day when the modern universe was revealed? Marcia Bartusiak: In some ways there was a unique day: January 1, 1925, at the height of the Roaring Twenties. That’s the day when astronomer Edwin Hubble finally announced that the Milky Way was not alone but surrounded by sister galaxies just like our own. Eventually, Hubble directed our eyes to hundreds of billions of other galaxies, scattered like separate atoms through an ever-expanding space. It was the astronomical news of the century, if not of all astronomical history. Q: In your book Hubble turns out to be a more complex character than portrayed in most astronomy books. MB: He was an odd bird, but certainly a handsome one. Friends called him an Adonis. I think he resembles the British actor Jeremy Irons. Raised in Missouri, in a solid middle-class household, Hubble somewhere along the line yearned to be singular and distinct. Once he graduated from the University of Chicago, he went to Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, where he completely reinvented himself; he adopted a British accent that he maintained for the rest of his life, dressed like a dandy, and began to add dubious credentials to his resume, like saying he once practiced law, which he never did. He married into a rich Los Angeles family, and throughout his life seemed intent on erasing his Midwestern roots. His wife never met Hubble’s mother or siblings. Hubble was not chums with his astronomy colleagues but preferred to socialize with the actors and writers in nearby Hollywood. One astronomer called Hubble, often arrogant and standoffish, a “stuffed shirt.” Yet, while Hubble fibbed to his friends about his background, he was meticulously careful about his science. In fact, when he obtained the first evidence in early 1924 that the Andromeda nebula was truly a distant galaxy, he held off an official report for almost a year. He first wanted to counter every possible argument against his find. Being caught in a scientific error was Hubble’s greatest nightmare. And when he did finally release the data at that astronomy meeting on New Year’s Day in 1925, after a lot of arm-twisting from his colleagues, he wasn’t even there. He had someone else relay the findings. Q: The Day We Fond the Universe informs us that there were numerous important figures whose efforts contributed to this monumental discovery—that Hubble didn’t do it alone as the textbooks today seem to imply. MB: Not at all. This is a far richer story--filled with trials and errors, serendipitous breaks, battle of wills, and missed opportunities. Several astronomers could have snatched victory years before Hubble but for various reasons didn’t. However, they constructed the firm foundation that allowed Hubble to step in and make his great discoveries, revealing the modern universe as we know it today. Q: Who are some of those other astronomers? MB: The first was James Keeler, then director of the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton in California near San Jose, the first observatory in the world to place a gigantic telescope at high elevation. Its lenses were a yard wide. But Keeler chose to spend his time at a smaller telescope, which every other astronomer on his staff despised. He fixed it up and began to discover that there were tens of thousands of faint, disklike nebulae arrayed over the celestial sky. This was in 1899. At the time most astronomers thought these spiraling clouds were baby solar systems in the making. If he had continued, Keeler had a good chance of revealing they were actually galaxies, other Milky Ways. He had the smarts (he was one of the best astronomers in his day) and he had the equipment. But he died at the age of 42, likely of lung cancer. He was never seen without a cigar in his mouth. If he had lived, it might have been the “Keeler Space Telescope” now orbiting the Earth. Q: Didn’t anyone follow-up? MB: Not right away, oddly enough. Most astronomers at this time were primarily concerned with the Sun and stars. The study of nebulae was not popular. It wasn’t until the 1910s that Heber Curtis, another Lick Observatory astronomer, went back to the same telescope that Keeler used and advanced this work. He found so many new nebulae that he estimated there were at least a million around the sky. Moreover, he began to report that they were indeed distant galaxies. He told one reporter that one he sighted had to be 20 million light-years away, an astounding distance for its time. Q: So why don’t we remember Curtis as the discoverer of the modern universe? MB: Because all the evidence Curtis gathered was merely circumstantial. Astronomers were waiting for a “slam dunk.” The novae, or sudden flare-ups, that occasionally appeared in these spiraling nebulae suggested they were far-off, since the novae were so faint when compared to the ones that pop off in our own Milky Way. But no one was sure. Some of the novae were so bright, there wasn’t any physics to explain the phenomena. This was before astronomers understood that stars could completely explode. Curtis was on the verge of solving the mystery, but he took himself out of the game when he accepted the directorship of an observatory in Pennsylvania, where the nighttime skies were so bad that he could no longer compete. What was needed to resolve the problem was an undeniable distance measurement out to those nebulae. It required a cosmic yardstick, but none was available. And that’s where an interesting woman, Henrietta Leavitt, comes in. Q: The role of women in astronomical history is prominent in your work. What are the parallels between their experiences and those of contemporary female researchers? MB: It was a far different time for women in the sciences at that time. Women astronomers weren’t allowed to observe on the major university telescopes. It was considered unseemly to have women and men work together on an isolated mountaintop. At Harvard, for example, women were mainly relegated to being what were called “computers”—staying in offices, scanning photographic plates and recording each star’s position, luminosity, and spectrum. Yet it was immensely valuable work. In the course of it, Henrietta Leavitt astutely discovered the celestial Rosetta Stone that later allowed Hubble to make his great discoveries. In 1912 she found a unique pattern to the blinking of variable stars called Cepheids. These are stars that repeatedly brighten and dim over a matter of days, weeks, or months. She revealed that the brighter Cepheids had the slower periods; the dimmer ones were faster. That meant you could follow the Cepheid’s change from afar, determine its period, which would let you know how bright the star is and hence how far away it was. Harlow Shapley, a young up-and-comer at the new Mount Wilson Observatory in southern California, was the first to take advantage of this wonderful new yardstick, discovering that the Milky Way was far larger than anyone had ever suspected. Ten times larger. It was now 1918, and Shapley could have continued outward, determining the distances to those mysterious spiral nebulae and beaten Hubble to the brass ring--but he didn’t. Q: Why not? MB: Because Shapley was mulishly wedded to his own vision of the universe. To him, the Milky Way was so big that its borders defined the very boundaries of the universe. The spiral nebulae were mere appendages. He saw no reason to study them. He regretted that blunder for the rest of his life. Hubble had by then arrived at Mount Wilson, and at first stood in Shapley’s shadow. Shapley was the golden boy of astronomy for his remake of the Milky Way. The two astronomers never got along, throughout their professional careers. Shapley, also from Missouri, retained his brassy and chummy country ways. Hubble’s affectation for wearing jodhpurs, leather puttees, and a beret while observing or going around and saying “Bah Jove” was simply too much for Shapley to bear. To Hubble’s relief, Shapley soon left Mount Wilson to become director of the Harvard College Observatory, which allowed Hubble to focus on the spiral nebulae and make his great discovery. Q: How did Hubble go on to see the universe expanding? MB: Well, that’s where the standard textbooks don’t get the story quite right. There was another astronomer, by the name of Vesto</p>


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


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; "><em>. . . In Cold Blood, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The Armies of the Night . . .</em></span></h3><p>Starting in 1965 and spanning a ten-year period, a group of writers including Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, John Sack, and Michael Herr emerged and joined a few of their pioneering elders, including Truman Capote and Norman Mailer, to remake American letters. The perfect chroniclers of an age of frenzied cultural change, they were blessed with the insight that traditional tools of reporting would prove inadequate to tell the story of a nation manically hopscotching from hope to doom and back again—from war to rock, assassination to drugs, hippies to Yippies, Kennedy to the dark lord Nixon. Traditional just-the-facts reporting simply couldn’t provide a neat and symmetrical order to this chaos.  </p><p>Marc Weingarten has interviewed many of the major players to provide a startling behind-the-scenes account of the rise and fall of the most revolutionary literary outpouring of the postwar era, set against the backdrop of some of the most turbulent—and significant—years in contemporary American life. These are the stories behind those stories, from Tom Wolfe’s white-suited adventures in the counterculture to Hunter S. Thompson’s drug-addled invention of gonzo to Michael Herr’s redefinition of war reporting in the hell of Vietnam. Weingarten also tells the deeper backstory, recounting the rich and surprising history of the editors and the magazines who made the movement possible, notably the three greatest editors of the era—Harold Hayes at <em>Esquire</em>, Clay Felker at <em>New York</em>, and Jann Wenner at <em>Rolling Stone</em>. And finally Weingarten takes us through the demise of the New Journalists, a tragedy of hubris, miscalculation, and corporate menacing.  </p><p>This is the story of perhaps the last great good time in American journalism, a time when writers didn’t just cover stories but immersed themselves in them, and when journalism didn’t just report America but reshaped it.</p><p><em></em></p></div>


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<p>Steve McQueen is one of America’s legendary movie stars best known for his hugely successful film career in classics such as <em>The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt,</em> and <em>The Towering Inferno</em> as well as for his turbulent life off-screen and impeccable style. His unforgettable physical beauty, his soft-spoken manner, his tough but tender roughness, and his aching vulnerability had women swooning and men wanting to be just like him. Today—nearly thirty years after he lost his battle against cancer at the age of fifty—McQueen remains “The King of Cool.” Yet, few know the truth of what bubbled beneath his composed exterior and shaped his career, his passions, and his private life.  <br><br>Now, in <em>Steve McQueen,</em> <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author, acclaimed biographer, and film historian, Marc Eliot captures the complexity of this Hollywood screen legend. Chronicling McQueen’s tumultuous life both on and off the screen, from his hardscrabble childhood to his rise to Hollywood superstar status, to his struggles with alcohol and drugs and his fervor for racing fast cars and motorcycles, Eliot discloses intimate details of McQueen’s three marriages, including his tumultuous relationships with Neile Adams and Ali MacGraw, as well as his numerous affairs. He also paints a full portrait of this incredible yet often perplexing career that ranged from great films to embarrassing misfires. Steve McQueen, adored by millions, was obsessed by Paul Newman, and it is the nature of that obsession that reveals so much about who McQueen really was. Perhaps his greatest talent was to be able to convince audiences that he was who he really wasn’t, even as he tried to prove to himself that he wasn’t who he really was.<br><br>With original material, rare photos, and new interviews, Eliot presents a fascinating and complete picture of McQueen’s life.</p>


