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In the ten years since its publication in 1988, Stephen Hawking's classic work has become a landmark volume in scientific writing, with more than nine million copies in forty languages sold worldwide. That edition was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the origins and nature of the universe. But the intervening years have seen extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and the macrocosmic worlds. These observations have confirmed many of Professor Hawking's theoretical predictions in the first edition of his book, including the recent discoveries of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE), which probed back in time to within 300,000 years of the universe's beginning and revealed wrinkles in the fabric of space-time that he had projected. Eager to bring to his original text the new knowledge revealed by these observations, as well as his own recent research, Professor Hawking has prepared a new introduction to the book, written an entirely new chapter on wormholes and time travel, and updated the chapters throughout.


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; "><strong>A riveting tale of the great cultural "swerve" known as the Renaissance.</strong></span></h3><p>One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. <br></p><p>Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, <em>On the Nature of Things</em>, by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions. <br></p><p>The copying and translation of this ancient book-the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age-fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson. </p></div>


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<div><p>Fame can be addictive. From his early days videotaping crazy skateboard stunts to starring in the blockbuster <em>Jackass</em> franchise, there was little that Stephen "Steve-O" Glover wouldn't do for attention. Whether it was stapling his nutsack to his leg, diving into a pool full of elephant crap, or routinely risking death invading the private lives of sharks, lions, tigers, and bears, almost nothing was out of bounds. As the stunts got crazier, his life kept pace. He developed a crippling addiction to drugs and alcohol, and an obsession with his own celebrity that proved nearly as dangerous.</p><p>Steve-O has been a man in search of a spotlight practically since birth. Growing up all over the world, thanks to his father's career as a corporate executive, he was the kid who'd drink handfuls of salt in order to make friends. After he stole a video camera from his dad as a teenager, his future path was more or less sealed. Footage of himself skateboarding soon gave way to footage of himself setting his hair on fire or doing back flips off apartment buildings into shallow pools. <br></p><p>After detours to several hospitals, a couple of jails, and Ringling Bros. and Barnum &amp; Bailey Clown College, he landed, quite naturally, on MTV's <em>Jackass</em>, in 2000. He took to fame like it was the very thing missing from his life, but it was never enough. He filled the void with booze and drugs, and soon began treating his entire life like it was one bigand supremely riskystunt.</p><p>In 2008, Steve-O holed up in his West Hollywood apartment, where he drank, snorted, smoked, huffed, and swallowed drugs around the clock and began broadcasting his downward spiral on the Internet. Finally, his <em>Jackass</em> comrade Johnny Knoxville and seven other friends staged an intervention and forced him into a psychiatric ward against his will, ultimately saving his life. Today he has been clean and sober for more than three years.</p><p><em>Professional Idiot</em> recounts the lunacy, the debauchery, the stunts, the drug addiction and the path to recovery and redemption with the same bravado and humor that have endeared Steve-O to so many. <br></p><p>Hilarious, harrowing, and inspiring all at once, <em>Professional Idiot</em> will entertain those who've been with him on his many wild rides, as well as surprise and intrigue those who know him only as the guy willing to do anythingno matter how painfulfor a laugh. </p><p><strong>STEPHEN "STEVE-O" GLOVER</strong> has made a career of doing crazy, dangerous, unhealthy, ill-advised stunts for the amusement, delight, and occasional disgust of audiences around the world. Besides being one of the breakout stars of <em>Jackass</em>'s three-season run on MTV, Steve-O starred alongside fellow <em>Jackass</em> alum Chris Pontius in the extreme travel show <em>Wildboyz</em>, which ran on MTV for four seasons and his own <em>Dr. Steve-O</em> series on the USA Network. In 2009, the newly sober Steve-O lasted six weeks on the ABC reality series <em>Dancing with the Stars</em> despite the fact that he couldn't dance to save his life. He has figured prominently in all three <em>Jackass</em> feature films, all of which debuted at #1 at the box office. He's also been a frequent guest on <em>The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Howard Stern Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!</em>, and <em>Loveline</em>. <em>Professional Idiot</em> is his first book.</p><p>END </p></div>


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<div><p>In the twilight of the Gilded Age, a man accused of gruesome murders struggles to clear his name—and save his soul.<br></p><p><em>The Kingdom of Bones</em> is the haunting story of Tom Sayers, a former boxing champion who is wrongly accused of a series of grisly murders. As Sayers struggles for justice, he also must battle for the heart and soul of a theater troupe’s leading lady, and to uncover the truth behind a legend as old as evil itself. Thrown into a maelstrom of obsession, betrayal, and sacrifice—where even the pure may not escape damnation—Sayers must face the implications of an unthinkable bargain: the exchange of a soul for a chance at eternal life. With action that spans continents, decades, and every level of society, this brilliantly macabre mystery is a modern psychological thriller.</p></div>


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I have a dark and dreadful secret. I write poetry... I believe poetry is a primal impulse within all of us. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it. —Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled  Stephen Fry believes that if one can speak and read English, one can write poetry. Many of us have never been taught to read or write poetry and think of it as a mysterious and intimidating form. Or, if we have been taught, we remember uncomfortable silence when an English teacher invited the class to "respond" to a poem. In The Ode Less Travelled, Fry sets out to correct this problem by giving aspiring poets the tools and confidence they need to write poetry for pleasure.  Fry is a wonderfully engaging teacher and writer of poetry himself, and he explains the various elements of poetry in simple terms, without condescension. His enjoyable exercises and witty insights introduce the concepts of Metre, Rhyme, Form, Diction, and Poetics. Aspiring poets will learn to write a sonnet, on ode, a villanelle, a ballad, and a haiku, among others. Along the way, he introduces us to poets we've heard of, but never read. The Ode Less Travelled is a lively celebration of poetry that makes even the most reluctant reader want to pick up a pencil and give it a try. BACKCOVER: Advanced Praise: “Delightfully erudite, charming and soundly pedagogical guide to poetic form... Fry has created an invaluable and highly enjoyable reference book.” —Publishers Weekly  “A smart, sane and entertaining return to the basics... If you like Fry’s comic manner... this book has a lot of charm... People entirely fresh to the subject could do worse than stick with his cheerful leadership.” —The Telegraph (UK)  “...intelligent and informative, a worthy enterprise well executed.” —Observer (UK)  "If you learn how to write a sonnet, and Fry shows you how, you may or may not make a poem. But you will unlock the stored wisdom of the form itself." —Grey Gowrie, The Spectator (UK)  “...intelligent and informative, a worthy enterprise well executed.” —Observer (UK)


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Stephen Fry arrived at Cambridge on probation: a convicted fraudster and thief, and addict, liar, fantasist and failed suicide, convinced that at any moment he would be found out and flung away.Instead, university life offered him love, romance and the chance to stand on a stage and entertain. He met and befriended bright young things like Emma Thompson and Hugh Laurie and (after working out how to cheat the university examination system) emerges as one of the most promising comic talents in the country.This is the intriguing, hilarious and utterly compelling story of how the Stephen the nation knows (or thinks it knows) began to make his presence felt as he took his first tentative steps in the worlds of television, journalism, radio, theatre and film. Shameful tales of sugar, shag and champagne jostle with insights into credit cards, classic cars and conspicuous consumption, Blackadder, Broadway and the BBC.For all its trademark wit and verbal brilliance, this is a book that is not afraid to confront the aching chasm that separates public image from private feeling. Welcome to The Fry Chronicles, one of the boldest, bravest, most revealing and heartfelt accounts of a man's formative years that you will ever have the exquisite pleasure of reading.


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<div><p><strong>Appetite for America</strong> is the incredible real-life story of Fred Harvey—told in depth for the first time ever—as well as the story of this country’s expansion into the Wild West of Bat Masterson and Billy the Kid, of the great days of the railroad, of a time when a deal could still be made with a handshake and the United States was still uniting. As a young immigrant, Fred Harvey worked his way up from dishwasher to household name: He was Ray Kroc before McDonald’s, J. Willard Marriott before Marriott Hotels, Howard Schultz before Starbucks. His eating houses and hotels along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad (including historic lodges still in use at the Grand Canyon) were patronized by princes, presidents, and countless ordinary travelers looking for the best cup of coffee in the country. Harvey’s staff of carefully screened single young women—the celebrated Harvey Girls—were the country’s first female workforce and became genuine Americana, even inspiring an MGM musical starring Judy Garland.</p><p>With the verve and passion of Fred Harvey himself, Stephen Fried tells the story of how this visionary built his business from a single lunch counter into a family empire whose marketing and innovations we still encounter in myriad ways. Inspiring, instructive, and hugely entertaining, </p></div>


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<p class="description">In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a small detachment of British airborne troops stormed the German defense forces and paved the way for the Allied invasion of Europe. Pegasus Bridge was the first engagement of D-Day, the turning point of World War II. This gripping account of it by acclaimed author Stephen Ambrose brings to life a daring mission so crucial that, had it been unsuccessful, the entire Normandy invasion might have failed. Ambrose traces each step of the preparations over many months to the minute-by-minute excitement of the hand-to-hand confrontations on the bridge. This is a story of heroism and cowardice, kindness and brutality -- the stuff of all great adventures.</p>


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<p class="description">In this account of an unprecedented feat of engineering, vision, and courage, Stephen E. Ambrose offers a historical successor to his universally acclaimed Undaunted Courage, which recounted the explorations of the West by Lewis and Clark. Nothing Like It in the World is the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad -- the investors who risked their businesses and money; the enlightened politicians who understood its importance; the engineers and surveyors who risked, and lost, their lives; and the Irish and Chinese immigrants, the defeated Confederate soldiers, and the other laborers who did the backbreaking and dangerous work on the tracks.The Union had won the Civil War and slavery had been abolished, but Abraham Lincoln, who was an early and constant champion of railroads, would not live to see the great achievement. In Ambrose's hands, this enterprise, with its huge expenditure of brainpower, muscle, and sweat, comes to life.The U.S. government pitted two companies -- the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads -- against each other in a race for funding, encouraging speed over caution. Locomo-tives, rails, and spikes were shipped from the East through Panama or around South America to the West or lugged across the country to the Plains. This was the last great building project to be done mostly by hand: excavating dirt, cutting through ridges, filling gorges, blasting tunnels through mountains.At its peak, the workforce -- primarily Chinese on the Central Pacific, Irish on the Union Pacific -- approached the size of Civil War armies, with as many as fifteen thousand workers on each line. The Union Pacific was led by Thomas "Doc" Durant, Oakes Ames, and Oliver Ames, with Grenville Dodge -- America's greatest railroad builder -- as chief engineer. The Central Pacific was led by California's "Big Four": Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins. The surveyors, the men who picked the route, were latter-day Lewis and Clark types who led the way through the wilderness, living off buffalo, deer, elk, and antelope.In building a railroad, there is only one decisive spot -- the end of the track. Nothing like this great work had been seen in the world when the last spike, a golden one, was driven in at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869, as the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific tracks were joined.Ambrose writes with power and eloquence about the brave men -- the famous and the unheralded, ordinary men doing the extraordinary -- who accomplished the spectacular feat that made the continent into a nation.</p>


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<p class="description">In this riveting account, historian Stephen Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller "D-Day". Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war, from the high command down to the ordinary soldier, drawing on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.</p>


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<p class="description">Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, U.S. Army, was as good a rifle company as any in the world. From their rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 to D-Day and victory, Ambrose tells the story of this remarkable company, which kept getting the tough assignments. Easy Company was responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. "Band of Brothers" is the account of the men of this remarkable unit who fought, went hungry, froze, and died, a company that took 150 percent casualities and considered the Purple Heart a badge of office. Drawing on hours of interviews with survivors as well as the soldiers' journals and letters, Stephen Ambrose tell the stories -- often in the men's own words -- of these American hereoes.</p>


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<p>Young Henry Fleming dreams of finding glory and honor as a Union soldier in the American Civil War. Yet he also harbors a hidden fear about how he may react when the horror and bloodshed of battle begin. Fighting the enemy without and the terror within, Fleming must prove himself and find his own meaning of valor.</p>


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When Charlie Dean and the Deep Black team are called to investigate the apparent suicide of a troubled Secret Service agent, they uncover a vast conspiracy to assassinate high-ranking U.S. officials. Original.


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<div><p class="description">Crane was determined to live in the city and to make his living with his pen. Living a bohemian, hand-to-mouth existence, he took to vanishing into the vast netherworld of the city, living among the whores, the drunks, the drug addicts, and the “b’hoys,” the Irish gangster swells of the Bowery. Emerging from this underworld, Crane would have enough material for a freelance newspaper piece as well as other material that would become Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. Occasional newspaper work, a small but providential inheritance, and regular handouts from one of his brothers allowed Crane to cobble together a modest living—but it was Maggie on which he had pinned his hopes.            </p><p class="description">By 1892 Crane had finished writing Maggie. He approached the editor of Century Magazine, hoping his story would be serialized in the pages of that august publication. Almost immediately his hopes were dashed. The editor found the manuscript “cruel” and far too straightforward about the awful details of slum life. At the time there was no shortage of literature about the life of the underclass, but it was always couched in the safe terms of moral disapproval, sugar-coating the misery of the wretched, and suggesting that somehow the poor were responsible for their misery. Crane’s matter-of-fact presentation of life in the gutter was, the editor of the Century felt, too harsh for its middle- and upper-class readership.            </p><p class="description">Crane then began that dispiriting trek, so well known to first-time novelists, traveling from publisher to publisher only to have his manuscript rejected again and again. Many of the editors who read Maggie had the same opinion: While there was much to admire in the book, the squalor of the story, the appalling degradation of virtually all the characters, and the coarseness of the language were bound to outrage the “Mrs. Grundys” of the world (the fictional Mrs. Grundy, introduced in Thomas Morton’s play 1798 Speed the Plow, exemplifies the negative influence of conventional wisdom) and bring nothing but opprobrium down on the author and by extension his publisher.            </p><p class="description">Crane then came up with the idea of publishing his book under a pseudonym, and he chose the bland, almost forgettable name of “Johnston Smith.” “You see,” he explained, “I was going to wait until the world was pyrotechnic about Johnston Smith’s Maggie and then I was going to flop down like a trapeze performer from a wire, coming forward with all the grace of a consumptive hen, and say ‘I am he, friends’” </p></div>


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<p class="description">In Perilous Fight, Stephen Budiansky tells the rousing story of the underdog coterie of American seamen and their visionary secretary of the navy, who combined bravery and strategic innovation to hold off the legendary Royal Navy.Budiansky vividly demonstrates that far from an indecisive and unnecessary conflict—as historians have long dismissed the War of 1812—this “forgotten war” had profound consequences that would change the course of naval warfare, America’s place in the world, and the rules of international conflict forever. Never again would the great powers challenge the young republic’s sovereignty in the aftermath of the stunning performance of America’s navy and privateersmen in sea battles that ranged across half the globe. Their brilliant hit-and-run tactics against a far mightier foe would pioneer concepts of “asymmetric warfare” that would characterize the insurgency warfare of later centuries. Above all, the War of 1812 would be the making of the United States Navy. Even as the war began, the nation was bitterly divided over whether it should have a navy at all: Jeffersonian Republicans denounced the idea as a dangerous expansion of government power, while Federalists insisted that America could never protect its burgeoning seagoing commerce or command respect without a strong naval force. After the war, Americans would never again doubt that their might, respect, and very survival depended upon a permanent and professional navy.Drawing extensively on diaries, letters, and personal accounts from both sides, Budiansky re-creates the riveting encounters at sea in bloody clashes of cannonfire and swordplay; the intimate hopes and fears of vainglorious captains and young seamen in search of adventure; and the behind-the-scenes political intrigue and maneuvering in Washington and London. Throughout, Perilous Fight proves itself a gripping and essential work of American naval history.</p>


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


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<p class="description">Stephen Baxter's epic sequence of Xeelee novels was introduced to a new generation of readers with his highly successful quartet, Destiny's Children, published by Gollancz between 2003 and 2006. But the sequence of novels began with RAFT in 1991. From there it built into perhaps the most ambitious fictitious universe ever created. Beginning with the rise and fall of sub-quantum civilisations in the first nano-seconds after the Big Bang and ending with the heat death of the universe billions of years from now the series charts the story of mankinds epic war against the ancient and unknowable alien race the Xeelee. Along the way it examines questions of physics, the nature of reality, the evolution of mankind and its possibles futures. It looks not just at the morality of war but at the morality of survival and our place in the universe. This is a landmark in SF.</p>


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<div><p class="description">And everywhere the Humans went, they found life ...</p><p class="description">This dazzling future history, winner of the 2000 Philip K. Dick Award, is the most ambitious and exciting since Asimov's classic Foundation saga. It tells the story of Humankind -- all the way to the end of the Universe itself.Here, in luminous and vivid narratives spanning five million years, are the first Poole wormholes spanning the solar system; the conquest of Human planets by Squeem; GUTships that outrace light; the back-time invasion of the Qax: the mystery and legacy of the Xeelee, and their artifacts as large as small galaxies; photino birds and Dark Matter; and the Ring, where Ghost, Human, and Xeelee contemplate the awesome end of Time.Stephen Baxter is the most acclaimed and accomplished of a brilliant new generation of authors who are expanding the vision of science fiction and taking itto a new golden age.</p></div>


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<p class="description">Timelike Infinity: the strange region at the end of time where the Xeelee, owners of the universe, are waiting'Ś The second novel in Stephen Baxter's Xeelee sequence.First there were good times: humankind reached glorious heights, even immortality. Then there were bad times: Earth was occupied by the faceless, brutal Qax. Immortality drugs were confiscated, the human spirit crushed. Earth became a vast factory for alient foodstuffs.Into this new dark age appears the end of a tunnel through time. Made from exotic matter, it is humanity's greatest engineering project in the pre-Qax era, where the other end of the tunnel remains anchored near Jupiter. When a small group of humans in a makeshift craft outwit the Qax to escape to the past through the tunnel, it is not to warn the people of Earth against the Qax, who are sure to follow them. For these men and women from the future are themselves dangerous fanatics in pursuit of their own bizarre quantum grail.Michael Poole, architect of the tunnel, must boldly confront the consequences of his genius.</p>


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<p class="description">Alternate history at its most mindblowing-from the national bestselling author of Floodand Ark. Ten thousand years ago, a vast and fertile plain exists linking the British Isles to Europe. Home to a tribe of simple hunter-gatherers, Northland teems with nature's bounty, but is also subject to its whims. Fourteen-year-old Ana calls Northland home, but her world is changing. The air is warming, the ice is melting, and the seas are rising. Then Ana meets a traveler from a far-distant city called Jericho-a city that is protected by a wall. And she starts to imagine the impossible...</p>


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<p class="description">Ring tells the story of the end of the universe and the saving of mankind from its destruction. Two parallel plots are followed throughout the novel: that of Lieserl, an AI exploring the interior of the sun for millions of years, and that of the Great Northern, a generation ship of humans sent on a five-million-year journey (though only a thousand years will elapse onboard, due to relativistic time dilation effects).</p>


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<p class="description">Five hundred years after a spaceship from Earth accidentally crossed through a hole in space-time to another - and very strange - universe, the crew’s descendants still struggle for existence on the 'Raft', a structure built from the wreckage of the ship. A small group of scientists preserve the ancient knowledge which makes survival possible. But now they must contemplate a journey even more perilous and fantastic than that of their ancestors, or die.</p>


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<p class="description">Star humans were engineered to exist within the mantle of a star, mere tools of their Earth-evolved makers in a war against the Xeelee, owners of the universe. Stephen Baxter's third novel in his magnificent Xeelee Sequence is an exotic and endearing story of an abandoned people.Abandoned to their fate, their history lost along with contact with their makers, Star people survive in an environment that is possibly the strangest in science fiction. Microscopic inhabitants of superfluid air above a Quantum Sea and below the tangled Crust of the Star, swimming in an electric-blue grid, the Magfield, which is subject to violent storms, Star people struggle, like us, to make sense of their world'¦ and the threat hanging over it.Though the truth is far more disturbing and ominous than they feared, they will confront, finally, their makers, and they will rebel against the purpose for which they were created.</p>


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<p class="description">It's the job of a science fiction writer to visualize extrapolations of the future. But there are those who go far beyond, venturing into realms of breathtaking science. That kind of cutting edge talent is as rare as a supernovaand, in its own way, just as powerful. Arthur C. Clarke had it. So did William Gibson. Now, withEvolution, Stephen Baxter delivers what is sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the yearand shows once again why he belongs among the select company of science fiction writers who matter. Stretching from the distant past into the remote future, from primordial Earth to the stars,Evolutionis a soaring symphony of struggle, extinction, and survival, a dazzling epic that combines a dozen scientific disciplines and a cast of unforgettable characters to convey the grand drama of evolution in all its awesome majesty and rigorous beauty. Sixty-five million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, lived a small mammal, a proto-primate of the speciesPurgatorius. From this humble beginning, Baxter traces the human lineage forward through time. The adventure that unfolds is a gripping odyssey governed by chance and competition, a perilous journey to an uncertain destination along a route beset by sudden and catastrophic upheavals. It is a route that ends, for most species, in stagnation or extinction. Why should humanity escape this fate? A generation from today, a group of concerned scientistsdistant descendants of that primitivePurgatoriusgathers on a remote island to discuss this very question. The ceaseless expansion of human civilization has triggered an urgent environmental crisis that must be solved now if the Earth is to survive as a place hospitable to human life. But just when a peaceful solution seems within reach, two acts of shocking violence set in motion a cataclysmic chain of events that will expose the limitations of human intellect and adaptability in the face of the blind and implacable processes of Darwin's dangerous idea.</p>


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There are two sides to every story... Fans of The Twilight Saga will be enthralled by the riveting story of Bree Tanner, a character introduced in Eclipse, and the darker side of the newborn vampire world she inhabits. In another irresistible combination of danger, mystery, and romance, Stephenie Meyer tells the devastating story of Bree and the newborn army as they prepare to close in on Bella swan and the Cullens, following their encounter to its unforgettable conclusion.


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The #1 New York Times bestseller is available for the first time in a mass market paperback edition, featuring a striking movie tie-in cover.  Bella Swan's move to Forks, a small, perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made. But once she meets the mysterious and alluring Edward Cullen, Bella's life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. Up until now, Edward has managed to keep his vampire identity a secret in the small community he lives in, but now nobody is safe, especially Bella, the person Edward holds most dear. Deeply romantic and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight captures the struggle between defying our instincts and satisfying our desires. This is a love story with bite.


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Bella? Edward s soft voice came from behind me. I turned to see him spring lightly up the porch steps, his hair windblown from running. He pulled me into his arms at once, and kissed me again. His kiss frightened me. There was too much tension, too strong an edge to the way his lips crushed mine - like he was afraid we had only so much time left to us. As Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger. In the midst of it all, she is forced to choose between her love for Edward and her friendship with Jacob - knowing that her decision has the potential to ignite the ageless struggle between vampire and werewolf. With her graduation approaching, Bella has one more decision to make: life or death. But which is which? Following the international bestsellers Twilight and New Moon, Eclipse is the much-anticipated third book in Stephenie Meyer s captivating saga of vampire romance.


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When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved? To be irrevocably in love with a vampire is both fantasy and nightmare woven into a dangerously heightened reality for Bella Swan. Pulled in one direction by her intense passion for Edward Cullen, and in another by her profound connection to werewolf Jacob Black, a tumultuous year of temptation, loss, and strife have led her to the ultimate turning point. Her imminent choice to either join the dark but seductive world of immortals or to pursue a fully human life has become the thread from which the fates of two tribes hangs. Now that Bella has made her decision, a startling chain of unprecedented events is about to unfold with potentially devastating, and unfathomable, consequences. Just when the frayed strands of Bella's life-first discovered in Twilight, then scattered and torn in New Moonand Eclipse-seem ready to heal and knit together, could they be destroyed... forever? The astonishing, breathlessly anticipated conclusion to the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawnilluminates the secrets and mysteries of this spellbinding romantic epic that has entranced millions.


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The #1 New York Times bestseller is available for the first time in a mass market paperback edition, featuring a striking movie tie-in cover. In New Moon, Stephenie Meyer delivers another irresistible combination of romance and suspense with a supernatural twist. The "star-crossed" lovers theme continues as Bella and Edward find themselves facing new obstacles, including a devastating separation, the mysterious appearance of dangerous wolves roaming the forest in Forks, a terrifying threat of revenge from a female vampire and a deliciously sinister encounter with Italy's reigning royal family of vampires, the Volturi. Passionate, riveting, and full of surprising twists and turns, this vampire love saga captures the struggle between defying our instincts and satisfying our desires. This is a love story with bite.


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<div><p><strong>An explosive, heartbreaking memoir from the widow of Mark Madoff and daughter-in-law of Bernard Madoff, the first genuine inside story from a family member who has lived throughand survivedboth the public crisis and her own deeply personal tragedy.</strong></p><p>When the news of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme broke, Americans were shocked and outraged, perhaps none more so than the unsuspecting members of his own family. After learning that their father's legendarily successful wealth management company was "all just one big lie," Mark and Andrew Madoff turned their father in and cut off all communication with both parents. Mark and his wife, Stephanie, strove to make a fresh start for the sake of their two young children, but Mark could not overcome his sense of betrayal and shamehe and other family members were sued for $200 million in October of 2009. He hung himself on the two-year anniversary of his father's arrest. Left to raise her children as a single mother, Stephanie wrote this memoir to give them a sense of who their father really was, defend his innocence, and put her personal statement on record once and for all. In this candid insider account, she talks about her idyllic wedding to Mark on Nantucket, what it was really like to be a part of the Madoff family, the build-up to Bernard's confession, and the media frenzy that followed. It is about the loss of the fairytale life she knew, adjusting to life with a man she hardly recognized anymore, and the tragic and final loss of her husband. </p></div>


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<div><p>You are cordially invited to the wedding of Miss Heather Cynster . . . but not before she encounters kidnappers, danger, and a daring rescue at the hands of Viscount Breckenridge </p><p>Determined to hunt down her very own hero, one who will sweep her off her feet and into wedded bliss, and despairing of finding him in London’s staid ballrooms, Heather Cynster steps out of her safe world and boldly attends a racy soiree. </p><p>But her promising hunt is ruined by the supremely interfering Viscount Breckenridge, who whisks her out of scandal—and straight into danger, when a mysterious enemy seizes her, bundles her into a coach, and conveys her out of London. </p><p>Now it’s up to the notorious Breckenridge to prove himself the hero she’s been searching for all along . . . </p><p>And coming next month, more unforgettable romance in the Cynster Sisters Trilogy</p></div>


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<div><p><em>New York Times</em> bestselling author Stephanie Laurens returns to another utterly irresistible branch on her beloved Cynster family tree in <em>And Then She Fell.</em></p><p>Set in Regency England, London’s Henrietta Cynster, known as “The Matchbreaker” has a special talent for making sure that bad marriages never happen. After breaking up one ill-suited couple, Henrietta is obligated to find the perfect bride for the debonair James Glossup. </p><p>The assignment proves to be a challenging one for the single-minded Henrietta, who believes that finding love isn’t in her own stars. But Henrietta discovers—in spite of her personal denials of love—that both she and James are indisputably drawn to each other.</p><p>Fans of Stephanie Laurens’s Cynster books and readers of smart and compelling historical romances will be transported and entertained by <em>And Then She Fell.</em></p></div>


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<p>Three heros, three rescues, three weddings. The pleasure of your company is requested at the wedding of Miss Eliza Cynster ...but not until she's rescued from a daring abduction by the most unexpected of heros! Brazenly kidnapped from her sister Heather's engagement ball, Eliza Cynster is spirited north to Edinburgh. Desperate and determined to escape, she seizes upon the first possible champion who happens along - gentleman scholar Jeremy Carling. Villains and rescues are a far cry from Jeremy's expertise, yet he cannot abandon a damsel in distress. But danger lurks and hurdles abound in their race to escape the mysterious laird, until a final confrontation on a windswept cliff reveals what their future life could hold - if both are bold enough to seize and own the unexpected love they now share.</p>


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Amadeus meets Little Women in this irresistibly delightful historical novel by award-winning author Stephanie Cowell. The year is 1777 and the four Weber sisters, daughters of a musical family, share a crowded, artistic life in a ramshackle house. While their father scrapes by as a music copyist and their mother secretly draws up a list of prospective suitors in the kitchen, the sisters struggle with their futures, both marital and musical - until twenty-one-year-old Wolfgang Mozart walks into their lives. Bringing eighteenth-century Europe to life with unforgiving winters, yawning princes, scheming parents, and the enduring passions of young talent, Stephanie Cowell s richly textured tale captures a remarkable historical figure - and the four young women who engage his passion, his music, and his heart.


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<p class="description">In her sixth engrossing outing, Jane Austen employs her delicious wit and family ties to the Royal Navy in a case of murder on the high seas. Somewhere in the picturesque British port of Southampton, among a crew of colorful, eccentric, and fiercely individual souls, a killer has come ashore. And only Jane can fathom the depths of his ruthless mind....Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House“I will assert that sailors are endowed with greater worth than any set of men in England.” So muses Jane Austen as she stands in the buffeting wind of Southampton’s quay beside her brother Frank on a raw February morning. Frank, a post captain in the Royal Navy, is without a ship to command, and his best prospect is the Stella Maris, a fast frigate captained by his old friend Tom Seagrave. “Lucky” Tom — so dubbed for his habit of besting enemy ships — is presently in disgrace, charged with violating the Articles of War. Tom’s first lieutenant, Eustace Chessyre, has accused Seagrave of murder in the death of a French captain after the surrender of his ship. Though Lucky Tom denies the charge, his dagger was found in the dead man’s chest. Now Seagrave faces court-martial and execution for a crime he swears he did not commit.Frank, deeply grieved, is certain his friend will hang. But Jane reasons that either Seagrave or Chessyre is lying — and that she and Frank have a duty to discover the truth. The search for the captain’s honor carries them into the troubled heart of Seagrave’s family, through some of the seaport’s worst sinkholes, and at long last to Wool House, the barred brick structure that serves as gaol for French prisoners of war. Risking contagion or worse, Jane agrees to nurse the murdered French captain’s imprisoned crew — and elicits a debonair surgeon’s account of the Stella Maris’s battle that appears to clear Tom Seagrave of all guilt. When Eustace Chessyre is found murdered, the entire affair takes on the appearance of an insidious plot against Seagrave, who is charged with the crime. Could any of his naval colleagues wish him dead? In an era of turbulent intrigue and contested amour, could it be a case of cherchez la femme ... or a veiled political foe at work? And what of the sealed orders under which Seagrave embarked that fateful night in the Stella Maris? Death knocks again at Jane’s own door before the final knots in the killer’s net are completely untangled. Always surprising, Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House is an intelligent and intriguing mystery that introduces Jane and her readers to “the naval set” — and charts a true course through the amateur sleuth’s most troubled waters yet.</p>


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<div><p>In 1963, Betty Friedan unleashed a storm of controversy with her bestselling book, <em>The Feminine Mystique</em>. Hundreds of women wrote to her to say that the book had transformed, even saved, their lives. Nearly half a century later, many women still recall where they were when they first read it.</p><p>In <em>A Strange Stirring</em>, historian Stephanie Coontz examines the dawn of the 1960s, when the sexual revolution had barely begun, newspapers advertised for perky, attractive gal typists,” but married women were told to stay home, and husbands controlled almost every aspect of family life. Based on exhaustive research and interviews, and challenging both conservative and liberal myths about Friedan, <em>A Strange Stirring</em> brilliantly illuminates how a generation of women came to realize that their dissatisfaction with domestic life didn’t reflect their personal weakness but rather a social and political injustice.</p></div>


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<p class="description">For everyone who loves Jane Austen...a marvelously entertaining new series that turns the incomparable author into an extraordinary sleuth!On a visit to the estate of her friend, the young and beautiful Isobel Payne, Countess of Scargrave, Jane bears witness to a tragedy. Isobel's husband—a gentleman of mature years—is felled by a mysterious and agonizing ailment. The Earl's death seems a cruel blow of fate for the newly married Isobel. Yet the bereaved widow soon finds that it's only the beginning of her misfortune...as she receives a sinister missive accusing her and the Earl's nephew of adultery—and murder. Desperately afraid that the letter will expose her to the worst sort of scandal, Isobel begs Jane for help. And Jane finds herself embroiled in a perilous investigation that will soon have her following a trail of clues that leads all the way to Newgate Prison and the House of Lords—a trail that may well place Jane's own person in the gravest jeopardy.</p>


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<p>He challenged the greatest empire on earth with a ragtag bunch of renegades—and brought it to its knees. Empire of Blue Water is the real story of the pirates of the Caribbean.Henry Morgan, a twenty-year-old Welshman, crossed the Atlantic in 1655, hell-bent on making his fortune. Over the next three decades, his exploits in the Caribbean in the service of the English became legendary. His daring attacks on the mighty Spanish Empire on land and at sea determined the fates of kings and queens, and his victories helped shape the destiny of the New World.Morgan gathered disaffected European sailors and soldiers, hard-bitten adventurers, runaway slaves, and vicious cutthroats, and turned them into the most feared army in the Western Hemisphere. Sailing out from the English stronghold of Port Royal, Jamaica, “the wickedest city in the New World,” Morgan and his men terrorized Spanish merchant ships and devastated the cities where great riches in silver, gold, and gems lay waiting. His last raid, a daring assault on the fabled city of Panama, helped break Spain’s hold on the Americas forever. Awash with bloody battles, political intrigues, natural disaster, and a cast of characters more compelling, bizarre, and memorable than any found in a Hollywood swashbuckler—including the notorious pirate L’Ollonais, the soul-tortured King Philip IV of Spain, and Thomas Modyford, the crafty English governor of Jamaica—Empire of Blue Water brilliantly re-creates the passions and the violence of the age of exploration and empire.</p>


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<p class="description">The restorative power of the ocean brings Jane Austen and her beloved brother Henry, to Brighton after Henry’s wife is lost to a long illness. But the crowded, glittering resort is far from peaceful, especially when the lifeless body of a beautiful young society miss is discovered in the bedchamber of none other than George Gordon—otherwise known as Lord Byron. As a poet and a seducer of women, Byron has carved out a shocking reputation for himself—but no one would ever accuse him of being capable of murder. Now it falls to Jane to pursue this puzzling investigation and discover just how “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” Byron truly is. And she must do so without falling victim to the charming versifier’s legendary charisma, lest she, too, become a cautionary example for the ages.</p>


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<p class="description">After her brilliant detective debut in Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, there can be no doubt that Jane Austen would have made aremarkable sleuth. And so, with great aplomb, Stephanie Barron reveals the next superb Jane Austen Mystery... Jane Austen and her family are looking forward to a peaceful late-summer holiday in the seaside village of Lyme Regis. But on the road thither, a fearful storm and an overturned carriage lead the shaken travelers to seek refuge at High Down Grange. And there, in a dismal manor house wrapt in an air of malevolent neglect, Jane meets the darkly forbidding yet strangely attractive master of High Down Grange, Mr. Geoffrey Sidmouth. What murky secrets does the brooding Mr. Sidmouth hope to preserve behind his fierce glower? And who is the exceedingly lovely young woman dressed in peasant garb who shares his home? Once settled in town, Jane seeks to learn the answers. Yet common gossip is soon forgotten when a man is found hanged from a makeshift gibbet by the sea. Only the day before, Jane had observed this same man in a heated exchange with Mr. Sidmouth. Still, the worthies of Lyme are certain the labourer's death is the work of "the Reverend," the notorious ringleader of the midnight smuggling trade. The Reverend's identity is the paramount mystery of Lyme Regis.  And Jane, who can never resist a puzzle, is determined to solve this one. But to her dismay, she must soon admit that she harbours a strange sensibility for a man who could very well be a murderer. And then a second mysterious death draws her into a perilous scheme to entrap and expose Geoffrey Sidmouth. From the drawing- rooms of the cultured and the devious to secret caverns and coarse haunts, her mission will take her far from a lady's proper venue...until even so canny a student of character and valiant adventurer must ask herself: "Is the prize worth the risk--to my heart as well as my person?" Stylish, suspenseful, and wickedly diverting, Jane and the Man of the Cloth delves deep into the foibles, passions, and ruthless machinations that lurk within the most polite society.</p>


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<p class="description">Stefan Kanfer, acclaimed biographer of Lucille Ball and Groucho Marx, now gives us the definitive life of Marlon Brando, seamlessly intertwining the man and the work to give us a stunning and illuminating appraisal. Beginning with Brando’s turbulent childhood, Kanfer follows him to New York where he made his star-making Broadway debut as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire at age twenty-three. Brando then decamped for Hollywood, and Kanfer looks at each of Brando’s films over the years—from The Men in 1950 to The Score in 2001—offering deft and insightful analysis of his sometimes brilliant, sometimes baffling performances. And, finally, Kanfer brings into focus Brando’s self-destructiveness, ambivalence toward his craft, and the tragedies that shadowed his last years.</p>


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The careers of New York City detective Simon Ziele and his former partner Captain Declan Mulvaney went in remarkably different directions after the tragic death of Ziele's fiancée in the 1904 General Slocum ferry disaster. Although both men were earmarked for much bigger things, Ziele moved to Dobson, a small town north of the city, to escape the violence, and Mulvaney buried himself even deeper, agreeing to head up the precinct in the most crime-ridden area in the city.Yet with all of the detectives and resources at Mulvaney's disposal, a particularly puzzling crime compels him to look for someone he can trust absolutely.  When a chorus girl is found dead on a Broadway stage dressed in the leading lady's costume, there are no signs of violence, no cuts, no bruises--no marks at all. If pressed, the coroner would call it a suicide, but then that would make her the second girl to turn up dead in such a manner in the last few weeks.  And the news of a possible serial killer would be potentially disastrous to the burgeoning theater world, not to mention the citizens of New York.Following on the heels of Stefanie Pintoff's acclaimed and award-winning debut, A Curtain Falls is a moody and evocative tale that follows Ziele and his partners as they scour the dark streets of early-twentieth-century New York in search of a true fiend.