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<div><p>He is Hollywood’s most fascinating and timeless star. Although he came to personify the debonair American, Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach on January 18, 1904, in the seaport village of Bristol, England. Combining the captivating beauty of silent-screen legend Rudolph Valentino with the masculine irresistibility of Clark Gable, Grant emerged as Hollywood’s quintessential leading man. Today, “the man from dream city,” as critic Pauline Kael once described him, remains forever young, an icon of quick wit, romantic charm, and urbane sophistication, the epitome of male physical perfection. Yet beneath this idealized movie image was a conflicted man struggling to balance fame with a desire for an intensely private life separate from the “Cary Grant” persona celebrated by directors and movie studios. </p><p>Exploring Grant’s troubled childhood, ambiguous sexuality, and lifelong insecurities as well as the magical amalgam of characteristics that allowed him to remain Hollywood’s favorite romantic lead for more than thirty-five years, Cary Grant is the definitive examination of every aspect of Grant’s professional and private life, and the first to reveal the man behind the movie star.<br></p><p>Working with the most talented directors of his time, Grant starred in an astonishing seventy-two films, ranging from his groundbreaking comedic roles in such classics as Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks) and The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor) to the darker, unforgettable characters of Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion and Notorious, culminating in the consummate sophisticates of An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey), North by Northwest (Hitchcock), and Charade (Stanley Donen). The camera loved Grant, and his magnetism helped illuminate his leading ladies, some of the most glamorous women ever to grace the silver screen: Mae West, Irene Dunne, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, and Sophia Loren, among others. Yet, because of his pioneering role as an independent player, Grant was repeatedly denied the Oscar he coveted—a snub from the Academy that would last until 1970, when he graciously accepted a special lifetime achievement award.<br></p><p>Grant’s sparkling image on-screen hid a tumultuous personal life that he tried desperately to keep out of the public eye, including his controversial eleven-year relationship with Randolph Scott, five marriages, and numerous affairs.<br></p><p>Rigorously researched and elegantly written, <strong>Cary Grant: A Biography</strong> is a complete, nuanced portrait of the greatest Hollywood star in cinema history.</p></div>


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<p class="description">In this inspirational call to action, Marc Bekoff, the world’s leading expert on animal emotions, gently shows that improving our treatment of animals is a matter of rethinking our many daily decisions and “expanding our compassion footprint.” He demonstrates that animals experience a rich range of emotions, including empathy and compassion, and that they clearly know right from wrong. Driven by moral imperatives and pressing environmental realities, Bekoff offers six compelling reasons for changing the way we treat animals — whether they’re in factory farms, labs, circuses, or our vanishing wilderness. The result is a well-researched, informative guide that will change animal and human lives for the better.</p>


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<div><p></p><p>Jess Mackey is living a meticulously fabricated lie of necessity. She's left the secret tragedy of her past behind along with who she was and is forging ahead with a clean slate. Jess soon discovers that passion can't be left behind; her own and that of the one man that sees who she really is. Whose presence caresses her soul in a way that may breach the peaceful life Jess has made for herself.</p><p>Devin Castile sees a young woman that is the missing puzzle piece to his existence and who is also the victim to a heinous crime. Devin convinces himself that he can remain emotionally distant even while indulging his physical desire for her. When the lies that Jess has made crumble before their attraction and the truth is revealed, one of them might pay with their life... or their very being.</p><p><em>Due to sexual content, language and violence, this book is recommended for 17+ - New Adult -Contemporary Women's Fiction.</em></p><h3>From the Author</h3><p>New York Times and USA Today bestselling author,Tamara Rose Blodgett, writes dark romantic erotica under the pen name Marata Eros. She is a passionate reader who loves interacting with her readers and is more grateful than she can express for their support. Tamara is currently writing the companion novel to A TERRIBLE LOVE; A BRUTAL TENDERNESS, coming soon!</p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>BLOG: marataeroseroticaauthor.blogspot.com </p></div>


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<div><p>At a meeting of the central committee of Spain's Communist Party, in a room both locked and guarded, general secretary Fernando Garrido is stabbed to death. But the Party refuses to believe it was an inside job.</p><p>They turn to former member Pepe Carvalho. But he’s soon out of his depth in unfamiliar Madrid, where he spends nearly as much time investigating the chorizo, lamb-kidneys, and tripe, and the uninspiring selection of wine on offer, as he does murder.</p><p>With time out for his signature book burning (Engels’s <em>The Housing Question</em>), cooking (shellfish risotto), and an ill-advised bajativo (cognac, crème de menthe) inspired romp with Gladys, Pepe Carvalho leads a wry and cynical tour through the labyrinth of post-Fascist Spanish politics amid violent jostling for power.</p></div>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; "><strong>Years in the making-the definitive biography of the legendary black activist.</strong></span></h3><p>Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world.   </p><p>Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the <em>Autobiography, Malcolm X</em> unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. <em>Malcolm X</em> will stand as the definitive work on one of the most singular forces for social change, capturing with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.</p></div>


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<p>For most people, quantum theory is a byword for mysterious, impenetrable science. And yet for many years it was equally baffling for scientists themselves. This work presents the history of this fundamental scientific revolution. It focuses on the conflict between Einstein and Bohr over the nature of reality and the soul of science.</p>


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Award-winning screenwriter Malla Nunn delivers a stunning and darkly romantic crime novel set in 1950s apartheid South Africa, featuring Detective Emmanuel Cooper -- a man caught up in a time and place where racial tensions and the raw hunger for power make life very dangerous indeed.In a morally complex tale rich with authenticity, Nunn takes readers to Jacob's Rest, a tiny town on the border between South Africa and Mozambique. It is 1952, and new apartheid laws have recently gone into effect, dividing a nation into black and white while supposedly healing the political rifts between the Afrikaners and the English. Tensions simmer as the fault line between the oppressed and the oppressors cuts deeper, but it's not until an Afrikaner police officer is found dead that emotions more dangerous than anyone thought possible boil to the surface.When Detective Emmanuel Cooper, an Englishman, begins investigating the murder, his mission is preempted by the powerful police Security Branch, who are dedicated to their campaign to flush out black communist radicals. But Detective Cooper isn't interested in political expediency and has never been one for making friends. He may be modest, but he radiates intelligence and certainly won't be getting on his knees before those in power. Instead, he strikes out on his own, following a trail of clues that lead him to uncover a shocking forbidden love and the imperfect life of Captain Pretorius, a man whose relationships with the black and coloured residents of the town he ruled were more complicated and more human than anyone could have imagined.The first in her Detective Emmanuel Cooper series, A Beautiful Place to Die marks the debut of a talented writer who reads like a brilliant combination of Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene. It is a tale of murder, passion, corruption, and the corrosive double standard that defined an apartheid nation. I


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<p class="description">Through a life of passion and struggle, Malcolm X became one of the most influential figures of the 20th Century. In this riveting account, he tells of his journey from a prison cell to Mecca, describing his transition from hoodlum to Muslim minister. Here, the man who called himself "the angriest Black man in America" relates how his conversion to true Islam helped him confront his rage and recognize the brotherhood of all mankind. An established classic of modern America, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" was hailed by the New York Times as "Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book." Still extraordinary, still important, this electrifying story has transformed Malcom X's life into his legacy. The strength of his words, the power of his ideas continue to resonate more than a generation after they first appeared.</p>


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<p class="description">What is the difference between choking and panicking? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard-but only one variety of ketchup? What do football players teach us about how to hire teachers? What does hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century? In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books that have radically changed how we understand our world and ourselves: The Tipping Point; Blink; and Outliers. Now, in What the Dog Saw, he brings together, for the first time, the best of his writing from TheNew Yorker over the same period. Here is the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill, and the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz. Gladwell sits with Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen, as he sells rotisserie ovens, and divines the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer" who can calm savage animals with the touch of his hand. He explores intelligence tests and ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias" and why it was that everyone in Silicon Valley once tripped over themselves to hire the same college graduate. "Good writing," Gladwell says in his preface, "does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head."What the Dog Saw is yet another example of the buoyant spirit and unflagging curiosity that have made Malcolm Gladwell our most brilliant investigator of the hidden extraordinary.</p>


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<p class="description">The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.</p>


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<p>In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band. <br />Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate. </p>


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<div><p><strong>Malcolm Gladwell, the #1 bestselling author of <em>The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, </em>and <em>What the Dog Saw,</em> offers his most provocative---and dazzling---book yet.<br></strong><br>Three thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty warrior with nothing more than a stone and a sling, and ever since then the names of David and Goliath have stood for battles between underdogs and giants. David's victory was improbable and miraculous. He <em>shouldn't </em>have won.   </p><p>Or should he have?   </p><p>In <em>David and Goliath</em>, Malcolm Gladwell<em> </em>challenges how we think about obstacles and disadvantages, offering a new interpretation of what it means to be discriminated against, or cope with a disability, or lose a parent, or attend a mediocre school, or suffer from any number of other apparent setbacks.  </p><p>Gladwell begins with the <em>real</em> story of what happened between the giant and the shepherd boy those many years ago. From there, <em>David and Goliath</em> examines Northern Ireland's Troubles, the minds of cancer researchers and civil rights leaders, murder and the high costs of revenge, and the dynamics of successful and unsuccessful classrooms---all to demonstrate how much of what is beautiful and important in the world arises from what looks like suffering and adversity.   </p><p>In the tradition of Gladwell's previous bestsellers---<em>The Tipping Point</em>, <em>Blink</em>, <em>Outliers</em> and <em>What the Dog Saw---</em><em>David and Goliath</em> draws upon history, psychology, and powerful storytelling to reshape the way we think of the world around us.</p><h3>Review</h3><p><strong>Praise for <em>Outliers</em>:<br></strong><br>"In the vast world of nonfiction writing, Malcolm Gladwell is as close to a singular talent as exists today...<em>Outliers</em> is a pleasure to read and leaves you mulling over its inventive theories for days afterward." (<strong><em>New York Times Book Review</em></strong> <strong><em>David Leonhardt</em></strong>)  </p><p>"The explosively entertaining <em>Outliers</em> might be Gladwell's best and most useful work yet...There are both brilliant yarns and life lessons here: <em>Outliers </em>is riveting science, self-help, and entertainment, all in one book." (<strong><em>Entertainment Weekly</em></strong> <strong><em>Gregory Kirschling</em></strong>)  </p><p>"No other book I read this year combines such a distinctive prose style with truly thought-provoking content. Gladwell writes with a high degree of dazzle but at the same time remains as clear and direct as even Strunk or White could hope for." (<strong><em>Atlanta Journal Constitution</em></strong>)  </p><p>"[An] important new book...Gladwell intelligently captures a larger tendency of thought-the growing appreciation of the power of cultural patterns, social contagions, memes...Gladwell's social determinism is a useful corrective to the Homo economicus view of human nature." (<strong><em>New York Times</em></strong> <strong><em>David Brooks</em></strong>)  </p><p>"Thought-provoking, entertaining, and irresistibly debatable...[<em>Outliers</em>] is another winner from this agile social observer." (<strong><em>Christian Science Monitor</em></strong> <strong><em>Heller McAlpin</em></strong>)  </p><p>"<em>Outliers</em> is required reading for boardroom and watercooler crowds alike." (<strong><em>Men's Health</em></strong>)  </p><p>"In <em>Outliers</em>, Gladwell (<em>The Tipping Point</em>) once again proves masterful in a genre he essentially pioneered-the book that illuminates secret patterns behind everyday phenomena." (<strong><em>Publishers Weekly</em></strong>)  </p><p><strong>Praise for <em>The Tipping Point</em>:<br></strong><br>"A fascinating book that makes you see the world in a different way." (<strong><em>Fortune</em></strong>)  </p><p>"Gladwell's theories could be used to run businesses more effectively, to turn products into runaway bestsellers, and perhaps most important, to alter human behavior." (<strong><em>New York Times</em></strong>)  </p><p><strong>Praise for <em>Blink</em>:</strong>  </p><p>"A real pleasure...Brims with surprising insights about our world and ourselves." (<strong>Salon.com</strong>)  </p><p>"Intoxicating. Gladwell is an engaging writer and a first-rate tour guide." (<strong><em>Los Angeles Times</em></strong> <strong><em>Thane Rosenbaum</em></strong>)  </p><p>"<em>Blink</em> moves quickly through a series of delightful stories. Always dazzling us with fascinating information and phenomena." (<strong><em>New York Times Book Review</em></strong> <strong><em>David Brooks</em></strong>) </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer at <em>The</em> <em>New Yorker </em>since 1996. He is the author of <em>The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers,</em> and <em>What the Dog Saw. </em>Prior to joining <em>The New Yorker, </em>he was a reporter at the <em>Washington Post. </em>Gladwell was born in England and grew up in rural Ontario. He now lives in New York. </p></div>


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<div><p>In his landmark bestseller <em>The Tipping Point</em>, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in <em>Blink</em>, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within.<br></p><p>Blink *is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant-in the blink of an eye-that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work-in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?<br></p><p>In <em>Blink </em>we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. <br></p><p><em>Blink </em>reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing"-filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.</p></div>


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<div><p>Maggie Shipstead’s <em>Seating Arrangements</em> is a stunning debut, an irresistible social satire that is also an unforgettable meditation on the persistence of hope, the yearning for connection, and the promise of enduring love.<br></p><p>Winn Van Meter is heading for his family’s retreat on the pristine New England island of Waskeke. Normally a haven of calm, for the next three days this sanctuary will be overrun by tipsy revelers as Winn prepares for the marriage of his daughter Daphne to the affable young scion Greyson Duff.  Winn’s wife, Biddy, has planned the wedding with military precision, but arrangements are sideswept by a storm of salacious misbehavior and intractable lust: Daphne’s sister, Livia, who has recently had her heart broken by Teddy Fenn, the son of her father’s oldest rival, is an eager target for the seductive wiles of Greyson’s best man; Winn, instead of reveling in his patriarchal duties, is tormented by his long-standing crush on Daphne’s beguiling bridesmaid Agatha; and the bride and groom find themselves presiding over a spectacle of misplaced desire, marital infidelity, and monumental loss of faith in the rituals of American life. <br></p><p>Hilarious, keenly intelligent, and commandingly well written, Shipstead’s deceptively frothy first novel is a piercing rumination on desire, on love and its obligations, and on the dangers of leading an inauthentic life, heralding the debut of an exciting new literary voice. </p></div>


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<div><p>When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.  </p><p>On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.   </p><p>Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize.  </p><p>I AM MALALA<em> </em>is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.  </p><p>I AM MALALA<em> </em>will make you believe in the power of one person's voice to inspire change in the world.</p><p>**</p></div>


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


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A funny thing happened on the way to Kathy Griffin's skyrocketing stardom. The more she told stories about her mother, Maggie, in her stand-up act and on her Emmy-winning television show, Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, the more popular her mother became. (At the mere mention of Maggie, a stadium full of fans will cheer, "Tip It! Tip It!") Shocked by Kathy, exasperated by Kathy, grudgingly amused by Kathy, and at the end of the day, always a loving mother to Kathy, Maggie Griffin has become the darling Gracie to Kathy's George Burns, the wry Cher to Kathy's Sonny Bono, the spry, sweet Roadrunner to Kathy's Wile E. Coyote. Maggie Griffin grew up in Chicago, the youngest of sixteen children born to Irish immigrant parents. She met Johnny, the love of her life, in Chicago, started dating him after high school (while working at the Form Fit Bra factory in the returns department), and they fell in love and married during the War. Together they raised five children, the youngest a cutie named Kathleen, who never gave them a moment's trouble throughout her childhood-though it's been payback time ever since. As Kathy's comedy career took off, more and more stories of Maggie magically worked their way into Kathy's routines. And as a regular on Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, Maggie takes more guff from her daughter than any other mom on national television. Well, after having her life put on comic display by the loudmouthed redhead she fed, clothed, and cared for well into the comedian's adulthood, Maggie finally has the floor, and she has some business to share with you. So get out your Franzia, stir up some Hamburger Helper, and dive into the world according to Maggie.


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<p class="description">You’d think, now that she’s off the hook for murder, that Alison, an English professor at a cushy college campus just north of chaotic New York City, would be able to relax. But how can she, with a wedding in the works? A Ph.D can only go so far… The recently-divorced Alison couldn’t be happier for her best friend, the bride Max. The problem is with the groom. Namely, his best man: the stunningly handsome yet technically married NYPD homicide detective Bobby Crawford. Alison just can’t stop day-dreaming about him—until a new nightmare unfolds. Alison’s ex-husband has just turned up dead. And now that’s she’s being dragged into another murder investigation—his time, involving the Mob-boss parent of a student—Bobby might be the only man she can trust with her life. But will he ever make Alison his wife? With a killer on the loose, the pursuit of happiness may just have to wait…</p>


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<p>When a new highway threatens to bypass the town of Rossmore and cut through Whitethorn Woods, everyone has a passionate opinion about whether the town will benefit or suffer. But young Father Flynn is most concerned with the fate of St. Ann’s Well, which is set at the edge of the woods and slated for destruction. People have been coming to St. Ann’s for generations to share their dreams and fears, and speak their prayers. Some believe it to be a place of true spiritual power, demanding protection; others think it’s a mere magnet for superstitions, easily sacrificed. <br><br>Father Flynn listens to all those caught up in the conflict, as the men and women of Whitethorn Woods must decide between the traditions of the past and the promises of the future.</p>


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<div><p>In this extraordinary collection of stories, the <em>New York Times</em>-bestselling author of <em>Evening Class</em> and <em>This Year It Will Be Different</em> once again reveals her incomparable understanding of matters of the heart. In <em>The Return Journey,</em> Maeve Binchy brings us sons and lovers, daughters and strangers, husbands and wives in their infinite variety--powerfully compelling stories of love, loss, revelation, and reconciliation.<br></p><p>A secretary's silent passion for her boss meets the acid test on a business trip....A man and a woman's mutual disdain at first sight shows how deceptive appearances can be....An insecure wife clings to the illusion of order, only to discover chaos at the hands of a house sitter who opens the wrong doors....A pair of star-crossed travelers take each other's bags, and then learn that when you unlock a stranger's suitcase, you enter a stranger's life. In their company are many more, whose poignant, ironic, often humorous stories--unforgettable slices of life--make up <em>The Return Journey,</em> a spellbinding trip into the human heart.</p></div>


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<p>Every day, millions of people travel on London’s Underground, yet everyday life is not nearly as mundane as we think. At Notting Hill, the secretary, harbouring her secrets travels to work; at Highbury and Islington, Adam has a sudden change of heart; at Holborn, a disastrous reunion is about to take place. With her characteristic mix of humour and biting realism, Maeve Binchy enters the lives of ordinary people.</p>


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<p class="description">Warm, humorous, sad and happy, this delightful collection set in Australia and around the world shows Maeve Binchy weaving her story-telling magic. Families, friends, lovers and the lonely - Binchy draws us into their lives with wisdom and generosity. * Frankie uses an unexpected trip with Robert to find out what she really wants from their relationship.* Victor, a self-confessed hopeless romantic, accompanies a friend to Australia with no thought of love on his mind.* Ethel is assured by her family that this year the usual massive Christmas organisation won't be entirely up to her, that this year it will be different.* Nick and Janet meet at the Sydney Fish Markets...everything seems perfect, what could go wrong?* Victoria imagines what it would mean to her widowed father to join her in his beloved Paris for a weekend. These wonderful stories will thrill readers already familiar with Binchy's work as well as those for whom this pleasure awaits.</p>


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<p>Binchy ( Circle of Friends ; The Lilac Bus ) is a consummate storyteller with a unique ability to draw readers into her tales of Irish life. Here again she mines sources rich in plot and character to produce a captivating narrative. The eponymous copper beech is a huge tree that shades the tiny schoolhouse in the village of Shancarrig. For generations, graduating pupils have carved their initials on the massive trunk, and the book examines what has become of some of them. Though each of the 10 chapters offers the perspective of a single character, Binchy adroitly indicates the ways in which their lives intersect. Thus, the allegedly stolen jewels that are discovered and stolen again in one early chapter become significant in later chapters. Long after two adulterous characters sneak into a Dublin hotel, it emerges that they were spotted by a small soul from Shancarrig, who passes on the information--with unforeseen consequences. A priest's dalliance with the sweet young schoolteacher is shown to have been been suspected by others in the village. The result is a charming and compelling series of interlocking stories about ordinary people who are given dimension through Binchy's empathetic insight. While this book is more fragmentary in structure than some of her previous novels, it should leave Binchy's fans wholly satisfied. </p>