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Dobson, New York, 1905.Detective Simon Ziele lost his fiancée in the General Slocum ferry disaster—a thousand perished on that summer day in 1904 when an onboard fire burned the boat down in the waters of the East River. Still reeling from the tragedy, Ziele transferred to a police department north of New York, to escape the city and all the memories it conjured. But only a few months into his new life in a quiet country town, he’s faced with the most shocking homicide of his career to date: Young Sarah Wingate has been brutally murdered in her own bedroom in the middle of an otherwise calm and quiet winter afternoon. After just one day of investigation, Simon’s contacted by Columbia University’s noted criminologist Alistair Sinclair, who offers a startling claim about one of his patients, Michael Fromley—that the facts of the murder bear an uncanny resemblance to Fromley’s deranged mutterings.But what would have led Fromley, with his history of violent behavior and brutal fantasies, to seek out Sarah, a notable mathematics student and a proper young lady who has little in common with his previous targets? Is Fromley really a murderer, or is someone mimicking him?This is what Simon Ziele must find out, with the help of the brilliant but self-interested Alistair Sinclair—before the killer strikes again.With this taut, atmospheric, and original story of a haunted man who must search for a killer while on the run from his own demons, Stefanie Pintoff’s In the Shadow of Gotham marks the debut of an outstanding new talent, the inaugural winner of the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America Best First Crime Novel Competition.


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<p class="description">Lauren Sutherland tries to set a good example for her twin sister, from her practical job to her dependable, if boring, fiancé. So when impulsive Meg elopes with her boss, a U.S. senator twice her age, Lauren hops on a plane to talk her into an annulment...but comes face-to-face with the senator's handsome son, Drew, instead.Demanding to know what she's done with his father, Drew is as infuriating as he is annoyingly irresistible. But he's not the only one who mistakes Lauren's identity. A relentless foe is on a deadly hunt for the missing newlyweds -- unless Lauren and Drew can find them first.Venturing into the elite Washington social scene, they discover an elaborate web of explicit photos and blackmail, but the biggest surprise is the fiery attraction they can barely control. The clock is ticking, and while the sparks between Lauren and Drew burn hot, the trail of clues is growing cold....</p>


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<p>Search for fried ferns, jellied cowskins, and dried yak cheese at Thimphu's weekend market.<p>Be blessed with a 10-inch penis at Chimi Lhakhang, the home of the 'Divine Madman'.<p>Dance with snowlions and banter with clowns at the pick of Bhutan's colorful festivals.<p>Hike up to the gavity-defying Tiger's Nest monastery, reputedly held on to the sheer cliff face by the hairs of angels.<p><B>In this Guide</B><p>Understand murals and monsters with in-depth coverage of Bhutanese Buddhism and culture by our regional expert.<p>Special trekking chapter brings Himalayan peaks that little bit closer...<p>Find out more and swap yeti-spotting tips at <i><b>lonelyplanet.com</B></I>


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<p class="description"><br>Cleopatras palace shimmered with onyx and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Though her life spanned fewer then forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first and she poisoned the second.Incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men.They happen, however to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, two of the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a son with Caesar and - after his murder, three more with his prot_g_.Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way the supple personality has been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order a generation before the birth of Christ. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiffs is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life.</p>


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Multiple Amber Alerts for missing girls bring Detective CeeCee Gallagher onto the case of a serial child abducter and murderer. Time is running out as Gallagher and her partner race to save the girls lives and apprehend the killer before he can strike again.


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<p class="description">In response to popular demand, folks...the fifth volume of spike's uniquely amazing military memoirs of life in the ranks during world war 2.</p>


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<p class="description">This is the second volume of Mr Milligan's reminiscences of World War II.</p>


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<p class="description">Britannia rules the waves TA-RA, but on occasions she waives the rules and Spike is all set to liberate-gasp-Italy. In this fourth volume of war memoirs, Lance-Bombardier Milligan (Spike actually) continues his notorious sage of World War II - from the long remembered outbreak of crabs in monkey to the unfortunate ack-acking of and American killyhawk. Dio mio, is war is a game of cards, someone was cheating.</p>


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<p class="description">Britain's looniest war hero completes the third volume of the Milligan memoirs. The nineteenth battery forge into Tunis, cocksure and carefree. They climb on aqueduct with no trousers on (the battery that is; the aqueduct was very well-dressed). Five hundred gunners try to dance with two girls and an old French matron...up there in Valhalla, Monty's laughing fit to burst.</p>


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<p class="description">'At Victoria station the R.T.O. gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked 'This is your enemy'. I searched every compartment, but he wasn't on the train'. Spike Milligan's on the march, blitzing friend and foe alike with his uproarious recollections of army life from enlistment to the landing at Algiers in 1943. Bathos, pathos and gales of drunken laughter, and insane military goonery explode in superlative Milliganese.</p>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Riveting, funny, heartbreaking, at once raw and lyrical: these journals reveal the complexity of the actor/writer who invented the autobiographical monologue and perfected the form in such celebrated works as *Swimming to Cambodia.</span></h3><p>*Here is the first intimate portrait we have of the man behind the charismatic performer who ended his life in 2004: evolving artist, conflicted celebrity, a man struggling for years with depression before finally succumbing to its most desperate impulse. Begun when he was twenty-five, the journals give us Gray’s reflections on his childhood; his craving for success; the downtown New York arts scene of the 1970s; his love affairs, marriages and fatherhood; his travels in Europe and Asia; and throughout, his passion for the theater, where he worked to balance his compulsion to tell all with his terror of having his deepest secrets exposed.<br></p><p>Culled from more than five thousand pages and including interviews with friends, colleagues, lovers, and family, <em>The Journals of Spalding Gray</em> gives us a haunting portrait of a creative genius who we thought had told us everything about himself—until now.<br></p><p><em></em></p></div>


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There’s never been a better excuse to buy a new dress...or two. Shopaholic Ties the KnotThe irresistible heroine of Confessions of a Shopaholic and Shopaholic Takes Manhattan is back!--in a hilarious tale of mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, and one blushing bride who just can’t say no to saying “I do.”Life has been good for Becky Bloomwood: She’s become the best personal shopper at Barneys, she and her successful entrepreneurial boyfriend, Luke, are living happily in Manhattan’s West Village, and her new next door neighbor is a fashion designer! But with her best friend, Suze, engaged, how can Becky fail to notice that her own ring finger is bare? Not that she’s been thinking of marriage (or diamonds) or anything...Then Luke proposes! Bridal registries dance in Becky’s head. Problem is, two other people are planning her wedding: Becky’s overjoyed mother has been waiting forever to host a backyard wedding, with the bride resplendent in Mum’s frilly old gown. While Luke’s high-society mother is insisting on a glamorous, all-expenses-paid affair at the Plaza. Both weddings for the same day. And Becky can’t seem to turn down either one. Can everyone’s favorite shopaholic tie the knot before everything unravels?From the Trade Paperback edition.


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What's a round-the-world honeymoon if you can't buy the odd souvenir to ship back home? Like the Chinese urns and twenty silk dressing gowns Becky found in Hong Kong, the five kilim rugs from Turkey, the splendid hand-carved dining table (and ten chairs) from Sri Lanka, the huge wooden giraffes from Malawi (that her husband Luke expressly forbade her to buy). Only now Becky and Luke have returned home to London and Luke is furious. Two truckloads of those souvenirs have cluttered up their usually immaculate loft, and the bills for them are outrageous. Becky's even maxed out on her second secret credit card, and she doesn't have a new job yet. Luke insists she go on a budget. And worse -; her beloved best friend Suze has found a new best friend while Becky was away. Becky's feeling rather blue - when her parents deliver some incredible news. She has a long-lost sister! Becky is thrilled! She's convinced her sister will be a true soulmate. They'll go shopping together, drink cappuccinos together, have manicures together, and watch their favorite videos together. Until she meets Jessica for the first time and gets the shock of her life. Surely Becky Bloomwood's sister can't...hate shopping?


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The irresistible heroine of Confessions of a Shopaholic and Shopaholic Ties the Knot is back! And this time Becky Bloomwood and her credit cards are headed across the Atlantic.…With her shopping excesses (somewhat) in check and her career as a TV financial guru thriving, Becky’s biggest problem seems to be tearing her entrepreneur boyfriend, Luke, away from work for a romantic country weekend. And worse, figuring out how to pack light. But packing takes on a whole new meaning when Luke announces he’s moving to New York for business—and he asks Becky to go with him! Before you can say “Prada sample sale,” Becky has landed in the Big Apple, home of Park Avenue penthouses and luxury boutiques. Surely it’s only a matter of time until she becomes an American TV celebrity, and she and Luke are the toast of Gotham society. Nothing can stand in their way, especially with Becky’s bills miles away in London. But then an unexpected disaster threatens her career prospects, her relationship with Luke, and her available credit line! Shopaholic Takes Manhattan—but will she have to return it?


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Becky Brandon is pregnant! She couldn't be more overjoyed--especially since shopping cures morning sickness. But when the celebrity must-have obstetrician turns out to be her husband's glamorous ex-girlfriend, Becky's perfect world starts to crumble.


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<p>When twenty-eight-year-old Lexi Smart wakes up in a London hospital, she’s in for a big surprise. Her teeth are perfect. Her body is toned. Her handbag is Vuitton. Having survived a car accident—in a Mercedes no less—Lexi has lost a big chunk of her memory, three years to be exact, and she’s about to find out just how much things have changed. Somehow Lexi went from a twenty-five-year-old working girl to a corporate big shot with a sleek new loft, a personal assistant, a carb-free diet, and a set of glamorous new friends. And who is this gorgeous husband—who also happens to be a multimillionaire? With her mind still stuck three years in reverse, Lexi greets this brave new world determined to be the person she…well, seems to be. That is, until an adorably disheveled architect drops the biggest bombshell of all. Suddenly Lexi is scrambling to catch her balance. Her new life, it turns out, comes complete with secrets, schemes, and intrigue. How on earth did all this happen? Will she ever remember? And what will happen when she does?</p>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">In the latest installment to the wildly popular Shopaholic series (Shopaholic and Baby; etc.), Rebecca Brandon returns with willful two-year-old Minnie, who has taken after her mother in her fierce determination and her addiction to luxury brands. When the financial crisis finally hits the Brandon family, Rebecca vows to stop shopping until she's worn everything in her closet at least three times; Luke scrambles for new business directions; and Minnie remains exceptionally difficult. Still, Rebecca wants to throw Luke a surprise birthday bash, but planning it behind his back and on a budget proves almost impossible. As in all previous Shopaholic books, Rebecca is loud and proud about her luxury-brand obsession and equally at ease being a flighty, sometimes annoying lead, though her well-meaning secret birthday mission scores her much-needed points in the sympathy department. Series fans know what to expect and will get it by the Birkin-load. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">ntley</span></h3>


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<div><p>I’ve lost it.  The only thing in the world I wasn’t supposed to lose. My engagement ring. It’s been in Magnus’s family for three generations. And now the very same day his parents are coming, I’ve lost it. The very same day! Do not hyperventilate, Poppy. Stay positive !!</p><p><br>Poppy Wyatt has never felt luckier. She is about to marry her ideal man, Magnus Tavish, but in one afternoon her “happily ever after” begins to fall apart. Not only has she lost her engagement ring in a hotel fire drill but in the panic that follows, her phone is stolen. As she paces shakily around the lobby, she spots an abandoned phone in a trash can. Finders keepers! Now she can leave a number for the hotel to contact her when they find her ring. Perfect!<br><br>Well, perfect except that the phone’s owner, businessman Sam Roxton, doesn’t agree. He wants his phone back and doesn’t appreciate Poppy reading his messages and wading into his personal life.<br><br>What ensues is a hilarious and unpredictable turn of events as Poppy and Sam increasingly upend each other’s lives through emails and text messages. As Poppy juggles wedding preparations, mysterious phone calls, and hiding her left hand from Magnus and his parents . . . she soon realizes that she is in for the biggest surprise of her life.</p></div>


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Millions of readers have come to adore New York Times best-selling author Sophie Kinsella’s irrepressible heroine. Meet Becky Bloomwood, America’s favorite shopaholic—a young woman with a big heart, big dreams…and just one little weakness.Becky has a fabulous flat in London's trendiest neighborhood, a troupe of glamorous socialite friends, and a closet brimming with the season's must-haves. The only trouble is that she can't actually afford it—not any of it. Her job writing at Successful Savings not only bores her to tears, it doesn't pay much at all. And lately Becky's been chased by dismal letters from the bank—letters with large red sums she can't bear to read—and they're getting ever harder to ignore. She tries cutting back. But none of her efforts succeeds. Becky's only consolation is to buy herself something ... just a little something....Finally a story arises that Becky actually cares about, and her front-page article catalyzes a chain of events that will transform her life—and the lives of those around her—forever. Sophie Kinsella has brilliantly tapped into our collective consumer conscience to deliver a novel of our times—and a heroine who grows stronger every time she weakens. Becky's hilarious schemes to pay back her debts are as endearing as they are desperate. Her "confessions" are the perfect pick-me-up when life is hanging in the (bank) balance.


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With the same wicked humor, buoyant charm, and optimism that have made her Shopaholic novels beloved international bestsellers, Sophie Kinsella delivers a hilarious new novel and an unforgettable new character. Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets:Secrets from her mother:I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur.Sammy the goldfish in my parents’ kitchen is not the same goldfish that Mum gave me to look after when she and Dad were in Egypt.Secrets from her boyfriend:I weigh one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. Not one eighteen, like Connor thinks.I’ve always thought Connor looks a bit like Ken. As in Barbie and Ken.From her colleagues:When Artemis really annoys me, I feed her plant orange juice. (Which is pretty much every day.) It was me who jammed the copier that time. In fact, all the times.Secrets she wouldn’t share with anyone in the world:My G-string is hurting me.I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even what it is.Until she spills them all to a handsome stranger on a plane. At least, she thought he was a stranger.But come Monday morning, Emma’s office is abuzz about the arrival of Jack Harper, the company’s elusive CEO. Suddenly Emma is face-to-face with the stranger from the plane, a man who knows every single humiliating detail about her. Things couldn’t possibly get worse—Until they do.


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


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<p class="description">In the same vein as Marley and Me and My Dog Skip, this “mostly true” novel is at once a whimsical campfire mystery and a universal story about the friendship between a man and his dog.Cormac, a golden retriever who has always been afraid of thunderstorms and lightning flashes, runs away one stormy night while his master is away. So begins a strange adventure that lands Cormac in the back of a red pickup truck driven by a mysterious woman, takes him to a series of dog pounds and rescue shelters, and ultimately brings him to the suburbs of Connecticut. His owner, meanwhile, devastated by Cormac’s disappearance and trying to juggle a family, a book tour, and writing his new novel, becomes determined to solve the “dog-napping” case. With the help of the local veterinarian, bookstore colleagues, animal rescue employees, and old friends, he picks up on Cormac’s trail and watches his small-town community come together in search of his lost companion.Inspired by real events, and embellished only to serve the story through the spirit of imagination, Brewer has, as he says, “mainly told the truth in this story of losing my good dog Cormac.</p>


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<div><p>The first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. Now, with a candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself.<br></p><p>Here is the story of a precarious childhood, with an alcoholic father (who would die when she was nine) and a devoted but overburdened mother, and of the refuge a little girl took from the turmoil at home with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. But it was when she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that the precocious Sonia recognized she must ultimately depend on herself.  She would learn to give herself the insulin shots she needed to survive and soon imagined a path to a different life. With only television characters for her professional role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School, the New York County District Attorney’s office, private practice, and appointment to the Federal District Court before the age of forty. Along the way we see how she was shaped by her invaluable mentors, a failed marriage, and the modern version of extended family she has created from cherished friends and their children. Through her still-astonished eyes, America’s infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book, destined to become a classic of self-invention and self-discovery.</p></div>


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<div><p><strong>One of <em>The</em> <em>New York Times Book Review</em>'s 10 Best Books of the Year</strong>  </p><p>On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing, unsentimental, beautifully poised account: as she struggles through the first months following the tragedy, furiously clenched against a reality that she cannot face and cannot deny; and then, over the ensuing years, as she emerges reluctantly, slowly allowing her memory to take her back through the rich and joyous life she’s mourning, from her family’s home in London, to the birth of her children, to the year she met her English husband at Cambridge, to her childhood in Colombo; all the while learning the difficult balance between the almost unbearable reminders of her loss and the need to keep her family, somehow, still alive within her.</p></div>


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<p>Kidnapped into slavery in 1841, Northup spent 12 years in captivity. This autobiographical memoir represents an exceptionally detailed and accurate description of slave life and plantation society. "A moving, vital testament to one of slavery's 'many thousand gone' who retained his humanity in the bowels of degradation." — Saturday Review. 7 illustrations. Index.</p>


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<p class="description">A symbol of the strength of African-American women, and a champion of the rights of all women, Sojourner Truth was an illiterate former slave in New York State who transformed herself into a vastly powerful orator. Dictating to a neighbor, she began her celebrated life story, in which she chronicles her youth, her 1827 emancipation, and her religious experiences, one year after the extremely successful publication in 1846 of Frederick Douglass's narrative.Truth's magnetism as an abolitionist speaker brought her fame in her own time, and her narrative gives today's readers a vivid picture of nineteenth-century life in the north, where blacks, enslaved or free, lived in relative isolation from one another.</p>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Enthusiastic, spunky, and positive, Punky Brewster was the quintessential eighties kid. Nearly thirty years later, Soleil Moon Frye-the adorable girl who played her on TV-is all grown up. Now she's a married mom of two, an entrepreneur who parlayed her successful kids' clothing line into a partnership with Target, and a social media whiz with millions of followers. Many of the same girls who watched Soleil on television are now grown up with children of their own, too, and they look to her as a go-to source for realistic, in-the-trenches parenting advice, inspiration, and fun. <em>Happy Chaos</em> invites those women into Soleil's world, and makes them revel in the chaos of their own lives, too. </span></h3><p>Soleil believes that happy chaos" is the sign of a family operating at its best-when parents accept that they'll make mistakes, that there will be messes, tears and skinned knees. She learned to love a jumbled life during her own childhood, when her own mom created an atmosphere that was thoroughly unconventional. Their house in Los Angeles was a haven for many young stars of Soleil's generation, often far from home and looking for a safe place to hang out. In this book, she shows how her happy but chaotic childhood informed her parenting: Each chapter begins with a telling reminiscence before moving into insightful advice and fun stories about life with her husband and two adorable daughters. eles.</p></div>


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<p class="description">Let The Smart Cookies show you how to eliminate debt, spend smarter, save better, and achieve financial freedom—without sacrificing your social life or your sanity! They were five dynamic young women: smart, successful—and secretly drowning in debt. Inspired by an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show on personal finance, Andrea, Angela, Katie, Robyn, and Sandra formed a money club, together developing strategies for turning their finances around. Just one year later they had dramatically improved their financial situations—and had made major developments in their careers, relationships, and life goals to boot. Their proven recipe for success has since been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, MSNBC, and in the New York Daily News. How did they do it? These five women—with varied careers in marketing, public relations, social work, and TV production—joined forces to create a fun, simple, effective strategy for achieving financial success, forming a money club and supporting each other every step of the way. Now, in this extraordinary hands-on guide, the women, who soon dubbed themselves The Smart Cookies, share the secrets of their success.Weaving anecdotes from their own lives with practical, how-to advice, The Smart Cookies offer strategies that cut across the financial spectrum, whether you’re deeply in debt or just want to manage your money better. Tackling the unique financial challenges facing women today, they offer easy-to-follow advice on everything from creating a spending plan to boosting your income to starting your own money club.</p>


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<div><p><em>The Complete Sherlock Holmes</em> comprises four novels and fifty-six short stories revolving around the world’s most popular and influential fictional detective—the eccentric, arrogant, and ingenious Sherlock Holmes. He and his trusted friend, Dr. Watson, step from Holmes’s comfortable quarters at 221b Baker Street into the swirling fog of Victorian London to combine detailed observation and vast knowledge with brilliant deduction. Inevitably, Holmes rescues the innocent, confounds the guilty, and solves the most perplexing puzzles known to literature.</p><p><em>Volume II</em> of <em>The Complete Sherlock Holmes</em> begins with <em>The Return of Sherlock Holmes</em>. <strong>Sir Arthur Conan Doyle</strong>, tired of writing about Holmes, had killed him off at the end of “The Final Problem,” the last tale in <em>The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes</em> (found in <em>Volume I</em> of <em>The Complete Sherlock Holmes</em>). Public demand for new Holmes stories was so great, however, that Conan Doyle eventually resurrected him. The first story in <em>The Return</em>, “The Adventure of the Empty House,” features Conan Doyle’s infamously inventive explanation of how Holmes escaped what seemed like certain death.</p><p>This volume also includes two other collections of Holmes stories, <em>His Last Bow</em> and <em>The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes</em>; Conan Doyle’s final full-length Holmes novel, <em>The Valley of Fear</em>; a pair of parodies, “The Field Bazaar” and “How Watson Learned the Trick”; and two essays about the “private life” of the beloved sleuth.</p></div>


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A brand-new book of hilarious and insightful personal essays by the iconic, irresistible Sloane Crosley.   From the author of the sensational bestseller I Was Told There'd Be Cake comes a new book of personal essays brimming with all the charm and wit that have earned Sloane Crosley widespread acclaim, award nominations, and an ever-growing cadre of loyal fans. In Cake readers were introduced to the foibles of Crosley's life in New York City-always teetering between the glamour of Manhattan parties, the indignity of entry-level work, and the special joy of suburban nostalgia-and to a literary voice that mixed Dorothy Parker with David Sedaris and became something all its own.  Crosley still lives and works in New York City, but she's no longer the newcomer for whom a trip beyond the Upper West Side is a big adventure. She can pack up her sensibility and takes us with her to Paris, to Portugal (having picked it by spinning a globe and putting down her finger, and finally falling in with a group of Portuguese clowns), and even to Alaska, where the "bear bells" on her fellow bridesmaids' ponytails seemed silly until a grizzly cub dramatically intrudes. Meanwhile, back in New York, where new apartments beckon and taxi rides go awry, her sense of the city has become more layered, her relationships with friends and family more complicated.  As always, Crosley's voice is fueled by the perfect witticism, buoyant optimism, flair for drama, and easy charm in the face of minor suffering or potential drudgery. But in How Did You Get This Number it has also become increasingly sophisticated, quicker and sharper to the point, more complex and lasting in the emotions it explores. And yet, Crosley remains the unfailingly hilarious young Everywoman, healthily equipped with intelligence and poise to fend off any potential mundanity in maturity.


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<p class="description">in this classic satire of small-town America, beautiful young Carol Kennicott comes to Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, with dreams of transforming the provincial old town into a place of beauty and culture. But she runs into a wall of bigotry, hypocrisy and complacency. The first popular bestseller to attack conventional ideas about marriage, gender roles, and small town life, Main Street established Lewis as a major American novelist.</p>


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<p class="description">In the fall of 1920, Sinclair Lewis began a novel set in a fast-growing city with the heart and mind of a small town. For the center of his cutting satire of American business he created the bustling, shallow, and myopic George F. Babbitt, the epitome of middle-class mediocrity. The novel cemented Lewis’s prominence as a social commentator. Babbitt basks in his pedestrian success and the popularity it has brought him. He demands high moral standards from those around him while flirting with women, and he yearns to have rich friends while shunning those less fortunate than he. But Babbitt’s secure complacency is shattered when his best friend is sent to prison, and he struggles to find meaning in his hollow life. He revolts, but finds that his former routine is not so easily thrown over.</p>


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<div><p><em>The Complete Sherlock Holmes</em> comprises four novels and fifty-six short stories revolving around the world’s most popular and influential fictional detective—the eccentric, arrogant, and ingenious Sherlock Holmes. He and his trusted friend, Dr. Watson, step from Holmes’s comfortable quarters at 221b Baker Street into the swirling fog of Victorian London to exercise that unique combination of detailed observation, vast knowledge, and brilliant deduction. Inevitably, Holmes rescues the innocent, confounds the guilty, and solves the most perplexing puzzles known to literature.</p><p><em>Volume I</em> of <em>The Complete Sherlock Holmes</em> starts with Holmes’s first appearance, <em>A Study in Scarlet</em>, a chilling murder novel complete with bloodstained walls and cryptic clues, followed by the baffling <em>The Sign of Four</em>, which introduces Holmes’s cocaine problem and Watson’s future wife. The story collections <em>The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes</em> and <em>The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes</em> feature such renowned tales as “A Scandal in Bohemia,” “The Red-Headed League,” and “The Musgrave Ritual.”</p><p>Tired of writing stories about Holmes, his creator, <strong>Sir Arthur Conan Doyle</strong>, killed him off at the end of “The Final Problem,” the last tale in <em>The Memoirs</em>. But the public outcry was so great that eight years later he published the masterful <em>The Hound of the Baskervilles</em>, which supposedly takes place before Holmes’s death.</p><p><br></p></div>


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<p>The first book in the Aidy Westlake mystery series set in the high-octane world of motor racing - When Derek Deacon threatens to kill Alex Fanning, his championship rival, rookie driver Aidy Westlake doesn’t put much stock in it – it’s typical of the intense competitiveness and aggression in their world. But when Fanning dies after making contact with Deacon’s car during a race, a conspiracy ensues: the TV coverage is edited and the police wind up the investigation without interviewing witnesses. Compelled to prove Deacon is the murderer, Aidy pushes for the truth and is drawn into a world of fraud, organized crime and murder.</p>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">The making of the "Oxford English Dictionary" was a monumental 50 year task requiring thousands of volunteers. One of the keenest volunteers was a W C Minor who astonished everyone by refusing to come to Oxford to receive his congratulations. In the end, James Murray, the "OED's" editor, went to Crowthorne in Berkshire to meet him. What he found was incredible - Minor was a millionaire American civil war surgeon turned lunatic, imprisoned in Broadmoor Asylum for murder and yet who dedicated his entire cell-bound life to work on the English language.</span></h3>

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<div><p>In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of <em>The Professor and the Madman</em> ("Elegant and scrupulous"<em>New York Times Book Review</em>) and <em>Krakatoa</em> ("A mesmerizing page-turner"<em>Time</em>) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically advanced country.<br></p><p>No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair.<br></p><p>He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire. He searched everywhere for evidence to bolster his conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundreds of mankind's most familiar innovationsincluding printing, the compass, explosives, suspension bridges, even toilet paperoften centuries before the rest of the world. His thrilling and dangerous journeys, vividly recreated by Winchester, took him across war-torn China to far-flung outposts, consolidating his deep admiration for the Chinese people.<br></p><p>After the war, Needham was determined to tell the world what he had discovered, and began writing his majestic <em>Science and Civilisation in China</em>, describing the country's long and astonishing history of invention and technology. By the time he died, he had produced, essentially single-handedly, seventeen immense volumes, marking him as the greatest one-man encyclopedist ever.<br></p><p>Both epic and intimate, <em>The Man Who Loved China</em> tells the sweeping story of China through Needham's remarkable life. Here is an unforgettable tale of what makes men, nations, and, indeed, mankind itself greatrelated by one of the world's inimitable storytellers.<br></p></div>


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<div><p><strong>A True Portrait of One of the World's Most Chaotic and Beautiful Regions That Explains Why Violence Has Always Occurred ThereAnd Why It May Continue For Years To Come</strong></p><p>The vast and mountainous area that makes up the Balkans is rife with discord, both cultural and topographical. And, as Simon Winchester superbly demonstrates in this intimate portrait of the region, much of the political strife of the past century can be traced to its inherent contrasts. With the aid of a guide and linguist, Winchester traveled deep into the region's most troublesome areasincluding Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, and Turkeyjust as the war was tearing these countries apart. The result is a book not just about war but also about how war affects the living. Both timeless and current, <em>The Fracture Zone</em> goes behind the headlines to offer a true picture of a region that has always been on the brink. Winchester's remarkable journey puts all the elements togetherthe faults, the fractures, and the chaosto make sense out of a seemingly senseless place. </p></div>


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<div><p>Like most long journeys into the unknown, this one began with an idea -- an idea that was triggered by a strange story I read one wet Sunday afternoon in a recent early spring, on the front page of a London newspaper. It was all about the alleged 'invasion' of an island known as Southern Thule, which was said to be 10,000 miles away from England in chilly wastes of the Southern Ocean.</p><p>The island of Southern Thule is quite barren, windswept, bitterly cold, uninhabited and, to all intents and purposes, useless. The Admiralty's <em>Antarctic </em>Pilot<em> says that it is part of an old sunken volcano, and is covered with ash and penguin guano. There are seals, a variety of petrels and a bank of kelp weed a few hundred yards offshore, especially around a small inlet called Ferguson Bay. Of other possible delights the <em>Pilot</em> is silent.</em></p><em><p>The central fact of this curious tale is that Southern Thule belongs now, and belonged at the time of the 'invasion', to Britain. It was, and is, a part of a British Crown colony -- one of the South Sandwich Islands, which are themselves dependencies of the Falkland Islands. Southern Thule was, indeed, part of the British Empire. It was given its name because it must have seemed to its first finders at very much the extreme end of the discoverable world.</p><p>Some time during the November of 1976 -- no one is certain of the exact date -- a party of fifty members of the Argentine Air Force landed on this remote British rock and, with neither notice, permission nor publicity, constructed a small military base. They built barracks, and a small concrete landing pad for their helicopters. They set up weather-recording machinery and a radio station. They built a plinth, and erected a flagpole, and they flew their flag -- the blue and white bandera of the Argentine Republic. So far as they and their commanders were concerned the island, hitherto British, was now an integral part -- de facto if not de jure -- of Argentina.</p><p>It was a month before the British Government discovered what had happened. Ham radio operators on the Falkland Islands, a thousand miles away to the west, heard chatter between Argentine naval vessels and the Thule air force detachment. On the orders of the Ministry of Defence the local Royal Naval guard ship -- HMS <em>Endurance</em> -- was sent down to investigate. Five days before Christmas a helicopter from the ship spotted the Argentinians, and the extraordinary news of what was at the very least an act of the most immense cheek, was flashed to London.</p><p>But what initially intrigued me about the story is that London did almost nothing about it. More than a year was to go by before word of the seizure was to leak out to the British public -- via the Sunday newspaper -- or to the British Parliament. The then Prime Minister, James Callaghan, admitted to a House of Commons that was by turns amused and outraged that yes, he had known all about the affair and that no, he was not planning to send in the Marines to dislodge the Argentinian trespassers. Patient negotiations would continue, he said, to try to persuade them to go away, and in the meantime the interests of regional serenity, diplomatic practice and protocols would be better served if everyone remained calm, and made light of the incident.</p><p>The Argentines remained on Southern Thule until six days after the Falklands War was ended, on 28th June 1982. The same HMS <em>Endurance</em> that had first sighted the men six years before, turned up with a recovery party. HMS <em>Yarmouth</em>, a frigate, dropped a salvo of shells on to a bluff not far from the Argentine base. A Royal Naval tug and a Royal Fleet Auxiliary stood by, giving the whole exercise a properly Imperial appearance. And the Argentines, outnumbered and outgunned, surrendered and handed over their weapons to the Royal Marines. The Union flag was hoisted, and everyone -- British victors and Argentine vanquished -- sailed away and left Southern Thule to a customarily lonely winter of gales, ice storms and blizzards.</p><p>The story did not quite end there. Six months later a passing British warship noticed, to general astonishment, that the Union flag had been taken down from the jackstaff and the blue-and-white Argentine flag run up in its place. Wary sailors clambered on to the island, finding it deserted, but noticed that whoever had taken the British flag down had folded it with commendable neatness and stuffed it under a nearby boulder. There was general agreement that the new invader was a wit, if nothing else.</p><p>The sailors' amusement was not matched back in London: a signal was sent to HMS <em>Apollo</em> ordering its men to destroy all buildings on Southern Thule, leaving none fit for prolonged habitation. Demolition crews moved in with plastic explosive, and by Christmas 1982 every barrack block and mess room and met station was reduced to a pile of concrete rubble.</p><p>Only a tiny refuge hut was left, stocked with rations, in case a British survey team should ever find itself benighted on the island. And to give such stranded men solace, a Bible, presented by the Scottish Commercial Travellers' Christian Union, was tucked in with the food. As a final act the helicopter crew from <em>Endurance</em> raised yet another Union flag, though since the halyards had been destroyed it could only flutter at half mast, where it possibly remains to this day, whipped by the freezing winds, to declare to all the world that this minute speck of worthless land is British, and that, as stated in the best-known of all British Imperial axioms, 'What we have, we hold.'</p><p>The story intrigued me, for one reason above all. I had thought to the extent that I had ever thought about the matter at all since schooldays -- that we had no longer had an Empire ...</p><em></em></em></div>


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<p class="description"><br>Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman, examines the legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa, which was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. The effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France. Barometers in Bogotá and Washington, D.C., went haywire. Bodies were washed up in Zanzibar. The sound of the island's destruction was heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of miles away. Most significant of all -- in view of today's new political climate -- the eruption helped to trigger in Java a wave of murderous anti-Western militancy among fundamentalist Muslims, one of the first outbreaks of Islamic-inspired killings anywhere. Krakatoa gives us an entirely new perspective on this fascinating and iconic event.This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.</p>


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<p>Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today’s clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of three thousand years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence. <br /><br />How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the “center of the world” and now the key to peace in the Middle East? In a gripping narrative, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city in its many incarnations, bringing every epoch and character blazingly to life. Jerusalem’s biography is told through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the men and women—kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores—who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem. As well as the many ordinary Jerusalemites who have left their mark on the city, its cast varies from Solomon, Saladin and Suleiman the Magnificent to Cleopatra, Caligula and Churchill; from Abraham to Jesus and Muhammad; from the ancient world of Jezebel, Nebuchadnezzar, Herod and Nero to the modern times of the Kaiser, Disraeli, Mark Twain, Lincoln, Rasputin, Lawrence of Arabia and Moshe Dayan. <br /><br />Drawing on new archives, current scholarship, his own family papers and a lifetime’s study, Montefiore illuminates the essence of sanctity and mysticism, identity and empire in a unique chronicle of the city that many believe will be the setting for the Apocalypse. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem, and the only city that exists twice—in heaven and on earth. </p>


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<p>Instead of the dying Old Regime, Schama presents an ebullient country, vital and inventive, infatuated with novelty and technology--a strikingly fresh view of Louis XVI's France. A New York Times bestseller in hardcover. </p>


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The first in an ambitious and highly commercial quartet of novels focusing on two giants of European history, Wellington and Napoleon Europe in the late eighteenth century was a tumultuous place, with war and rebellions breaking out on many fronts. Young Arthur Wesley (later Wellington) and Napoleon Bonaparte grow up worlds apart yet immersed from youth in a culture where a military career is a natural choice for men of ambition. While Wellington is blooded in Ireland and Flanders, Napoleon is caught up in the dramas of the French Revolution and war with Prussia, Britain and Holland. None of this is enough to distract Wellington from his pursuit of Kitty Pakenham or Napoleon from his future bride, Josephine, for these men throw themselves into all aspects of life as enthusiastically as they rush to battle. A wonderful, multi-layered introduction to an epic series.


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<p>Join the thunderous applause for the sublime ballet dancers in the Bolshoi Theatre<p>Perfect your <I>banya</I> etiquette before joining in this steamy Russian ritual<p>Surround yourself with majestic rugged scenery as you drive across the world's deepest lake<p>Feel St Petersburg's contemporary pulse by clubbing in converted stables and Soviet factories<p><B>In This Guide:</B><p>Nine authors, more than seven months of research, countless shots of vodka<p>All new Activities chapter and tips on how to cut through red tape to secure your visa<p>Content updated daily - visit <I><B>lonelyplanet.com</B></I> for up-to-the-minute reviews, updates and traveler insights


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<p>Welcome to the Nightside, that secret square mile located in the dark heart of London where the sun never rises and people can fraternize with every myth and monster imaginable. </p><p>John Taylor is a P.I. with the special ability to locate anyone or anything. <em>The Unnatural Inquirer</em>, the Nightside's most notorious gossip rag, has offered him a million pounds to find a DVD purportedto contain an actual recording of the afterlife. John doesn't know if it's true, but someone-or something-thinks so, and will stop at nothing to possess the disc. </p>


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<p>Experience the best of Korea with Lonely Planet. Our 8th edition will have you checking out the chic boutiques and bars of Seoul, watching the spectacular Mass Games, dining on Busan seafood, hiking to volcanic craters and recuperating from it all on the island paradise of Jeju-do.<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>Detailed Advice from food and drink to culture and transport<p>Touring North Korea we help you discover Asia's dark star<p>Itineraries historic sights, activities and gourmet feasts


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'Something from the Nightside' is the first book in Green's Nightside sequence, a hard-boiled mystery that chronicles the life of John Taylor, a down-and-out private detective with supernatural abilities who specializes in finding lost things in Nightside. The realm of Nightside is 'the secret, hidden, dark heart' of London, a subterranean world where time and reality have no meaning, a place where it's always three o'clock in the morning and something dangerous is most definitely lurking right around the corner. When a desperate blonde comes to John searching for her runaway daughter, he takes the case, although it means returning to his place of birth, Nightside. John has been living in 'the real world' for five years, and returning to Nightside means being reacquainted with old friends like Razor Eddie, Punk God of the Straight Razor, and Shotgun Suzie, a leather-clad bounty hunter. But the first rule in Nightside is never trust anyone.


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John Taylor, a "finder" who works in the magical underworld of London, uncovers the mystery of his past just in time to try to stop his mother, a being who has been around since before the dawn of history, from destroying the Nightside, a realm of her own making.


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John Taylor is a PI for hire in the Nightside, the dark and corrupt city within the city of London. Where the sun never shines and where pleasure and horror are always on sale - for the right price. John Taylor cares that this place is about to be destroyed. He was born there, lives there and got friends there. They might not all be acceptable in polite company, but they're his friends, nonetheless. He knows that he's the only one who can stop her. The trick is, how to do it without fulfilling this prophecy that says whatever action he takes, not only is the Nightside doomed, but the rest of the world will soon follow.


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<p>In the Nightside, the hidden heart of London where it's always 3 AM, Detective John Taylor must find an elusive singer known as The Nightingale. Her silken voice has inexplicably lured many a fan to suicideand Taylor is determined to stop her, before the whole neighborhood falls under her trance. But to catch the swift-winged Nightingale, he'll have to hear the deadly musicand survive. </p>


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There's a new sheriff in town, and he's got the Nightside's rich and powerful quaking in their boots. He's The Walking Man, and it's his mission to exorcise sinners—with extreme prejudice. Problem is, the Nightside was built on sin and corruption, and The Walking Man makes no distinction between evildoers and those simply indulging themselves. He'll leave the place a wasteland unless someone stops him, and P.I. John Taylor has been handed the job. No known magic or science can affect The Walking Man, and if John can't discover his weakness, he'll be facing the very Wrath of God…


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After the war that had left the Nightside leaderless, Jeremiah Griffin, head of one of the last immortal human families, plans to fill the power vacuum, but when his granddaughter vanishes, he is forced to enlist the assistance of John Taylor and his special talents to find her, but someone--or something--is blocking his abilities. Original.


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<p>Lady Luck has hired John Taylor to investigate the origins of the Nightsidethe dark heart of London where it's always 3 A.M. But when he starts to uncover facts about his long-vanished mother, the Nightsideand all of existence could be snuffed out. </p>


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<p class="description">Working in Nightside, the dark underworld beneath the streets of London, John Taylor, gifted with the ability of finding things that are lost, is determined to locate The Unholy Grail--the cup, rife with power and corruption, that Judas drank from at the Last Supper--before it falls into the wrong hands.</p>


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"'Find what you were looking for, Inspector?' "  " "  "Every day the same question. A different uniform but the same question. They thought Lucia enjoyed being here. They thought that was why she kept coming back. But they were asking the wrong thing. She had found what she was looking for - she had found what she had been sent to discover - but she had found out more besides. The question was what to do about it. The question was whether to do anything at all."  In the depths of a sweltering summer, teacher Samuel Szajkowski walks into his school assembly and opens fire. He kills three pupils and a colleague before turning the gun on himself.  Lucia May, the young policewoman who is assigned the case, is expected to wrap up things quickly and without fuss. The incident is a tragedy that could not have been predicted and Szajkowski, it seems clear, was a psychopath beyond help. Soon, however, Lucia becomes preoccupied with the question no one else seems to want to ask: what drove a mild-mannered, diffident school teacher to commit such a despicable crime?  Piecing together the testimonies of the teachers and children at the school, Lucia discovers an uglier, more complex picture of the months leading up to the shooting. She realises too that she has more in common with Szajkowski than she could have imagined. As the pressure to bury the case builds, she becomes determined to tell the truth about what happened, whatever the consequences . . .


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Experimental brain surgery goes horribly awry; a dam fails catastrophically; a geologist leads an ill-equipped party to its doom in the mouth of an active volcano: these are the amazing and sometimes horrific stories of technical errors and scientific mistakes that LeVay (<em>The Sexual Brain</em>) relates. Some, like the case of the British meteorologist who failed to predict a hurricane that killed 18 people, seem due to arrogance. Others—the loss of a costly spacecraft, a criminal conviction based on inaccurate DNA analysis, multiple deaths after an accidental release of anthrax—are the result of ordinary human error. Some incidents may well have been deliberate, such as a nuclear reactor error that was possibly the result of a love triangle gone bad, or the data falsified by a physicist seeking fame as the discoverer of a new element. LeVay surveys a range of fields, offering several reasons why things go wrong and noting that for every brilliant scientific success, there are a dozen failures. Readers curious about particularly notorious cases will find LeVay's book both entertaining and thought provoking. </span></h3>


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Trained by the mystical Villichi in the Way of the Druid and the Path of the Preserver, Sorak the elfling sets out to find the mysterious and reclusive wizard known only as the Sage. Guided by a spell scroll and his own tormented inner voices, Sorak must cross a lethal, rock-strewn wasteland no one has ever survived and make his way to Nibenay, where he must seek out the secret Veiled Alliance. Together with Ryana, the beautiful Villichi priestess who has forsworn her vows in order to follow him upon his quest, and the lovely, pampered daughter of a sorcerer-king whom they have stolen from a noble's caravan, Sorak braves the unknown dangers of the wild, Athasian desert... pursued by a cruel, relentless noble who will stop at nothing to regain the princess who was stolen from him.


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A new set of heroes embarks upon a quest to discover the secrets of power in the Dark Sun world, including an outcast, whose bloodline combines the lithe grace of elves with the feral savagery of Athasian halflings. Illustrations.


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


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After Sorak finds the Sage, who explains to him how he came to be splintered into countless separate beings, Sorak gathers all the members of his tribe of one and launches a war against the evils of Athas. Original.


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Sorak, elfin hero of the author's Tribe of One trilogy, along with his friend and lover, Ryana, embarks on a mission of mercy for his new master, the Sage. Original. 75,000 first printing.


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">The gripping, suspenseful, and wry 10th tale in the Nightside supernatural detective series proves every bit the equal of Jim Butcher's better-known Harry Dresden books. The action picks up not long after 2009's <em>Just Another Judgement Day</em> as Lord Screech, an elf claiming to be a peace emissary who has just negotiated a treaty between powerful elvish rivals, enlists PI John Taylor's help in getting safe passage to a portal to another realm. Despite his misgivings about Screech's honesty, Taylor and Ms. Fate, a transvestite crime fighter who might have heard of taste, but only as something other people had, battle werewolves and Neanderthals to deliver Screech to his destination and tackle several other challenges. Longtime fans and first timers alike will applaud Green's blend of fantasy, mystery, and humor. </span></h3>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">This gripping, fast-paced, emotionally intense fourth volume in Green's Secret Histories series (after 2009's <em>The Spy Who Haunted Me</em>) is sure to delight fans of paranormal investigator Eddie Drood and his girlfriend, the fabulously strong and strong-willed witch Molly Metcalf. An insignificant villain, Doctor Delirium, plans to acquire a powerful, mysterious item at a secret sale. This simple event explodes into complexity when someone kills the Drood matriarch and turns Eddie's family into a deadly mob, with horrifying consequences. The real enemy is truly worthy of the Drood clan: a race of immortals who plan to breach the gates of heaven itself. Fans of the series will be delighted by the deft combination of urban fantasy adventure, sharp-edged sarcasm, and treachery upon treachery, which make this installment strong enough to stand alone as a great introduction to Green's work. </span></h3>


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<p>Admired for her achievements and satirized for her personal life, Catherine the Great was one of the most celebrated monarchs in history, turning eighteenth-century Russia into arguably the largest and most powerful state since the fall of the Roman Empire. She promoted radical political ideas while emphasizing moderation in government. She could be ruthless when necessary, but she charmed everyone she met, joking at private dinner parties in the Hermitage, which she had built for her own use. Determined to endear herself to the Russians, she made religious devotions in which she never believed. </p><p>Intimate and revealing, <em>Catherine the Great</em> examines the lifelong friendships that sustained the empress throughout her personal life and places her within the context of the royal court: its politics, its flourishing literature and the very culture that became central to her exercise of absolute power. </p>


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<div><p><strong>DID HITLER--CODE NAME “GREY WOLF”--REALLY DIE IN 1945?</strong></p><p><strong>GRIPPING NEW EVIDENCE SHOWS WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED…</strong></p><p>When Truman asked Stalin in 1945 whether Hitler was dead, Stalin replied bluntly, “No.” As late as 1952, Eisenhower declared: “We have been unable to unearth one bit of tangible evidence of Hitler's death.” What really happened?</p><p>Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams have compiled extensive evidence--some recently declassified--that Hitler actually fled Berlin and took refuge in a remote Nazi enclave in Argentina. The recent discovery that the famous “Hitler's skull” in Moscow is female, as well as newly uncovered documents, provide powerful proof for their case. Dunstan and Williams cite people, places, and dates in over 500 detailed notes that identify the plan's escape route, vehicles, aircraft, U-boats, and hideouts. Among the details: the CIA's possible involvement and Hitler's life in Patagonia--including his two daughters.</p></div>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">Simon Baron-Cohen displays once again his ability to bring science to bear on troubling and controversial issues. Arguing that we explain nothing by describing acts of wanton cruelty as evil, he explores the simple but powerful hypothesis that such acts can be traced to a distinct psychological state - a lack of empathy. He backs up his claim with a wealth of research - from developmental psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience and genetics. Those who have to deal with the aftermath of cruelty may not agree with Baron-Cohen’s analysis but they will surely be informed and provoked by his boldness and originality.</span></h3>


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From the critically acclaimed author of The Last of Her Kind, a breakout novel that imagines the aftermath of pandemic flu, as seen through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old boy uncertain of his destiny.  His family's sole survivor after a flu pandemic has killed large numbers of people worldwide, Cole Vining is lucky to have found refuge with the evangelical Pastor Wyatt and his wife in a small town in southern Indiana. As the world outside has grown increasingly anarchic, Salvation City has been spared much of the devastation, and its residents have renewed their preparations for the Rapture.  Grateful for the shelter and love of his foster family (and relieved to have been saved from the horrid, overrun orphanages that have sprung up around the country), Cole begins to form relationships within the larger community. But despite his affection for this place, he struggles with memories of the very different world in which he was reared. Is there room to love both Wyatt and his parents? Are they still his parents if they are no longer there? As others around him grow increasingly fixated on the hope of salvation and the new life to come through the imminent Rapture, Cole begins to conceive of a different future for himself, one in which his own dreams of heroism seem within reach.  Written in Sigrid Nunez's deceptively simple style, Salvation City is a story of love, betrayal, and forgiveness, weaving the deeply affecting story of a young boy's transformation with a profound meditation on the meaning of belief and heroism.


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<p class="description">In her great historical epic Kristin Lavransdatter, set in fourteenth-century Norway, Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset tells the life story of one passionate and headstrong woman. Painting a richly detailed backdrop, Undset immerses readers in the day-to-day life, social conventions, and political and religious undercurrents of the period. Now in one volume, Tiina Nunnally's award-winning definitive translation brings this remarkable work to life with clarity and lyrical beauty.  As a young girl, Kristin is deeply devoted to her father, a kind and courageous man. But when as a student in a convent school she meets the charming and impetuous Erlend NikulaussÃ¸n, she defies her parents in pursuit of her own desires. Her saga continues through her marriage to Erlend, their tumultuous life together raising seven sons as Erlend seeks to strengthen his political influence, and finally their estrangement as the world around them tumbles into uncertainty.  With its captivating heroine and emotional potency, Kristin Lavransdatter is the masterwork of Norway's most beloved author—one of the twentieth century's most prodigious and engaged literary minds—and, in Nunnally's exquisite translation, a story that continues to enthrall.</p>


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<div><p>Judd Stevens is a psychoanalyst faced with the most critical case of his life.</p><p>If he does not penetrate the mind of a murderer he will find himself arrested for murder or murdered himself...</p><p>Two people closely involved with Dr. Stevens have already been killed. Is one of the doctor's patients responsible? Someone overwhelmed by his problems? A neurotic driven by compulsion? A madman? Before the murderer strikes again, Judd must strip away the mask of innocence the criminal wears, uncover the inner emotions, fears, and desires, to expose. </p></div>


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A memorable, mesmerizing heroine Jennifer -- brilliant, beautiful, an attorney on the way up until the Mafia's schemes win her the hatred of an implacable enemy -- and a love more destructive than hate. A dangerous, dramatic world The Dark Arena of organized crime and flashbulb lit courtrooms where ambitious prosecutors begin their climb to political power.


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Sidney Sheldon introduced the glamorous Blackwell family in his book 'Master of the Game'. Yet the intervening years have not lessened the Blackwells' drama or talent for manipulation, domination, and passion. Though Kate is long gone, the children of her beloved granddaughters, Eve and Alexandra, battle to carry on her powerful legacy. Each is determined to control Kruger-Brent, Ltd., the multibillion-dollar international corporation with holdings in diverse industries around the globe. But only one can reign supreme. Lexi Templeton is a ruthless competitor with the brains and beauty to match. Raised by her psychiatrist father, Lexi burns to follow in her great-grandmother's footsteps and become her own Mistress of the Game. She is not alone in her ambitions. Her handsome and nefarious cousin, Max Webster, the son of Eve, will stop at nothing to own the prize of Kruger-Brent. Driven by hatred, jealousy, and blinding devotion to his bitter and twisted mother, he will seduce, betray, and even kill to succeed. And there is another player with plans of his own - a little-known descendant of Kate's great-grandfather. Growing up in poverty in Aberdeen, Scotland, handsome and cunning Gabriel McGregor is determined to fulfill his destiny, a quest that will lead him deep into the heart of the Kruger-Brent empire. In a family rife with secrets - murder, hidden identities, perversions - and a depraved sense of honor, the player who wins the game may be the only one who will survive.


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<p>In this beautifully written, candid memoir, legendary actor Sidney Poitier reveals the spiritual depth, passion and intellectual fervour that has driven his remarkable life. Poitier credits his childhood of poverty on idyllic Cat Island in the Bahamas for equipping him with the unflinching sense of self-worth, family values and simple ethics that he has never since surrendered and that have dramatically shaped his world. Just a few years after his introduction to indoor plumbing and the automobile, Poitier broke countless barriers to launch a pioneering career portraying important, dignified characters in some of the most morally significant films of the late 20th century. His engaging memoir spans a time in American history from segregation, through the early Civil Rights conflicts, to present-day cultural struggles. Poitier shares his provocative thoughts on racism in Hollywood, consumerism and the media, illness and mortality, honouring a higher consciousness and paying the price for artistic integrity. This book is a powerful testament to the rewards of being true to one's self, acting passionately on one's convictions and boldly walking on the edge.</p>


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<p class="description">The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive—and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.</p>


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<p class="description">As you read this book, there are a few things you have to understand: 95 percent of my stories are truthful. Every member of the Robertson family has the God- given gift of storytelling. Hey, when you’ve sat in a duck blind for more than half of your life, you have to figure out some way to pass the time! It’s better than looking at Willie and Jase for six hours! Many of the stories I like to tell happened when I was a young boy or when I was in Vietnam. At my age, a few of the details are cloudy, but I’ll recollect the coming stories as best I can. Hey, just remember it isn’t a lie if you think it’s true! It’s up to you, the reader, to figure out what’s truth and what’s fiction. Best of luck with that, Jack! May the force be with you.  Hey, another thing you have to know: my stories are kind of like my vocabulary. You might have noticed I like to say “hey” quite a bit. “Hey” can mean anything. It can mean “yes,” it can mean “maybe,” and it can mean “no.” Hey, it could mean “next week.” The bottom line is, you have to understand “hey” to understand me.  And if you know anything about Silas Merritt Robertson, you know I’m a hard rascal to figure out.  —From the Prologue</p>


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"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." So begins this most beloved of all American Zen books. Seldom has such a small handful of words provided a teaching as rich as has this famous opening line of Shunryu Suzuki's classic. In a single stroke, the simple sentence cuts through the pervasive tendency students have of getting so close to Zen as to completely miss what it's all about. An instant teaching on the first page. And that's just the beginning. In the thirty years since its original publication, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind has become one of the great modern Zen classics, much beloved, much re-read, and much recommended as the best first book to read on Zen. Suzuki Roshi presents the basics—from the details of posture and breathing in zazen to the perception of nonduality—in a way that is not only remarkably clear, but that also resonates with the joy of insight from the first to the last page. It's a book to come back to time and time again as an inspiration to practice.


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<p class="description">A young insurance saleswoman is found strangled at Mitsuse Pass. Her family and friends are shocked and terrified. The pass-which tunnels through a mountainous region of southern Japan-has an eerie history: a hideout for robbers, murderers, and ghostly creatures lurking at night. Soon afterward, a young construction worker becomes the primary suspect. As the investigation unfolds, the events leading up to the murder come darkly into focus, revealing a troubled cast of characters: the victim, Yoshino, a woman much too eager for acceptance; the suspect, Yuichi, a car enthusiast misunderstood by everyone around him; the victim's middle-aged father, a barber disappointed with his life; and the suspect's aging grandmother, who survived the starvation of postwar Japan only to be tormented by local gangsters. And, finally, there is desperate Mitsuyo, the lonely woman who finds Yuichi online and makes the big mistake of falling for him. A stunningly dark thriller and a tapestry of noir, Villain is the English-language debut for Shuichi Yoshida, one of Japan's most acclaimed and accomplished writers. From desolate seaside towns and lighthouses to love hotels and online chat rooms, Villain reveals the inner lives of men and women who all have something to hide. Part police procedural, part gritty realism, Villain is a coolly seductive story of loneliness and alienation in the southernmost reaches of Japan. </p>


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<p class="description">A dramatization of the novel in which an anthropologist conducts an unusual research project in a reputedly haunted house.</p>


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Bewitched meets Murder She Wrote in this delightful new cozy mystery series featuring Ophelia Jensen, small town librarian and reluctant psychic, and her grandmother Abby, a benevolent witch.   Thirty something Ophelia Jensen wants to live a quiet life as a small town librarian. She's created a comfortable existence with her kooky, colorful grandmother Abby, and if it were up to her, they could live out their days—along with Ophelia's dog Lady and cat Queenie—in peace and quiet. But, to Ophelia's dismay, she and Abby aren't a typical grandmother/granddaughter duo. She possesses psychic powers, and Abby is a kindly witch. And while Ophelia would do anything to dismiss her gift—harboring terrible guilt after her best friend was killed and she was unable to stop it—threatening events keep popping up, forcing her to tap into her powers of intuition. To make matters worse, a strange—yet devastatingly attractive—man is hanging around Ophelia's library, and no matter how many times she tells him she's sworn off men forever, he persists. Soon this handsome newcomer reveals he's following a lead on a local drug ring, and then a dead body shows up right in Abby's backyard. And much as Ophelia would like to put away her spells forever, she and Abby must use their special powers to keep themselves, and others, out of harm's way.


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Small-town librarian Ophelia Jensen is finally starting to embrace her lot as one of the "chosen"—a psychic and folk magick practitioner, a.k.a. a witch. Expert loving guidance from her magickally adept grandmother Abby helps—and adopting Tink, an exceptionally talented teenage medium, has given Ophelia's life new purpose . . . until a brutal murder clouds the sunshine of their days.   Ophelia's co-worker and best friend, Darci, is distraught when her cousin is implicated in the small Iowa town of Summerset's most recent murder—the violent death of a biker. Unfortunately for Darci's cousin, it's her fingerprints all over the murder weapon. She claims she's innocent, but it'll take Ophelia and Abby more than a good incantation or two to get to the bottom of this crime—what with ghosts, crooked cops, secret identities, and a small army of outlaw bikers thrown into this devil's brew.


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Cupid has cast his spell on good witch Ophelia Jensen. The practical, pragmatic, law-abiding librarian has just begun letting down her hair with Stephen Larsen, the author of some of the most scandalous crime exposés ever written. It's a match made in the stacks—until the would-be lovers take a quiet countryside stroll, and shots ring out.   A murderer, not magick, made Stephen disappear—and Ophelia might be next. The sheriff warns her and her grandmother Abby not to meddle, but after another shooting leaves them shaken the women can't help but get involved. A sinister stalker is slowly drawing closer to Ophelia, and she'll have to summon all her powers to prevent herself from ending up six feet under.


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Life is busier than ever for witch Ophelia Jensen. In addition to her day job at the library, she—with the help of her grandmother Abby—is preparing to officially adopt Tink, the young medium she's taken under her wing. So when Ophelia's elderly Aunt Dot, eager for adventure, wants to investigate the murder of a funeral director in the neighboring town, Ophelia tries to say no. But then Tink's dog pulls a skull out of the woods—a skull that may belong to a murder victim.   Finding mysterious bones in the woods isn't the only strange thing that's happened to Tink lately. She's been having visions of ghastly ghosts imploring her for help. But before Ophelia can connect the apparitions with the murder, Tink is kidnapped! Ophelia and Abby will have to battle a creepy crematorium owner and an invasion from some modern-day body snatchers to find their protégé . . . or else they'll have to hold a séance just to speak to her again.


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Ophelia has always considered her psychic abilities an imposition, except for those times she's been able to put her paranormal talents to good use—like when a friend asks her to help find a missing teenager. Unfortunately it means she and Abby, her kindly, canny sorceress granny, will be taking to the road to pursue the vanished girl in the wilds of Minnesota.   The signs are pointing toward the secluded new age research facility of Jason and Juliet Finch, who live with their troubled—and possibly matricidal—thirteen-year-old niece. And a bizarre local murder that follows their arrival—plus the appearance of a mysterious Native American shaman—only emphasize the urgency of Ophelia and Abby's hunt, drawing them into a web of dark secrets and to the last place they'd ever wish to be: a cottage in the woods where true evil quite possibly resides.


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<p class="description">Ophelia Jensen's good witch granny Abigail revels in her paranormal powers. But Ophelia never asked for her bothersome psychic abilities -- especially since they proved worthless when the thirty-something librarian's best friend Brian was murdered by a still-unknown assailant. Now, five years later, another friend is gone, killed in almost identical fashion. Even dear old Abby isn't safe, distracted as she is by her fight to prevent a massive, mega-polluting pig-farming operation from invading their small Iowa town. And Ophelia can't count on her snarling, scoffing nemesis, police detective Henry Comacho, to get the job done, so she'll have to take matters into her own hands. Because a common thread to the crimes -- and a possible next victim -- is suddenly becoming troublingly apparent . . . and it's Ophelia Jensen herself!</p>


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Small-town librarian and psychic Ophelia Jensen hails from a long line of wise and wonderfully gifted women. There's her grandmother, Abby, a talented witch, and her great-aunt Mary, who's about to celebrate her 100th birthday. But as Ophelia learns, when she and Abby travel to North Carolina for the centennial celebration, their family secrets aren't just magickal—they're murderous. Someone in the sweet Southern town wants Abby dead. Could it be a rogue witch in Ophelia's own family? A vengeful local witch desperate to settle a bitter feud decades in the making? Ophelia must use all her talents to save her loved ones—before the witching hour comes upon them, and bad blood turns deadly.


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<p class="description">String theory says we live in a ten-dimensional universe, but that only four are accessible to our everyday senses. According to theorists, the missing six are curled up in bizarre structures known as Calabi-Yau manifolds. In The Shape of Inner Space, Shing-Tung Yau, the man who mathematically proved that these manifolds exist, argues that not only is geometry fundamental to string theory, it is also fundamental to the very nature of our universe. Time and again, where Yau has gone, physics has followed. Now for the first time, readers will follow Yau’s penetrating thinking on where we’ve been, and where mathematics will take us next. A fascinating exploration of a world we are only just beginning to grasp, The Shape of Inner Space will change the way we consider the universe on both its grandest and smallest scales.</p>


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<div><p>Thirty years after women became 50 percent of the college graduates in the United States, men still hold the vast majority of leadership positions in government and industry. This means that women’s voices are still not heard equally in the decisions that most affect our lives. In <em>Lean In,</em> Sheryl Sandberg examines why women’s progress in achieving leadership roles has stalled, explains the root causes, and offers compelling, commonsense solutions that can empower women to achieve their full potential. <br></p><p>Sandberg is the chief operating officer of Facebook and is ranked on <em>Fortune</em>’s list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business and as one of <em>Time</em>’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2010, she gave an electrifying TEDTalk in which she described how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. Her talk, which became a phenomenon and has been viewed more than two million times, encouraged women to “sit at the table,” seek challenges, take risks, and pursue their goals with gusto.<br></p><p>In <em>Lean In,</em> Sandberg digs deeper into these issues, combining personal anecdotes, hard data, and compelling research to cut through the layers of ambiguity and bias surrounding the lives and choices of working women. She recounts her own decisions, mistakes, and daily struggles to make the right choices for herself, her career, and her family. She provides practical advice on negotiation techniques, mentorship, and building a satisfying career, urging women to set boundaries and to abandon the myth of “having it all.”  She describes specific steps women can take to combine professional achievement with personal fulfillment and demonstrates how men can benefit by supporting women in the workplace and at home. <br></p><p>Written with both humor and wisdom<em>,</em> Sandberg’s book is an inspiring call to action and a blueprint for individual growth. <em>Lean In</em> is destined to change the conversation from what women can’t do to what they can.</p></div>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">A physician who teaches at the Yale School of Medicine, Nuland writes gracefully about a topic most of us would rather not dwell on--our impending deaths. He demystifies the process of dying by providing straightforward information on the clinical, biological and emotional details of deaths resulting from heart disease, stroke, cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, old age, accidents, suicide, euthanasia and murder or violent physical assault. Crammed with intriguing scientific findings and useful facts, as well as case histories of dying patients whom Nuland ( Doctors: The Biography of Medicine ) has treated, his report is imbued with wisdom rooted in a belief that the dignity we seek in dying must be found in the art of living life to the fullest. </span></h3>

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"WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?"

Horse wrangler Wade Owens treated Lauren Winters like a pretty little interloper who had sashayed onto his turf. Wade's attitude sparked Lauren's temper, but she'd never backed down from a challenge. Weary from her high-profile career, Lauren had returned to Wyoming to reunite with her old friends, the Calamity Janes, and to start over--incognito--as a horse trainer. Wade was a refreshing change from the glitterati--*he* treated her like a real person. But the wrangler had made clear his distaste for the rich and powerful...would their stormy love endure the maelstrom when Lauren revealed her true identity?


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<div><p>Falling for "Maddening Moira" O'Malley was the unexpected highlight of Luke O'Brien's Dublin holiday. So when she pays a surprise visit to Chesapeake Shores, Luke is thrilled…at first. A fling with this wild Irish rose is one thing, but forever? Maybe someday, but not when he's totally focused on establishing a business that will prove his mettle to his overachieving family.</p><p>Given Luke's reaction, Moira has some soul-searching of her own to do. Scarred by her father's abandonment, she wonders if Luke, with his playboy past, is truly the family man she longs for. Adding to her dilemma, she's offered an amazing chance at a dream career of her own.</p><p>Deep down, though, Moira knows home is the real prize, and that love can be every bit as enchanted as a summer garden.</p></div>


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<p class="description">Son of a shattered family, fireman Sean Devaney knew love never lasted, so he made sure he'd never be in a position to experience that kind of loss again. But then, he never counted on meeting scrappy-but-vulnerable single mom Deanna Blackwell, who had just lost everything in a devastating fire. Despite the warning bells going off in Sean's head, he felt an immense need to protect this struggling waitress and her spunky kid. How was he to know that mother and child would take chinks out of the armor surrounding his heart; A tower of testosterone, Sean was tough enough to storm burning buildings. But was he brave enough to risk the dangers of love?</p>


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<div><p><em>New York Times</em> and <em>USA Today</em> bestselling author Sherryl Woods takes listeners to the North Carolina coast with a new family and her trademark heartfelt emotions</p><p>In a trade-off she’s lived to regret, Emily Castle left home years ago to become an interior designer. The youngest of three sisters, Emily desperately wanted to prove herself. Success, though, came at the cost of leaving behind the man she loved.</p><p>For Boone Dorsett, losing Emily left his heart shattered, but another woman was waiting in the wings. Now a widower with a young son, Boone has a second chance with Emily when a storm brings her home. But with his former in-laws threatening a custody suit, the stakes of loving her are higher than ever.</p><p>Will fate once again separate them—or is the time finally right for these two star-crossed lovers?</p></div>


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Abandoned by his parents and separated from his four brothers as a youngster, Ryan Devaney never let anyone get too close to him. Then spunky Maggie O'Brien marched into his Irish pub and declared war on the icy fortress around his heart.Ryan claimed he didn't believe in love, but Maggie's bright smile and tender touch soon had him reconsidering. The beautiful redhead warmed his frozen spirit and awakened long-forgotten dreams -- like the desire to search for his long-lost brothers. The ultimate question remained: Would Ryan accept the challenge to believe there was a place for him in happily-ever-after?


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">Jess O'Brien has overcome a lot—the challenges of attention deficit disorder, the near bankruptcy of her beloved Inn at Eagle Point and her self-perception as a screwup in a family of overachievers. Now she's ready to share the future with a man. Her friends persuade her to join a dating service—but she gets no takers! Which is fine with her childhood friend, psychologist Will Lincoln, who's already chosen the perfect man for Jess: himself.</span></h3><p>Will has loved Jess practically forever. He knows her faults and her strengths. But for all Will's sincerity <em>and</em> charm, Jess fears he views her as some psychological case study. With her family and the town of Chesapeake Shores behind him, Will finally makes his case. But is it enough to convince Jess to take the risk of a lifetime?</p></div>


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For years, Kelly Andrews had waited for her big brother's best friend to notice her. Now, Navy SEAL Michael Devaney is back in Boston as her embittered physical therapy patient -- but still every inch her hero. She vows he will be whole again with the help of his family and her healing touch.Broken in body and spirit, Michael seems determined to defy Kelly and his reunited kin. Although he finally gazes at her with the passion she's always craved, Michael holds himself back, saying he's only half a man. How can Kelly convince her lifelong love that he's all the man she will ever need; The Devaney brothers are products of a shattered family, and the scars followed them into their adult lives -- and wreak particular havoc with their romantic relationships. It takes a strong and confident woman to tear down the walls of a Devaney man . . .


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<p class="description">Single mom Heather Donovan's dreams of home and family are tantalizingly within reach when she settles in Chesapeake Shores. The welcoming arms of the boisterous, loving O'Brien clan embrace her and her son. But accepting their support seems to further alienate her son's father, Connor O'Brien. His parents' divorce and his career as a high-powered divorce attorney have left him jaded about marriage.Then everything changes. Will the possibility of a future without Heather make Connor look at love and his career differently? Heather's just about given up on her old dreams—of love, of family and especially of Driftwood Cottage, the home she secretly wishes were hers. It's going to take a lot of persuasion—and some help from the O'Brien family—to make Heather believe that some dreams are worth fighting for.</p>


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PREGNANT AND UNMARRIED, SHE LEFT TOWN...

Now Cassie Collins had returned to reconnect with her oldest friends, the Calamity Janes, and put her troubles behind her. But trouble found her in the disconcertingly sexy form of Cole Davis--father of her child. Having discovered her secret, Cole demanded a convenient marriage--or Cassie could lose her son to the powerful, wealthy Davis clan. Time hadn't dulled Cassie's anger at the man who'd betrayed her ten years ago...nor cooled the fiery attraction between them. Could she rekindle their long-lost love, and unite Cole, herself and their son in the precious bonds of family?