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<p>In the first eight interrelated stories of the dozen that comprise her new collection, Binchy ( Circle of Friends ) introduces eight people who travel on a lilac-colored bus from Dublin every Friday night to spend the weekend in their hometown, Rathdoon. Each of the seven passengers and the bus driver is the protagonist of an individual story; taken together, the tales have the cohesion of a novelette. Though these people have known one another for years, they are totally unaware of the compulsions, anxieties, heartaches and dreams of their fellow travelers. As is gradually revealed, everyone on the bus has a secret; thus the stories have the pull of taffy: having finished one, the reader is hooked on discovering the essence of yet another protagonist's existence. Each story delivers a kick of surprise--and often more than one--as Binchy peels back the layers of her characters' lives with empathy, compassion and not a little humor. In the process, the tales coalesce to portray the social order of Rathdoon. The last four stories are set in Dublin, with a new, equally engrossing cast. Although the pieces differ widely in social setting and circumstance, each features a woman who learns the strength of her mettle through adversity. This gallery of memorable characters again confirms Binchy as a beguiling raconteur. </p>


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<p class="description">A Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month ClubNew York Times bestselling author Maeve Binchy has captured the hearts of millions with her unforgettable novels. Binchy's graceful storytelling and wise compassion have earned her the devotion of fans worldwide--and made her one of the most beloved authors of our time. Now she dazzles us once again with a new novel filled with her signature warmth, humor, and tender insight. A provocative tale of family heartbreak, friendship, and revelation,Tara Road explores every woman's fantasy: escape, into another place, another life. "What if..." Binchy asks, and answers in her most astonishing novel to date.</p>


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<p>The arrangements for celebrating Desmond and Deirdre Doyle's forthcoming silver wedding anniversary fall to Anna, their eldest daughter, who works in a pretentious London bookshop. Anna proceeds to make a list of guests, most important of whom, besides her parents and herself, are her sister Helen, brother Brendan, and three other participants in the wedding ceremony: the best man, Frank Quigley; Maureen Barry, the maid of honor; and Father Hurley. Each leisurely chapter deals with one of these characters, detailing their lives in the 25 years since the Doyle's marriage. Binchy ( Firefly Summer) exhibits her gift for astute and loving characterization as she examines the way relationships and families work. She engagingly delineates the pressures, both stated and unstated, that repel or attract, the striving for approval from parents and lovers. At the silver wedding celebration, when the obligatory photograph is taken for the family album, the reader knows well what fears and doubts, secrets and achievements lie behind the happy smiles.</p>


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<p>Night after night the beautiful woman walked beside the serene waters of Lough Glass. Until the day she disappeared, leaving only a boat drifting upside down on the unfathomable lake that gave the town its name. Ravishing Helen McMahon, the Dubliner with film-star looks and unfulfilled dreams, never belonged in Lough Glass, not the way her genial pharmacist-husband Martin belonged, or their spirited daughter Kit. Suddenly, she is gone and Kit is haunted by the memory of her mother, seen through a window, alone at the kitchen table, tears streaming down her face. Now Kit, too, has secrets: of the night she discovered a letter on Martin’s pillow and burned it, unopened. The night her mother was lost. The night everything changed forever…</p>


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<p>Every table at Quentins Restaurant has a thousand stories to tell: tales of love, betrayal and revenge. Ella Brady wants to make a documentary about the renowned Dublin restaurant that has captured the spirit of a generation and a city in the years it has been open. In Maeve Binchy's magical QUENTINS you will meet new friends and old: the twins from SCARLET FEATHER, the Signora from EVENING CLASS, Ria from TARA ROAD - and a host of fresh faces. There is Monica, the ever-cheerful Australian waitress, and Blouse Brennan, whose simplicity disguises a sharp mind and a heart of gold. Presiding over Quentins are Patrick and Brenda Brennan, who have made Quentins such a legend. But even they have a story and a sadness which is hidden from the public gaze. As Ella uncovers more of what has gone on, she wonders about the wisdom of bringing it to the screen. Should the restaurant keep its secrets?</p>


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<div><p>In a tiny Greek village, tourists enter a hilltop tavern, alone and in pairs, for a casual lunch. But a sudden tragedy in the harbor below causes these perfect strangers to become unlikely friends as their lives begin to entwine.<br></p><p>Fiona left her nursing career in Ireland to be with the man everyone thinks is wrong for her. Elsa fled Germany and her high-powered television job once she learned what the man she loved was hiding from her. Thomas mourns his failed marriage and misses his young son in California, while David yearns to reconcile with his family in England without having to go into the family business. Chance has brought them together, and together they will find new ways of looking at the lives they left behind.</p></div>


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<p class="description">Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather have decided to create the best catering company in Dublin. They have the perfect premises, heaps of talent, and even a few contacts - but not everyone seems as pleased by the idea of 'Scarlet Feather' as they are. Tom's parents are disappointed that he has turned his back on the family business. Cathy's husband buries himself in work, becoming ever more distant, whilst his mother thinks Cathy should stay at home to look after him. And Tom's relationship with his beautiful, ambitious girlfriend becomes fraught as she struggles to realise her dream of becoming a model. As Cathy and Tom strive to maintain their emotional ties amidst catering triumphs and disasters they are supported - and undermined - by an enchanting cast of classic Binchy characters.</p>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; ">Reading a Maeve Binchy novel is like settling in for a cozy visit with an old friend. In vintage Binchy style, a cast of colorfully eccentric characters living in a snug Dublin neighborhood seamlessly weave in and out of each other’s lives, united by family, faith, friendship, and community. When a young alcoholic learns he has fathered a child with a dying woman, he must step into the role of father, protector, and provider to his infant daughter, Frankie, in a matter of weeks. Determined to succeed, though totally unprepared for his new responsibilities, Noel gets an essential assist from his visiting American cousin. Exercising her tremendous gifts of organization and insight, Emily cobbles together a neighborhood support system, featuring a few familiar faces from previous Binchy books. As everybody begins to mind Frankie, a suspicious social worker pokes her nose in where it doesn’t belong, attempting to dredge up any dirt she can on Noel and his slightly unorthodox network of babysitters. Readers will need a box of tissues handy as the good-hearted residents of St. Jarlath’s Crescent prove that it does indeed take a village to raise a child.</span></h3>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; ">The chaos of World War II London sends preteen Elizabeth White to the safety of Ireland and into the lives of the much larger and emotional O'Connor family. The enduring friendship she finds with her counterpart, Aisling, forms the framework of this novel, offering clear contrasts between the two families and countries. The early chapters of Binchy's 1982 debut novel are engagingly humorous, filled with solid characterizations of these two very different but compatible adolescents. The girls sustain their friendship and distinct personalities through regular letters, but unfortunately they must grow up and the novel may strain under the conventionality of the genre and some inconsistency, perhaps due to Binchy's inexperience as an author at the time she wrote the original story. Her cousin Kate Binchy reads the book well, capturing the innocence, yearning, and growth of the girls. Recommended for larger fiction collections.</span></h3>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; ">With the insight, humor, and compassion we have come to expect from her, Maeve Binchy tells a story of family, friends, patients, and staff who are part of a heart clinic in a community caught between the old and the new Ireland.</span></h3><p>Dr. Clara Casey has been offered the thankless job of establishing the underfunded clinic and agrees to take it on for a year. She has plenty on her plate already—two difficult adult daughters and the unwanted attentions of her ex-husband—but she assembles a wonderfully diverse staff devoted to helping their demanding, often difficult patients.</p><p>Before long the clinic is established as an essential part of the community, and Clara must decide whether or not to leave a place where lives are saved, courage is rewarded, and humor and optimism triumph over greed and self-pity.</p><p><em>Heart and Soul</em> is Maeve Binchy at her storytelling best.</p></div>


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<p class="description">Dreaming of Italy, eager to learn the language, a disparate group of Dubliners comes together for an introductory Italian course held in a drab classroom every Tuesday and Thursday evening. Aidan Dunne has hit an all-time low in both his career and family life, and so his self-image is hinging on the success of this class.The teacher, Signora, so smitten with love that she followed the man she adored to a distant country, waiting 23 years for him; Laddy, the hotel porter; and Hilary, the society hostess, who has an oddly empty calendar.Each student has a private reason for wanting to learn Italian. Bill Burke, a young bank clerk, wants to be considered for an international banking job, but is secretly hoping that now his spendthrift girlfriend Lizzie will have fewer opportunities to waste their money if she's busy attending an evening class. Then there's Suzy Sullivan, who can't figure out why her husband Lou wants to pick up Italian because he hasn't learned anything since he mastered reading and writing; there must be some catch, she figures. Kathy Clarke works much too hard and so she decides to join the class in an attempt to relax, but through the people she meets she learns a secret about her own family that transforms both her future and her past.As the classes progress, we learn about each of the participants, watching their relationships grow throughout the year and culminating in a magical "viaggio" to Italy. This evocative tale shimmers with the storytelling artistry that makes Maeve Binchy's books international bestsellers.</p>


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<p>It was a summer of warmth.... Kate Ryan and her  husband, John, have a rollicking pub in the Irish  village of Mountfern... lovely twelve-year-old  twins... and such wonderful dreams.... It was a summer  of innocence... but all that is about to change  this fateful summer of 1962 when American  millionaire Patrick O'Neill comes to town with his  irresistible charm and a pocketful of money... when love  and hate vie for a town's quiet heart and old  traditions begin to crumble away.... It was a summer of  love that would never come again.... A time that  has been captured forever in Maeve Binchy's  compelling family drama... a novel you will never forget.</p>


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<p>The bracing sea air brings little pleasure to the year-round residents of Castlebay, a village on the coast of Ireland, where class lines are strictly observed and morals publicly monitored. The youngest daughter of a shopkeeper whose meagre living depends on summer trade, Clare O'Brien is determined to move beyond her present circumstances. Hard work and the guidance of an irreverent, caring schoolteacher bring the resolute scholar to a college in Dublin. There, her steps falter when she enters into an ardent affair with David Power, the son of Castlebay's only doctor and another willing exile. Although David returns her love, their devotion is sorely tested when they are forced to marry and return home. As a wealthy, new-fledged doctor, David easily resumes his privileged position, but Clare is trapped between her mother-in-law's cold fury and the town's unease. Sharply drawn, memorable characters and a convincing picture of a small Irish community bring freshness and zest to a familiar tale. </p>


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<p class="description">It began with Benny Hogan and Eve Malone, growing up, inseparable, in the village of Knockglen. Benny—the only child, yearning to break free from her adoring parents...Eve—the orphaned offspring of a convent handyman and a rebellious blueblood, abandoned by her mother's wealthy family to be raised by nuns. Eve and Benny—they knew the sins and secrets behind every villager's lace curtains...except their own. It widened at Dublin, at the university where Benny and Eve met beautiful Nan Mahlon and Jack Foley, a doctor's handsome son. But heartbreak and betrayal would bring the worlds of Knockglen and Dublin into explosive collision. Long-hidden lies would emerge to test the meaning of love and the strength of ties held within the fragile gold bands of a...Circle Of Friends. From the Trade Paperback edition.</p>


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<p>Stoneybridge is a small town on the west coast of Ireland where all the families know one another. When Chicky Starr decides to take an old, decaying mansion set high on the cliffs overlooking the windswept Atlantic Ocean and turn it into a restful place for a holiday by the sea, everyone thinks she is crazy. Helped by Rigger (a bad boy turned good who is handy around the house) and Orla, her niece (a whiz at business), Chicky is finally ready to welcome the first guests to Stone House’s big warm kitchen, log fires, and understated elegant bedrooms. John, the American movie star, thinks he has arrived incognito; Winnie and Lillian are forced into taking a holiday together; Nicola and Henry, husband and wife, have been shaken by seeing too much death practicing medicine; Anders hates his father’s business, but has a real talent for music; Miss Nell Howe, a retired schoolteacher, criticizes everything and leaves a day early, much to everyone’s relief; the Walls are disappointed to have won this second-prize holiday in a contest where first prize was Paris; and Freda, the librarian, is afraid of her own psychic visions. <br><br>Sharing a week with this unlikely cast of characters is pure joy, full of Maeve’s trademark warmth and humor. Once again, she embraces us with her grand storytelling.</p>


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


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<p class="description">In 1995 Madison Smartt Bell published All Souls' Rising, earning both critical plaudits and a National Book Award nomination for this fictional account of Haiti's 18th-century slave rebellion. Now he continues the saga with Master of the Crossroads, the second volume of a projected trilogy. Even in his earlier narratives of contemporary America, the author has always been attuned to the byzantine politics of color. But by focusing on the figure of Toussaint Louverture--the black general who led the Haitians to independence only to be jailed for treason against the French Republic--Bell allows the politics of race to point him in unexpected and rewarding narrative directions. This is a big, muscular book, which derives much of its strength from the author's willingness to paint his tumultuous political and physical landscapes with broadly sweeping strokes. But it is also a work of surprising delicacy, whose finely drawn characters come to life with the minutest gesture or softly whispered word. The crossroads herein are not merely literal but metaphorical. Yes, the former slaves and their courageous leader are pinned down in the island's remote interior, caught between the English forces and the Spanish army (their nominal yet treacherous ally). But more to the point, Haiti's intricate progress from slavery to freedom brings each of the characters to a crucial, defining moment of energy or introspection. And finally, swirling through the book like an island mist, is the voodoo figure of Mâit' Kalfou, or the "Master of the Crossroads." Straddling the worlds of the dead and the living, this ecstatic spirit may at any time inhabit the body of a believer: Between Legba and Kalfou the crossroads stood open now, and now Guiaou could feel that opened pathway rushing up his spine--passage from the Island Below Sea inhabited by les Morts et les Mystères. His hips melted into the movement of the drums, and the tails of the red coat swirled around his legs like feathers of a bird. With the other dancers he closed the small, tight circle around Legba and Kalfou, who faced each other as in a mirror: the shining surface of the waters, which divides the living from the dead. Throughout, Bell's captivating vision of the battlefield bears witness to his rigorous research. Still, the voodoo celebrations, and the author's sly evocation of their unexpected resonance, remain the novel's strongest moments. Why? They speak, perhaps, to the apocalyptic nature of the Haitian rebellion. And more intriguingly, they permit Bell to play with the deceptive nature of belief and reality--a move that, in an avowedly historical novel, hints at the ironic fluidity of history itself. --Kelly Flynn</p>


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<div><p>In this first installment of his epic Haitian trilogy, Madison Smartt Bell brings to life a decisive moment in the history of race, class, and colonialism. The slave uprising in Haiti was a momentous contribution to the tide of revolution that swept over the Western world at the end of the 1700s. A brutal rebellion that strove to overturn a vicious system of slavery, the uprising successfully transformed Haiti from a European colony to the world’s first Black republic. From the center of this horrific maelstrom, the heroic figure of Toussaint Louverture–a loyal, literate slave and both a devout Catholic and Vodouisant–emerges as the man who will take the merciless fires of violence and vengeance and forge a revolutionary war fueled by liberty and equality. </p><p>Bell assembles a kaleidoscopic portrait of this seminal movement through a tableau of characters that encompass black, white, male, female, rich, poor, free and enslaved. Pulsing with brilliant detail, <strong>All Soul’s Rising</strong> provides a visceral sense of the pain, terror, confusion, and triumph of revolution.</p></div>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">The breathtaking finale of Madeline Hunter's magnificent quartet...</span></h3><p>Outrageously wealthy, the Duke of Castleford has little incentive to curb his profligate ways-gaming and whoring with equal abandon and enjoying his hedonistic lifestyle to the fullest. When a behest adds a small property to his vast holdings, one that houses a modest flower business known as The Rarest Blooms, Castleford sees little to interest him...until he lays eyes on its owner. Daphne Joyes is coolly mysterious, exquisitely beautiful, and utterly scathing toward a man of Castleford's stamp-in short, an object worthy of his most calculated seduction.   </p><p>Daphne has no reason to entertain Castleford's outrageous advances, and every reason to keep him as far away as possible from her eclectic household. Not only has she been sheltering young ladies who have been victims of misfortune, but she has her own closely guarded secrets. Then Daphne makes a discovery that changes everything. She and Castleford have one thing in common: a profound hatred for the Duke of Becksbridge, who just happens to be Castleford's relative.   </p><p>Never before were two people less likely to form an alliance-or to fall in love... </p></div>


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Liz and Jonathan Chambers are in trouble. Mortgage trouble. They've overextended themselves with their latest exciting project - exciting to Liz, that is - buying and managing the Silchester Tutorial College, and now can't sell their old house. So, here they are, with two mortgages, mounting debts, and a miserable adolescent daughter. Then Marcus Witherstone comes into their lives - and at first it seems he will solve all their problems. Marcus, senior partner in Silchester's leading real-estate agency, is large, assured, and wears an expensive coat. He brings the perfect tenants in from London to rent their old house - glamorous PR girl Ginny and the nearly famous Piers. Everything will be fine. As unintentional as it is inevitable, Liz and Marcus find themselves in the thralls of an adulterous tryst. While Marcus finds it all too easy to hide his affair from his wife, Liz spends her days wrapped up in blissful dreams of her lover. Jonathan, in the meantime, is left to run the school. And both parents are too preoccupied to notice the desperate passion developing in their daughter for the tenants, Piers and Ginny. Entanglements grow increasingly uncomfortable, and as events close in on Marcus, he begins to realize that some deceptions are just a bit too close to home.


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<p class="description">Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and a search for Meg's father, who has disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government, in a re-release of the classic story which now includes an essay about the real-life science behind the fantasy. </p>


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Over fifty years ago, Madeleine L'Engle introduced the world to A Wrinkle in Time and the wonderful and unforgettable characters Meg and Charles Wallace Murry, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe. Now all their adventures are together in one volume. The Time Quintet consists of A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time.A Wrinkle in Time--This Newberry Award winner is one of the most significant novels of our time. This fabulous, ground-breaking science-fiction and fantasy story is the first of five in the Time Quintet series about the Murry family.A Wind in the Door--When Charles Wallace falls ill, Meg, Calvin, and their teacher, Mr. Jenkins, must travel inside C.W. to make him well, and save the universe from the evil Echthros.A Swiftly Tilting Planet--The Murry and O'Keefe Families enlist the help of the unicorn, Gaudior, to save the world from imminent nuclear war.Many Waters--Meg Murry, now in college, time travels with her twin brothers, Sandy and Dennys, to a desert oasis that is embroiled in war.An Acceptable Time--While spending time with her grandparents, Alex and Kate Murry, Polly O'Keefe wanders into a time 3,000 years before her own.


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


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<div><p>Emily Andrew is earning some much-needed green by navigating the twisting roads of Ireland with a group of seniors, including her beloved Nana. But once the hearty troupe from Iowa lands on Irish sod, trouble starts brewing: there's a death-defying incident with a horse-drawn carriage . . . and a gender-bending encounter with Emily's ex-husband Jack, now known as Jackie. No wonder Emily has come down with a smarting case of hives!</p><p>The plot thickens like Irish stew when the group settles into Ballybantry Castle, where a ghost is said to wander the halls. But it's no blarney when a very real corpse turns up in one of the guest rooms. While the murderous malarkey has Emily step-dancing as fast as she can, one sure thing emerges from the mists: not even St. Paddy himself could drive out the spiteful serpent that slithers among them! </p></div>


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IT WAS AN OFFER SHE COULDN'T REFUSE....  The discount travel package to Italy seemed like a great deal: Emily Andrew could lead her globe-trotting Iowans on the trip of a lifetime and bring her family to boot. Maybe she should have read the fine print....Sharing their itinerary with a group of hyper-competitive aspiring romance writers is just a prelude to more Machiavellian drama than an Italian opera.  First, their hotel burns to the ground. Then, when Emily's lost luggage turns up found, the disgruntled literary ladies raid her clothing supply like she's a one-woman Gucci outlet. But the real killer is a contest sponsored by a publishing house -- and the depths to which the dime-novel divas will plunge to win a book contract. Amid backstabbing and catcalling, bodies start turning up -- in Emily's favorite outfits! Now, Emily will need more than a phrasebook to say ciao to someone with a hot and spicy passion for murder.