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">With the recent explosion of increasingly sophisticated cell-phone technology and social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook, a casual observer might understandably conclude that human relationships are blossoming like never before. But according to MIT science professor Turkle, that assumption would be sadly wrong. In the third and final volume of a trilogy dissecting the interface between humans and technology, Turkle suggests that we seem determined to give human qualities to objects and content to treat each other as things. In her university-sponsored studies surveying everything from text-message usage among teens to the use of robotic baby seals in nursing homes for companionship, Turkle paints a sobering and paradoxical portrait of human disconnectedness in the face of expanding virtual connections in cell-phone, intelligent machine, and Internet usage. Despite her reliance on research observations, Turkle emphasizes personal stories from computer gadgetry’s front lines, which keeps her prose engaging and her message to the human species—to restrain ourselves from becoming technology’s willing slaves instead of its guiding masters—loud and clear. </span></h3>

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<p class="description">“Dr. Seethaler has written an excellent book for any interested student of science. She answers great questions about the world around us in this fascinating book. As a high school science teacher, I encounter many of these from my own students. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who has pondered questions starting with ‘how,' ‘what,' or ‘why.'” –Ernest James Lo, Science Teacher, Woodside High School, Woodside, CA Prepare to Be Fascinated! Why does the flu change every year? " What makes glue sticky? " What causes out-of-body experiences? " Are all brands of gas the same? " Will adult stem cells work as well as embryonic stem cells? " Is one “horsepower” really equal to the power of one horse? " Why can't you sneeze with your eyes open? " How much does a cremated body weigh? These are just a few of the fascinating science and health questions real people have asked top science writer and San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Sherry Seethaler. Curious Folks Askbrings together 162 of her best answers–all crystal-clear, accurate, quick, and a pleasure to read. Seethaler is one of this generation's best science explainers, and it shows: Every answer is accurate, fun to read, and distilled to a single page or less! Want to know how canned air works&amp;or nuclear bombs? What causes goose bumps, earwax, dandruff, headaches? Whether it's healthy to crack your knuckles, drink decaf, eat chocolate? What it costs to run all those LED lights around your house? It's all here–and a whole lot more! Your body's oddities: knees to knuckles, itches to sneezes Surprising facts about how your body grows and works Our ingenious inventions The past, present, and future of our relentless human inventiveness Pesky pathogens: viruses, bacteria, and prions How they keep outsmarting us, and why it's so hard to stay healthy Common chemical concoctions The science behind the everyday products that have transformed our lives Uniquely human: how we got here, how we're unique New lessons from genetics, archaeology, and evolutionary biology</p>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; ">Contending that some women are "too nice," comedian and radio show host Sherry Argov has written Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl-A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship. "I'm not recommending that a woman have an abrasive disposition," Argov writes, "The woman I'm describing is kind yet strong. She doesn't give up her life, and she won't chase a man." Her sassy book is filled with scenarios and advice aimed at making women subtly stronger and self-empowered. Argov's principles, which range from the farfetched to the downright absurd, include "If you give him a feeling of power, he'll want to protect you and he'll want to give you the world" and "A little distance combined with the appearance of self-control makes him nervous that he may be losing you." The book, which has already been featured on The View and The O'Reilly Factor, should make waves with its controversial view of relationships. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; ">get this book now!</span></h3>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><p style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Dream-Hunter Lydia has been charged with the most sacred and dangerous of missions: To descend into the Nether Realm and find the missing god of dreams before he betrays the secrets that could kill her and her kind. What she never expects is to be taken prisoner by the Realm’s most vicious guardian…</span></p></span></h3><strong><strong><em><em><em><strong><strong><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Seth’s time is running out. If he can’t hand over the entrance to Olympus, his own life and those of his people will be forfeit. No matter the torture, Seth hasn’t been able to break the god in his custody. Then there’s the beautiful Dream-Hunter Lydia: She isn’t just guarding the gates of Olympus—she’s holding back one of the world’s darkest powers. If she fails, an ancient curse will haunt the earth once more and no one will be safe. But evil is always seductive...</span></span></p></strong></strong></em></em></em></strong></strong></div>


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<div><p class="description">Live fast, fight hard and if you have to die then take as many of your enemies with you as you can. That is the Amazon credo and it was one Samia lived and died by. Now in contemporary New Orleans, the immortal Amazon warrior is about to learn that there’s a worse evil coming to slaughter mankind than she’s ever faced before.</p><p class="description">Shapeshifter Dev Peltier has stood guard at the front of Sanctuary for almost two hundred years and in that time, he’s seen it all. Or so he thought. Now their enemies have discovered a new source of power- one that makes a mockery of anything faced to date.  </p><p class="description">The war is on and Dev and Sam are guarding ground zero. But in order to win, they will have to break the most cardinal of all rules and pray it doesn’t unravel the universe as we know it.</p></div>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">THESE HEROES ARE 100 PERCENT RAW, DANGEROUS, AND . . . UNDENIABLY SEXY.New York Times bestselling authors Sherrilyn Kenyon, Dianna Love, and Cindy Gerard and rising romance star Laura Griffin mix seduction and suspense in three irresistible romantic adventures. From sultry international jungles to the rugged terrain of the American Southwest, join the larger-than-life, scorching-hot alpha heroes of the Bureau of American Defense, Black Ops, Inc., and the U.S. Navy SEALs for all the pulse-pounding, heart-racing, toe-curling excitement. They’re cool under pressure, steamy under the sheets, and when the enemy strikes, there’s not a lethal mission these gorgeous men can’t handle. . . . </span></h3>


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<div><p><em>In a universe where corruption and deception rule all aspects of life, sparks of rebellion threaten to ignite . . . </em><br></p><p><strong>BORN OF SILENCE</strong><br></p><p>As the Resistance leader, Zarya Starska's only goal is to topple the government that destroyed her entire family and left her penniless. Her biggest asset is a mysterious man known only as Kere. <br></p><p>But Kere has a dark secret. Born into a world that is as privileged as it is corrupt, his real name is Darling Cruel-and he is heir to the government Zarya wants to overthrow. No one has ever seen the real man behind the legend. No one except Zarya. But when she allows a weapon he designed to be used against his beloved sister, all bets are off.<br></p><p>Betrayed by the Resistance, Darling's goal is not only to reign, but to kill every Resistance member he can find. Zarya must stop Darling's reign of terror, but can she reach past his insanity to restore the hero who once fought by her side?</p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Kenyon boldly goes where no author has gone before and claims yet another genre as her own. With her League series, she has created a new, addictive universe and proven herself the undisputed master of the cross-genre novel." (<strong><em>Publishers Weekly</em></strong> )<br></p><p>"[A] publishing phenomenon...[Sherrilyn Kenyon is] the reigning queen of the wildly successful paranormal scene." (<strong><em>Publishers Weekly</em></strong> )<br></p><p>"Kenyon's writing is brisk, ironic, sexy, and relentless imaginative." (<strong><em>Boston Globe</em></strong> )<br></p><p>"Kenyon delivers the goods readers have come to expect, and more." (<strong><em>Booklist</em></strong> ) </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>In just two years, Sherrilyn Kenyon has claimed the #1 spot on national bestseller lists fourteen times. This extraordinary bestselling author continues to soar to the top of every genre she writes, including manga and graphic novels. With more than twenty-five million copies of her books in print in over thirty countries, her series include: The League, Dark-Hunter Lords of Avalon, and Chronicles of Nick. Since 2004, she has placed over fifty novels on the <em>New York Times</em> bestseller list and her manga is an international bestseller. Proclaimed the preeminent voice in paranormal fiction by critics, Kenyon continues to blaze new trails that blur traditional genre lines. </p></div>


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<p class="description">In a world where the League and its assassins rule, where betrayal and treachery are everywhere . . . the only survivors are those ones who are . . . BORN OF SHADOWSFor Caillen Dagan, a defiant soldier of fortune, survival isn't a right, it's a brutal daily battle. Moving through the Ichidaian universe like a wraith, his brushes with the law and death are legendary. But when an act of rare heroism reveals his hidden birthright, he's forced into a world much more dangerous and cold-hearted than the bloody streets where he was raised-one of obscene wealth and lethal politics.Ferocious and determined, Desideria serves as an official bodyguard for her queen. Born of questionable genetics, she will do anything to prove herself worthy of the weapons she carries and the position she's won by combat. But when she uncovers a ruthless plot to assassinate the queen and overthrow her country's government, Desideria is caught in the crosshairs.With assassination contracts out on both of them, Caillen and Desideria must learn to fight together or die alone. And if they fail, their governments will fall into the hands of an unimaginable evil.</p>


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It was many, many years ago that humans came and settled the world of Newholme. In the early days, the first wave of pioneers struggled to make a home on the harsh, alien planet. As others from Earth came, the humans learned to bend Newholme to their will, to set down roots and raise up cities and farms and a grand temple to their goddess. But now strange things are happening. The very ground is shaking with volcanic eruptions, and all of Newholme is in peril. And so it is that the great Great Questioner, official arbiter of the Council of Worlds, decides to pay a visit to the isolated planet to find out what is causing the increasingly violent disturbances. It is on Newholme that the Questioner will meet Mouche, a beautiful youth of uncommon cleverness and spirit. It will fall to Mouche to discover and embrace that which makes him unique among humans. For Newholme's past is not dead, not completely. And the survival of an entire world depends upon Mouche appeasing something dark and terrible that's coiled within...and in his total surrender to the mysterious, ecstatic revelry that results when the six moons join.


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The book that launched Sherman Alexie onto the YA market is now available in a deluxe collector's edition! Beautifully designed with a gifty new look that includes a foil-stamped, die-cut slipcase and 4-color interior art, this edition is perfect for fans and collectors alike.In his nationally acclaimed, semi-autobiographical YA debut, author Sherman Alexie tells the heartbreaking, hilarious, and beautifully written story of a young Native American teen as he attempts to break free from the life he was destined to live.


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<p>Cursed with the sight and rumors of witchcraft, Rosalind's only chance at an ordinary life is marriage to Lucien, Viscount Hastings. She doesn't expect love, only security and children of her own. Determined to go through with the wedding, she allows nothing she encounters at the gloomy Castle St. Clare to dissuade her.</p><p>Recently returned from the Continent, Lucien has no time for the English mouse his family has arranged for him to marry—not when he's plotting to avenge the murder of his beloved Francesca. He has no intention of bedding Rosalind, not even to sire an heir.</p><p>Though spurned by her bridegroom, Rosalind turns to him for protection when she is plagued by a series of mysterious accidents and haunted by terrifying visions. Forced to keep Rosalind close—and tempted into passionate kisses—Lucien soon finds himself in grave danger of falling in love with his own wife . . .</p><p>Refreshed version of SECOND SEDUCTION, newly revised by author.</p>


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<p>Foote's comprehensive history of the Civil War includes three compelling volumes: Fort Sumter to Perryville, Fredericksburg to Meridian, and Red River to Appomattox.</p>


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<div><p>Reeling from a failed marriage, Sheila, a twentysomething playwright, finds herself unsure of how to live and create. When Margaux, a talented painter and free spirit, and Israel, a sexy and depraved artist, enter her life, Sheila hopes that through close—sometimes too close—observation of her new friend, her new lover, and herself, she might regain her footing in art and life.</p><p>Using transcribed conversations, real emails, plus heavy doses of fiction, the brilliant and always innovative Sheila Heti crafts a work that is part literary novel, part self-help manual, and part bawdy confessional. It's a totally shameless and dynamic exploration into the way we live now, which breathes fresh wisdom into the eternal questions: What is the sincerest way to love? What kind of person should you be?</p></div>


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<p class="description">Part One Of Three Parts Shelby Foote is that rare combination, a novelist turned historian. His narrative gifts transform dates and places into dramas of great power. He breathes life into the past. Foote's crowning achievement is his trilogy THE CIVIL WAR, the most acclaimed work of our time about the war between the states. Volume III, RED RIVER TO APPOMATTOX, begins three years after the first guns were fired on Ft. Sumter. It ends with Lee's surrender and the extirpation of Southern hope. "The most written about war in history has, with the completion of Shelby Foote's trilogy, been given the epic treatment it deserves.</p>


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<div><p>"Here, for a certainty, is one of the great historical narratives of our century, a unique and brilliant achievement, one that must be firmly placed in the ranks of the masters."--Van Allen Bradley, <em>Chicago Daily News</em></p><p>"A stunning book full of color, life, character and a new atmosphere of the Civil War, and at the same time a narrative of unflagging power. Eloquent proof that an historian should be a writer above all else." —Burke Davis</p><p>"This is historical writing at its best.... It can hardly be surpassed." —<em>Library Journal</em></p><p>"Anyone who wants to relive the Civil War, as thousands of Americans apparently do, will go through this volume with pleasure.... Years from now, Foote's monumental narrative most likely will continue to be read and remembered as a classic of its kind." —<em>New York Herald Tribune Book Review</em></p><p>"To read this great narrative is to love the nation—to love it through the living knowledge of its mortal division. Whitman, who ultimately knew and loved the bravery and frailty of the soldiers, observed that the real Civil War would never be written and perhaps <em>should</em> not be. For me, Shelby Foote has written it.... This work was done to last forever." —James M. Cox, Southern Review</p><p>Foote's comprehensive history of the Civil War includes three compelling volumes: Fort Sumter to Perryville, Fredericksburg to Meridian, and Red River to Appomattox. </p></div>


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Read it.   You're already living it.   Was diabetes evolution's response to the last Ice Age? Did a deadly genetic disease help our ancestors survive the bubonic plagues of Europe? Will a visit to the tanning salon help lower your cholesterol? Why do we age? Why are some people immune to HIV? Can your genes be turned on -- or off?   Joining the ranks of modern myth busters, Dr. Sharon Moalem turns our current understanding of illness on its head and challenges us to fundamentally change the way we think about our bodies, our health, and our relationship to just about every other living thing on earth, from plants and animals to insects and bacteria.   Through a fresh and engaging examination of our evolutionary history, Dr. Moalem reveals how many of the conditions that are diseases today actually gave our ancestors a leg up in the survival sweepstakes. When the option is a long life with a disease or a short one without it, evolution opts for disease almost every time.   Everything from the climate our ancestors lived in to the crops they planted and ate to their beverage of choice can be seen in our genetic inheritance. But Survival of the Sickest doesn't stop there. It goes on to demonstrate just how little modern medicine really understands about human health, and offers a new way of thinking that can help all of us live longer, healthier lives.  Survival of the Sickest is filled with fascinating insights and cutting-edge research, presented in a way that is both accessible and utterly absorbing. This is a book about the interconnectedness of all life on earth -- and, especially, what that means for us.


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">Schwartz's undergraduate major was philosophy, and that interest as well as Buddhism has broadened his outlook and makes this book potentially attractive to more readers than those habitually interested in "brain science." Psychiatrist Schwartz pioneered the use of positron-emission tomography in studying obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The behaviorists' therapeutic use of the often-harsh exposure and prevention method with OCD struck Schwartz as brutal and unproductive. Searching for a new approach, he gradually developed the four-step method that he and science writer Begley thoroughly describe here. Employing the Buddhist idea of willful mindfulness, Schwartz and his colleagues enjoyed considerable research and clinical success. A long, informal collaboration with physicist Henry Stapp enabled Schwartz to overcome the problem of free will and moral action, and one of his major achievements was proving the neuroplasticity of the adult brain, thanks to which the formation of new transmission routes coincides with that of new neurons. Schwartz and Begley bring to life the thinking and work of many original investigators in a book that thoughtful readers will enjoy. </span></h3>


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<div><p>Superman. Diesel. The Big Aristotle. Shaq Fu. The Big Daddy. The Big Shaqtus. Wilt Chamberneezy. The Real Deal. The Big Shamrock. Shaq.</p><p>You know him by any number of names, and chances are you know all about his legendary basketball career: Shaquille "Shaq" O'Neal is a four-time NBA champion and a three-time NBA Finals MVP. After being an All-American at Louisiana State University, he was the overall number one draft pick in the NBA in 1992. In his 19-year career, Shaq racked up 28,596 career points (including 5,935 free throws!), 13,099 rebounds, 3,026 assists, 2,732 blocks, and 15 All-Star appearances.</p><p>These are statistics that are almost as massive as the man himself. His presence-both physically and psychologically-made him a dominant force in the game for two decades.</p><p>But if you follow the game, you also know that there's a lot more to Shaquille O'Neal than just basketball.</p><p>Shaq is famous for his playful, and at times, provocative personality. He is, literally, outsize in both scale and persona. Whether rapping on any of his five albums, challenging celebrities on his hit television show "Shaq Vs.," studying for his PhD or serving as a reserve police officer, there's no question that Shaq has led a unique and multi-dimensional life. And in this rollicking new autobiography, Shaq discusses his remarkable journey, including his candid thoughts on teammates and coaches like Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Phil Jackson, and Pat Riley.</p><p>From growing up in difficult circumstances and getting cut from his high school basketball team to his larger-than-life basketball career, Shaq lays it all out in SHAQ UNCUT: MY STORY. </p></div>


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<div><p>Natalie Carmichael thought that Bryson Daniels would be her world. She planned a bright future with him, cherished four years with him, and couldn't have been any happier, but during graduation night, all of that changes.</p><p>Natalie walks in on Bryson cheating on her. One month after catching him in the act, she finally decides to make an escape by leaving for Florida. <br>She wants to start over, have fun, and be free while also finding a way to mend her broken heart but when she meets Nolan Young, her single-life escapade doesn't last for very long. She tries to stay clear of Nolan and his desires but it's impossible for her. Nolan will do everything that he can to have her as his own, but will Natalie accept Nolan along with the problems of his past? Will she let someone else into her heart that may be even worse than Bryson?<br>For Natalie, Nolan will be something completely new to her. And for them both, their desires will be completely hard to resist.</p></div>


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<p class="description">From bestselling and award-winning country/pop star Shania Twain, an in-depth look at her hard-scrabble childhood and her rise to worldwide fame.</p>


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A haunting, enigmatic, Kafkaesque modern fairytale, steeped in visual imagery and consolingly lyrical prose.' The Times February is persecuting the townspeople. It has been winter for more than three hundred days. All forms of flight are banned and the children have started to disappear, taken from their beds in the middle of the night. The priests hang ominous sheets of parchment on the trees, signed 'February'. And somewhere on the outskirts of the town lives February himself, with the girl who smells of honey and smoke... In short bursts of intensely poetic language, this beautifully strange and otherworldly first novel tells the story of the people in the town and their efforts to combat the mysterious spectre of February. Steeped in visual imagery, this is a hauntingly enigmatic modern fairy tale - in which nothing is as it seems. 'This slim and absorbing novel reads like a bedtime story that your mother forgot to tell you, and it announces Jones as a stunning new literary voice' -- BlackBook 'Shane Jones's darkly imaginative debut novel was first released last year by a small independent publisher in a print run of 500, it seemed destined to only fall into the hands of a few. But thanks to the literary underground, the novel has quickly garnered a cult following' -- Dazed & Confused 'A gem and a serious contender for best novel of 2010' -- 3am Magazine 'It's hard not to root for Light Boxes' -- Time Out New York'We expect a vibrant imagination in our authors, but charm is an underrated quality, and Jones has both in spades' -- Time Out Chicago'Imagination reminiscent of the works of Richard Brautigan' -- The Rumpus 'A strange mix of Richard Brautigan, Italo Calvino, and Jim Henson. Jones has written a tale that is dreamy yet personal, experimental yet accessible. Light Boxes will be important not just for the power of its prose but also, hopefully, because it might give large publishers an excuse to once again take chances on innovative novels by young writers'-- Publishers Weekly Booktrust: 'With bursts of poetical language, compact language and bursts of emotion, Light Boxes is a beautiful and moving read, striving to burst through situations with light and hope' Just William's Luck:Savidge Reads: 'The book's 168 small, square, sparse pages would take just the one day to read through and it's amazing how far it's possible to travel in so short a time' The Bookbag: 'You will have to go a long way to find a more magical and quirky novella than Light Boxes ...... It's a book that shows a deep sympathy for humanity and I can see it being a cult hit. It's well worth checking out' Follow the Thread: 'What a wonderful read' Forbookssake.net: 'Beautiful way with language and visual imagery' Goodreads: 5 Stars - 'Pretty extraordinary' Savidge Reads: 'A marvellous, escapist read'


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<div><p>Social media is a crucial tool for success in business today. People are already talking about your business using social media, whether you’re using it or not. By becoming part of the conversation, you can start connecting directly to your customers, as well as finding new ones, easily and inexpensively spreading the word about your products or services.<br></p><p>But social media marketing isn’t like traditional marketing-and treating it that way only leads to frustration. Let Shama Hyder Kabani, president of web marketing firm The Marketing Zen Group and social media expert, teach you the zen” of social media marketing: how to access all the benefits of social media marketing without the stress!<br></p><p>With a foreword by <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author Chris Brogan, <em>The Zen of Social Media Marketing</em> outlines the most popular social media tools, from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn, and teaches you how to use them, step by step. She provides proven strategies for success from the businesses she works with every day, along with shortcuts and tips to help you make the most of your time and energy.<br></p><p>This 2012 edition includes the latest Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn updates, along with new information on Google+, social media advertising, mobile marketing, expanded SEO and video content, and more.</p></div>


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<div><p>The rural town of Stockton, New York, is famous for nothing: no one was born there, no one died there, nothing of any historical import at all has ever happened there, which is why Solomon Kugel, like other urbanites fleeing their pasts and histories, decided to move his wife and young son there.</p><p>To begin again. To start anew. But it isn’t quite working out that way for Kugel…</p><p>His ailing mother stubbornly holds on to life, and won’t stop reminiscing about the Nazi concentration camps she never actually suffered through. To complicate matters further, some lunatic is burning down farmhouses just like the one Kugel bought, and when, one night, he discovers history—a living, breathing, thought-to-be-dead specimen of history—hiding upstairs in his attic, bad quickly becomes worse.</p><p><em>Hope: A Tragedy</em> is a hilarious and haunting examination of the burdens and abuse of history, propelled with unstoppable rhythm and filled with existential musings and mordant wit. It is a comic and compelling story of the hopeless longing to be free of those pasts that haunt our every present.</p></div>


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From one of Iran’s most acclaimed and controversial contemporary writers, his first novel to appear in English—a dazzlingly inventive work of fiction that opens a revelatory window onto what it’s like to live, to love, and to be an artist in today’s Iran.The novel entwines two equally powerful narratives. A writer named Shahriar—the author’s fictional alter ego—has struggled for years against the all-powerful censor at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Now, on the threshold of fifty, tired of writing dark and bitter stories, he has come to realize that the “world around us has enough death and destruction and sorrow.” He sets out instead to write a bewitching love story, one set in present-day Iran. It may be his greatest challenge yet.Beautiful black-haired Sara and fiercely proud Dara fall in love in the dusty stacks of the library, where they pass secret messages to each other encoded in the pages of their favorite books. But Iran’s Campaign Against Social Corruption forbids their being alone together. Defying the state and their disapproving parents, they meet in secret amid the bustling streets, Internet cafés, and lush private gardens of Tehran.Yet writing freely of Sara and Dara’s encounters, their desires, would put Shahriar in as much peril as his lovers. Thus we read not just the scenes Shahriar has written but also the sentences and words he’s crossed out or merely imagined, knowing they can never be published.Laced with surprising humor and irony, at once provocative and deeply moving, Censoring an Iranian Love Story takes us unforgettably to the heart of one of the world’s most alluring yet least understood cultures. It is an ingenious, wholly original novel—a literary tour de force that is a triumph of art and spirit.


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<p class="description">'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.' So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read.</p>


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<div><p><strong>Indiana, 1818</strong>. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother's bedside. She's been stricken with something the old-timers call "Milk Sickness."</p><p>"My baby boy..." she whispers before dying.</p><p>Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother's fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.</p><p>When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, "<em>henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose</em>..." Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.</p><p>While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon <em>The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln</em>, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.</p><p>Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the <em>true</em> life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.</p></div>


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<p>A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). Its our nature. Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, theyre enabling countless new tribes to be borngroups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming. And so the key question: Who is going to lead us? The Web can do amazing things, but it cant provide leadership. That still has to come from individuals people just like you who have passion about something. The explosion in tribes means that anyone who wants to make a difference now has the tools at her fingertips. If you think leadership is for other people, think againleaders come in surprising packages. Consider Joel Spolsky and his international tribe of scary-smart software engineers. Or Gary Vaynerhuck, a wine expert with a devoted following of enthusiasts. Chris Sharma leads a tribe of rock climbers up impossible cliff faces, while Mich Mathews, a VP at Microsoft, runs her internal tribe of marketers from her cube in Seattle. All they have in common is the desire to change things, the ability to connect a tribe, and the willingness to lead. If you ignore this opportunity, you risk turning into a sheepwalkersomeone who fights to protect the status quo at all costs, never asking if obedience is doing you (or your organization) any good. Sheepwalkers dont do very well these days. Tribes will make you think (really think) about the opportunities in leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, or readers. . . . Its not easy, but its easier than you think.</p>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; ">Advertising's fundamental theorem-that perception trumps reality-informs this dubious marketing primer. Journalist and marketing guru Godin, author of Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, contends that, in an age when consumers are motivated by irrational wants instead of objective needs and "there is almost no connection between what is actually there and what we believe," presenting stolid factual information about a product is a losing strategy. Instead, marketers should tell "great stories" about their products that pander to consumers' self-regard and worldview. Examples include expensive wine glasses that purport to improve the taste of wine, despite scientific proof to the contrary; Baby Einstein videotapes that are "useless for babies but...satisfy a real desire for their parents"; and organic marketing schemes, which amount to "telling ourselves a complex lie about food, the environment and the safety of our families." Because consumers prefer fantasy to the truth, the marketer's duty is to be "authentic" rather than honest, to "live the lie, fully and completely" so that "all the details line up"-that is, to make their falsehoods convincing rather than transparent. Troubled by the cynicism of his own argument, Godin draws a line at deceptions that actually kill people, like marketing infant formula in the Third World, and elaborates a murky distinction between "fibs" that "make the thing itself more effective or enjoyable" and "frauds" that are "solely for the selfish benefit of the marketer." To illustrate his preferred approach to marketing, the author relates a grab bag of case studies, heavy on emotionally compelling pitches and seamless subliminal impressions. Readers will likely find the book's practical advice as rudderless as its ethical principles. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; ">we intuitively embrace and then share with our friends. Think of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, or Fiji water or the iPod. </span></h3><p>But beware: If your stories are inauthentic, you cross the line from fib to fraud. Marketers fail when they are selfish and scurrilous, when they abuse the tools of their trade and make the world worse. That's a lesson learned the hard way by telemarketers, cigarette companies, and sleazy politicians. <br></p><p>But for the rest of us, it's time to embrace the power of the story. As Godin writes, "Stories make it easier to understand the world. Stories are the only way we know to spread an idea. Marketers didn't invent storytelling. They just perfected it."<br></p></div>


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"The only way to get what you're worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about."  In bestsellers such as Purple Cow and Tribes, Seth Godin taught readers how to make remarkable products and spread powerful ideas. But this book is different. It's about you - your choices, your future, and your potential to make a huge difference in whatever field you choose.  There used to be two teams in every workplace: management and labor. Now there's a third team, the linchpins. These people invent, lead (regardless of title), connect others, make things happen, and create order out of chaos. They figure out what to do when there's no rule book. They delight and challenge their customers and peers. They love their work, pour their best selves into it, and turn each day into a kind of art.  Linchpins are the essential building blocks of great organizations. Like the small piece of hardware that keeps a wheel from falling off its axle, they may not be famous but they're indispensable. And in today's world, they get the best jobs and the most freedom.  Have you ever found a shortcut that others missed? Seen a new way to resolve a conflict? Made a connection with someone others couldn't reach? Even once? Then you have what it takes to become indispensable, by overcoming the resistance that holds people back. Linchpin will show you how to join the likes of...  *Keith Johnson, who scours flea markets across the country to fill Anthropologie stores with unique pieces.  *Marissa Mayer, who keeps Google focused on the things that really matter.  *Jason Zimdars, a graphic designer who got his dream job at 37signals without a résumé.  *David, who works at Dean and Deluca coffeeshop in New York. He sees every customer interaction as a chance to give a gift and is cherished in return.  As Godin writes, "Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. It's time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must."


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<div><p><strong>Imprisoned by memories, Claudia Campbell lives each day in the shadow of a ten-year-old murder. Who can set her free?<br></strong><br>On the way home from a football game, a decade earlier, a masked gunman opened fi re on a Texas school bus.  Cheerleading coach B.J. Remington was killed, but her murderer was never found. Claudia, who had a close friendship with the young, spirited teacher, constantly relives the anguish of that day, caught in one moment in time. When her husband, the assistant district attorney, becomes determined to uncover the mystery of that tragedy, the secrets buried over the years threaten to tear their family apart.</p><p>Officer Casio Hightower will never forget the day his dreams were destroyed. A star quarterback with a promising future, Casio was on top of the world—until one bullet changed everything. He is eager to help Victor Campbell find B.J.’s killer, the man who shot him. Maybe solving the case will help silence the demons driving Casio to hurt the woman he loves.</p><p><strong>As the Campbells and Casio teeter on the brink of losing everything, will they be able to discover that what begins at the crossing ends at the cross?</strong></p></div>


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Walking the streets of Moscow, indistinguishable from the rest of its population, are the Others. Possessors of supernatural powers and capable of entering the Twilight, a shadowy world that exists in parallel to our own, each owes allegiance either to the Dark or the Light. Night Watch Agent Anton Gorodetsky's holiday is abruptly shortened when an urgent call from Gesar - his boss and Night Watch head - forces him to return to work. Gesar has received an anonymous note, stating that an Other has revealed the full truth about their kind to a human, and intends to convert the human in an Other. The note has also been sent to the Day Watch, and to the Inquisition - but only the very highest-level Others know the addresses. So the Inquisition orders the cooperation of Night and Day Watch in an effort to unmask the culprit.


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<p>As a young child in Naples, Italy, Sergio Esposito sat at his kitchen table observing the daily ritual of his large, loud family bonding over fresh local dishes and simple country wines. While devouring the rich <em>bufala</em> mozzarella, still sopping with milk and salt, and the platters of fresh prosciutto, sliced so thin he could see through it, he absorbed the profound relationship of food, wine, and family in Italian culture.<br />Growing up in Albany, New York, after emigrating there with his family, he always sat next to his uncle Aldo and sipped from his wineglass during their customary hours-long extended family feasts. Thus, from a very early age, Esposito came to associate wine with the warmth of family, the tastes of his mother’s cooking—and, above all, memories of his former life in Italy. When he was in his twenties, he headed for New York and undertook a career in wine, beginning a journey that would culminate in his founding of Italian Wine Merchants, now the leading Italian wine source in America. His career offered him the opportunity to make frequent trips back to Italy to find wine for his clients, to learn the traditions of Italian winemaking, and, in so doing, to rediscover the Italian way of life he’d left behind.<br /><em>Passion on the Vine </em>is Esposito’s intimate and evocative memoir of his colorful family life in Italy, his abrupt transition to life in America, and of his travels into the heart of Italy—its wine country—and the lives of those who inhabit it. The result is a remarkably engaging and entertaining wine/travel narrative replete with vivid portraits of seductive places—the world-famous cellars of Piedmont, the sweeping estates of Tuscany, the lush fields of Campania, the chilly hills of Friuli, the windy beaches of Le Marche; and of memorable people, diverse and vibrant wine artisans—from a disco-dancing vintner who bases his farming on the rhythm of the moon to an obsessive prince who destroys his vineyards before his death so that his grapes will never be used incorrectly.<br />Esposito’s luscious accounts of the wonderful food and wine that are so much a part of Italian life, and his poignant and often hilarious stories of his relationships with his family and Italian friends, make <em>Passion on the Vine </em>an utterly unique and enchanting work about Italy and its eternally seductive lifestyle.</p>


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<p class="description">Hours before his untimely—and highly suspicious—death, world-renowned astrophysicist Thom Bergmann shares his discovery of extraterrestrial life with his wife, Lucy. Feeling that the warring world is not ready to learn of—or accept—proof of life elsewhere in the universe, Thom entrusts Lucy with his computer flash drive, which holds the keys to his secret work.   Devastated by Thom's death, Lucy keeps the secret, but Thom's friend, anthropologist Pierre Saad, contacts Lucy with an unusual and dangerous request about another sensitive matter. Pierre needs Lucy to help him smuggle a newly discovered artifact out of Egypt: an ancient codex concerning the human authorship of the Book of Genesis. Offering a reinterpretation of the creation story, the document is sure to threaten the foundation of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions . . . and there are those who will stop at nothing to suppress it.   Midway through the daring journey, Lucy's small plane goes down on a slip of verdant land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Middle East. Burned in the crash landing, she is rescued by Adam, a delusional American soldier whose search for both spiritual and carnal knowledge has led to madness. Blessed with youth, beauty, and an unsettling innocence, Adam gently tends to Lucy's wounds, and in this quiet, solitary paradise, a bond between the unlikely pair grows. Ultimately, Lucy and Adam forsake their half-mythical Eden and make their way back toward civilization, where members of an ultraconservative religious cult are determined to deprive the world of the knowledge Lucy carries.   Set against the searing debate between evolutionists and creationists, Adam &amp; Eve expands the definition of a "sacred book," and suggests that true madness lies in wars and violence fueled by all religious literalism and intolerance. A thriller, a romance, an adventure, and an idyll, Adam &amp; Eve is a tour de force by a master contemporary storyteller.</p>


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<p><em>I am a mix of two traditions.<br />From Daddy Christmas and Hanukkah Mama.<br />How lucky am I?</em>  </p><p>Holiday time at Sadie's house means golden gelt sparkling under the Christmas tree, candy canes hanging on eight menorah branches, voices uniting to sing carols about Macabees and the manger, and latkes on the mantel awaiting Santa's arrival.  </p><p>Selina Alko's joyous celebration of blended families will make the perfect holiday gift for the many Americans who celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah.</p><h3>From Booklist</h3><p>At Sadie’s house, she has “a mix of two traditions,” and so begins the description of what life is like with Daddy Christmas and Hanukkah Mama. Christmas trees and candles, angels and menorahs all come into play. Songs about dreidels and a silent night are sung. Ironically, it’s Daddy Christmas who knows how to make the latkes and kugel dressing for the turkey. Then the relatives come and everyone tells stories of their own traditions. The wonderful artwork has a definite Maira Kalman look and feel. Using bits of collage for everything from the tree branches to the steam coming from the latkes, the inventive pictures not only help spring the story from the occasionally unremarkable text but they also perfectly capture the love that everyone in this mixed household shares. Religion often leads to arguments more than affection, so this is a book that could (and perhaps should) provoke discussion. It will certainly be a boon for families that need a road map to help them navigate the holidays. Preschool-Grade 1. --Ilene Cooper </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>SELINA ALKO is the acclaimed author-illustrator of <em>Every-Day Dress-Up, I'm Your Peanut Butter Big Brother,</em> and <em>B Is for Brooklyn.</em> She is also the illustrator of the beloved <em>My Subway Rid</em>e and <em>My Taxi Ride.</em> Selina lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two children. </p>


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October 1991. It was "the perfect storm"--a tempest that may happen only once in a century--a nor'easter created by so rare a combination of factors that it could not possibly have been worse. Creating waves ten stories high and winds of 120 miles an hour, the storm whipped the sea to inconceivable levels few people on Earth have ever witnessed. Few, except the six-man crew of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat tragically headed towards its hellish center.


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From the author of The Perfect Storm, a gripping book about Sebastian Junger's almost-fatal year with the 2nd battalion of the American Army.They were known as "The Rock." For one year, in 2007-2008, Sebastian Junger accompanied a single platoon of thirty men from the storied 2nd battalion of the U.S. Army, as they fought their way through a remote valley in Eastern Afghanistan. Over the course of five trips, Junger was in more firefights than he can count, men he knew were killed or wounded, and he himself was almost killed. His relationship with these soldiers grew so close that they considered him part of the platoon, and he enjoyed an access and a candidness that few, if any, journalists ever attain.War is a narrative about combat: the fear of dying, the trauma of killing and the love between platoon-mates who would rather die than let each other down.Gripping, honest, intense, War explores the neurological, psychological and social elements of combat, and the incredible bonds that form between these small groups of men. This is not a book about Afghanistan or the 'War on Terror'; it is a book about the universal truth of all men, in all wars. Junger set out to answer what he thought of as the 'hand grenade question': why would a man throw himself on a hand grenade to save other men he has probably known for only a few months? The answer elusive but profound, and goes to the heart of what it means not just to be a soldier, but to be human.


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Sixteen-year-old Jacques Rebière is living a humble life in rural France, studying butterflies and frogs by candlelight in his bedroom. Across the Channel, in England, the playful Thomas Midwinter, also sixteen, is enjoying a life of ease-and is resigned to follow his father's wishes and pursue a career in medicine. A fateful seaside meeting four years later sets the two young men on a profound course of friendship and discovery; they will become pioneers in the burgeoning field of psychiatry. But when a female patient at the doctors' Austrian sanatorium becomes dangerously ill, the two men's conflicting diagnosis threatens to divide them--and to undermine all their professional achievements. From the bestselling author of Birdsong comes this masterful novel that ventures to answer challenging questions of consciousness and science, and what it means to be human.