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<p class="description">Sure, Jackie Thum's newly published novel might not be Hemingway, but bad reviews from her fellow travelers have Emily Andrew's transgender ex-husband (Jackie was formerly Jack) steaming like a sauna. It's a dismal start to their Scandinavian tour, and group leader Emily is getting that sinking feeling in Helsinki: something fishy this way comes. When Jackie's most outspoken critic, a Floridian from a picture-perfect gated community called The Hamlets, is found dead, suspicion falls on Jackie -- who surprises everyone with an airtight alibi. But when another guest turns up dead, Emily realizes there is a killer hiding among them. Herrings, both red and pickled, abound on a Norwegian fjord cruise -- and Jackie is suddenly nowhere to be found. With her mother arranging a wedding disaster for Emily back home in Iowa, Emily must somehow salvage her nuptials from overseas while icing a killer -- before someone else meets a nasty Finnish.</p>


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Dead in the WaterFor travel escort Emily Andrew and her fellow Iowans, aloha means "hello" to all the sun, surf, and scrumptious cuisine their Hawaiian cruise has to offer. But for Professor Dorian Smoker, a renowned expert on the legendary Captain Cook, aloha also means "good-bye" -- as in "man overboard."Sure, it could have been an accident. But Emily wonders if some guest with a grudge might have knocked off the opinionated professor. Or maybe it had something to do with that missing journal Nana's friend lent him -- the one with the mysterious treasure map. Emily figures the map is probably a fake. But when another copy turns up, she and her friends take off, rafting down rivers and plunging through jungles to find the treasure themselves. Unfortunately, Professor Smoker's killer just might have the same idea. And this tropical heat wave could quickly turn into a crime wave...


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When Emily Andrew lands in the Land of Oz -- Australia, that is -- she and her hearty group of world-touring seniors know they're not in Iowa anymore. Winter is summer, drains drain counterclockwise, and all the comforts of home are, well, back home. Even Emily's love life is upside down: her darling detective Etienne Miceli has yet to propose, while gorgeous tour director Duncan Lazarus is vying to be more than just mates. Emily is preoccupied calming the group's jitters about the outback's killers, from sunstroke to snake bites. But when a fellow traveler turns up dead, Emily fears something far more toxic has struck: human greed. Someone has stumbled upon a natural wonder that could turn science on its head -- was this priceless discovery the catalyst for murder? Before the dust settles, a second untimely death occurs. If Emily can't stop a killer in their tracks, this Aussie adventure just may be her last.


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<p class="description">A TRIP TO DIE FOR... Accompanying her grandmother on a seniors tour of Switzerland, Emily Andrew had envisioned a vacation straight out of a travel brochure: spectacular scenery, great food, and a classy European hotel, all worlds away from her rural Iowa hometown. But her dream trip quickly snowballs into mayhem when smooth-talking tour escort Andy Simon is found dead. To be sure, Andy was as randy as a mountain goat on Viagra, hitting on every miss -- Swiss or otherwise -- within striking distance. His constant advances were driving Emily cuckoo -- but had someone orchestrated his untimely death? For savvy, resourceful Emily, leading the tour in Andy's place is only natural. But she can't remain neutral when a fellow traveler takes a fatal plunge -- she's convinced a murderer lurks among them. With precision timing, sexy Etienne Miceli steps in to investigate, and Emily warms to the suave detective. Still, with the group roster suddenly sprouting more holes than the local cheese, Emily wonders: is there a safe haven anywhere in the shadow of the Alps?</p>


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Not long before her fiftieth birthday, Mackenzie Phillips walked into Los Angeles International Airport. She was on her way to a reunion for 'One Day at a Time', the popular 70s sitcom on which she once starred as the lovable rebel Julie Cooper. Within minutes of entering the security checkpoint, Mackenzie was in handcuffs, arrested for possession of cocaine and heroin. Born into rock and roll royalty, flying in Learjets to the Virgin Islands at five, making pot brownies with her father's friends at eleven, Mackenzie grew up in an all-access kingdom of hippie freedom and heroin cool. It was a kingdom over which her father, John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, presided, often in absentia, as a spellbinding, visionary phantom. When Mackenzie was a teenager, Hollywood and the world took notice of the charming, talented, precocious child actor after her star-making turn in American Graffiti. As a young woman she joined the nonstop party in the hedonistic pleasure dome her father created for himself and his fellow revelers, and a rapt TV audience watched as Julie Cooper wasted away before their eyes. By the time Mackenzie discovered how deep and dark her father's trip was going, it was too late. And as an adult, she has paid dearly for a lifetime of excess, working tirelessly to reconcile a past in which she succumbed to the power of addiction and the pull of her magnetic father. As her life story unfolds, the actor-musician-mother shares her lifelong battle with personal demons and near-fatal addictions. She overcomes seemingly impossible obstacles again and again and journeys toward redemption and peace. By exposing the shadows and secrets of the past to the light of day, the star who turned up 'High on Arrival' has finally come back down to earth - to stay.


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An exotic setting and a passionate, forbidden affair make The Clouds Beneath the Sun an irresistible page-turner that is sure to satisfy readers looking for an intelligent blend of history, romance, and intrigue.  Mackenzie Ford (a nom de plume) was introduced to readers in 2009 with the publication of Gifts of War, which was praised in USA Today as “an absorbing, morally complex read.” In a starred review, Library Journal said, “Ford keeps the reader on a knife’s edge as the lies build and the truth is only a word or misstep away. Highly recommended.”  Now Ford takes us to Kenya in 1961. As a small plane carrying Natalie Nelson lands at a remote airstrip in the Serengeti, Natalie knows she’s run just about as far as she can from home. Trained as an archeologist, she accepted an invitation to be included in a famous excavating team, her first opportunity to escape England and the painful memories of her past.  But before she can get her bearings, the dig is surrounded by controversy involving the local Masai people—and murder. Compounding the tension, Eleanor Deacon, friend of the Masai, who is leading the excavating mission, watches a rift grow between her two handsome sons. Natalie’s growing attrac­tion to Jack Deacon soon becomes a passionate affair that turns dangerous when she must give evidence in a trial that could spark even more violence and turmoil.  The startling beauty of the Kenyan setting, the tension of loom­ing social upheaval, and the dizzying highs and crushing lows of a doomed love affair are all captured brilliantly on every page of this extraordinary and utterly unforgettable novel.


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


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<p>In the tradition of Jonathan Strange &amp; Mr. Norrell, this brilliant first novel fuses history, fantasy, and romance. Prepare to be enchanted by M. K. Hobson’s captivating take on the Wild, Wild West.<br /><br />The year is 1876. In the small Sierra Nevada settlement of Lost Pine, the town witch, Emily Edwards, is being run out of business by an influx of mail-order patent magics. Attempting to solve her problem with a love spell, Emily only makes things worse. But before she can undo the damage, an enchanted artifact falls into her possession—and suddenly Emily must flee for her life, pursued by evil warlocks who want the object for themselves. </p><p>Dreadnought Stanton, a warlock from New York City whose personality is as pompous and abrasive as his name, has been exiled to Lost Pine for mysterious reasons. Now he finds himself involuntarily allied with Emily in a race against time—and across the United States by horse, train, and biomechanical flying machine—in quest of the great Professor Mirabilis, who alone can unlock the secret of the coveted artifact. But along the way, Emily and Stanton will be forced to contend with the most powerful and unpredictable magic of all—the magic of the human heart. </p>


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<p class="description">Translated by Mahadev Desai and with a New Preface The only authorized American edition Mohandas K. Gandhi is one of the most inspiring figures of our time. In his classic autobiography he recounts the story of his life and how he developed his concept of active nonviolent resistance, which propelled the Indian struggle for independence and countless other nonviolent struggles of the twentieth century. In a new foreword, noted peace expert and teacher Sissela Bok urges us to adopt Gandhi's "attitude of experimenting, of tesing what will and will not bear close scrutiny, what can and cannot be adapted to new circumstances," in order to bring about change in our own lives and communities. All royalties earned on this book are paid to the Navajivan Trust, founded by Gandhi, for use in carrying on his work.</p>


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<p>First in the thrilling new Kit Marlowe historical mystery series - Cambridge, 1583. About to graduate from Corpus Christi, the young Christopher Marlowe spends his days studying and his nights carousing with old friends. But when one of them is discovered lying dead in his King’s College room, mouth open in a silent scream, Marlowe refuses to accept the official verdict of suicide. Calling on the help of his mentor, Sir Roger Manwood, Justice of the Peace, and the queen’s magus, Dr John Dee, a poison expert, Marlowe sets out to prove that his friend was murdered.</p>


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The magnificent new novel from the award-winning author of The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (“This beautiful novel . . . is proof that fictional truth can illuminate an epoch in history like nothing else”—The Boston Globe).In the aftermath of the brutal violence that gripped western India in 2002, Karsan Dargawalla, heir to Pirbaag—the shrine of a mysterious, medieval sufi—begins to tell the story of his family and the shrine now destroyed. His tale opens in the 1960s: young Karsan is next in line after his father to assume lordship of the Shrine of the Wanderer, and take his place as a representative of God to the multitudes who come there. But he longs to be “just ordinary”—to play cricket and be part of the exciting world he reads about in the stacks of newspapers a truck driver brings him from all across India. And when, to his utter amazement, he is accepted at Harvard, he can’t resist the opportunity to go finally “into the beating heart of the world.” Despite his father’s epistolary attempts to keep Karsan close to traditional ways, the excitements and discoveries of his new existence in America soon prove more compelling, and after a bitter quarrel he abdicates his successorship to the ancient throne. Yet even as he succeeds in his “ordinary” life—marrying and having a son (his own “child-god”), becoming a professor in suburban British Columbia—his heritage haunts him in unexpected ways. After tragedy strikes, both in Canada and in Pirbaag, he is drawn back across thirty years of separation and silence to discover what, if anything, is left for him in India.A story of grand historical sweep and intricate personal drama, a stunning evocation of the physical and emotional landscape of a man caught between the ancient and the modern, between legacy and discovery, between the most daunting filial obligation and the most undeniable personal yearning—The Assassin’s Song is a heartbreaking ballad of a life irrevocably changed.