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<p class="description">'Vintage Bond. Thrilling' The Times'Everything a thriller should be' Front Row, Radio 4Bond is back. With a vengeance.M has summoned agent 007 to London. It's the swinging Sixties and a flood of narcotics is pouring into Britain. Sinister industrialist Dr Julius Gorner is identified as the source and James Bond is dispatched to investigate.The trail takes Bond to Paris and then Persia - where the beautiful and enigmatic twins Scarlett and Poppy lead him to Gorner's secret desert headquarters. Here, Bond uncovers Gorner's cold-blooded plans for world domination.Only by playing Gorner's twisted game can Bond stop him . .</p>


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<p class="description">From the bestselling author ofBirdsongcomesCharlotte Gray, the remarkable story of a young Scottish woman who becomes caught up in the effort to liberate Occupied France from the Nazis while pursuing a perilous mission of her own. In blacked-out, wartime London, Charlotte Gray develops a dangerous passion for a battle-weary RAF pilot, and when he fails to return from a daring flight into France she is determined to find him. In the service of the Resistance, she travels to the village of Lavaurette, dyeing her hair and changing her name to conceal her identity. Here she will come face-to-face with the harrowing truth of what took place during Europe's darkest years, and will confront a terrifying secret that threatens to cast its shadow over the remainder of her days. Vividly rendered, tremendously moving, and with a narrative sweep and power reminiscent of his novelBirdsong,Charlotte Grayconfirms Sebastian Faulks as one of the finest novelists working today. </p>


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<p class="description">Set before and during the Great War, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman who journeys to France on business in 1910 and becomes so entangled in a passionate clandestine love affair that he never returns home. Rootless and heartbroken when war breaks out in 1914, he joins the army and is given command of a brigade of miners, whose macabre assignment is to tunnel beneath German lines and set off bombs under the enemy trenches - thereby creating a pitch-dark subterranean battlefield even more ghastly than the air and trench warfare above them. As have many lost young men, Stephen finds a place and an intense camaraderie in this tortuous world, and through his eyes Faulks reveals not only the unspeakable carnage but the unexpected love and loyalty that took place in the fields of France a mere two generations ago.</p>


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"In Sebastian Faulks' panoramic and masterful new novel, we follow, over seven eventful days, the lives of seven major characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career, a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland, a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate, a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory, a hack book reviewer with more blades out than a Swiss Army knife, a schoolboy hooked on genetically enhanced pot and reality TV, and a Tube train driver with a secret online life whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. Here is a powerfully compelling novel that holds a mirror up to the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life, with all its ironies, conflicts, and discontinuities. Melding the moral heft of Dickens with the satirical spirit of Tom Wolfe, A Week in December fearlessly tackles greed, the dehumanizing effects of the electronic age, and the fragmentation of society with savage humor. The writing on the wall appears in letters ten feet high, but the characters refuse to see it--and party on as though tomorrow is a dream"--Cover, p. 2.


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


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Now comes the second in the series-from a dynamic new fantasy talent!   Toby Daye-a half-human, half-fae changeling-has been an outsider from birth. After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the fae world, retreating to a "normal" life. Unfortunately for her, the Faerie world had other ideas...  Now her liege, the Duke of the Shadowed Hills, has asked Toby to go to the Country of Tamed Lightening to make sure all is well with his niece, Countess January O'Leary. It seems like a simple enough assignment-until Toby discovers that someone has begun murdering people close to January, and that if the killer isn't stopped, January may be the next victim.


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


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<p class="description">One of America’s finest historians shows us how Bob Dylan, one of the country’s greatest and most enduring artists, still surprises and moves us after all these years.  Growing up in Greenwich Village, Sean Wilentz discov­ered the music of Bob Dylan as a young teenager; almost half a century later, he revisits Dylan’s work with the skills of an eminent American historian as well as the passion of a fan. Drawn in part from Wilentz’s essays as “historian in residence” of Dylan’s official website, Bob Dylan in America is a unique blend of fact, interpretation, and affinity—a book that, much like its subject, shifts gears and changes shape as the occasion warrants.  Beginning with his explosion onto the scene in 1961, this book follows Dylan as he continues to develop a body of musical and literary work unique in our cultural history. Wilentz’s approach places Dylan’s music in the context of its time, including the early influences of Popular Front ideology and Beat aesthetics, and offers a larger critical appreciation of Dylan as both a song­writer and performer down to the present. Wilentz has had unprecedented access to studio tapes, recording notes, rare photographs, and other materials, all of which allow him to tell Dylan’s story and that of such masterpieces as Blonde on Blonde with an unprecedented authenticity and richness.  Bob Dylan in America—groundbreaking, comprehensive, totally absorbing—is the result of an author and a subject brilliantly met.</p>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">In March 2002, U.S. forces moved into the Shahikot Mountains, hoping to trap and eliminate a substantial number of Al Qaeda fighters. They were handicapped almost fatally by their own lack of numbers, substandard logistics support, the highest altitudes at which Americans had ever fought, and the frigid weather of the mountains. Victory eluded them, although considerable damage was done to the enemy; and disaster may have been averted by the actions of special operations teams drawn from Delta Force and Seal Team 6. These operatives put on a very convincing demonstration of how much of the future of warfare may lie in the hands of small bands of experts engaging the enemy by stealth, with heavy firepower on call, firepower that wasn't always available in Operation Anaconda. Prizewinning <em>Army Times</em> reporter Naylor has written the best full-scale history of Operation Anaconda to date. </span></h3>


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<p>'Afghanistan is just like Iraq – hot, dusty and full of people who want to kill you', SSgt Simon Fuller, Royal Engineer Search AdvisorBomb Hunters tells the story of the British army's elite bomb disposal experts, men who face death every day in the most dangerous region of the most lethal country on earth – Helmand Province, Afghanistan.Bomb Hunters are up against the Improvised Explosive Device – the IED – the deadly homemade bombs planted by the Taliban. Hard to detect and easy to trigger, an estimated 10 bombs for every one of the 10,000 British troops have been planted in the region. IEDs are now the main killer of British troops in Afghanistan and the ultimate psychological weapon.Bomb Hunters work in 50-degree heat as they take the 'long walk' into the kill zone, defusing as many as 15 bombs a day. In the past year the casualty rate has soared as the troops have become locked into a deadly game of cat and mouse – to locate and deactivate the deadly bombs before they maim and kill soldiers, police and civilians. Skill, cold courage and inevitably pure luck play a huge part in the survival of these men and as the British public have already seen – a single lapse of concentration can result in instant death.Ex-paratrooper, now defence journalist, Sean Rayment, takes the reader on a journey into the heat and dust of Helmand Province as he meets these courageous soldiers while they put their lives at risk to prevent other British troops falling victim to the IED. He interviews the Bomb Hunters as they perform their duties on the frontline and paints a breathtaking picture of what life is like for the men who play poker with their own lives every day, who live knowing the enemy watches their every move, waiting for a weakness to show itself, a pattern in technique to be exploited, or an error to be made that triggers the device itself.This is as vivid and dramatic as war reporting gets, mixing 'close to the bone' narrative and dead-pan black humour from the Bomb Hunters themselves, some of whom were subsequently killed in action. No punches will be pulled on what these men feel about the war, their place in it, the politicians and generals who send them there, and how they deal with the relentless pressure of the job itself in the heart of the world's most hostile combat environment. </p>


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A rising star in theoretical physics offers his awesome vision of our universe and beyond, all beginning with a simple question: Why does time move forward? Time moves forward, not backward-everyone knows you can't unscramble an egg. In the hands of one of today's hottest young physicists, that simple fact of breakfast becomes a doorway to understanding the Big Bang, the universe, and other universes, too. In From Eternity to Here, Sean Carroll argues that the arrow of time, pointing resolutely from the past to the future, owes its existence to conditions before the Big Bang itself-a period modern cosmology of which Einstein never dreamed. Increasingly, though, physicists are going out into realms that make the theory of relativity seem like child's play. Carroll's scenario is not only elegant, it's laid out in the same easy-to- understand language that has made his group blog, Cosmic Variance, the most popular physics blog on the Net. From Eternity to Here uses ideas at the cutting edge of theoretical physics to explore how properties of spacetime before the Big Bang can explain the flow of time we experience in our everyday lives. Carroll suggests that we live in a baby universe, part of a large family of universes in which many of our siblings experience an arrow of time running in the opposite direction. It's an ambitious, fascinating picture of the universe on an ultra-large scale, one that will captivate fans of popular physics blockbusters like Elegant Universe and A Brief History of Time.


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IN THE GRAND TRADITION OF EIGHT MEN OUT. . . the untold story of baseball's ORIGINAL SCANDAL Did the Chicago Cubs throw the WorldSeries in 1918and get away with it? Who were the players involvedand why did they do it? Were gambling and corruption more widespread across the leagues thanpreviously believed? Were the players and teams "cursed" by their actions? Finally, is it time to rewrite baseball history? With exclusive access to surprising new evidence, Sporting News reporterSean Deveney details a scandal at the core of baseball's greatestfolklorein a golden era as exciting and controversial as our sports worldtoday. This inside look at the pivotal year of 1918 proves that baseballhas always been a game overrun with colorful characters, intense humandrama, and explosive controversy. " The Original Curseis not just about baseball. It is a sweeping portrait of America at war in 1918. . . . In the end, the proper question is not, 'How could a player from that era fix the World Series?' It's, 'How could he not?'" Ken Rosenthal, FOX Sports, from theIntroduction "Sean Deveney plays connect-the-dots in this intriguing account of a possible conspiracy to throw the 1918 World Series. Thoroughly researched and well written, The Original Curseis a must-read for baseball fans and anyone who loves a good mystery. Is Max Flack the Shoeless Joe of the 1918 Cubs? Deveney lays out the case and let's readers decide if the fix was in." Paul Sullivan, Cubs beat writer, Chicago Tribune "This book gives the reader a fun and honest look at baseball as it used to be-- the good guys, the gamblers, the cheaters, the drunks, the inept leaders. But, more than that, it puts those characters into the context of Chicago, Boston and America at the time of World War I, and you wind up with a unique way to explain the motivations of those characters." David Kaplan, host, Chicago Tribune Liveand WGN's Sports Central "Deveney's painstaking study of the 1918 World Series between the Cubs and Red Sox argues that the Black Sox scandal was not an aberration and might have had an antecedent. Deveney's scholarship does not detract from his ability to spin a good tale: his tendency to imagine players' conversations will remind readers of Leigh Montville's The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth.... A welcome companion to Susan Dellinger's Red Legs and Black Sox: Edd Roush and the Untold Story of the 1919 World Series, Deveney's book contributes greatly to our understanding of this decisive period in baseball and American morals." Library Journal


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; ">From the investment experts at Weiss Research, the ultimate guide to preparing for and profiting during a disaster of any kind</span></h3><p>Life is unpredictable. Economic and natural disasters can happen anytime and anywhere. <em>The Ultimate Suburban Survivalist Guide: The Smartest Money Moves to Prepare for Any Crisis</em> describes the simple things people can do today to prepare for anything and everything that life might throw at them tomorrow. It also offers comprehensive advice on how to profit during a market collapse, energy crisis, or natural disaster. The guide  </p><ul><li>     Explains how to invest in today's new, more turbulent financial landscape </li> <li>     Reveals what can be used as money should the dollar lose its value </li> <li>     How to cut home energy costs, and why it's prudent to stock up on supplies in preparation for natural disasters </li></ul><p>Panicking during a disaster won't solve anything. Be prepared for any number of potential economic calamities and natural disasters with <em>The Ultimate Suburban Survivalist Guide</em>.</p></div>


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


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<div><p>THE REMARKABLE AND INSPIRING TRUE STORY OF ONE GUY WHO TRANSFORMED HIS UNCERTAINTY ABOUT THE FUTURE INTO ACTION<br><br>A year and a half after he graduated from college, Sean Aiken found himself struggling to answer the question “What should I do with my life?” His mother suggested teaching. His older sister told him to apply for an entry-level corporate position. His father said, “It doesn’t matter what you do, just make sure it’s something you’re passionate about.” Taking his father’s advice to heart, Sean created the One-Week Job Project and launched himself on an epic journey to find his passion. His goal: to work fifty-two jobs in fifty-two weeks. </p><p>After the launch of his website, oneweekjob.com, the offers began pouring in. Sean’s first gig was—literally—jumping off a bridge, as a bungee operator in British Columbia. From there he traveled across Canada and the United States, reinventing himself as a firefighter, an aquarium host, a radio DJ, a martial arts instructor, an NHL mascot, and a snowshoe guide. During the course of his seven-day stints, from a Florida stock-trading floor to a cattle ranch in the wilds of Wyoming to a real estate office in Beverly Hills, Sean found time to make new friends and even fall in love. Whether choosing a spring fashion line, brewing beer, or milking a cow, Sean continued to ask himself and others about what success really means and how we find happiness—all while having the adventure of his life.<br><br>Inventive and empowering, witty and wise, The One-Week Job Project<em> </em>is a book that will give you the courage to follow your passion. Or, as Mark Twain said, “Explore. Dream. Discover<em>.”</em><br></p></div>


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<div><p>Newly discharged from the Marines after World War II, Scotty Bowers arrived in Hollywood in 1946. Young, charismatic, and strikingly handsome, he quickly caught the eye of many of the town’s stars and starlets. He began sleeping with some himself, and connecting others with his coterie of young, attractive, and sexually free-spirited friends. His own lovers included Edith Piaf, Spencer Tracy, Vivien Leigh, Cary Grant, and the abdicated King of England Edward VIII, and he arranged tricks or otherwise crossed paths with Tennessee Williams, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price, Katharine Hepburn, Rita Hayworth, Errol Flynn, Gloria Swanson, Noël Coward, Mae West, James Dean, Rock Hudson and J. Edgar Hoover, to name but a few.<br></p><p><em>Full Service</em> is not only a fascinating chronicle of Hollywood’s sexual underground, but also exposes the hypocrisy of the major studios, who used actors to propagate a myth of a conformist, sexually innocent America knowing full well that their stars’ personal lives differed dramatically from this family-friendly mold. As revelation-filled as <em>Hollywood Babylon</em>, <em>Full Service</em> provides a lost chapter in the history of the sexual revolution and is a testament to a man who provided sex, support, and affection to countless people.</p></div>


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<div><p><em>New York Times</em> bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author Lisa Scottoline revolutionized crime fiction when she introduced her all-female law firm of Rosato &amp; Associates, thrilling readers with her twisty, fast-paced plots and capturing their hearts with her cast of strong and relatable female characters. Now Bennie Rosato, Mary DiNunzio, Judy Carrier, and Anne Murphy are back with all cylinders firing in <em>Accused</em>.</p><p>Mary Dinuzio has just been promoted to partner and is about to take on her most unusual case yet, brought to the firm by a thirteen-year-old genius with a penchant for beekeeping.  Allegra Gardner’s sister Fiona was murdered six years ago, and it seemed like an open-and-shut case: the accused, Lonnie Stall, was seen fleeing the scene; his blood was on Fiona and her blood was on him; most damningly, Lonnie Stall pleaded guilty.  But Allegra believes Lonnie is innocent and has been wrongly imprisoned. The Gardner family is one of the most powerful in the country and Allegra’s parents don’t believe in reopening the case, so taking it on is risky.  But the Rosato &amp; Associates firm can never resist an underdog.  Was justice really served all those years ago?  It will take a team of unstoppable female lawyers, plus one thirteen-year-old genius, to find out. </p></div>


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As they continue to battle evil creatures living in an hour hidden at midnight, Jessica and her new friends learn about Bixby, Oklahoma's shadowy past and uncover a deadly conspiracy that reaches beyond the secret hour.


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<p class="description"> The sequel to the genre-defining, landmark bestseller Presumed Innocent, INNOCENT continues the story of Rusty Sabich and Tommy Molto who are, once again, twenty years later, pitted against each other in a riveting psychological match after the mysterious death of Rusty's wife.</p>


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the darklings will hunt once again   The secret hour when time freezes arrives every night at midnight in Bixby, Oklahoma. It's a dangerous time, when five teenagers are the only humans awake and dark creatures crawl out of the shadows, but at least the midnight hour is regular and predictable.   Until suddenly, the blue time comes . . . in the middle of the day.   The noise of school stops. Cheerleaders are frozen in midair, teachers brought to a standstill. Everything is the haunted blue color of the midnight hour.   The Midnighters can't understand what's happening, but as they scramble for answers, they discover that the walls between the secret hour and real time are crumbling. Soon the dark creatures will have a chance to feed after centuries of waiting, unless these five teenagers can find a way to stop them.   A desperate race against time, a mind-blowing mystery of paranormal logic, a tale of ancient evil and spine-chilling sacrifice: blue noon is the exhilarating third volume in the Midnighters series by acclaimed author Scott Westerfeld.


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<div><p><strong>A powerful legal thriller featuring the hero of <em>An Innocent Client</em>, Joe Dillard </strong><br></p><p>Prosecutor Joe Dillard watched in shock as friend and fellow lawyer Ray Miller was pushed to the brink of suicide in the court of Judge Leonard Green. So when Joe arrives at a crime scene to see Green swinging from a tree, it is duty rather than remorse that drives him to catch the killer. But soon the investigation takes Joe away from the halls of justice into his own home. And he's not sure he can face the answer he'll find.<br></p></div>


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<p>A family is slaughtered in rural Tennessee. Two goth teens stand accused of the murders, and now it's up to prosecutor Joe Dillard to convict them. A former defense attorney who spent way too much time defending people he knew were guilty, Joe is determined to win this case to atone for his past. But a young woman named Natasha, who apparently inspired the slayings, is walking around free because the boys are afraid to implicate her. Now, Joe must risk everything- including the safety of his family and his own good faith-to bring a guilty woman to justice.</p>


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<p>State Senator Paul Giannis is a candidate for Mayor of Kindle County. His identical twin brother Cass is newly released from prison, 25 years after pleading guilty to the murder of his girlfriend, Dita Kronon. When Evon Miller, an ex-FBI agent who is the head of security for the Kronon family business, and private investigator Tim Brodie begin a re-investigation of Dita's death, a complex web of murder, sex, and betrayal-as only Scott Turow could weave-dramatically unfolds.</p>


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<div><p>This is the kind of crime the tabloids love...<br></p><p>This is the kind of case most lawyers dream of...<br></p><p>This is the kind of trial that destroys more lives than it saves...<br></p><p>this is the kind of “terrific debut novel”( Sheldon Siegel, New York Times BestSelling Author of Judgment Day) that reinvents the legal thriller.<br></p><p>A preacher is stabbed to death in a Tennessee motel. The suspect is a waitress at a strip club. Defense attorney Joe Dillard’s too burnt out to defend anyone he knows in his heart is guilty. Then he meets the vulnerable Angel—the accused, incriminated by circumstantial evidence. Dillard’s sure she’s not capable of killing anyone. What Dillard doesn’t count on are the others drawn into the storm of the stunning crime—from the vindictive detective to the victim’s avenging son to Dillard’s own deeply troubled sister—all of whom will help to erase the line between guilt and innocence, and between an unthinkable lie and the unbelievable truth.</p></div>


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“Beware of geeks bearing formulas.” --Warren Buffett   In March of 2006, the world’s richest men sipped champagne in an opulent New York hotel.  They were preparing to compete in a poker tournament with million-dollar stakes, but those numbers meant nothing to them.  They were accustomed to risking billions.     At the card table that night was Peter Muller, an eccentric, whip-smart whiz kid who’d studied theoretical mathematics at Princeton and now managed a fabulously successful hedge fund called PDT…when he wasn’t playing his keyboard for morning commuters on the New York subway.  With him was Ken Griffin, who as an undergraduate trading convertible bonds out of his Harvard dorm room had outsmarted the Wall Street pros and made money in one of the worst bear markets of all time.  Now he was the tough-as-nails head of Citadel Investment Group, one of the most powerful money machines on earth. There too were Cliff Asness, the sharp-tongued, mercurial founder of the hedge fund AQR, a man as famous for his computer-smashing rages as for his brilliance, and Boaz Weinstein, chess life-master and king of the credit default swap, who while juggling $30 billion worth of positions for Deutsche Bank found time for frequent visits to Las Vegas with the famed MIT card-counting team.     On that night in 2006, these four men and their cohorts were the new kings of Wall Street.  Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein were among the best and brightest of a  new breed, the quants.  Over the prior twenty years, this species of math whiz --technocrats who make billions not with gut calls or fundamental analysis but with formulas and high-speed computers-- had usurped the testosterone-fueled, kill-or-be-killed risk-takers who’d long been the alpha males the world’s largest casino.  The quants believed that a dizzying, indecipherable-to-mere-mortals cocktail of differential calculus, quantum physics, and advanced geometry held the key to reaping riches from the financial markets.  And they helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could shift billions around the globe with the click of a mouse.     Few realized that night, though, that in creating this unprecedented machine, men like Muller, Griffin, Asness and Weinstein had sowed the seeds for history’s greatest financial disaster.     Drawing on unprecedented access to these four number-crunching titans, The Quants tells the inside story of what they thought and felt in the days and weeks when they helplessly watched much of their net worth vaporize – and wondered just how their mind-bending formulas and genius-level IQ’s had led them so wrong, so fast.  Had their years of success been dumb luck, fool’s gold, a good run that could come to an end on any given day?  What if The Truth they sought -- the secret of the markets -- wasn’t knowable? Worse, what if there wasn’t any Truth?    In The Quants, Scott Patterson tells the story not just of these men, but of Jim Simons, the reclusive founder of the most successful hedge fund in history; Aaron Brown, the quant who used his math skills to humiliate Wall Street’s old guard at their trademark game of Liar’s Poker, and years later found himself with a front-row seat to the rapid emergence of mortgage-backed securities; and gadflies and dissenters such as Paul Wilmott, Nassim Taleb, and Benoit Mandelbrot.     With the immediacy of today’s NASDAQ close and the timeless power of a Greek tragedy, The Quants is at once a masterpiece of explanatory journalism, a gripping tale of ambition and hubris…and an ominous warning about Wall Street’s future.


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<p>In the Pacific there is an island that looks like a big fish sunning itself in the sea. Around it, blue dolphins swim, otters play, and sea elephants and sea birds abound. once, Indians also lived on the island. And when they left and sailed to the east, one young girl was left behind.  </p><p>This is the story of Karana, the Indian girl who lived alone for years on the Island of the Blue Dolphins. Year after year, she watched one season pass into another and waited for a ship to take her away. But while she waited, she kept herself alive by building shelter, making weapons, finding food, and fighting her enemies, the wild dogs. It is not only an unusual adventure of survival, but also a tale of natural beauty and personal discovery.</p>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; "><strong>What inspired you to write this book?</strong></span></h3><p>I began looking for a book idea several years ago with two requirements in mind. First, I wanted to find a good story--something with fascinating characters, a bit of tension, and a compelling narrative. Second, I was looking for a story of some significance. That led me instinctively to the turn of the century. Everything about the United States--its economy, its politics, the way people played and worked -- were all rapidly changing. It was a turning point in the nation’s history. McKinley and his assassin Leon Czolgosz, I quickly discovered, offered a fascinating story in their own right, but also spoke to broader issues. </p><p>McKinley tends to be overshadowed by his successor, Theodore Roosevelt. Is that fair? There is no question that McKinley gets less space in the history books. Roosevelt ranks as perhaps the most charismatic president in U.S. history and accomplished great things. But McKinley’s five years in office were, if anything, more action packed. He led the nation into war with Spain, he annexed the Philippines, and he sent troops to China to help put down the Boxer Rebellion. Many of his decisions would have long-lasting consequences. U.S. troops would remain in the Philippines for decades. Puerto Rico and Guam would be brought under--the Open Door-- that would guide presidents right up to Pearl Harbor. McKinley, however, was the type of man who preferred to work behind the scenes and was not one for bombastic speech making. This modesty has certainly hurt his profile, undeservedly so. </p><p><strong>Do you see parallels between McKinley’s presidency and what the United States faces now?</strong><br>Yes. Many of the issues about America’s role in the world can be traced back to his years in office. McKinley and his team were at various times torn over whether the United States, as a former colony itself, should avoid interfering in the affairs of other governments, or whether to use its power to correct what it considered to be problems in other countries. Overlaying that conflict was the pursuit of American economic interests, which demanded a strong U.S. presence abroad. Ultimately, I think, McKinley decided in many cases that there existed a happy union of interests--what was good for the United States was also probably good for others. </p><p><strong>And what of the anarchist philosophy that Czolgosz said he subscribed to? </strong><br>There are a number of similarities between the anarchist movement in the 1880s and 1890s and what’s happening in some parts of the world today. Radical anarchists of that time saw in terror--what they called the “propaganda of the deed”--an opportunity to draw attention to their cause. Some also felt they were justified in using violence because, in their view, government and society was using violence against them--aggressive police tactics and an unjust legal system. Finally, and this really struck me, was the power of imitation. It seemed like every time the police, in the United States or in Europe, captured and punished an anarchist, it only inspired others to take up the fight themselves, even to the point of hoping to die in the same manner that their heroes had. </p><p><strong>What surprised you about your research?</strong><br>What struck me the most was the richness of those who became secondary characters in the book. There is the adventure-loving Frederick Funston, the army officer who--passing himself off as a prisoner of war--led a secret raid on the camp of the leader of the Filipino resistance. There is Admiral Dewey, a desk-bound naval officer who worried over a forgettable career until he was given the opportunity to attack the Spanish fleet at Manila. There is Emma Goldman, “Red Emma,” who loved anarchism, and the men who shared her views. And there is even McKinley’s wife, a demanding and sickly woman, who would have tested most men, but found in McKinley an ever faithful and loving companion. Getting to know these people--as well as McKinley and Czolgosz--was one of the great joys of the book and I’ll miss spending time with them.</p></div>


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In this stunning debut, author Scott Lynch delivers the wonderfully thrilling tale of an audacious criminal and his band of confidence tricksters. Set in a fantastic city pulsing with the lives of decadent nobles and daring thieves, here is a story of adventure, loyalty, and survival that is one part Robin Hood, one part Ocean’s Eleven, and entirely enthralling.…An orphan’s life is harsh–and often short–in the island city of Camorr, built on the ruins of a mysterious alien race. But born with a quick wit and a gift for thieving, Locke Lamora has dodged both death and slavery, only to fall into the hands of an eyeless priest known as Chains–a man who is neither blind nor a priest. A con artist of extraordinary talent, Chains passes his skills on to his carefully selected “family” of orphans–a group known as the Gentlemen Bastards. Under his tutelage, Locke grows to lead the Bastards, delightedly pulling off one outrageous confidence game after another. Soon he is infamous as the Thorn of Camorr, and no wealthy noble is safe from his sting.Passing themselves off as petty thieves, the brilliant Locke and his tightly knit band of light-fingered brothers have fooled even the criminal underworld’s most feared ruler, Capa Barsavi. But there is someone in the shadows more powerful–and more ambitious–than Locke has yet imagined.Known as the Gray King, he is slowly killing Capa Barsavi’s most trusted men–and using Locke as a pawn in his plot to take control of Camorr’s underworld. With a bloody coup under way threatening to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the Gray King at his own brutal game–or die trying.…


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<p><strong>First they tried to kill him. Then they took his daughter . . . </strong><br><br>Anthropologist Simon Dracup knows that his only hope of finding her alive lies within the pages of his grandfather's diary, the record of a near century old expedition to Mount Ararat, legendary resting place of the great Ark of Noah.<br><br>When the CIA pays him a visit Dracup learns that something was found on the Ark. Something priceless. Now its owners have taken it back, but they want revenge and Dracup is their prime target . . . <br><br>Dracup finds himself plunged into a desperate battle for survival as he hunts for evidence that will lead him to the sinister Korumak Tanri, but even he could not have predicted the shocking truth about the mysterious cult and the ancient secret they are sworn to protect . . . <br><br><em>'The Trespass' is a gripping, fast-paced novel that asks serious questions about the nature of our existence.</em></p>


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


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<p class="description">Genellan -- beautiful, Earthlike world where intelligent cliff-dwellers waited in fear for the day the warlike bear people would return... Genellan -- the only refuge for a ship's crew and a detachment of spacer marines, abandoned by a fleet fleeing from alien attackers. Stranded on Genellan, the humans struggled to make a home for themselves until -- they hoped against hope -- the fleet could rescue them. Lt. Sharl Buccari tried desperately to hold on to the threads of command over both the civilians and the marines -- to keep her people together. Winter was coming. No one knew if the winged natives would be friend or foe. And now the bear people were returning, bent on destroying every human -- but not before stealing the secret of hyperlight drive, the key to interstellar flight...</p>


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<p><em>The Last Gasp</em> takes us to the dark side of human history in the first full chronicle of the gas chamber in the United States. In page-turning detail, award-winning writer Scott Christianson tells a dreadful story that is full of surprising and provocative new findings. First constructed in Nevada in 1924, the gas chamber, a method of killing sealed off and removed from the sight and hearing of witnesses, was originally touted as a "humane" method of execution. Delving into science, war, industry, medicine, law, and politics, Christianson overturns this mythology for good. He exposes the sinister links between corporations looking for profit, the military, and the first uses of the gas chamber after World War I. He explores little-known connections between the gas chamber and the eugenics movement. Perhaps most controversially, he has unearthed new evidence about American and German collaboration in the production and lethal use of hydrogen cyanide and about Hitler's adoption of gas chamber technology developed in the United States. More than a book about the death penalty, this compelling history ultimately reveals much about America's values and power structures in the twentieth century.</p>


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<p>Scott and Joan Bolzan tell their unique, harrowing true story—the story of a 46-year-old man whose accident at the workplace resulted in permanent amnesia, erasing all memories of his past, his wife and children, his likes and dislikes, and how to navigate the accelerated pace of the 21st century. But, in the vein of Lee and Bob Woodruff's <i>In an Instant </i>and Jill Bolte Taylor's <i>My Stroke of Insight</i>, Scott Bolzan's story is not a memoir of loss but rather a tale of hope, perseverance, and optimism—an inspirational recollection of confronting an unimaginable crisis and learning to start over.</p>


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<div><p><strong>THE TYLENOL MAFIA: Marketing, Murder, and Johnson &amp; Johnson (Revised 2nd Edition)</strong></p><p><strong>Overview</strong></p><p>On September 29, 1982, seven people in Chicago died after taking Extra Strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide. Officials have long cited the scarcity of physical evidence and apparent lack of motive to explain why they never solved the Tylenol murders. However, new revelations and information not previously disclosed tell a very different story of a crime that should have been solved.<br></p><p>In a story both fascinating and dramatic in its warnings, The Tylenol Mafia rips away the facade of an investigation that J&amp;J CEO James Burke labeled "A demonstration without parallel of government and business working with the news media to help protect the public." This gripping, meticulously documented expose' unearths the troubling details of an investigation corrupted by well-connected corporate executives and politically motivated government officials who simply buried the truth inside a shadow legal system inaccessible to everyday Americans.</p></div>


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


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<p class="description">With The Years of Extermination, Saul Friedländer completes his major historical work on Nazi Germany and the Jews. The book describes and interprets the persecution and murder of the Jews throughout occupied Europe. The enactment of German extermination policies and measures depended on the cooperation of local authorities, the assistance of police forces, and the passivity of the populations, primarily of their political and spiritual elites. This implementation depended as well on the victims’ readiness to submit to orders, often with the hope of attenuating them or of surviving long enough to escape the German vise.   This multifaceted study—at all levels and in different places—enhances the perception of the magnitude, complexity, and interrelatedness of the many components of this history. Based on a vast array of documents and an overwhelming choir of voices—mainly from diaries, letters, and memoirs—Saul Friedländer avoids domesticating the memory of these unprecedented and horrific events. The convergence of these various aspects gives a unique quality to The Years of Extermination. In this work, the history of the Holocaust has found its definitive representation.</p>


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<p class="description">A great historian crowns a lifetime of thought and research by answering a question that has haunted us for more than 50 years: How did one of the most industrially and culturally advanced nations in the world embark on and continue along the path leading to one of the most enormous criminal enterprises in history, the extermination of Europe's Jews?  Giving considerable emphasis to a wealth of new archival findings, Saul Friedlander restores the voices of Jews who, after the 1933 Nazi accession to power, were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality. We hear from the persecutors themselves: the leaders of the Nazi party, the members of the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies, the university elites, and the heads of the business community. Most telling of all, perhaps, are the testimonies of ordinary German citizens, who in the main acquiesced to increasing waves of dismissals, segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, expulsion, and violence.</p>


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<div><p class="description">Saul Bellow wrote marvellously acute, unsparing, tender, ferocious, hilarious, and wise letter throughout his long life (1915-2005).</p><p class="description">Friends, lovers, wives, colleagues, and fans all cross these pages. Some of the finest letters are to his fellow writers-William Faulkner, John Cheever, John Berryman, Ralph Ellison, J.F. Powers, Karl Shapiro, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, John Auerbach, Stanley Elkin, Richard Stern, James Salter, Martin Amis, and others. Intimate and ironical, rueful and amused, this vast self portrait-indeed, the autobiography Bellow never wrote-shows the influences at work in the man and illuminates his enduring legacy: the novels and stories that enduring legacy: the novels and stories that earned him a Nobel Prize and the admiration of readers the world over.</p></div>


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It is an offer anthropologist Katharine Sundquist cannot refuse. A chance to study the unusual skeletal remains unearthed on the volcanic flanks of Haleakala, Maui. Yet for Katharine's sixteen-year-old son, Michael, the sudden move is jarring. It's the last thing he needs while struggling with the still painful death of his father. And here, beyond the sparkling beaches, masked by the deceptive beauty of the rainforest, a terrible danger waits. It begins with a video transmission so shocking that Katharine cannot believe what flashes on her computer screen - then instantly, inexplicably, vanishes. Secret deliveries in the dead of the night to a restricted wing of the high-tech laboratory in which she works signal that behind locked doors some sinister experiment is unfolding. And then, with the sudden, unexplained death of Michael's friend, a disturbing truth dawns: the corporation that is funding Katharine's dig has a far greater investment than she has imagined - an investment in medical terror. And her son may be part of their hideous grand plan.


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<p>Clark's Harbor was the perfect coastal haven,  jealously guarded against outsiders. But now  strangers have come to settle there. And a small boy is  suddenly free of a frenzy that had gripped him since  birth... His sister is haunted by fearful  visions... And one by one, in violent, mysterious ways the  strangers are dying. Never the townspeople. Only  the strangers. Has a dark bargain been struck  between the people of Clark's Harbor and some  supernatural force? Or is it the sea itself calling out for  a human sacrifice? A howling, deadly... </p>


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<p>A century ago, a gentle blind girl walked the cliffs of Paradise Point. Then the children came -- taunting, teasing -- until she lost her footing and fell, shrieking her rage to the drowning sea... Now Michelle has come from Boston to live in the big house on Paradise Point. She is excited about her new life, ready to make new friends... until a hand reaches out of the swirling mists -- the hand of blind child. She is asking for friendship... seeking revenge... whispering her name... </p>


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The hardcover publication ofHow the Soldier Repairs the Gramophonelaunched Stanisic as an exciting and important new voice in literary fiction and earned exuberant praise from readers and critics alike. Now in paperback, Stanisic’s debut about a boy who experiences the Bosnian War and finds the secret to survival in language and stories is bound to dazzle a whole new readership.For Aleksandar Krsmanovic, Grandpa Slavko’s stories endow life in Višegrad with a kaleidoscopic brilliance. Neighbors, friends, and family past and present take on a mythic quality; the River Drina courses through town like the pulse of life itself. So when his grandfather dies suddenly, Aleksandar promises to carry on the tradition. But then soldiers invade Višegrad—a town previously unconscious of racial and religious divides—and it’s no longer important that Aleksandar is the best magician in the nonaligned states; suddenly it is important to have the right last name and to convince the soldiers that Asija, the Muslim girl who turns up in his apartment building, is his sister.Alive with the magic of childhood, the surreality of war and exile, and the power of language, every page of this glittering novel thrums with the joy of storytelling.