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<p class="description">Recovering addict Tommy Jarret rented a chalet to check on reports of a sea monster near the dour village of Drim. When he turns up dead, apparently of a drug overdose, Lochdubh constable Hamish Macbeth finds the lad's demise to be particularly fishy - and not of the local salmon variety. Hamish decides to infiltrate the illicit drug trade in nearby Strathbane, but his daft scheme springs a leak.</p>


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<p class="description">Murder is a Tasty Dish The most hated man in the most dour town in Scotland is sleeping with the fishes, or-more accurately-dumped into a tank filled with crustaceans. All that remain of the murdered victim are his bones. But after the lobsters are shipped off to Britain's best restaurants, the whole affair quickly lands on the plate of Constable Hamish Macbeth. Exiled with his dog, Towser, to the dreary outpost of Cnothan, Macbeth sorely misses his beloved Lochdubh, his formerly beloved Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, and his days of doing nothing but staring at the sheep grazing in a nearby croft. Now the lawman has to contend with a detective chief inspector who wants the modus operandi hushed up, a dark-haired lass who has an ulterior motive to seduce him, and a killer who has made mincemeat of his victim-and without doubt will strike again...</p>


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<p class="description">Police Sergeant Hamish Macbeth's new promotion means more money, but it also means that an eager beaver of a policeman, P.C. Willie Lamont, has been thrust upon him, interfering with Hamish's easygoing way of life. On a walk escaping his new sidekick's bloodhound efficiency, Hamish sees a battered camper parked next to the Lochdubh Hotel. The man Hamish meets inside the camper would have been called a hippie not so long ago and a beatnik a long time before that. Now he belongs to a crowd who refer to themselves as "travellers": people who live like gypsies and try to demand the same rights. But Hamish knows real gypsies and is tolerant of them; they have rights and privileges that date back centuries. Hamish has no time for these so-called travellers, especially not this one, with his good looks and disturbingly smooth manner. Hamish takes an instant disliking to him, but the man manages to endear himself to several villagers. Only Hamish seems to realize the trouble this drifter is stirring up - until the man is found murdered in his camper. Nothing ever happens in the sleepy Scottish town of Lochdubh - nothing except murder. And where there's murder there's Hamish Macbeth to lend his unique brand of charm and wit to the proceedings.</p>


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<p class="description">A Hamish Macbeth Mystery by the author of "Death of a Hussy."With a cold in his head and no place to go for Christmas, Hamish snaps up the invitation of drop-dead gorgeous Jane Wetherby to spend the holiday at her Scottish island health farm -- and figure out who is trying to kill her.When Hamish arrives on the island of Eileencraig, he finds threatening locals and fellow guests barely more civil, especially a terrible snob named Heather Todd. It seems like everyone on the island has a grudge against Jane. How to choose among so many suspects?But then one suspect is eliminated. Heather Todd is murdered. And suddenly Hamish's Christmas is looking very black indeed . . .</p>


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<div><p class="description">HOLLYWOOD IN THE HIGHLANDS</p><p class="description">With the lovely Priscilla Halburton-Smythe away in London, Lochdubh Constable Hamish Macbeth pines for company during the long Scottish winter. He gets his wish -- and more -- when a troupe of flashy, urbane filmmakers clamors into the nearby town of Drim. Before long bedlam erupts around their make-believe mystery ...and culminates in the sudden appearance of one very real corpse.The initial suspect in the killing is one Patricia Martyn-Broyd, the aging mystery writer furious that her musty old cozies are getting a risque face-lift in their TV reincarnation. Yet, going behind the scenes, Hamish soon finds a town full of locals bitten by the movie bug and a cast of quarreling show business types, all harboring their own secrets, lies, and hidden agendas. And as the culprit strikes again, Hamish must quickly find the right killer -- or script the wrong finale to a show gone murderously awry.</p></div>


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<p class="description">A Hamish Macbeth Mystery by the author of "Death of a Snob." When it comes to murder, Constable Hamish Macbeth can't see the joke. Rich, old practical joker Andrew Trent summons his kin to remote Arrat House in the dead of winter for a deathbed farewell. But when they arrive, the old coot is in perfect health, cackling at his joke and ready to torment them with others. But it turns out the joke's on Trent. As the saying goes, he who laughs last, kills first! And when Trent is murdered, Constable Macbeth must step in and solve the crime before the punchline of the next killing joke knocks him right into an early grave!</p>


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<p class="description">"Offbeat, utterly endearing . . ." Booklist.A Hamish Macbeth Mystery.When Paul and Trixie Thomas move to the village of Lochdubh, Trixie jumps into things with a vengeance. She organizes an anti-smoking league, promotes vegetarian cooking, even starts a birdwatching society. It's too much . . . too perfect. It doesn't feel like the old Lochdubh anymore. So when Trixie is murdered, not everyone is exactly devastated. Constable Macbeth, head over heels in love with beautiful Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, must interrupt his romance at the most inopportune time to solve the mystery. But how to do that when the list of suspects includes the entire town?</p>


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<p class="description">Wealthy Maggie Baird is neither nice nor kind nor generous. Once she was beautiful, but now, although middle-aged, she retains the appetites of a beautiful woman. When Maggie's car catches fire with her inside it, suspicion focuses on the five houseguests staying at Maggie's luxurious Highlands cottage: her timid niece and four former lovers, once of whom Maggie had intended to pick for a husband. All five are impecunious. All five had ample opportunity to monkey with Maggie's car. So finding who did it requires all Police Constable Hamish Macbeth's extraordinary common sense and insight into human nature. And lazy lout though he may be, Hamish lets no grass grow under his feet when it comes to solving a murder. Especially when he may be the next target.</p>


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<p class="description">Police Constable Hamish Macbeth is called in to investigate the death of the unpopular Lady Jane, a malicious gossip and student at the Lochdubh School of Casting, Salmon and Trout Fishing, set in the Scottish Highlands</p>


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<p class="description">A blinding toothache sends Hamish Macbeth 120 miles out of Lochdubh to the dentist Frederick Gilchrist, only to find him dead. Since everyone is pleased the dentist is deceased--patients, several harassed women, and even his wife--Macbeth faces one of the more biting challenges of his career.</p>


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<p class="description">When Priscilla Halburton-Smythe brings her London playwright fianc_ home to Lochdubh, everyone in town is delighted_ except for love-smitten Hamish Macbeth. Yet the affairs of his heart will have to wait.Vile, boorish Captain Bartlett, one of the guests at Priscilla_s engagement party, has just been found murdered _ shot while on a grouse hunt. Now with so many titled party guests as prime suspects, each with their own reason for snuffing out the despicable captain, Hamish must smooth ruffled feathers as he investigates the case_ and catch a killer, before they fly the coop!</p>


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A New York Times Editor's ChoiceIn this extraordinary book, the world's most extraordinary swimmer writes about her emotional and spiritual need to swim, and about the almost mystical act of swimming itself. Lynne Cox has a photographic memory of her swims, and tells us how she conceived of, planned, and trained for each. She re-creates for us the experience of swimming (almost) unswimmable bodies of water - a lone swimmer among the waves, pitting her courage against the odds.


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<p>Two tiger cub brothers are torn from the jungle and taken to Rome. The stronger cub is trained as a killer at the Coliseum. Emperor Caesar makes a gift of the smaller cub to his beautiful daughter, Aurelia. She adores her cub, Boots. Julius, a young animal keeper, teaches Aurelia how to earn Boots’s trust. Boots is pampered while his brother, known as Brute, lives in the cold and darkness, let out only to kill. Caesar trusts Julius to watch Aurelia and her prized pet. But when a prank backfires, Boots temporarily escapes and Julius must pay with his life. Thousands watch as Julius is sent unarmed into the arena to face the killer Brute.  </p><p><em>From the Hardcover edition.</em></p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 5-7–Despite its mundane title, Banks's novel succeeds fairly well at being exotic and original. Two tiger cubs are captured and brought to ancient Rome. Brute is trained to be an aggressive killer of slaves, criminals, and Christians in the Colosseum; Boots is gentled into a pet for Caesar's beautiful 12-year-old daughter, Aurelia, and cared for by the slave Julius, who loves Aurelia from afar. When a prank goes awry and Julius is wrongly blamed for Boots's escape, Aurelia must decide where her loyalties lie. A vibrant setting and strong sense of place bring this often-neglected time period to life. Aurelia and Julius are three-dimensional, though the other characters (including the big cats themselves) are less believable and vivid. The conflict between the Roman pantheon of gods and Christianity lacks clear delineation and comes across as superficial. While not an essential purchase, this provocative title will appeal to fans of historical fiction, romance, and animal stories.<em>–Melissa Moore, Union University Library, Jackson, TN</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From Booklist</h3><p>Gr. 5-8. Captured in the wild, two tiger cubs are shipped to Rome. There, the larger cat is raised to attack and kill people in the Colosseum, while the other is defanged and given to the caesar's daughter, Aurelia, as a pet. Although in the end the tigers meet again, the main story follows Aurelia, who is 12 when the story begins. Aurelia is a thoughtful, rather solitary child who loves her tiger, Boots, and, even more dangerously, comes to love his trainer as well. With her younger cousin, Marcus, she joins in a game that seems innocent at the time, but has perilous consequences for them all. Banks writes well, bringing the late-third-century Roman Empire to life in a novel that blends history with timeless human emotions. In swift, sure strokes, she effectively portrays Aurelia's discomfort, uncertainty, and growing confidence as she grows from child to adult, while using the tigers effectively as both characters and plot devices. <em>Carolyn Phelan</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


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<p class="description">"With just one touch, Jessa Bellamy can see anyone's darkest secrets, thanks to whoever tampered with her genes. What she doesn't know is that a biotech company called GenHance has discovered her talent, and intends to kill her and harvest her priceless DNA. When GenHance is poised to strike, Gaven Matthias is forced to take action. After months of tracking Jessa, he abducts her himself so he can protect her in his underground fortress. Matthias tries to explain what she is and how she can protect others like her, but Jessa has a hard time believing the one man whose secrets she can't read. She senses he's hiding a terrible truth, and yet his touch ignites a passion she's never known. As a monstrous assassin closes in and forces them on the run, Jessa will have to find another way to discover whether Matthias is her greatest ally...or her deadliest enemy.</p>