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<p class="description">A compelling YA novel from the best-selling author of Guitar Girl! Isabel is the girl who rules the school with an iron fist and a gang of minions who do her bidding. Her friends are scared of her, her teachers can’t get through to her, and that’s just the way she likes it. With her razor-sharp edges and tall walls, nothing gets to Isabel—and no one, but no one, is ever going to discover her dark, sad secrets. Then she meets Smith. And Isabel learns that sometimes when all the expectations and pressures are too much, you just need someone to help you get lost.</p>


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<p>Lonely Planet is the expert on India. Our 13th edition eases you through the spicy diversity of India - from the thrilling bustle of Delhi's bazaars, to the laid-back beaches of Goa, the serene beauty of Himalayan Sikkim, and the majesty of Jaisalmer's ancient fort.<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>Bonus activities chapter detailing camel treks, watersports and yoga<p>Tasty color feature reveals the best local food<p>Festive special section on India's most magical celebrations


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<p class="description">From the bestselling author of The Wordy Shipmates, an examination of Hawaii, the place where Manifest Destiny got a sunburn.   Many think of 1776 as the defining year of American history, when we became a nation devoted to the pursuit of happiness through self- government. In Unfamiliar Fishes, Sarah Vowell argues that 1898 might be a year just as defining, when, in an orgy of imperialism, the United States annexed Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and invaded first Cuba, then the Philippines, becoming an international superpower practically overnight.  Among the developments in these outposts of 1898, Vowell considers the Americanization of Hawaii the most intriguing. From the arrival of New England missionaries in 1820, their goal to Christianize the local heathen, to the coup d'état of the missionaries' sons in 1893, which overthrew the Hawaiian queen, the events leading up to American annexation feature a cast of beguiling, and often appealing or tragic, characters: whalers who fired cannons at the Bible-thumpers denying them their God-given right to whores, an incestuous princess pulled between her new god and her brother-husband, sugar barons, lepers, con men, Theodore Roosevelt, and the last Hawaiian queen, a songwriter whose sentimental ode "Aloha 'Oe" serenaded the first Hawaiian president of the United States during his 2009 inaugural parade.  With her trademark smart-alecky insights and reporting, Vowell lights out to discover the off, emblematic, and exceptional history of the fiftieth state, and in so doing finds America, warts and all.</p>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; "> Essayist and public radio regular Vowell (_Assassination Vacation_) revisits America's Puritan roots in this witty exploration of the ways in which our country's present predicaments are inextricably tied to its past. In a style less colloquial than her previous books, Vowell traces the 1630 journey of several key English colonists and members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Foremost among these men was John Winthrop, who would become governor of Massachusetts. While the Puritans who had earlier sailed to Plymouth on the <em>Mayflower</em> were separatists, Winthrop's followers remained loyal to England, spurred on by Puritan Reverend John Cotton's proclamation that they were God's chosen people. Vowell underscores that the seemingly minute differences between the Plymouth Puritans and the Massachusetts Puritans were as meaningful as the current Sunni/Shia Muslim rift. Gracefully interspersing her history lesson with personal anecdotes, Vowell offers reflections that are both amusing (colonial history lesson via <em>The Brady Bunch</em>) and tender (watching New Yorkers patiently waiting in line to donate blood after 9/11). </span></h3>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Sweeney St. George looks nothing like a university Professor with her unruly red curls and preference for vintage clothing. Single and wary of relationships, she pours her energy into her college teaching and a passionate interest in cemetery art. And now Sweeney is intrigued with a macabre graveyard statue of a beautiful woman-a carving that is at once astonishing, sinister, and perhaps hiding a one-hundred-year-old murder...</span></h3>
<p>Dying to find out more about the strange monument, Sweeney heads for a winter holiday among friends at a mansion in Vermont's historic Byzantium Art Colony. Her plan is to snoop in dusty archives and tromp through the tiny cemetery where the statue still stands. But what Sweeney finds in this isolated rural community is an emotional awakening, a chilling link between old and new crimes...and a clever killer reaching for her with deadly hands.  
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Warning from publisher to reader:   At HarperCollins, we are committed to customer satisfaction. Before proceeding with your purchase, please take the following questionnaire to determine your likelihood of enjoying this book:   1. Which of the following do you appreciate?  (a) Women with somewhat horse-ish facial features. (b) Women who, while not super Jew-y, are more identifiably Jewish than, say, Natalie Portman. (c) Frequent discussion of unwanted body hair.  2. Are you offended by the following behavior?  (a) Instructing one's grandmother to place baked goods in her rectal cavity. (b) Stripping naked in public—eleven times in a row. (c) Stabbing one's boss in the head with a writing implement.  3. The best way to treat an emotionally fragile young girl is:  (a) Murder the main course of her Thanksgiving dinner before her very eyes. (b) Tell her that her older sister is prettier than she, and then immediately die. (c) Prevent her suicide by recommending she stay away from open windows.  If you read the above questions without getting nauseous or forming a hate Web site, you are ready to buy this book! Please proceed to the cashier.


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The body in the church hall is very definitely dead. It has been sliced open with surgical precision, its organs exposed, and its vocal cords are gone. It is as if they were never there or they've been dissolved! With the Welsh amateur Operatic Contest getting under way, music is filling the churches and concert halls of Cardiff. The competition has attracted the finest Welsh talent to the city, but it has also drawn something else — there are stories of a metallic creature hiding in the shadows. Torchwood is on its tail, but it's moving too fast for them to track it down! This new threat requires a new tactic, so Ianto Jones is joining a male voice choir...


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


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<div><p class="description"></p><p>What a scoundrel wants, a scoundrel gets. . .</p><p>A decade ago, the Marquess of Bourne was cast from society with nothing but his title. Now a partner in London's most exclusive gaming hell, the cold, ruthless Bourne will do whatever it takes to regain his inheritance—including marrying perfect, proper Lady Penelope Marbury.</p><p>A broken engagement and years of disappointing courtships have left Penelope with little interest in a quiet, comfortable marriage, and a longing for something more. How lucky that her new husband has access to an unexplored world of pleasures.</p><p>Bourne may be a prince of London's illicit underworld, but he vows to keep Penelope untouched by its wickedness—a challenge indeed as the lady discovers her own desires, and her willingness to wager anything for them . . . .even her heart.</p></div>


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Built on the Upper West Side, the elegant Breviary claims a regal history. But despite 14B's astonishingly low rental price, the recent tragedy within its walls has frightened away all potential tenants . . . except for Audrey Lucas.   No stranger to tragedy at thirty-two—a survivor of a fatherless childhood and a mother's hopeless dementia— Audrey is obsessively determined to make her own way in a city that often strangles the weak. But is it something otherworldly or Audrey's own increasing instability that's to blame for the dark visions that haunt her . . . and for the voice that demands that she build a door? A door it would be true madness to open . . .


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<div><p>When ex—Wall Streeter Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree bought a charming 1823 fixer-upper in tiny Eastport, Maine, she figured she’d also bought herself a tranquil, stress-free life. But Jake soon learned that appearances can be deceiving, and that even small towns have their share of dark secrets — including murder.</p><p><strong>Wreck The Halls<br></strong><br>People hardly ever lock their doors in Eastport. So when Jake and her best pal, Ellie, arrive at Faye Anne Carmody’s kitchen door, they knock and walk right in. But though Christmas is just two weeks away, what they find is far from festive: a dazed Faye Anne covered with blood, and her no-good husband — the town butcher, Merle — nowhere in sight. Nowhere, that is, until Jake discovers his body — tidily wrapped in his own butcher paper.... <br></p><p>It doesn’t take long for news of the murder to race through the small town, and just about everyone has a theory about the grisly crime that has robbed Eastport of its least-liked citizen. But while police chief Bob Arnold considers it an open-and-shut case, Jake and Ellie aren’t convinced of Faye Anne’s guilt. <br></p><p>Jake has enough going on in her life without trying to investigate a murder. After all, she’s just married her longtime love, Wade, and the pair plan to spend the winter rehabilitating the paint-encrusted windows in Jake’s old house. <br></p><p>But Jake has to admit that there are a lot of details that don’t add up: for example, Faye Anne’s complaint that she was being stalked, and blood-splattered evidence at the crime scene that just doesn’t make sense. Then there is the diary that Faye Anne’s secret, sometime boyfriend claims is hidden somewhere in her house. Could Faye Anne’s own journal be the key to unlocking an even more fiendish murder plot, or is her double-crossing lover trying to frame her?<br></p><p>When yet another Eastport citizen turns up dead, Jake realizes the murderer’s trail began long before the night Merle Carmody died. But what keeps eluding her and Ellie is the motive behind the mystery. The truth is so close, they can almost taste it — but can they stop the shrewd killer before he chisels another victim’s name onto a tombstone?</p></div>


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<div><p>Do-it-yourself killer fixes small-town thug... </p><p>For ex-Wall Streeter Jacobia Tiptree and her teenaged son, Sam, September promises tranquil days winter-proofing their rambling handyman's special of a home in Eastport, Maine. But there's nothing idyllic about this Down East autumn. For starters, the return of truly vicious native son Reuben Tate stirs up the town. And when somebody slits Reuben's throat and hangs his corpse on the cemetery gate, the police trace a bloodied scalpel to surgeon Victor Tiptree—Jacobia's former husband. Yet Jake knows her troublesome, trouble-prone ex is capable of just about anything except murder. Proving that, though, is another matter.</p><p>Eastport is packed with tourists and former residents for the annual Salmon Festival—and Jake soon realizes any Eastporter, past or present, has motive for Tate's murder. To nail the real killer, Jake and her best friend, Ellie White, must probe a past as rotten as crumbling clapboard, while a secret hatred builds toward a series of murders even more brutal than Reuben Tate himself....</p></div>


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<div><p>Once a Wall Street hotshot, Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree chucked it all for a charmingly dilapidated fixer-upper in the tiny town of Eastport, Maine. She was certain she’d left the dangers of city life behind—until she discovered that no place, no matter how idyllic and peaceful it may appear, is safe from murder.<br><strong><br></strong>It began with the mysterious disappearance of Harriet Hollingsworth—Eastport’s snoopiest resident. Everyone is convinced the old busybody bolted out of town to escape her creditor—everyone except Jake and her best friend Ellie who know Harriet would never leave home without her most prized possession. But before Jake and Ellie can persuade police chief Bob Arnold to open an investigation, they’ll need to come up with proof more sinister than a pair of abandoned binoculars. </p><p>Just as Jake starts poking around for clues, things suddenly take a troubling turn for the worse. A suspicious accident nearly kills her teenaged son, Sam, and her husband, Wade, just misses getting his head blown off. Jake is prepared to attribute these incidents to a spate of bad luck—until another “accident” leaves a visitor to Eastport unmistakably dead.</p><p>Most perplexing, all this mayhem coincides with the unexpected arrival of a man from Jake’s past: a former New York City cop. Harry Markle claims he has unintentionally brought an unwelcome guest into Eastport: a crook determined to knock off everyone with ties to Harry.</p><p>Twenty-four hours ago, Jake’s only worry was fixing her broken-down gutters and downspouts before the big storm swept into town. Now, everything seems to be falling apart all around her. Jake knows from experience that the truth is usually as messy and complicated as do-it-yourself remodeling. As it becomes chillingly clear that appearances in this quaint community are more misleading than ever, she’ll have to find a way to lure a homicidal maniac into the light--before he nails another victim.</p></div>


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<div><p>Jacobia Tiptree saved her sanity—and her son, Sam—the day she abandoned Wall Street for the seacoast village of Eastport, Maine. In her new home, a charmingly dialpidated fixer-upper, she looks forward to repairing old radiators and restoring antique shutter for years to come. But Jake's hopes of serenity are dashed when tiny Eastport erupts in a crime wave. </p><p>Hometown bad boy Kenny Mumford—old flame of Jake's best fiend and fellow sleuth, Ellie White—is the first victim. When his corpse washes up on the beach at Prince's Cove, all evidence points to a drowning...except the bullet hole in his forehead.</p><p>When bodies begin littering the Maine scenery, Jake and Ellie learn that the ante on Kenny's small-town antics has been upped. Add a pair of unwelcome arrivlas—Jake's ex-husband, and an unscrupulous New York ex-money mogul—and you've got a blueprint for more deadly danger than one house can hold.</p></div>


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<p>When Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree left behind her high-powered, high-risk career on Wall Street for the charming town of Eastport, Maine, she expected a quiet life spent fixing up her 1823 Federal-style house. But there are skeletons in her closet that may prove beyond repair...Suddenly the perils of the stock market pale in comparison to the murder, mayhem, and mystery of remodeling.</p>


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<div><p>Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree traded her power-broker life for a run-down dream house in peaceful Eastport, Maine. But the do-it-yourself enthusiast is learning that no matter how carefully you build your home, murder has a way of slipping in through the cracks…. </p><p>It’s a bright June afternoon and old-house-fixer-upper Jake Tiptree is driving through downeast Maine on an unusual errand. She’s getting ready to interview a large, angry man with a criminal history. Jim Diamond may or may not be harassing his ex-wife with life-threatening letters, but Jake promised her new housekeeper, Bella Diamond, she’d look into the matter. An ex-con and a deadbeat, Jim Diamond doesn’t have a history of violence…that is, not until Jake arrives at his apartment and discovers that a killer has been there first.</p><p>Suddenly Jake and her best friend, Ellie White, find themselves at the center of a murder with too many suspects and too few clues. And as if that’s not enough, Jake is now saddled with the manic Bella, whose certainty that she’ll be the next victim is fueling a supercompulsive neatness–one that threatens to clean Jake and her long-suffering husband, Wade, out of house and home.</p><p>Add to that a moose in her kitchen, a rebellious son with a habit of dumping Miss Right for Miss Wrong, and a troublesome ex of her own, and Jake is already at wit’s end. Then she gets word that a horde of her dad’s long-lost relatives mean to descend on Eastport, intending to be put up at her far-from-fixed-up fixer-upper.</p><p>When the killer does strike again, it’s not where Jake expects…and the victim couldn’t be more of a surprise. For this is a case bigger than the usual angry—ex-spouse variety, and now that Jake and Ellie have gotten themselves involved, they’ve each won a special place in a ruthless murderer’s master plan of greed, deception, and death. And the prize? A pair of eternally private rooms–six feet under!</p></div>


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<div><p><strong>dead cat bounce</strong> <em>n.</em> Stock market jargon for a small, temporary rise in a stock's trading price after a sharp drop. </p><p>Since she bought her rambling old fixer-upper of a house, Jacobia Tiptree has gotten used to finding things broken. But her latest problem isn't so easily repaired. Along with the rotting floor joists and sagging support beams, there's the little matter of the dead man in Jake's storeroom, an ice pick firmly planted in his cranium.</p><p>Not much happens in her tiny Maine town, but that's about to change. Jake's unknown guest turns out to be a world-famous corporate raider, local boy turned billionaire Threnody McIlwaine. When Jake's best friend, quiet and dependable Ellie White, readily confesses to the murder, cops and journalists swarm into snowbound Eastport.</p><p>Jake smells a cover-up, and begins poking into past history between McIlwaine and Ellie's family. But someone doesn't like nosy neighbors...and Jake's rustic refuge may become her final resting place.</p></div>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; "><strong>Home repair can be murder.</strong></span></h3><p><br>Jacobia Tiptree and her teenage son are used to their Eastport, Maine, home attracting more than its share of houseguests. This year Jake is hoping the plaster dust will keep them away while she finally gets her gem of a fixer-upper into shape — from doorknobs and chandeliers to leaky pipes to ghostly phenomena.<br></p><p>But when the charming and mysterious Jonathan Raines appears on her doorstep — and then just as suddenly disappears — remodeling the house becomes the least of Jake’s problems. Could Jonathan’s disappearance have something to do with his quest for a cursed violin — the one that local legend says was hidden by a long-ago owner of Jake’s house before he too vanished without a trace?<br></p><p>Soon Jonathan’s grief-stricken girlfriend arrives downeast, and Jake needs to strip Eastport’s past of its idyllic veneer — before a killer paints her very dead indeed!</p></div>


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<div><p>Once upon a time, Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree was a hotshot money manager to Manhattan’s rich and dreadful—until she left city life behind for a centuries-old fixer-upper in the quaint seaside town of Eastport, Maine. But even this tiny haven has its hazards—and they can be astonishingly deadly….</p><p>What would you do if a long-buried book was unearthed from beneath your 1823 fixer-upper—a book containing your name written <em>in blood</em>? That’s the mystery Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree faces in the midst of her latest old-house renovations. But it’s only the first in a town better known for its scenic views and historic homes than its body count. Now Jake is putting aside her hammer and fixing to find someone who’s got the blueprint for a perfect murder.</p></div>


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<div><p>Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree took the dangerous plunge from Wall Street power broker–to homeowner! Now the do-it-yourself enthusiast is about to discover that her own dream house is built on a foundation of murder. </p><p>Buying a beachfront fixer-upper to lease out to Eastport, Maine’s, burgeoning tourist crowd seems like a good idea to Jake Tiptree and her best friend, Ellie White. But working double-time as landladies to a coven of wannabe witches isn’t what they had in mind. And it only gets worse when Jake is called out one stormy night to make a repair–and stumbles on a dead body in the utility shed.</p><p>A small-time thief and street preacher with a particularly violent message, the deceased was no favorite of Jake’s–nor of anyone else in Eastport. But what’s he doing shot to death on Jake’s property? Jake’s bewitching tenants–including an ex-cop, a con man, and a mute teenage girl–claim to have been too busy conjuring spells to have heard or seen a thing. Then a member of the coven disappears without a trace and Jake doesn’t think it’s a case of witchcraft–but a kidnapping...or worse.</p><p>Scandal, secrets, and a mysterious box buried deep in the foundation of her own home are just the beginning of a mystery that threatens to bring Jake’s house–and life–crashing down. Now she and Ellie are racing to find a missing girl who may be the key to it all...or lead them to a killer holding the final nails to their coffins.</p></div>


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<div><p>Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree left her high-powered career for a dilapidated fixer-upper and the dream of a quiet existence in the quaint town of Eastport, Maine. But she found that no matter how carefully you remodel your life, murder can take up residence anywhere. </p><p>It’s Eastport’s most notorious landmark: the old Harlequin House. Named for the disgraced physician Chester Harlequin, it was used as a hideout for gunshot gangsters and their molls during Prohibition’s heyday. Now fixer-upper enthusiast Jake Tiptree and Harlequin’s only living descendant, Ellie White, are refurbishing the mansard-roofed mansion to host the local Historical Society’s upcoming gala. But when stripping down old wallpaper reveals a secret door to a room containing not one but two corpses, Jake and Ellie once again find home repair leading to homicide.</p><p>One of the bodies is a skeleton dressed in 1920s flapper chic. But the other is that of real-estate mogul Hector Gosling, and in his pocket is a paper bearing the single word “Guilty.” The less-than-scrupulous tycoon has been poisoned, and when it’s learned that the offending substance is the poison that Ellie’s husband George has been using to kill red ants, he is immediately taken into custody. Then it develops that George had recently accused Gosling of a scheme to scam George’s vulnerable old aunt out of her life savings—and George out of his inheritance.</p><p>With George held for murder, Jake and a pregnant Ellie swing into action. In between Ellie’s Lamaze sessions, baby showers, and CPR classes taught by Jake’s ex-husband Victor, the two amateur sleuths must sift their way through a trail of seemingly contradictory clues. Then another corpse surfaces and suddenly Jake and Ellie realize they must find this killer fast. A clever culprit is not only building an airtight case against Ellie’s husband. He—or she—is planning to nail everyone who stands in the way.</p></div>


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<p>Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree is deep in her latest home improvement project—repainting the porch of her lovingly restored house in Eastport, Maine—when she notices the man repeatedly biking past her house. His face is unsettlingly familiar, but his chilling message seems inexplicable: <em>Blood shows up again. Murder will out. </em>Then there’s the anonymous email warning her to beware the Fourth of July—just two days away. Jake remembers some shady characters from her days as a hotshot financial manager, but she’s baffled as to the identity of her nemesis—until she receives a photo of a murdered man. From home invasion to kidnapping, this twisted killer is slowly but surely plotting a knockdown, not just for Jake but for the entire town of Eastport. </p>


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<p class="description">Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree abandoned Wall Street to its bankruptcies and bailouts for a far more rewarding life fixing up an 1823 Federal-style house in Eastport, Maine. But in SarahGraves's chilling new mystery thriller, Jake discovers that no matter what your address, the most terrifying crimes always hit closest to home. The infamous Dodd murders are hardly amongEastport's proudest legacies. So when bestselling true-crime author Carolyn Rathbone arrives to research the case for a new book, the locals in the seaside town let her know that she's about as welcomeas a spoiled clam. But surely no one would harm a crime writer out of a sense of civic pride-or would they? Jake has her own problems, from the mysteries of old-house insulation to an anonymouscaller plaguing her with death threats. But with Carolyn's arrival, the slayings of the wealthy Dodd women suddenly go from cold case to hot topic-much to someone's dismay. For CarolynRathbone's untimely investigation hasn't only reopened old wounds and stirred up new suspicions; it's unearthed a string of deadly secrets-ones that a cunning killer is grimlydetermined to rebury right along with Carolyn herself. Suddenly Jake finds herself inescapably targeted by one of the most deranged criminal minds she's ever encountered. For as much as shefights to insulate herself from his grisly compulsions, someone with a taste for terror has already crept closer than she dares to imagine. She'd rather die than lose the home and family she'sbuilt-and that suits her nemesis fine, because her death is just exactly what he has planned.</p>


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<div><p>Back in the day, Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree turned profits managing the fortunes of Manhattan’s most fortunate. Then she fled the rat race for a stately old fixer-upper in easygoing Eastport, Maine. But now a rat from an even darker corner of Jake’s past has turned up…a killer with a blueprint for demolishing her new life.<br></p><p>As a home repair enthusiast, Jake knows that nothing lasts forever—not windows or doors, not plaster or plumbing. And not good fortune.<br></p><p>After more than three decades eluding justice, the man who murdered her mother is finally about to stand trial—until he vanishes into thin air. Jake has a terrible foreboding of where Ozzie Campbell will turn up next. And while the local police chief is sure she’s overreacting, the truth is far worse than even Jake’s worst fears.<br></p><p>With her normally full house empty for at least another week, Jake has been looking forward to the unaccustomed peace and quiet. Now her cozy, well-loved home feels more like a big empty death trap ready to snap shut. First a pair of out-of-towners clearly not in Eastport for vacation turn up asking questions about her. And if she has any doubt they’re connected to Campbell, those doubts are erased when he calls her with a grim warning. <br></p><p>But exactly what Campbell wants from her isn’t clear, only that he’ll stop at nothing to hurt those closest to Jake. And his first victims are the most defenseless of all. Suddenly Jake can’t help but feel that her house—and her life—has far too many windows. And in any one of them she might see the face of her killer.</p></div>


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<div><p><strong>The <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of the acclaimed Italian Renaissance novels—<em>The Birth of Venus, In the Company of the Courtesan, </em>and<em> Sacred Hearts</em>—has an exceptional talent for breathing life into history. Now Sarah Dunant turns her discerning eye to one of the world’s most intriguing and infamous families—the Borgias—in an engrossing work of literary fiction.</strong><br><strong> </strong><br>By the end of the fifteenth century, the beauty and creativity of Italy is matched by its brutality and corruption, nowhere more than in Rome and inside the Church. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia buys his way into the papacy as Alexander VI, he is defined not just by his wealth or his passionate love for his illegitimate children, but by his blood: He is a Spanish Pope in a city run by Italians. If the Borgias are to triumph, this charismatic, consummate politician with a huge appetite for life, women, and power must use papacy and family—in particular, his eldest son, Cesare, and his daughter Lucrezia—in order to succeed.<br><br>Cesare, with a dazzlingly cold intelligence and an even colder soul, is his greatest—though increasingly unstable—weapon. Later immortalized in Machiavelli’s <em>The Prince, </em>he provides the energy and the muscle. Lucrezia, beloved by both men, is the prime dynastic tool. Twelve years old when the novel opens, hers is a journey through three marriages, and from childish innocence to painful experience, from pawn to political player.<br><br>Stripping away the myths around the Borgias, <em>Blood &amp; Beauty</em> is a majestic novel that breathes life into this astonishing family and celebrates the raw power of history itself: compelling, complex and relentless.</p></div>


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<p class="description">Raised by a mother who has had five husbands, eighteen-year-old Remy believes in short-term, no-commitment relationships until she meets Dexter, a rock band musician.</p>


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For fifteen-year-old Haven, life is changing too quickly. She's nearly six feet tall, her father is getting remarried, and her sister&150the always perfect Ashley&150is planning a wedding of her own. Haven wishes things could just go back to the way they were. Then an old boyfriend of Ashley's reenters the picture, and through him, Haven sees the past for what it really was, and comes to grips with the future.


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<p class="description">The very name Lucrezia Borgia conjures up everything that was sinister and corrupt about the Renaissanceincest, political assassination, papal sexual abuse, poisonous intrigue, unscrupulous power grabs. Yet as bestselling biographer Sarah Bradford reveals in this breathtaking new portrait, the truth is far more fascinating than the myth. Neither a vicious monster nor a seductive pawn, Lucrezia Borgia was a shrewd, determined woman who used her beauty and intelligence to secure a key role in the political struggles of her day.Born the illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Cardinal Borgia and his scheming mistress, Vannozza Cattanei, Lucrezia was twelve when her father became Pope Alexander VI and thirteen when she was forced into her first marriage. She would marry twice more, gaining increasing power with each match, until she came into her own as duchess of the city-state of Ferrara. Bradford argues that in her maturity Lucrezia was an enlightened ruler, kind and decisive in time of war, generous to the poets and artists of her court, passionate in love, and utterly indifferent to sexual morality.Drawing from a trove of contemporary documents and fascinating firsthand accounts, Bradford brings to life the art, the pageantry, and the dangerous politics of the Renaissance world Lucrezia Borgia helped to create. Bradford is an expert on the Borgia family and in Lucrezia she has found a subject ideally suited to her gift for narrative and psychological insight. Sex, gossip, murder, astonishing beauty, and ambition this is the Renaissance at its most irresistible.</p>


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<p class="description">"I work really hard, and because of that I believe that I should be able to play really hard. It's not easy to find a guy who can handle that. It's also not easy to find a guy who doesn't mind that at one point in my life, I slept with somebody named 'Paul's friend.' " In this wickedly funny and irreverent memoir, "Chelsea Lately" writer and comedian Sarah Colonna opens up about love, life, and pursuing her dreams . . . and then screwing it all up. Sarah Colonna believes that there are very different personalities living inside each of us, and that sometimes those personalities are at war with one another. One wants to have fun, not take things too seriously, and have that fourth margarita. The other would like to get married, stay in, order Chinese food, and have a responsible, secure life. From her formative years in small-town Arkansas to a later career of dates, drinks, and questionable day jobs, Colonna attempts to reconcile her responsible side with her fun-loving side. Sometimes this pans out, and sometimes she finds herself in Mexico handing out her phone number to anyone who calls her pretty. She moves to Los Angeles to pursue acting, but for years is forced to hone her bartending skills; she wants a serious boyfriend, but won't give up nights at the bar with her friends. She tries to behave like an adult, but can't seem to stop acting like a frat boy. In the end, she discovers that there doesn't have to be just one or the other. And if there's one thing Colonna has learned from her many missteps, it's that hindsight is always 100 proof.</p>


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<p>In the blink of an eye, Mom ran up behind me and pushed me into the fence. Instinctively, I reached out my arms to stop my fall and ended up grabbing the live fence. My hands clamped around the thin wires, and my body collapsed to the ground as the electricity coursed through it. I opened my eyes and saw my mother standing over me with the strangest smile on her face. "Oh, my God, I’m going to die!" I thought in panic. Imagine never being able to close your eyes and remember the feel of your mother’s arms wrapped around you. Now imagine closing your eyes and remembering your mother’s tears splashing down on your face as she is on top of you, crying as she is trying to choke you to death. My mother left me these memories and many more during my traumatic childhood. After many years of struggling with trying to understand "Why Me?" I took back control of my life and started saying, "It was me, now what am I going to do?" The answer is my book, "Why Me?" It is my childhood journey through the terrors of physical and mental abuse from first grade until the day I moved out. It is my way of letting the world know what was really going on behind closed doors.</p>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">Weaving together the stories of three very different women loosely tied to each other, debut novelist Blake takes readers back and forth between small town America and war-torn Europe in 1940. Single, 40-year-old postmistress Iris James and young newlywed Emma Trask are both new arrivals to Franklin, Mass., on Cape Cod. While Iris and Emma go about their daily lives, they follow American reporter Frankie Bard on the radio as she delivers powerful and personal accounts from the London Blitz and elsewhere in Europe. While Trask waits for the return of her husband—a volunteer doctor stationed in England—James comes across a letter with valuable information that she chooses to hide. Blake captures two different worlds—a naïve nation in denial and, across the ocean, a continent wracked with terror—with a deft sense of character and plot, and a perfect willingness to take on big, complex questions, such as the merits of truth and truth-telling in wartime.</span></h3>


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<p class="description">Brilliant, original, funny and moving - a vivid portrait of Montaigne, showing how his ideas gave birth to our modern sense of our inner selves, from Shakespeare's plays to the dilemmas we face today. How to get on well with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love - such questions arise in most people's lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honourable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy? This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92), perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them 'essays', meaning 'attempts' or 'tries'. Into them he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog's ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the appalling events of the religious civil wars raging around him. The Essayswas an instant bestseller, and over four hundred years later, Montaigne's honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come to him in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment - and in search of themselves. This book, a spirited and singular biography (and the first full life of Montaigne in English for nearly fifty years), relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored. It traces his bizarre upbringing (made to speak only Latin), youthful career and sexual adventures, his travels, and his friendships with the scholar and poet Etienne de La Bo tie and with his adopted 'daughter', Marie de Gournay. And as we read, we also meet his readers - who for centuries have found in Montaigne an inexhaustible source of answers to the haunting question, 'how to live?' </p>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; "><em>She put a penny on her windowsill and cracked the window, because her grandmother once said that ghosts often forget they’re ghosts and will go after money, but if they get close enough to an open window, the night air will suck them out.</em> </span></h3><p>--Chapter Eight, <em>The Peach Keeper</em></p><p>The original title of <em>The Peach Keeper</em> was <em>God Eats Peaches</em>, which I took from the old saying, “When God eats peaches, He saves the pit.” I had a cousin who would never throw away a peach pit based on that saying. She thought it was bad luck. My family is full of strange Southern superstitions. My great-aunt never liked for company to come in through one door and leave through another because she said that meant the preacher would visit. </p><p>How many of us grew up seeing our mothers throw a pinch of salt over their shoulders when salt was spilled? How many of us remember when our grandmothers whispered that a bird tapping on a window meant someone was going to die? We took these things on trembling faith as children, believing them to be real because <em>everything</em> was real back then. Everything had possibilities. So how do we explain, with our skeptical grown-up natures, why we still make an X in the air when a black cat passes. Why we still have to eat something in the morning before we will tell someone about our bad dreams. Why we still worry about umbrellas being opened indoors. </p><p>What is it about superstitions that stay with us, that encourage us to pass them on? Flights of fancy, maybe. Or nostalgia. Or maybe the power of the unknown is just that strong. We can’t help but think: What if it’s true? <em>What if it just might be true?</em> So we take an ounce of prevention instead of a pound of cure. We knock on wood and avoid ladders and never break mirrors. Just in case. </p><h3><br></h3></div>


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<p class="description">In her latest enchanting novel, New York Times bestselling author Sarah Addison Allen invites you to a quirky little Southern town with more magic than a full Carolina moon. Here two very different women discover how to find their place in the world—no matter how out of place they feel. Emily Benedict came to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother’s life. Such as, why did Dulcie Shelby leave her hometown so suddenly? And why did she vow never to return? But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew—a reclusive, real-life gentle giant—she realizes that mysteries aren’t solved in Mullaby, they’re a way of life: Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood. Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight. And a neighbor bakes hope in the form of cakes.Everyone in Mullaby adores Julia Winterson’s cakes—which is a good thing, because Julia can’t seem to stop baking them. She offers them to satisfy the town’s sweet tooth but also in the hope of rekindling the love she fears might be lost forever. Flour, eggs, milk, and sugar . . . Baking is the only language the proud but vulnerable Julia has to communicate what is truly in her heart. But is it enough to call back to her those she’s hurt in the past?   Can a hummingbird cake really bring back a lost love? Is there really a ghost dancing in Emily’s backyard? The answers are never what you expect. But in this town of lovable misfits, the unexpected fits right in. </p>


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<p class="description">In this irresistible follow-up to herNew York Timesbestselling debut,Garden Spells,author Sarah Addison Allen tells the tale of a young woman whose family secretsand secret passionsare about to change her life forever. Twenty-seven-year-old Josey Cirrini is sure of three things: winter in her North Carolina hometown is her favorite season, she's a sorry excuse for a Southern belle, and sweets are best eaten in the privacy of her hidden closet. For while Josey has settled into an uneventful life in her mother's house, her one consolation is the stockpile of sugary treats and paperback romances she escapes to each night.... Until she finds it harboring none other than local waitress Della Lee Baker, a tough-talking, tenderhearted woman who is one part nemesisand two parts fairy godmother... Fleeing a life of bad luck and big mistakes, Della Lee has decided Josey's clandestine closet is the safest place to crash. In return she's going to change Josey's lifebecause, clearly, it is not the closet of a happy woman. With Della Lee's tough love, Josey is soon forgoing pecan rolls and caramels, tapping into her startlingly keen feminine instincts, and finding her narrow existence quickly expanding. Before long, Josey bonds with Chloe Finley, a young woman who makes the best sandwiches in town, is hounded by books that inexplicably appear whenever she needs them, andmost amazing of allhas a close connection to Josey's longtime crush. As little by little Josey dares to step outside herself, she discovers a world where the color red has astonishing power, passion can make eggs fry in their cartons, and romance can blossom at any timeeven for her. It seems that Della Lee's work is done, and it's time for her to move on. But the truth about where she's going, why she showed up in the first placeand what Chloe has to do with it allis about to add one more unexpected chapter to Josey's fast-changing life. Brimming with warmth, wit, and a sprinkling of magic, here is a spellbinding tale of friendship, loveand the enchanting possibilities of every new day.</p>


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


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Everyone has something to hide—especially high school juniors Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna.   Spencer covets her sister's boyfriend. Aria's fantasizing about her English teacher. Emily's crushing on the new girl at school. And Hanna uses some ugly tricks to stay beautiful.   But they've all kept an even bigger secret since their friend Alison vanished.   How do I know? Because I know everything about the bad girls they were and the naughty girls they are now. And guess what? I'm telling.


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In idyllic Rosewood, Pennsylvania, where Burberry earmuffs keep diamond-studded ears warm, four very pretty girls have done some very wicked things. High school juniors Hanna, Spencer, Emily, and Aria have paid dearly for their sins. A stalker named 'A' terrorized them for months and revealed their darkest secrets. But now that A's true identity has been revealed, the girls can finally go back to their pretty little lives. Only, once a pretty little liar, always a pretty little liar - and these girls just can't help but be bad. Hanna will do anything to be Rosewood's queen bee. Spencer starts stealing from her parents. Emily can't stop thinking about her new boyfriend. And Aria approves a little too strongly of her mom's taste in men. As the secrets get darker and the scandals juicier, the consequences turn deadly. After all, girls who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. And in Rosewood, someone is always watching.


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In Rosewood, Pennsylvania, four perfect-looking girls aren't nearly as perfect as they seem.   Aria can't resist her forbidden ex. Hanna is on the verge of losing her BFF. Emily is freaking out over a simple kiss. And Spencer can't keep her hands off anything that belongs to her sister.   Lucky me. I know these pretty little liars better than they know themselves. But it's hard keeping all of their secrets to myself. They better do as I say . . . or else!


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In picture-perfect Rosewood, Pennsylvania, ash-blond highlights gleam in the winter sun and frozen lakes sparkle like Swarovski crystals. But pictures often lie—and so do Rosewood's four prettiest girls.   Hanna, Aria, Spencer, and Emily have been lying ever since they became friends with beautiful Alison DiLaurentis. Ali made them do terrible things—things they had to keep secret for years. And even though Ali was killed at the end of seventh grade, their bad-girl ways didn't die with her.   Hanna's on a mission to corrupt Rosewood's youth, starting with a very attractive sophomore. Aria's snooping into her boyfriend's past. Spencer's stealing—from her family. And pure little Emily's abstaining from abstinence.   The girls should be careful, though. They thought they were safe when Ali's killer was arrested and A's true identity was finally revealed. But now there's a new A in town turning up the heat. And this time Rosewood is going to burn.


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In Rosewood, Pennsylvania, neighbors gossip over picket fences, and gleaming SUVs sit in every crushed-granite driveway. But recently, friendly smiles have been replaced with suspicious glares and accusatory whispers - and it's all because Hanna, Aria, Emily, and Spencer just can't keep their mouths shut. First they claimed they found a dead body in the woods behind Spencer's house, only to have it vanish without a trace. Then when the same woods went up in flames, they swore they saw someone who's supposed to be dead rise from the ashes. And even after all that, the pretty little liars are still playing with fire. Hanna's trading in her Dior trench for a straitjacket. Aria's trying to contact the dead. Emily's dumped her boyfriend and is skipping town again. And Spencer thinks someone in her family has gotten away with murder. The friends insist they're telling the truth about what they saw, but all of Rosewood thinks they're simply out for attention - and nobody likes a girl who cries wolf. So when the big bad killer comes after the girls, will anyone believe them or will they be the next to disappear?