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<div><p>When Lynn Barber was sixteen, a stranger in a maroon sports car pulled up beside her as she was on her way home from school and offered her a ride. It was the beginning of a long journey from innocence to precocious experience—an affair with an older man that would change her life. Barber’s seducer left her with a taste for luxury hotels and posh restaurants and trips abroad, expensive habits that she managed to support in later life as a successful London journalist whose barbed interviews at once terrorized and fascinated her smart-set subjects.</p><p>A poignant, shockingly candid account of the stages in a literary life—from promiscuity at Oxford to a stint at <strong>Penthouse</strong> to a complex marriage that endured—<strong>An Education</strong> is a classic of English memoir.</p></div>


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<p>This is Lynda's first novel. Forty something and single She was born in 
Queens, New York and is presently residing at the nearby suburbs and 
holding a Masters degree in Criminal Justice. Lynda is currently 
pursuing her passion, which include living her life to the fullest. At 
an early age, she developed a desire for travel and continued that 
throughout the years. Lynda's love for pets, underground clubs, 
motorcycles and the elegant things in life keep her a true Diva at 
heart.      </p>


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<p class="description">By Christmas 1914, the wild wave of enthusiasm that had sent men flocking to join up a few months earlier began to tail off, and though the original British Expeditionary Force had suffered 90 percent casualties, most people, particularly the soldiers themselves, still believed that 1915 would see the breaking of the deadlock. But their hopes were shattered on the bloody battlefields of Neuve Chapelle, Ypres, Loos, and far away on the shores of Gallipoli.Lyn Macdonald's story of 1915 is stark, brutal, frank, sometimes painfully funny, always human. Never before has any writer collected so many firsthand accounts of the experiences of ordinary soldiers, through diaries, letters, and interviews with survivors -- and it is the dogged heroism and sardonic humor of the soldiers that shine through the pages of this epic narrative. 1915 is a uniquely compelling blend of military history and poignant memories of the fighters who survived the ordeal.</p>


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<div><p>When Maxon met Sunny, he was seven years, four months, and eighteen-days old. Or, he was 2693 rotations of the earth old. Maxon was different. Sunny was different. They were different together.</p><p>Now, twenty years later, they are married, and Sunny wants, more than anything, to be “normal.” She’s got the housewife thing down perfectly, but Maxon, a genius engineer, is on a NASA mission to the moon, programming robots for a new colony. Once they were two outcasts who found unlikely love in each other: a wondrous, strange relationship formed from urgent desire for connection. But now they’re parents to an autistic son. And Sunny is pregnant again. And her mother is dying in the hospital. Their marriage is on the brink of imploding, and they’re at each other’s throats with blame and fear. What exactly has gone wrong?</p><p>Sunny wishes Maxon would turn the rocket around and come straight-the-hell home.</p><p>When an accident in space puts the mission in peril, everything Sunny and Maxon have built hangs in the balance. Dark secrets, long-forgotten murders, and a blond wig all come tumbling to the light. And nothing will ever be the same.</p></div>


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


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An international journalist, a war-weary Portuguese veteran, a Muslim with visions of the Virgin MAry, a rogue priest, and members of the world's most pwoerful--and secretive--organizations come together after the suspicous death of Pope John Paul I. A few operatives bold enough to penetrate the Vatican's shadowy inner circle will investigate what went wrong--and try to prevent the popular new pope from meeting the same fate. In London, journalist Sarah Monteiro is again drawn into the web of international conspiracy, and must reunite--reluctantly--with the mysterious priest/assassin Rafael, and the sinister mastermind known only as JC. Sarah's and Rafael's commitment to truth and justice could prove to be extremely dangerous, for them and for John Paul II, especially if they discover the true power behind the papal throne.


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<p>The prizewinning writer Luis Alberto Urrea's long-awaited novel is an epic mystical drama of a young woman's sudden sainthood in late 19th-century Mexico.It is 1889, and civil war is brewing in Mexico. A 16-year-old girl, Teresita, illegitimate but beloved daughter of the wealthy and powerful rancher Don Tomas Urrea, wakes from the strangest dream—a dream that she has died. Only it was not a dream. This passionate and rebellious young woman has arisen from death with a power to heal—but it will take all her faith to endure the trials that await her and her family now that she has become the Saint of Cabora.THE HUMMINGBIRD'S DAUGHTER is a vast, hugely satisfying novel of love and loss, joy and pain. Two decades in the writing, this is the masterpiece that Luis Alberto Urrea has been building up to.</p>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">The term Roaring Twenties connotates an era of uninhibited excess, characterized by drinking, shameless flappers, jazz, and gangland wars. All of these aspects are covered in this enjoyable, if uneven, survey of the decade. Moore also convincingly asserts that this was a period of significant social and political change with long-term effects. Utilizing a topical approach, she offers interesting descriptions of the emergence of organized crime, the excesses of big business, the Harlem Renaissance, and the stirrings of civil rights activism. She provides many useful tidbits about personalities as varied as Al Capone and Marcus Garvey. As long as Moore stays with her descriptive narrative, her account moves along smoothly. Unfortunately, her efforts to analyze these trends and to link them to our current economic and political conditions don’t ring true and are often based upon unwarranted assumptions. Still, for general readers, this work provides an interesting and wide-ranging look at a tumultuous period.</span></h3>

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Masterworks of economy and acuity, these brief, trenchant tales by Russian author and playwright Petrushevskaya, selected from her wide-ranging but little translated oeuvre over the past 30 years, offer an enticement to English readers to seek out more of her writing. The tales explore the inexplicable workings of fate, the supernatural, grief and madness, and range from adroit, straightforward narratives to bleak fantasy. Frequently on display are the decrepit values of the Soviet system, as in The New Family Robinson, where a family tries to outsmart everyone by relocating to a ramshackle cabin in the country. Domestic problems get powerful and tender treatment; in My Love, a long-suffering wife and mother triumphs over her husband's desire for another woman. Darker material dominates the last section of the book, with tortuous stories, heavy symbolism and outright weirdness leading to strange and unexpected places. Petrushevskaya's bold, no-nonsense portrayals find fresh, arresting expression in this excellent translation.


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Joanna had been head over heels in love with her convenient fiance, Gustavo Ferrara, when he fell in love with - and married - someone else! Twelve years on, Gustavo, now single, is thrown into turmoil at seeing Joanna again. He's older, wiser, and he realizes Joanna is the person he should have married - but he has no idea how much he hurt her. Can he persuade her to give him another chance?


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<p class="description">Why has a secret from 1914 caused a century of heartache? Troubled by recent loss, Grania Ryan has returned to Ireland and the arms of her loving family. And it is here, on a cliff edge, that she first meets a young girl, Aurora, who will profoundly change her life. Mysteriously drawn to Aurora, Grania discovers that the histories of their families are strangely and deeply entwined . . . From a bittersweet romance in wartime London to a troubled relationship in contemporary New York, from devotion to a foundling child to forgotten memories of a lost brother, the Ryans and the Lisles, past and present, have been entangled for a century. Ultimately, it will be Aurora whose intuition and remarkable spirit help break the spell and unlock the chains of the past. Haunting, uplifting and deeply moving, Aurora's story tells of the triumph of hope over loss.</p>


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


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">In 1975, Ung, now the national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World, was the five-year-old child of a large, affluent family living in Phnom Penh, the cosmopolitan Cambodian capital. As extraordinarily well-educated Chinese-Cambodians, with the father a government agent, her family was in great danger when the Khmer Rouge took over the country and throughout Pol Pot's barbaric regime. Her parents' strength and her father's knowledge of Khmer Rouge ideology enabled the family to survive together for a while, posing as illiterate peasants, moving first between villages, and then from one work camp to another. The father was honest with the children, explaining dangers and how to avoid them, and this, along with clear sight, intelligence and the pragmatism of a young child, helped Ung to survive the war. Her restrained, unsentimental account of the four years she spent surviving the regime before escaping with a brother to Thailand and eventually the United States is astonishing--not just because of the tragedies, but also because of the immense love for her family that Ung holds onto, no matter how she is brutalized. She describes the physical devastation she is surrounded by but always returns to her memories and hopes for those she loves. Her joyful memories of life in Phnom Penh are close even as she is being trained as a child soldier, and as, one after another, both parents and two of her six siblings are murdered in the camps. Skillfully constructed, this account also stands as an eyewitness history of the period, because as a child Ung was so aware of her surroundings, and because as an adult writer she adds details to clarify the family's moves and separations. Twenty-five years after the rise of the Khmer Rouge, this powerful account is a triumph.</span></h3>


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Acclaimed novelist Luanne Rice "touches the deepest, most tender corners of the heart" (Tami Hoag, author of A Thin Dark Line). Her stories remind us how precious and fragile life can be—and that we must risk our hearts every day to know happiness. Follow the Stars Home is just such a novel: a story of poignancy and heartbreak, grace and courage.Being a good mother is never simple: each day brings new choices and challenges. For Dianne Robbins, being a devoted single mother has resulted in her greatest joy and her darkest hours. Weeks before her daughter was born, she and her husband, Tim McIntosh, received the news every parent fears. Tim had not reckoned on their child being anything less than perfect, and abruptly fled to a solitary existence on the sea, leaving Dianne with a newborn—almost alone.It was Tim's brother, Alan, the town pediatrician, who stood by Dianne and her exceptional daughter. Throughout years of waiting, watching, and caring, Alan hid his love for his brother's wife. But one of the many hard choices Dianne has made is to close her heart toward any man—especially one named McIntosh. It will take a very special twelve-year-old to remind them all that love comes in many forms and can be received with as much grace as it is given.As lyrical and moving as the poetry of nature, Follow the Stars Home is a miracle of storytelling that will take your breath away. If words alone can dare us to confront our fears and to choose joy over sorrow, then Luanne Rice's magnificent novel is a benediction and a call to celebrate our lives.