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<div><p>Spencer stole her sister's boyfriend. Aria is brokenhearted over her English teacher. Emily likes her new friend Maya . . . as much more than a friend. Hanna's obsession with looking flawless is making her sick. And their most horrible secret yet is so scandalous that the truth would ruin them forever. </p><p>And why <em>shouldn't</em> I tell? They deserve to lose it all. With every crumpled note, wicked IM, and vindictive text message I send, I'll be taking these pretty little liars down. Trust me, I've got enough dirt to bury them alive. </p></div>


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<p class="description">In the simmering hot summer of 1492, a monstrous evil is stirring within the Eternal City of Rome. The brutal murder of an alchemist sets off a desperate race to uncover the plot that threatens to extinguish the light of the Renaissance and plunge Europe back into medieval darkness.Determined to avenge the killing of her father, Francesca Giordano defies all convention to claim for herself the position of poisoner serving Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, head of the most notorious and dangerous family in Italy. She becomes the confidante of Lucrezia Borgia and the lover of Cesare Borgia. At the same time, she is drawn to the young renegade monk who yearns to save her life and her soul.Navigating a web of treachery and deceit, Francesca pursues her father’s killer from the depths of Rome’s Jewish ghetto to the heights of the Vatican itself. In so doing, she sets the stage for the ultimate confrontation with ancient forces that will seek to use her darkest desires to achieve their own catastrophic ends.</p>


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The audacious new V. I. Warshawski novel from the New York Times-bestselling author.   The enigmatic performer known as the Body Artist takes the stage at Chicago's Club Gouge and allows her audience to use her naked body as a canvas for their impromptu illustrations. V. I. Warshawski watches as people step forward, some meek, some bold, to make their mark.  The evening takes a strange turn when one woman's sketch triggers a violent outburst from a man at a nearby table. Quickly subdued, the man-an Iraqi war vet-leaves the club. Days later, the woman is shot outside the club. She dies in V.I.'s arms, and the police move quickly to arrest the angry vet.  A shooting in Chicago is nothing new, certainly not to V.I., who is hired by the vet's family to clear his name. As V.I. seeks answers, her investigation will take her from the North Side of Chicago to the far reaches of the Gulf War.


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<p class="description">An atmospheric, gritty, and compelling novel of star-crossed lovers, set in the circus world circa 1932, by the bestselling author of "Riding Lessons.  When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, grifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her.  Beautifully written, "Water for Elephants is illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. It tells a story of a love between two people that overcomes incredible odds in a world in which even love is a luxury that few can afford.</p>


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<div><p class="description"> Sam, Bonzi, Lola, Mbongo, Jelani, and Makena are no ordinary apes. These bonobos, like others of their species, are capable of reason and carrying on deep relationships-but unlike most bonobos, they also know American Sign Language. Isabel Duncan, a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab, doesnrs"t understand people, but animals she gets-especially the bonobos. Isabel feels more comfortable in their world than shers"s ever felt among humans . . . until she meets John Thigpen, a very married reporter who braves the ever-present animal rights protesters outside the lab to see whatrs"s really going on inside. When an explosion rocks the lab, severely injuring Isabel and "liberating" the apes, Johnrs"s human interest piece turns into the story of a lifetime, one hers"ll risk his career and his marriage to follow. Then a reality TV show featuring the missing apes debuts under mysterious circumstances, and it immediately becomes the biggest-and unlikeliest-phenomenon in the history of modern media. Millions of fans are glued to their screens watching the apes order greasy take-out, have generous amounts of sex, and sign for Isabel to come get them. Now, to save her family of apes from this parody of human life, Isabel must connect with her own kind, including John, a green-haired vegan, and a retired porn star with her own agenda. Ape Housedelivers great entertainment, but it also opens the animal world to us in ways few novels have done, securing Sara Gruenrs"s place as a master storyteller who allows us to see ourselves as we never have before. </p>
<p class="description"><br>Sam, Bonzi, Lola, Mbongo, Jelani, and Makena are no ordinary apes. These bonobos, like others of their species, are capable of reason and carrying on deep relationships-but unlike most bonobos, they also know American Sign Language. Isabel Duncan, a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab, doesnrs"t understand people, but animals she gets-especially the bonobos. Isabel feels more comfortable in their world than shers"s ever felt among humans . . . until she meets John Thigpen, a very married reporter who braves the ever-present animal rights protesters outside the lab to see whatrs"s really going on inside. When an explosion rocks the lab, severely injuring Isabel and "liberating" the apes, Johnrs"s human interest piece turns into the story of a lifetime, one hers"ll risk his career and his marriage to follow. Then a reality TV show featuring the missing apes debuts under mysterious circumstances, and it immediately becomes the biggest-and unlikeliest-phenomenon in the history of modern media. Millions of fans are glued to their screens watching the apes order greasy take-out, have generous amounts of sex, and sign for Isabel to come get them. Now, to save her family of apes from this parody of human life, Isabel must connect with her own kind, including John, a green-haired vegan, and a retired porn star with her own agenda. Ape Housedelivers great entertainment, but it also opens the animal world to us in ways few novels have done, securing Sara Gruenrs"s place as a master storyteller who allows us to see ourselves as we never have before. </p></div>


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


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<div><p><strong>In this thrilling gothic suspense debut by Sara Foster in the tradition of Rosamund Lupton and Sophie Hannah, a young mother searches Yorkshire's windswept moors for the truth behind her husband's mysterious disappearance.</strong></p><p>When Grace’s husband, Adam, inherits an isolated North Yorkshire cottage, they leave the bustle of London behind to try a new life. A week later, Adam vanishes without a trace, leaving their baby daughter, Millie, in her stroller on the doorstep. The following year, Grace returns to the tiny village on the untamed heath.  Everyone—the police, her parents, even her best friend and younger sister—is convinced that Adam left her. But Grace, unable to let go of her memories of their love and life together, cannot accept this explanation.  She is desperate for answers, but the slumbering, deeply superstitious hamlet is unwilling to give up its secrets. As Grace hunts through forgotten corners of the cottage searching for clues, and digs deeper into the lives of the locals, strange dreams begin to haunt her. Are the villagers hiding something, or is she becoming increasingly paranoid? Only as snowfall threatens to cut her and Millie off from the rest of the world does Grace make a terrible discovery. She has been looking in the wrong place for answers all along, and she and her daughter will be in terrible danger if she cannot get them away in time.</p><p>"A haunting tale of loss and one woman's search for the truth no matter the consequences. This vividly written novel will leave you breathless and as chilled as the starkly beautiful North Yorkshire moors where this compelling story unfolds.</p></div>


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<p>Lonely Planet knows California. This 5th edition guarantees adventures across the Golden State, whether you're tasting small-batch pinots in Sonoma, reliving the Gold Rush or cruising the last leg of Route 66 on the ultimate beach-bound road trip.<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>Expanded Outdoors chapter covering 21 activities to get you closer to nature<p>New Food chapter showcases California's best drinks and delicacies<p>Green Index directs you to sustainable listings


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When a young boy is found murdered in a park, the boy's brother says that his sister was the murderer---but she's nowhere to be found. Constables Hart and Tain find evidence that the sister is innocent and is actually a potential victim herself. Now they need to find her before she---and the rest of her family---is killed.


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<div><p>The Viking Is a Princess . . . </p><p>All Ingrith wants is refuge for herself and a group of orphans from a vicious Saxon commander who would harm the children and destroy her honor. At her age, she no longer expects to find a husband, or even a lover, especially not the arrogant Lord of the Bees! </p><p>John of Hawk's Lair longs for peace and quiet, not a nagging wife and noisy children. As a knight in the king's service, he spends his cherished time at home working on his beekeeping experiments. So when an irksome Viking princess comes barging into his castle with a horde of orphans, he does everything he can to get rid of her. But then a sexual attraction sparks between them, despite their differences, one that soon has them making honey, rather than war . . . </p></div>


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Nobody was more surprised than Mattie herself when Luke Spenser, considered the great catch of their small Iowa town, asked her to marry him. Less than a month later, they are wed and setting off in a covered wagon to build a home on the Colorado frontier. Mattie's only company, aside from a taciturn and slightly mysterious new husband, is her private journal, where she records the joys and frustrations not just of frontier life, but also of marriage to a handsome but distant stranger. As Mattie and Luke make a life together on the harsh and beautiful prairie, battling the fierce odds imposed by weather, illness, and lawlessness, Mattie learns some bitter truths about her husband and the woman he left behind, and finds love where she least expects it.


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<p class="description">Colleagues, friends, and lovers know Dodge Hanley as a private investigator who doesn't let rules get in his way in his private life as well as his professional one. If he breaks a heart, or bends the law in order to catch a criminal, he does so without hesitation or apology. That's why he's the first person Caroline King who after a thirty-year separation continues to haunt his dreams asks for help when a deranged stalker attempts to murder their daughter... the daughter Dodge has never met. He has a whole bagful of grudging excuses for wishing to ignore Caroline's call, and one compelling reason to drop everything and fly down to Texas: Dodge's mind may be a haze of disturbing memories and bad decisions, but he arrives in Houston knowing with perfect clarity that his daughter, Berry, is in danger. She has become the object of desire of a co-worker, a madman and genius with a penchant for puzzles and games who has spent the past year making Berry's life hell, and who now has vowed to kill her. Dodge joins forces with local deputy sheriff Ski Nyland, but the alarming situation goes from bad to worse when the stalker begins to claim other victims and leaves an ominous trail of clues as he lethally works his way toward Berry. Sensing the killer drawing nearer, Dodge, who's survived vicious criminals and his own self-destructive impulses, realizes that this time he's in for the fight of his life. From acclaimed best-selling author Sandra Brown,Tough Customer is a heart-pounding tale about obsession and murder, the fragile nature of relationships, and, possibly, second chances.</p>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">When her four year old daughter informs her a sick man is in their yard, Honor Gillette rushes out to help him. But that "sick" man turns out to be Lee Coburn, the man accused of murdering seven people the night before. Dangerous, desperate, and armed, he promises Honor that she and her daughter won't be hurt as long as she does everything he asks. She has no choice but to accept him at his word.</span></h3><p>But Honor soon discovers that even those close to her can't be trusted. Coburn claims that her beloved late husband possessed something extremely valuable that places Honor and her daughter in grave danger. Coburn is there to retrieve it -- at any cost. From FBI offices in Washington, D.C., to a rundown shrimp boat in coastal Louisiana, Coburn and Honor run for their lives from the very people sworn to protect them, and unravel a web of corruption and depravity that threatens not only them, but the fabric of our society </p></div>


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<p>Like the city of New Orleans itself, Claire Laurent is a vibrant beauty laced with a mysterious elusiveness. The founder of French Silk, a fabulous lingerie company, she has fought hard to make it a worldwide success. Then a TV evangelist attacks French Silk's erotic sleepwear as sinful. And when he is killed, Claire becomes the prime suspect.District Attorney Robert Cassidy knows Claire is damning herself with lie after lie about the murder, even as he feels her drawing him into her world and her very soul. But neither Cassidy nor her protests of innocence can save Claire unless she reveals a shocking truth -- one she has sworn to take to the grave...</p>


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<p class="description">Five women are missing from the sleepy mountain town of Cleary, North Carolina, and a blue ribbon has been left near where each woman was last seen. Lilly Martin has returned to Cleary to close the sale of her cabin. But when her car skids and strikes a stranger, Ben Tierney, as he emerges from the woods, they've no choice but to wait out a brutal blizzard in the cabin. And as the hours of their confinement mount, Lilly wonders if the greater threat to her safety isn't the storm, but the stranger beside her.</p>


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<p class="description">On a rainy Southern night, Jade Sperry endured a young woman's worst nightmare at the hands of three local hell-raisers. Robbed of her youthful ideals and at the center of scandal and tragedy, Jade ran as far and as fast as she could. But she never forgot the sleepy "company town" where every man, woman, and child was dependent on one wealthy family. And she never forgot their spoiled son, who, with his two friends, changed her life forever. Someday, somehow, she'd return, exact a just revenge -- and free herself from fear, and the powerful family that could destroy her.</p>


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<p>Catch a breath of sea air as you watch orcas leap and splash off shore at Lime Kiln Point<p>Find yourself sleeping in a classroom after drinking in the Kennedy School's Detention Bar<p>Navigate the Cascades' jagged ridges by eco-friendly llama<p>Brush off your snowboots and snuggle up by a 92ft fireplace<p><B>In This Guide:</B><p>Local authors, 217 days of research, 76 detailed maps, five rock concerts<p>You asked for it, we checked it out &#8211; everything you need to know about microbreweries, island-hopping and offbeat locales


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<p class="description">(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The first novel of Samuel Beckett's mordant and exhilarating midcentury trilogy introduces us to Molloy, who has been mysteriously incarcerated, and who subsequently escapes to go discover the whereabouts of his mother. In the latter part of this curious masterwork, a certain Jacques Moran is deputized by anonymous authorities to search for the aforementioned Molloy. In the trilogy's second novel, Malone, who might or might not be Molloy himself, addresses us with his ruminations while in the act of dying. The third novel consists of the fragmented monologue-delivered, like the monologues of the previous novels, in a mournful rhetoric that possesses the utmost splendor and beauty-of what might or might not be an armless and legless creature living in an urn outside an eating house. Taken together, these three novels represent the high-water mark of the literary movement we call Modernism. Within their linguistic terrain, where stories are taken up, broken off, and taken up again, where voices rise and crumble and are resurrected, we can discern the essential lineaments of our modern condition, and encounter an awesome vision, tragic yet always compelling and always mysteriously invigorating, of consciousness trapped and struggling inside the boundaries of nature.</p>


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<div><p></p><blockquote>Loud rock, fast cars, and Cabo.<p>This is the life of Sammy Hagar.</p><p></p></blockquote><p>For almost forty years, Sammy Hagar has been a fixture in rock music. From breaking into the industry with the band Montrose to his multiplatinum solo career to his ride as the front man of Van Halen, Sammy's powerful and unforgettable voice has set the tone for some of the greatest rock anthems ever written—songs like "I Can't Drive 55," "Right Now," and "Why Can't This Be Love."</p><p>In <i>Red</i>, Sammy tells the outrageous story of his tear through rock 'n' roll, detailing the backstage antics and nonstop touring that have made his voice instantly recognizable. Beginning with his musical coming-of-age in the blue-collar towns of California, Sammy traces his rough and determined rise to fame, working harder than anyone else out there and writing songs about the things he loved—fast cars, loud parties, and <i>lots</i> of good times.</p><p>But solo success was just the start,...</p></div>


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<div><p><strong>Johanna Walker is used to taking charge. But she’s about to meet someone who will make her lose control....</strong></p><p>It has always been up to Johanna to care for her family, particularly her younger brother, Cole. With an absent father and a useless mother, she’s been making decisions based on what’s best for Cole for as long as she can remember. She even determines what men to date by how much they can provide for her brother and her, not on whatever sparks may—or may not—fly.<br></p><p>But with Cameron MacCabe, the attraction is undeniable. The sexy new bartender at work gives her butterflies every time she looks at him. And for once, Jo is tempted to put her needs first. Cam is just as obsessed with getting to know Jo, but her walls are too solid to let him get close enough to even try.<br></p><p>Then Cam moves into the flat below Jo’s, and their blistering connection becomes impossible to ignore. Especially since Cam is determined to uncover all of Jo’s secrets…even if it means taking apart her defenses piece by piece.</p></div>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">The death of the charismatic Brazilian chief of the U.N. Mission to Iraq in a 2003 terrorist bombing symbolized both the U.N.'s haplessness—he died because rescuers lacked the training and equipment to free him from the rubble—and its idealism. In this sprawling biography, Vieira de Mello's life symbolizes the tragic contradictions of coping with humanitarian crises. Journalist Power, author of the Pulitzer-winning <em>The Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide</em>, follows Vieira de Mello through a U.N. career spent in hot spots like Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. His tasks were many: implementing peace accords, settling refugees, overseeing elections, running the government of East Timor. In each posting, he confronts a hydra-headed monster of communal violence and poverty, plus difficulties compounded by U.N. red tape, miserly budgets and uncaring Western governments. Agonizing dilemmas abound. Should refugees be fed or sent home? Should U.N. peacekeepers observe or intervene? Should past atrocities be prosecuted or overlooked? Playing by ear, Vieira de Mello charts an erratic course through these conundrums. Sometimes he's a human rights zealot, sometimes he cozies up to the Khmer Rouge; sometimes he negotiates with the Serbs, sometimes he wants to bomb them. Vieira de Mello comes off as a charming diplomat, a canny politician and an inspiring leader, and the author celebrates his flexibility and pragmatism (while criticizing his failures). Power wants to extract lasting lessons for the international community's efforts to head off humanitarian catastrophes and mend failed states from his experience. Unfortunately, it's hard to discern through his improvisations any systematic approach to nation building or to such vexed issues as humanitarian military intervention and regime change. The lack of perspective isn't helped by the biographical format, as the peripatetic Vieira de Mello jets from one conflagration to the next, then on to a romantic getaway with a mistress or to give a murky speech on Kant. We get the impression that U.N. missions are inevitably a hopeless muddle unless Sergio, with his unique talents, parachutes in to fix things; the book may thus inadvertently encourage critics of the U.N.-style interventionism that Power supports. Readers will gain an appreciation of Vieira de Mello's gifts, but not the method to his magic. </span></h3>


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<p class="description">Jodie Patterson's posh bakery is all about satisfying cravings. Her signature aphrodisiac cookies have been flying off the shelves…and giving Jodie some delicious ideas of her own.Behind his owlish glasses, Jodie's business partner, Dr. Dan Ellison, is the male equivalent of the Naughty Professor. Jodie is more than ready to indulge her fantasies with this wolf-in-geek's-clothing as long as they set some ground rules: sex is sex, business is business and nothing will change. Yeah, right! After that first addictive kiss, it's time to see if they can really satisfy each other's appetites….</p>


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Audrey Hepburn is an icon like no other, yet the image many of us have of Audrey—dainty, immaculate—is anything but true to life. Here, for the first time, Sam Wasson presents the woman behind the little black dress that rocked the nation in 1961. The first complete account of the making of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. reveals little-known facts about the cinema classic: Truman Capote desperately wanted Marilyn Monroe for the leading role; director Blake Edwards filmed multiple endings; Hepburn herself felt very conflicted about balancing the roles of mother and movie star. With a colorful cast of characters including Truman Capote, Edith Head, Givenchy, "Moon River" composer Henry Mancini, and, of course, Hepburn herself, Wasson immerses us in the America of the late fifties before Woodstock and birth control, when a not-so-virginal girl by the name of Holly Golightly raised eyebrows across the country, changing fashion, film, and sex for good. Indeed, cultural touchstones like Sex and the City owe a debt of gratitude to Breakfast at Tiffany's.   In this meticulously researched gem of a book, Wasson delivers us from the penthouses of the Upper East Side to the pools of Beverly Hills, presenting Breakfast at Tiffany's as we have never seen it before—through the eyes of those who made it. Written with delicious prose and considerable wit, Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. shines new light on a beloved film and its incomparable star.


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


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The Periodic Table is one of man's crowning scientific achievements. But it's also a treasure trove of stories of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The infectious tales and astounding details in THE DISAPPEARING SPOON follow carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, the arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.We learn that Marie Curie used to provoke jealousy in colleagues' wives when she'd invite them into closets to see her glow-in-the-dark experiments. And that Lewis and Clark swallowed mercury capsules across the country and their campsites are still detectable by the poison in the ground. Why did Gandhi hate iodine? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium? And why did tellurium lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history?From the Big Bang to the end of time, it's all in THE DISAPPEARING SPOON.


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


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Beautifully written as they were (the elegance of his prose is a distilled blend of honesty and clarity) there was little in Sam Harris's previous books that couldn't have been written by any of his fellow "horsemen" of the "new atheism." This book is different, though every bit as readable as the other two. I was one of those who had unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals. To my surprise, <em>The Moral Landscape</em> has changed all that for me. It should change it for philosophers too. Philosophers of mind have already discovered that they can't duck the study of neuroscience, and the best of them have raised their game as a result. Sam Harris shows that the same should be true of moral philosophers, and it will turn their world exhilaratingly upside down. As for religion, and the preposterous idea that we need God to be good, nobody wields a sharper bayonet than Sam Harris. </span></h3>

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Jack's best friend, Charlie, is in serious trouble, possessed by an ancient demon called the Scourge who plans to use Charlie to bring about its evil ends—which, unfortunately, involve the destruction of the entire universe. Now Jack and the butt-kicking, sword-wielding Esme must contend with floating sharks, intelligent jelly, oversized centipedes, gladiator pits, and vomiting bats, all for the sake of saving Charlie from the Scourge. And, hopefully, saving the universe from total and utter annihilation.


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


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<p class="description">A sweeping historical saga in the tradition of Conn Iggulden, Bernard Cornwell, and Jean Auel The beginning of civilization is fraught with war, invasion, plunder, and rapine. The little city state of Akkad is carving out a mini-Empire on the banks of the mighty Tigris river--prosperity has returned after the bloody pitched battles waged by Akkad's ruler Eskkar and his beautiful wife Trella. But now comes Akkad's greatest threat from the south: Akkad's rival Sumer, a port city at the hub of the great sea trade routes. Sumer is poised to give birth to the mightiest empire in history. It is ruled by an incestuous parricide and his power hungry sister who are determined to crush and enslave the nation state on their northern borders. Esskar and Trella must prepare their fledgling nation for total war before it is too late. This time it will be a battle not of villages or of roving warrior bands, but a battle for Empire, for the known world, with no quarter given. As ever Eskkar, the ultimate warrior and battle tactician, must pit his wits against a vastly superior force in a battle to the death.</p>


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<p class="description">Just before dawn one winter's morning, a hijacked jetliner explodes above the English Channel. Through the falling debris, two figures, Gibreel Farishta, the biggest star in India, and Saladin Chamcha, an expatriate returning from his first visit to Bombay in fifteen years, plummet from the sky, washing up on the snow-covered sands of an English beach, and proceed through a series of metamorphoses, dreams, and revelations.</p>


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


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"A mixture of science fiction and folktale, past and future, primitive and present-day . . . Thunderous and touching." Financial Times After drinking an elixir that bestows immortality upon him, a young Indian named Flapping Eagle spends the next seven hundred years sailing the seas with the blessingand ultimately the burdenof living forever. Eventually, weary of the sameness of life, he journeys to the mountainous Calf Island to regain his mortality. There he meets other immortals obsessed with their own stasis and sets out to scale the island's peak, from which the mysterious and corrosive Grimus Effect emits. Through a series of thrilling quests and encounters, Flapping Eagle comes face-to-face with the island's creator and unwinds the mysteries of his own humanity. Salman Rushdie's celebrated debut novel remains as powerful and as haunting as when it was first published more than thirty years ago. "A book to be read twice . . . [Grimus] is literate, it is fun, it is meaningful, and perhaps most important, it pushes the boundaries of the form outward." Los Angeles Times


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Have you ever been a less than perfect friend? To whom does your first loyalty belong—your best friend or your husband? With her trademark wit and empathy, Sally Koslow explores the entangled lives of women in this candid, fast-paced novel.  Quincy, Talia, Chloe, and Jules met in the early nineties after answering a roommate ad for a Manhattan apartment. Despite having little in common, the women became fast friends. A decade later, their lives have diverged, though their ties remain strong.Quincy, a Midwestern introvert, is trying to overcome a set of tragedies by hunting for the perfect home; Talia, a high-energy Brooklyn wife and mom with an outspoken conscience, is growing resentful of her friends’ greater financial stability and her husband’s lack of ambition; timid Chloe, also a mother, is trying to deflect pressure from her husband, a hedge fund manager, to play the role of trophy wife; while Jules, a fiercely independent actress/entrepreneur with a wicked set of life rules, is confronting her forties alone. When Jules gives her new boyfriend the inside scoop on the real estate gem Quincy is lusting after, and Talia chases a lucrative job earmarked for Chloe, the women are forced to wrestle with the challenges of love and motherhood. Will their friendships and marriages survive? And at what price? Punchy yet tender, a high-five to sisterhood, this book will hit an emotional bull’s-eye for anyone who has had—or been—less than a perfect friend.


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<div><p><strong>In this magisterial new biography, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author Sally Bedell Smith brings to life one of the world’s most fascinating and enigmatic women: Queen Elizabeth II. </strong><br></p><p>From the moment of her ascension to the throne in 1952 at the age of twenty-five, Queen Elizabeth II has been the object of unparalleled scrutiny. But through the fog of glamour and gossip, how well do we really know the world’s most famous monarch? Drawing on numerous interviews and never-before-revealed documents, acclaimed biographer Sally Bedell Smith pulls back the curtain to show in intimate detail the public and private lives of Queen Elizabeth II, who has led her country and Commonwealth through the wars and upheavals of the last sixty years with unparalleled composure, intelligence, and grace. <br><br>In <em>Elizabeth the Queen, </em>we meet the young girl who suddenly becomes “heiress presumptive”<strong> </strong>when her uncle abdicates the throne. We meet the thirteen-year-old Lilibet<strong> </strong>as she falls in love with a young navy cadet named Philip and becomes determined to marry him, even though her parents prefer wealthier English aristocrats. We see the teenage Lilibet repairing army trucks during World War II and standing with Winston Churchill on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on V-E Day. We see the young Queen struggling to balance the demands of her job with her role as the mother of two young children. Sally Bedell Smith brings us inside the palace doors and into the Queen’s daily routines—the “red boxes” of documents she reviews each day, the weekly meetings she has had with twelve prime ministers, her physically demanding tours abroad, and the constant scrutiny of the press—as well as her personal relationships: with Prince Philip, her husband of sixty-four years and the love of her life; her children and their often-disastrous marriages; her grandchildren and friends.<br><br>Compulsively readable and scrupulously researched, <em>Elizabeth the Queen </em>is a close-up view of a woman we’ve known only from a distance, illuminating the lively personality, sense of humor, and canny intelligence with which she meets the most demanding work and family obligations. It is also a fascinating window into life at the center of the last great monarchy.</p></div>


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


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; ">By the time <strong>Sabrina Jeffries</strong> was eighteen, she'd eaten chicken heads and jellyfish, been chased by a baby elephant, seen countless cobras and pythons, had the entire series of rabies shots, and visited rain forests and rubber plantations. But that wasn't enough excitement for her; to escape her mundane life as a missionary's daughter, she read romance novels.</span></h3><p>Now she <em>writes </em>romance novels, and her bestselling, award-winning tales of strong women and sexy, dangerous men have been translated all over the world. Although she now lives in North Carolina with her husband and son, her colorful life has given her plenty of inspiration for more novels.</p></div>


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Love, money, friendship . . . and incredibly uncomfortable underwear ? All these eternal mysteries are small challenges to Constance de Bellechasse. Too bad the glamorous inner persona of Constance comes through only as plain old Connie Pickles in everyday life.   Connie's first order of business: finding her mother a new husband. Connie enlists the help of her best friend, Julie, and before long everything spirals out of control. Boy-crazy Delilah begins fluttering around Connie's best guy friend, Will, and ever-reliable Will has been acting strangely awkward around Connie. But with a little luck and a lot of determination, Connie is sure that she can make everything right again in her world.


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<div><p>Continuing her irresistible Royal Brotherhood Series, bestselling author Sabrina Jeffries introduces the third of three half-noble half brothers -- the brashest rogue in all of London. </p><p>Proper Lady Christabel, the Marchioness of Haversham, is desperate to regain some letters that could destroy her -- so desperate that she pretends to be the mistress of notorious gaming-club owner Gavin Byrne to accompany him to a scandalous house party where she can reclaim them. But when she agreed to let Byrne coach her on how a true mistress behaves, she never suspected how very...persuasive his wicked lessons would be. </p><p>Gavin is secretly determined to find the letters himself and use them for revenge against the noble sire who abandoned him to grow up in London's worst slums. He's also delighted at how very successful his "mistress lessons" are: it won't be long before the luscious young widow is in his bed. But when Christabel catches Gavin in his own seductive net, he faces a difficult choice: to wreak the vengeance he's planned all his life, or to protect the woman he may -- to his own astonishment -- need more than revenge.</p></div>


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<p class="description">The ultimate collection of weird and frightening American fiction As Stephen King will attest , the popularity of the occult in American literature has only grown since the days of Edgar Allan Poe. American Supernatural Tales celebrates the richness of this tradition with chilling contributions from some of the nation's brightest literary lights, including Poe himself, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and-of course- Stephen King. </p>


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<p class="description">The New York Times bestselling author continues his post- apocalyptic series chronicling a modern world without technology.   With The Sword of the Lady, Rudi Mackenzie's destiny was determined. Now he returns to Montival in the Pacific Northwest, where he will face the legions of the Prophet. To achieve victory, Rudi must assemble a coalition of those who had been his enemies a few months before and forge them into an army that will rescue his homeland.  Only then will Rudi be able to come to terms with how the Sword has changed him, as well as the world, and assume his place as Artos, High King of Montival...</p>


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When modern and Bronze Age worlds are thrown together, the Republic of Nantucket struggles to integrate past and present while a renegade Coast Guard officer struggles to assert his tyrannical rule, in the sequel to Against the Tide of Years and Island in the Sea of Time. Original.


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It's spring on Nantucket and everything is perfectly normal, until a sudden storm blankets the entire island. When the weather clears, the island's inhabitants find that they are no longer in the late 20th century, but have been transported instead to the Bronze Age. Now they must learn to survive with suspicious, warlike peoples they can barely understand and deal with impending disaster, in the shape of a would-be conqueror from their own time.


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<p class="description">In the years since their arrival, the fledging Republic of Nantucket has striven to better the primitive world in which they now exist. Their prime concerns are establishing a constitution and handling the waves of immigrants from the British Isles. But a renegade time traveler plans his own future by forging an empire for himself based on conquest by modern technology. The Republic has no alternative but to face the inevitable war brought on by one of their own.</p>


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From the national bestselling author of the Crystal Healer The newest book in the thrilling Stardoc series Dispatched to investigate an unidentified ship that has emerged from a mysterious rift in space, Cherijo discovers technology far more advanced than anything she's ever seen. Before she can unravel the alien ship's mystery, Cherijo's own ship is sucked into the rift and transported through time. Unless she can find a way to reopen the rift, they will remain trapped in another time. And Cherijo will never see her family-which she's only just been reunited with-again...


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NINTH IN THE "CONTINUOUSLY SURPRISING AND DEVIOUSLY WRITEN" SERIES Genetically engineered interstellar surgeon Dr. Cherijo Torin, her husband Duncan Reever, and a handpicked crew journey to the planet oKia to locate a strange black mineral that is the source of an intergalactic epidemic. When one of the crew members becomes infected, his body slowly begins to crystallize. While Cherijo races to save the crew member, mercenaries arrive in the oKia system, wanting Cherijo's genes-and her near immortality. It will take all of her abilities to elude the mercenaries and discover the black crystal's secrets before it's too late.


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<div><p>"As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I’m still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me. . . ."</p><p>Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love—all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may be telling you only half the story.</p><p>Welcome to Christine's life.</p></div>


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Bill Smith's country cabin in upstate New York is far from the city's savage streets--a retreat where a weary P.I. can play Mozart on his upright piano and let nature heal him. But when Eve Colgate, a local farmer and painter, asks him to find stolen items--six paintings which could reveal Eve's highly guarded thirty-year-old secret--he caves. When Smith's partner, Lydia Chin, comes in on the action, she brings along her cool courage and sharp mind. It's a simple case--until the runaway daughter of a hotshot politician and the murder of a local hood change the playing field. Now the stench of corruption fills this rural paradise, as Bill and Lydia scour through dangerous secrets and greedy corridors for the stone-cold truth...


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A LETHAL INHERITANCE China, 1938. Eighteen-year-old Rosalie Gilder flees Nazi-occupied Austria with her younger brother. Hidden among their belongings are a few precious family heirlooms, their only protection against the hard times that await them as they join Shanghais growing population of Jewish refugees.New York, present day. Chinese-American detective Lydia Chin is hired by an old friend to investigate the recent theft of a cache of holocaust assets, thought to once belong to the Gilders. However, before she makes much headway, her friend is shot dead. Neither Lydia nor her partner, Bill, believe the NYPDs theory that his death was a robbery gone bad. Both fear they are no longer looking for a thief but a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to reclaim the past


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<p class="description">The secrets of a group of childhood friends unravel in this haunting thriller by Edgar Award winner S. J. Rozan. Set in New York in the unforgettable aftermath of September 11, Absent Friends brilliantly captures a time and place unlike any other, as it winds through the wounded streets of New York and Staten Island...and into a maze of old crimes, damaged lives, and heartbreaking revelations. The result is not only an electrifying mystery and a riveting piece of storytelling but an elegiac novel that powerfully explores a world changed forever on a clear September morning.In a novel that will catch you off guard at every turn, and one that is guaranteed to become a classic, S. J. Rozan masterfully ratchets up the tension one revelation at a time as she dares you to ponder the bonds of friendship, the meaning of truth, and the stuff of heroism.</p>


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<p><strong>A gripping historical thriller set in sixteenth-century England and centered on the highly secretive cult of Saint Thomas Becket, the twelfth-century archbishop murdered in Canterbury Cathedral.</strong><br><br>London, summer of 1584: Radical philosopher, ex-monk, and spy Giordano Bruno suspects he is being followed by an old enemy. He is shocked to discover that his pursuer is in fact Sophia Underhill, a young woman with whom he was once in love. When Bruno learns that Sophia has been accused of murdering her husband, a prominent magistrate in Canterbury, he agrees to do anything he can to help clear her name.<br><br>In the city that was once England's greatest center of pilgrimage, Bruno begins to uncover unsuspected secrets that point to the dead man being part of a larger and more dangerous plot in the making. He must turn his detective's eye on history—on Saint Thomas Becket, the twelfth-century archbishop murdered in Canterbury Cathedral, and on the legend surrounding the disappearance of his body—in order to solve the crime.<br><br>As Bruno's feelings for Sophia grow more intense, so does his fear that another murder is about to take place—perhaps his own. But more than Bruno's life is at stake in this vividly rendered, impeccably researched, and addictively page-turning whodunit—the stability of the kingdom hangs in the balance as Bruno hunts down a brutal murderer in the shadows of England's most ancient cathedral.s.</p>


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<p class="description">Cursed by God, hunted by demons, desired by Cain and Abel... All in a day's work.For Evangeline Hollis, a long ago fling with a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks just became a disaster of biblical proportions. One night with a leather-clad man of mystery has led to a divine punishment: the Mark of Cain.Thrust into a world where sinners are drafted into service to kill demons, Eve’s learning curve is short. A longtime agnostic, she begrudgingly maneuvers through a celestial bureaucracy where she is a valuable but ill-treated pawn. She’s also become the latest point of contention in the oldest case of sibling rivalry in history... But she’ll worry about all that later. Right now she’s more concerned with learning to kill while staying alive. And saving the soul she’d never believed she had.</p>


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<p class="description">The Fletchers' beautiful new house is everything they dreamed it would be. Built between two churches in Heptonclough, a small village on the moors that time forgot, it ought to be paradise for this young family of five, but they barely have a chance to settle in before they find that they're anything but welcome. Someone seems to be trying to drive them away--at first with silly pranks but then with threats that become increasingly dangerous, especially to the oldest child, ten-year-old Tom Fletcher, who begins to believe that someone is always watching him. The adults in Tom's life are trying to help, including his parents; the vicar next door, younger and more dashing than you'd expect a vicar to be; and a therapist, Evi Oliver, who believes him more than she wants to.  But there are other clues that something isn't quite right in Heptonclough, including the mysterious accidental deaths of three toddlers over the last ten years.  It is not until Tom's siblings, two-year-old Milly and five-year-old Joe Fletcher, go missing in turn that the little village's evil secret turns the Fletchers' dreams into a nightmare.With Sacrifice, Awakening, and now Blood Harvest, S. J. Bolton displays time and time again her remarkable talent as a beguiling storyteller, a master of thrills, and the mistress of her own brand of modern Gothic tale.</p>


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<div><p>Can love survive when life gets Reckless? </p><p>When the band hits it big, Kiera and Kellan must ask themselves: Can their love for each other withstand the constant pressures of superstardom? The friendships they’ve formed, the new family they’ve found, and the history they’ve forged will all play a part in helping them navigate the turbulent waters of the band’s exploding popularity. A greedy executive hell-bent on success, a declining pop star looking for an edge, and a media circus that twists lies into truths are just some of the obstacles the lovers will have to overcome if they are going to remain together. Fame comes with a price—but will it cost Kiera and Kellan everything?</p></div>


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<div><p><strong>In the tradition of <em>Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, </em>a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all.</strong></p><p>S. C. Gwynne’s <em>Empire of the Summer Moon</em><strong> </strong>spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches. </p><p>Although readers may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined just how and when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became adept bareback riders by age six; full Comanche braves were considered the best horsemen who ever rode. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled <em>backward </em>by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. So effective were the Comanches that they forced the creation of the Texas Rangers and account for the advent of the new weapon specifically designed to fight them: the six-gun. </p><p>The war with the Comanches lasted four decades, in effect holding up the development of the new American nation. Gwynne’s exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads—a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being. </p><p>Against this backdrop Gwynne presents the compelling drama of Cynthia Ann Parker, a lovely nine-year-old girl with cornflower-blue eyes who was kidnapped by Comanches from the far Texas frontier in 1836. She grew to love her captors and became infamous as the "White Squaw" who refused to return until her tragic capture by Texas Rangers in 1860. More famous still was her son Quanah, a warrior who was never defeated and whose guerrilla wars in the Texas Panhandle made him a legend. </p><p>S. C. Gwynne’s account of these events is meticulously researched, intellectually provocative, and, above all, thrillingly told. <em>Empire of the Summer Moon </em>announces him as a major new writer of American history. </p></div>


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<div><p><em> </em><em>Knowing</em><em> </em>(Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne)<em> </em>screenwriter Ryne Douglas Pearson brings a terrifying tale of dark forces to life in <em>The Donzerly Light</em>.</p><p><strong><em> </em></strong><strong><em>If evil shook your hand, would you know it?</em></strong></p><p>Jay Grady wakes up in handcuffs. Sitting at a table in an isolated room. Across from him sits a man who wants Jay to recount his life. Every detail of it.</p><p>If not, he'll kill him.</p><p>So begins Jay's reluctant journey to a past he's tried to forget. From his days ruling Wall Street as an impossibly intuitive stock picker, to just a few hours before, when he pumped six bullets into a transient outside a dying Missouri town. A drifter he'd once thought was just an ordinary man.</p><p>But he was far from ordinary. And Jay came to realize he was not a man at all, but something darker. Something sinister.</p><p>An evil he was destined to face.</p></div>


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<div><p>The last potential heir to the Helius Energy legacy was quietly eliminated over half a century ago . . . or so they thought<br></p><p>In December of 1999, a young reporter discovers an ancient deed in the Travis County archives of Austin, Texas. Hidden a century earlier, the original copy of the deed includes a covenant excised from the version available to the public. This covenant gives the grantor's descendants the right to reclaim ownership of the property if any future owner violates an explicit use restriction: a bar against the extraction of mineral wealth from the land. <br></p><p>The reporter is stunned by the discovery--the land subject to the deed is one of the most valuable oil fields in the world. Now, any descendant of the original grantor has the power to reclaim ownership of this billion-dollar asset with the stroke of a pen, and Helius Energy, the energy conglomerate that owns the land, has no intention of allowing this to happen. <br></p><p>Within hours of the discovery, the reporter is on the run, desperately racing to stay ahead of a team of killers dispatched by Helius. A second team is winging its way to California, with orders to kill John Caine, the last living heir entitled to claim the legacy created by the deed. <br></p><p>Caine is unaware of his ancestry and the nightmare coming his way. His only hope for survival is Andrea Marenna, a beautiful lawyer in Austin who is unwittingly drawn into Caine's race. Together, they must find a way to survive long enough to unravel the century-old mystery that has placed them in harm's way.</p></div>


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<p>With a Lonely Planet guidebook you'll get the best out of your Indonesian trip. Our 9th edition of <I>Indonesia</I> will take you to the best beaches and bars in Bali, through lush paddy fields in Sumatra, diving with turtles off the Gilis in Lombok and to a traditional dance in Ubud.<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>Discover natural Indonesia with our special color chapter<p>Detailed Itineraries for planning the perfect trip<p>Green Index helps you step lightly on your travels


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Companions half-elf Jedra and ex-templar Kayan search for a mentor that will help them to develop their psionic powers, and are forced to compete against one another in a fight to the death for the gladiatorial games. Original. 75,000 first printing.


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<p class="description">"Long before I became a millionaire entrepreneur, I was a punk with a juvenile criminal record, street gang experience, and a lot of emotional scarring...My teenage years were hardly the typical starting point for a normal, productive life, let alone a successful business career. Turns out, that didn't matter."  Ryan Blair knows about building a business from the ground up. Like many entrepreneurs he had no formal business education. But he had great survival instincts, tenacity, and above all, a "nothing to lose" mindset.  Blair's middle-class childhood came to an abrupt end when his abusive father succumbed to drug addiction and abandoned the family. Blair and his mother moved to a dangerous neighborhood, and soon he was in and out of juvenile detention, joining a gang just to survive.  Then his mother fell in love with a successful entrepreneur who took Ryan under his wing. With his mentor's help, Blair turned himself into a wildly successful businessman. He started his first company, 24/7 Tech, at the age of 21, and since then has started and sold several companies for hundreds of millions of dollars.  Now Blair shows readers how to start and grow their own profitable businesses by following his often contrarian philosophies:  * In juvenile detention, if you let someone take your milk the first day, they'll start taking it every day. The same is true in business.  * When you're dealing with an investor's money, you have to act as if God himself wrote you the check.  * Most business plans aren't worth the paper they're written on.  * Efforts don't pay the rent. Have no sympathy for employees who talk about how hard they're trying.  * Entrepreneurship is great because you can set your own hours -- any 17 hours of the day, 7 days a week. But if you're doing what you love, it doesn't drain you as much as the 9 to 5 death cycle.  This book is an inspirational guide for people who are willing to put in the hard work, time, and dedication needed to see their vision through to the end. Blair shares lessons from his mentors and advice from his own life- changing experiences, and provides readers with a road map for entrepreneurial success.</p>


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From crime fiction’s reigning queen comes a diabolically intricate tale that weaves together the lives of very different people in the vibrant part of London known as Portobello.Fifty-year-old Eugene Wren inherited from his father an art gallery near an arcade that now sells cashmere, handmade soaps, and children’s clothing. But he decided to move to a more upmarket site. Eugene was, perhaps, too secretive for his own good. He also had an addictive personality. But he had cut back radically on his alcohol consumption, and had given up cigarettes. Which was just as well, considering he was dating a doctor. For all his good intentions, though, there was something he didn’t want her to know.One day, Eugene comes across an envelope containing a sum of money. Rather than report the matter to the police, he writes a note and sticks it up on a lamppost near his house. This note would link a number of very different people–each with their own obsessions, problems, dreams, and despairs. And through it all the hectic life of Portobello bustles on.


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<p>The Barnes &amp; Noble ReviewWhen Ruth Reichl got her first job as a restaurant critic, she was elated. Her parents, however, wanted her to do something worthwhile with her life (this wasn't it); her husband, Doug, thought she should write a novel; and her colleagues at the communal house in Berkeley where she lived were frankly disappointed. "Let me get this straight," said one of them. "You're going to spend your life telling spoiled rich people where to eat too much obscene food."Reichl, who chronicled her earlier years and encounters with food in the very popularTender at the Bone, tackles her coming-of-age as a food writer in a touching, involving, often humorous, memoir that reads like a novel. We follow breathlessly as Reichl's first critic's job at a California magazine makes her an eyewitness to a culinary revolution; the pivotal years when California began to trump Europe in food and wine (a period well chronicled in Patric Kuh's The Last Days of Haute Cuisine). She covers the opening of Michael's in Santa Monica, enjoys lunch with her hero M.F.K. Fisher, reports on Alice Waters's garlic festival, and hangs out behind the scenes as Wolfgang Puck opens up Chinois. With these successes behind her, Reichl becomes the restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times just as Food (yes, with a capital "F") and the '80s converged, which produced a crowd of food groupies who considered every trip to a four-star restaurant as a new notch in their belt. Her unorthodox style -- writing reviews that read like short stories and introducing the Reluctant Gourmet as a presence in the reviews, for example -- elicits both praise and criticism, but led to later positions as restaurant critic of The New York Times and then editor-in-chief of Gourmet.Not only does Reichl chronicle her apprenticeship as a critic (including travels to France, China, and Thailand); she also covers the major personal events in her life: the long, slow dissolution of her first marriage; the affair with her food editor boss; the death of her father; and the electrically charged meeting with the man who would become her second husband. Some of these moments are so personal you may feel like an unwitting voyeur. Most heartbreaking is the story of the baby that Reichl and her second husband adopt -- only to have the natural parents show up before the final papers are signed and take her back. As final proof that food cannot be separated from life, Reichl ends each chapter with one or two recipes from that time in her life, like the dacquoise she ate in Paris, the mushroom soup she made for her mother, the appetizer Wolfgang Puck served at the White House in 1983, and Danny Kaye's lemon pasta.(Ginger Curwen)</p>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">Reichl discovered early on that since she wasn't "pretty or funny or sexy," she could attract friends with food instead. But that initiative isn't likely to secure her an audience for her chaotic, self-satisfied memoirs, although her restaurant reviews in the New York Times are popular. Reichl's knack for describing food gives one a new appreciation for the pleasures of the table, as when she writes here: "There were eggplants the color of amethysts and plates of sliced salami and bresaola that looked like stacks of rose petals left to dry." But when she is recalling her life, she seems unable to judge what's interesting. Raised in Manhattan and Connecticut by a docile father who was a book designer and a mother who suffered from manic depression, Reichl enjoyed such middle-class perks as a Christmas in Paris when she was 13 and high school in Canada to learn French. But her mother was a blight, whom Reichl disdains to the discomfort of the reader who wonders if she exaggerates. The author studied at the University of Michigan, earned a graduate degree in art history, married a sculptor named Doug, lived in a loft in Manhattan's Bowery and then with friends bought a 17-room "cottage" in Berkeley, Calif., which turned into a commune so self-consciously offbeat that their Thanksgiving feast one year was prepared from throwaways found in a supermarket dumpster. Seasoning her memoir with recipes, Reichl takes us only through the 1970s, which seems like an arbitrary cutoff, and one hopes the years that followed were more engaging than the era recreated here. </span></h3>


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<div><p>Dominic Corisi knew instantly that Abigail Dartley was just the distraction he was looking for, especially since having her took a bit more persuading than he was used to. So when business forces him to fly to China, he decides to take her with him, but on his terms. No promises. No complications. Just sex.</p><p>Abby has always been the responsible one. She doesn’t believe in taking risks; especially when it comes to men - until she meets Dominic. He’s both infuriating and intoxicating, a heady combination. Their trip to China revives a long forgotten side of Abby, but also reveals a threat to bring down Dominic’s company. With no time to explain her actions, Abby must either influence the outcome of his latest venture and save his company or accept her role as his mistress and leave his fate to chance. Does she love him enough to risk losing him for good?</p></div>


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<div><p>Nicole Corisi will lose her inheritance if she doesn’t find a way around the terms of her father’s will, but she will have to partner up with her estranged brother’s rival to do it. As pretense becomes painfully real, Nicole will have to choose between Stephan and the family he is driven to destroy.</p><p>Stephan Andrade has been planning his revenge ever since Dominic Corisi unscrupulously took over his father’s company. With Corisi Enterprises gambling its reputation on the success of a new software network for China, Stephan finally has his chance to take back his legacy. Dominic’s younger sister, Nicole, asks Stephan for his help and provides him with an opportunity to exact his revenge on a personal level.<br></p><p>It all goes smoothly until he falls in love. </p></div>


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<div><p>Lil Dartley’s life is upside down. Her previously steadfast and predictable sister is marrying an influential billionaire and needs help planning the wedding of the century in less than a month. Years of middle class rebellion have not prepared Lil for handling billionaires or paparazzi. </p><p>Jake Walton knows a train wreck when he sees one. Lil was trouble from the first day he met her, but since her sister is marrying his best friend, he has no choice but to help her or this wedding will be in the news for all the wrong reasons. Keeping Lil safe would be a whole lot easier if she didn’t drive him crazy both in and out of the bedroom.</p></div>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 11px; "> With wonderful attention to detail and real affection for her subjects, Brandon tells the story of Helena Rubinstein (1870–1965), a Polish Jew from a poor family with a small salon in Australia, who became the first woman tycoon and self-made millionaire. Her timing was excellent: she struck at the moment when decent women, for the first time, were allowing themselves makeup and were willing to shop for it publicly. At the same time, a young French chemist named Eugène Schueller (1881–1957) was making his name in hair dyes (and later collaborating with the Nazis); it was his company, L'Oreal, that swallowed Rubinstein's business. The descriptions of Schueller's political scandals are fascinating, but the story shines when Brandon returns to Rubinstein, a stubborn, spirited woman who responded to a luxury Park Avenue apartment's "No Jews" policy by buying the entire building, and who calmly thwarted robbers in her home at the age of 91. A clearheaded discussion of current beauty standards, vanity, and the gender politics of the modern cosmetic industry rounds out this lively history of the founding of the beauty business as we know it. </span></h3>

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<div><p>One of the most critical battles of the Afghan War is now revealed as never before. <em>Lions of Kandahar</em> is an inside account from the unique perspective of an active-duty U.S. Army Special Forces commander, an unparalled warrior with multiple deployments to the theater who has only recently returned from combat there.<br></p><p>Southern Afghanistan was slipping away. That was clear to then-Captain Rusty Bradley as he began his third tour of duty there in 2006. The Taliban and their allies were infiltrating everywhere, poised to reclaim Kandahar Province, their strategically vital onetime capital. To stop them, the NATO coalition launched Operation Medusa, the largest offensive in its history. The battlefield was the Panjwayi Valley, a densely packed warren of walled compounds that doubled neatly as enemy bunkers, lush orchards, and towering marijuana stands, all laced with treacherous irrigation ditches. A mass exodus of civilians heralded the carnage to come.<br></p><p>Dispatched as a diversionary force in support of the main coalition attack, Bradley’s Special Forces A-team and two others, along with their longtime Afghan Army allies, watched from across the valley as the NATO force was quickly engulfed in a vicious counterattack. Key to relieving it and calling in effective air strikes was possession of a modest patch of high ground called Sperwan Ghar. Bradley’s small detachment assaulted the hill and, in the midst of a savage and unforgettable firefight, soon learned they were facing nearly a thousand seasoned fighters—from whom they seized an impossible victory.<br></p><p>Now Bradley recounts the whole remarkable story as it actually happened. The blistering trek across Afghanistan’s infamous Red Desert. The eerie traces of the elusive Taliban. The close relations with the Afghan people and army, a primary mission focus. Sperwan Ghar itself: unremitting waves of fire from machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades; a targeted truck turned into an inferno; the death trap of a cut-off compound. Most important: the men, Americans and Afghans alike—the “shaky” medic with nerves of steel and a surgeon’s hands in battle; the tireless sergeant who seems to be everywhere at once; the soft-spoken intelligence officer with laser-sharp insight; the diminutive Afghan commander with a Goliath-sized heart; the cool maverick who risks all to rescue a grievously wounded comrade—each unique, all indelible in their everyday exercise of extraordinary heroism.</p></div>


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<p class="description">In this chilling saga of a  military/industrial/financial complex run amok, the Zero Sum trilogy pits Dr. Steven Archer against a powerful Wall Street financier in a white collar chess-game that quickly transforms into a cage-fight to the death.</p>


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<div><p>Present Day Wall Street. Where intelligence agencies and the financial industry are strange bedfellows, and the two worlds are often intertwined in disturbing ways.<br></p><p>In this chillingly plausible scenario of a military/industrial/financial complex run amok, Zero Sum pits Dr. Steven Archer against powerful financier Nicholas Griffen in a conflict that raises troubling questions about our markets and our government. <br></p><p>Racing against the clock in a chase that spans continents, one man's battle to expose the Machiavellian machinations of a ruthless Wall Street marauder forces him into a financial jungle populated by every variety of unscrupulous sociopath – rogue intelligence agencies, Russian mafia oligarchs, drug cartels, and terrorist networks. <br></p><p>As a white-collar game of chess transitions into a lethal real world cage-fight, Steven finds himself in a deadly showdown, where hunters can quickly become the hunted, and blood is the ultimate currency. </p></div>


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<div><p>Police Chief Justin Westwood is content to escape his big-city past in sleepy East End Harbor, but the brutal murder of a Wall Street shark is about to change all thatnot least because Westwood was in bed with the victim's wife at the time.<br></p><p>National bestselling author Russell Andrews returns with an intricately layered novel of suspense, as Justin Westwood tries to clear himself of involvement in murder while a multinational financial conspiracy brings destruction in its wake. Westwood is willing to do whatever it takes to solve this crime, even if it means teaming up with an FBI agent who once broke his heart. <br>A trail of dead bodies draws him back home to Providence, RI, where he must deal with his own personal demons as well as reconnect with troubling memories of the past. Here he will discover a complex corporate scam with unimaginably murky depths, and at the heart of it an evil, scheming intelligence and a deadly temptress whose greatest joy lies in human suffering and death. HADES is a dark and atmospheric tale of obscene wealth and sadistic violence, opposed by one flawed but honorable man. </p></div>


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<p class="description">"Justin Westwood moved to East End Harbor to escape a dark, disturbing past, and to lead a quiet life. He had retreated from reality by taking a menial post with a small-town Long Island police department, drowning his troubles in mindless traffic duty and lots of booze. Now his dormant professionalism is awakened after Susanna's brutal murder. Attempting to unravel the puzzle, wending his way through a maze that leads him toward a project run by a sinister, powerful cabal, Justin finds that everyone - the cops, the FBI, and one of the strangest professional killing teams ever seen - seems to be one step ahead of him, disposing of witnesses, and setting him up for the fall." "This is just the kind of reality check that Justin needs, and he will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of this madness - to find the meaning of the mysterious "Aphrodite" - and maybe save himself in the process.</p>


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<p>The essential Ruskin Bond Delhi Is Not Far brings together the best of Ruskin Bond's prose and poetry. For over four decades, by way of innumerable novels, essays, short stories, and poems, the author has mapped out and peopled a unique literary landscape. This anthology has selections from all of his major books and also features an unpublished novella, Delhi Is Not Far.</p>


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<p>Ruskin Bond wrote his first short story; ‘Untouchable’; at the age of sixteen over hundred stories; including the classics ‘A Face in Dark’; ’The Kitemaker’; ‘The Tunnel’; ‘The Room if many Colours’; ‘Dust on the Mountain’; and ‘Times Stops at Shamli’. This volume brings together the best of all the short fiction Ruskin Bond has ever written.<br>‘[Ruskin Bond’s stories]’ brings to life the special flavours of life in the hills…strengthen[s] the “Rudyardian thesis” that the smell of the Himalayas; if it once creeps into the blood of a man; he will return to the hills again and again and will love to live and lie among them.’-Tribune <br>‘[Ruskin Bond]’ is a writer who has; with intense depth and sensitivity; absorbed the essence of the culturally syncretic Indian society.’-Telegraph</p>


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Imagine growing up among wolves, being friends with a panther and a bear, and hunting the most fearsome animal in the wild—the man-killing tiger Shere Khan. Rudyard Kipling portrays the exciting and adventurous jungle upbringing of Mowgli in this timeless classic. Still amazingly contemporary even though it was written more than 100 years ago, the pacing, language, and characters will keep readers young and old turning the pages, and then begging for more. Originally published in two volumes, this edition collects all the Mowgli stories and adds the very popular Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and Toomai of the Elephants. This edition will feature an introduction by Newbery-award winner Neil Gaiman.From the Hardcover edition.


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<p class="description">“I am Kim. I am Kim. And what is Kim?” His soul repeated it again and again.’Set against the backdrop of Britain and Russia’s political struggle in central Asia, Kim, the son of a drunken Irish soldier grows up as a street-wise orphan in the city of Lahore. Upon befriending an aged Tibetan Lama, the playful and spirited Kim journeys with him across India, experiencing the exotic culture, religion and people of the subcontinent.On their travels they come across Kim’s father’s old army regiment. The Colonel quickly spots Kim’s ability to blend into his surroundings and trains him to become a spy for the British Army. As his adventures take him further into the world of secret agents and political intrigue, Kim is torn between his spiritual self and the expectations of his British compatriots. In this exotic tale of mystery, friendship and struggle, Kipling gives a fascinating insight into the British Raj and the volatile age of Imperialism in India.</p>


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<p class="description">"The Jungle Books", which includes Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" and "The Second Jungle Book" is a classic collection of fables with animal characters used to teach moral lessons. Among the most famous are the stories of Mowgli, a 'man-cub' raised by wolves in the Indian jungle; that of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a heroic mongoose; and 'Toomai of the Elephants', the story of a young elephant-handler. Interspersed with numerous poems "The Jungle Books" are regarded as some of Kipling's most memorable tales which will enchant and educate readers both young and old.</p>


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In one of the most impressive debuts of the year, Ru Freeman delivers an epic, searing novel about betrayal and salvation, the strength of the human spirit, and the boundlessness and limits of love.Set against the volatile events of the last forty years of Sri Lankan history, A Disobedient Girl traces the lives of three characters whose interwoven fates and histories force them to answer life's most difficult questions. Beautiful, haunting, alive, and brimming with truth, it is, above all, a novel about extraordinary circumstances that change life in an instant and the power of love to transcend time and place.The story begins with two little girls, mistress and servant, one with every luxury and opportunity that money can buy and the other with nothing but her yearning for a better life. Together, they grow up bound by love, betrayal, resentment, and an impossible secret.Then there is Biso, a devoted mother of three, who risks everything to escape from the hands of her tyrannical husband. But her journey, which begins with such hope, takes her on a disastrous path that ultimately leads her to give her life over to strangers she never imagined she would have reason to know, binding her story with that of the girls in the most unexpected and heartbreaking of ways.A Disobedient Girl is a compelling exploration of personal desire set against the volatile backdrop of class and prejudice, as three women journey toward their future, united by a shared history but separated by different fates. A bold and deeply moving account that spans three decades of love and loss, it is a tale about the will to survive and the incredible power of the human spirit to transcend the unforgiving sweep of tragedy.


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Early in the history of English, the words "grammar" and "glamour" meant the same thing: the power to charm. Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools, aims to put the glamour back in grammar with this fun, engaging alternative to stuffy instructionals. In this practical guide, readers will learn everything from the different parts of speech to why effective writers prefer concrete nouns and active verbs. THE GLAMOUR OF GRAMMARgivesreaders all the tools they need to"live inside the language"--to take advantage of grammar to perfect their use of English, to instill meaning, and to charm through their writing. With this indispensable book, readers will come to see just how glamorous grammar can be.


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<p class="description">A killer crosses over…Ace magician turned ace police detective Joe Bailey, a.k.a. the Spirit Basher, needs all his expertise when he’s teamed up with psychic investigator Monica Gaines to crack a string of serial murders--each involving strange voices and stranger circumstances. Monica senses supernatural forces at work, but whoever--or whatever--is doing the killing, the victims are real. When eerie happenings hit closer to home--to Joe’s daughter, Nikki--and then Monica herself is the victim of a grisly, near-fatal attack, Joe is more determined than ever to unmask the truth behind the phenomena. As he searches for answers to inexplicable questions, he discovers that politics and the paranormal make deadly bedfellows, that his escape-artist skills still come in handy--and that even a psychic can know too much.</p>


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<div><p><strong>How do you catch a killer no one believes in?</strong><br></p><p>They call Joe Bailey the Spirit Basher. Formerly a professional magician, he’s become an ace police detective in Atlanta, debunking phony psychics and spiritualists who prey on the gullible. And he’s just caught his first sensational murder case. <br></p><p>The victim is the head of a university parapsychology program, impaled in his own home by a massive sculpture no one could possibly have lifted. The prime suspect: an eight-year-old boy with violent telekinetic activity that erupts in his dreams. <br></p><p>Could the boy possibly be the murderer? Joe doesn’t think so. And he’s determined to prove it. <br></p><p>But first he must separate reality from illusion. To catch this killer, he can’t even trust his own senses. Because the truth is far more terrifying than anyone imagines. And if he doesn’t get someone to believe it soon, Joe and his child will be next.... </p></div>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; ">"The psychologist Roy F. Baumeister has shown that the force metaphor has a kernel of neurobiological reality. In <em>Willpower</em>, he has teamed up with the irreverent <em>New York Times</em> science columnist John Tierney to explain this ingenious research and show how it can enhance our lives. . . . <em>Willpower</em> is an immensely rewarding book, filled with ingenious research, wise advice and insightful reflections on the human condition.</span></h3>


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; ">Workplaces are filled with all types of people, and some of them can be very difficult to get along with.  By understanding difficult people and their behaviors, a savvy individual can resolve the awkward and problematic situations created by difficult people.</span></h3><p><em><br>Dealing with Difficult People</em> looks at difficult behavior – what drives it and how to cope with it.  Issues Roy Lilley discusses include: recognizing the seven types of difficult person, handling aggressive people, handling conflict, motivating lazy colleagues, dealing with difficult customers, and handling complaints. <br></p><p>Practical and accessible, this book is recommended for managers looking to improve performance, sales people looking to win more business, or anyone who has to deal with difficult colleagues or the public.</p></div>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">aberi’s moving descriptions of prison scenes and judicial settings offer one of the best accounts of what takes place in the darkest corners of the Islamic Republic. Authoritarian regimes have yet to learn not to imprison, on spurious charges, talented authors and journalists, contributing to the enrichment of prison literature.</span></h3>


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Rolencia's ancestry enemy, Merofynia, has invaded and marches on King Rolen's castle. Powerless to help, thirteen yeard old Piro watches as her father, King Rolen, listens to poisoned whispers against Bryen. How could the King doubt his second son? De­termined to prove his loyalty, Bryen races across the path of the advancing army to ask the Abbot to send the warriors monks in defence of the castle.


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<div><p>To everyone else<strong>, </strong>John F. Kennedy Jr. may have been American royalty, but to RoseMarie Terenzio he was an entitled nuisance—and she wasn’t afraid to let him know it. RoseMarie was his personal assistant, his publicist, and one of his closest confidantes during the last five years of his life. In this, her first memoir, she bravely recounts her own <em>Fairy Tale Interrupted</em>, describing the unlikely friendship between a blue-collar girl from the Bronx and John F. Kennedy Jr. </p><p>Funny, moving, and fresh, her memoir is a unique account by the woman who was with him through dating, politics, the paparazzi, and his marriage to Carolyn Bessette. Her street smarts, paired with her loyalty, candor, and relentless work ethic, made her the trusted insider to America’s most famous man. </p><p>After John and Carolyn’s tragic, untimely deaths on July 16, 1999, RoseMarie’s whole world came crashing down around her, along with her hopes for the future. Only now does she feel she can tell her story in a book that is at once a moving tribute and a very real picture of her friend and employer. </p><p>Many books have sought to capture John F. Kennedy Jr.’s life. None has been as intimate or as honest as <em>Fairy Tale Interrupted</em>, a true portrait of the man behind the icon—patient, protective, surprisingly goofy, occasionally thoughtless and self-involved, yet capable of extraordinary generosity and kindness. She reveals what John really had in mind for his political future, how he handled media attention, and the reality of life behind the scenes at <em>George </em>magazine. She also shares how she dealt with the ultra-secretive planning of John and Carolyn’s wedding on Cumberland Island—and the heartbreak of their deaths. </p><p><em>Fairy Tale Interrupted </em>is a deeply loving story and a fascinating adventure, filled with warmth, humor, insight, and five years’ worth of unforgettable memories.</p></div>


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<div><p>IN FOR A PENNY </p><p>No more drinking. No more gambling. And definitely no more mistress. Now that he’s inherited a mountain of debts and responsibility, Lord Nevinstoke has no choice but to start acting respectable. Especially if he wants to find a wife—better yet, a rich wife. Penelope Brown, a manufacturing heiress, seems the perfect choice. She’s pretty, rational, ladylike, and looking for a marriage based on companionship and mutual esteem.</p><p>IN FOR A POUND</p><p>But when they actually get to Nev’s family estate, all the respectability and reason in the world won’t be enough to deal with tenants on the edge of revolt, a menacing neighbor, and Nev’s family’s propensity for scandal. Overwhelmed but determined to set things right, Nev and Penelope have no one to turn to but each other. And to their surprise, that just might be enough.</p></div>


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<p class="description">A dazzling debut that is at once a lightly erudite novel of ideas and a darkly charming love story set on an island off the coast of Maine-the perfect sophisticated summer read.   By turns funny, charming, and tragic, Rosecrans Baldwin's debut novel takes us inside the heart and mind of Dr. Victor Aaron, a leading Alzheimer's researcher at the Soborg Institute on Mount Desert Island in Maine. Victor spends his days alternating between long hours in the sterile lab and running through memories of his late wife, Sara. He has preserved their marriage as a sort of perfect, if tumultuous, duet between two opposite but precisely compatible souls.  But one day, in the midst of organizing his already hyperorganized life, Victor discovers a series of index cards covered in Sara's handwriting. They chronicle the major "changes in direction" of their marriage, written as part of a brief fling with couples counseling. Sara's version of their great love story is markedly different from his own, which, for the eminent memory specialist, is a startling revelation. Victor is forced to reevaluate and relive each moment of their marriage, never knowing is the revisions will hurt or hearten. Meanwhile, as Victor's faith in memory itself unravels, so too does his precisely balanced support network, a group of strong women-from his lab assistant to Aunt Betsy, doddering doyenne of the island-that had, so far, allowed him to avoid grieving.  Rosecrans Baldwin shows himself here to be a young writer bursting with talent and imagination who deftly handles this aching love story with sensitivity and unexpected maturity. You Lost Me There is a treasure of a book filled with beautiful, intelligent prose, a book that wears its smarts lightly and probes its emotions deeply.</p>


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<p class="description">Set among the hills and gorges of southern France, Trespass is a thrilling novel about disputed territory, sibling love and devastating revenge, by the bestselling author of The Road Home, winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. In a silent valley stands an isolated stone farmhouse, the Mas Lunel. Its owner is Aramon Lunel, an alcoholic so haunted by his violent past that he's become incapable of all meaningful action, letting his hunting dogs starve and his land go to ruin. Meanwhile, his sister, Audrun, alone in her modern bungalow within sight of the Mas Lunel, dreams of exacting retribution for the unspoken betrayals that have blighted her life. Into this closed C venol world comes Anthony Verey, a wealthy but disillusioned antiques dealer from London. Now in his sixties, Anthony hopes to remake his life in France, and he begins looking at properties in the region. From the moment he arrives at the Mas Lunel, a frightening and unstoppable series of consequences is set in motion. Two worlds and two cultures collide. Ancient boundaries are crossed, taboos are broken, a violent crime is committed. And all the time the C vennes hills remain, as cruel and seductive as ever, unforgettably captured in this powerful and unsettling novel, which reveals yet another dimension to Rose Tremain's extraordinary imagination. </p>


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<p class="description">With rough miners for shipmates, Elizabeth Breckenridge sets sail to search for her brother in Alaska, wild with the 1890s gold rush. When she falls overboard midjourney, she is rescued by a man very unlike her minister brother—Clint Brady, a cynical bounty hunter who shoots to kill. Together, this unlikely couple struggles to survive the rugged dangers of the beautiful Alaskan frontier. Unexpectedly, Clint comes to love her, and proposes. Elizabeth returns his love, but unless she can help Clint see that heaven is no abstraction in the sky, the grip of the past could cost them a future together….</p>


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<p>This ingenious debut introduces John Shakespeare, Elizabethan England's most remarkable investigator, in a tale of conspiracy and murder that succeeds brilliantly as both historical fiction and crime thriller.</p>


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<p><strong>From the author of the acclaimed <em>New York Times</em> bestseller <em>Sister</em> comes a compelling, thrilling story of a mother who will do anything to protect her child.</strong><br><br>   The school is on fire. Her children are inside.<br>   Grace runs toward the burning building, desperate to reach them.<br>   In the aftermath of the devastating fire which tears her family apart, Grace embarks on a mission to find the person responsible and protect her children from further harm.  This fire was not an accident, and her daughter Jenny may still be in grave danger. Grace is the only one who can discover the culprit, and she will do whatever it takes to save her family and find out who committed the crime that rocked their lives.  While unearthing truths about her life that may help her find answers, Grace learns more about everyone around her -- and finds she has courage she never knew she possessed.<br>   Powerful and beautiful, with a riveting story and Lupton’s trademark elegant style that made <em>Sister</em> such a sweeping success, <em>Afterwards</em> explores the depths of a mother’s unswerving love.</p>


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<p class="description">A poignant but hilarious journey into the arcane world of birdwatching by one of the most popular names in British comedy, Bearded Tit is Rory McGrath’s story of life among birds. From a Cornish boyhood wandering gorse-tipped cliffs listening to the song of the yellowhammer with his imaginary girlfriend, or drawing gravity-defying jackdaws in class when he should have been applying himself to physics, to quoting the Latin names of birds to give himself a fighting chance with the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. As an adult, or what passes for one, Rory recounts becoming a card-carrying birdwatcher, observing his first skylark—peerless king of the summer sky—while stoned; his repeatedly failed attempts to get up at the crack of dawn like the real twitchers; and his flawed bid to educate his utterly unreconstructed drinking mate Danny in the ways of birding. Rory’s tale is a thoroughly educational, occasionally lyrical, and highly amusing romp through the hidden byways of birdwatching and all its attendant arcane knowledge.</p>


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Ronald Searle takes us back to the world of the Gothic Public School in The Terror of St Trinian's . In this gloriously anarchic academy for young ladies we witness shootings, knifings, torture and witchcraft, as well as many maidenly arts. The subject of many evergreen films, St Trinian's is synonymous with the sort of outrageous behaviour that would make a convict blench. This book also contains a selection of Ronald Searle's work from the non-school books, including The Rake's Progress, Souls in Torment and Merry England, etc . and their publication in one volumes stakes Searle's claim to be the greatest and most influential English satirist since the war.


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<div><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">As one of the greatest presidents of the twentieth century, Ronald Wilson Reagan succeeded in renewing pride in America, strengthening the principles of family, faith, and freedom on which this nation was founded, and restoring our hope for the future. President Reagan endeared himself even to his political opponents with his self-effacing wit and irrepressible optimism. Inspiring, thoughtful, and at times downright funny, he had an amazing gift for stirring emotion, sparking debate, and calling a nation to action.</span></h3><p>In In The Words of Ronald Reagan, his oldest son Michael Reagan has gathered a wonderful collection of his father's public and private words, providing a close-up portrait of our fortieth president. From hilarious one-liners to eloquent letters to intimate family moments, these selections depict Ronald Reagan in all his many roles--as world leader, conservative icon, orator, actor, and father. Complemented by Michael Reagan's personal and insightful commentary on his father's life, In The Words of Ronald Reagan will delight you, inspire you, and motivate you to finish the job Ronald Reagan began--the job of rebuilding the American dream.</p></div>


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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; ">To amend the "official" history of Rock, the author focuses on the fascinating history and powerful influence that certain innovative, albeit generally under-appreciated, musicians have had on successive generations of bands. 50 illustrations.</span></h3>


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<div><p>Never before has a journalist penetrated the wall of secrecy that surrounds the U.S. Secret Service. After conducting exclusive interviews with more than one hundred current and former Secret Service agents, bestselling author and award-winning reporter Ronald Kessler reveals their secrets for the first time. </p><p>•    George W. Bush’s daughters would try to lose their agents.<br>•    Based on a psychic’s vision that a sniper would assassinate President George H. W. Bush, the Secret Service changed his motorcade route.<br>•    To make the press think he came to work early, Jimmy Carter would walk into the Oval Office at 5 a.m., then nod off to sleep.<br>•    Lyndon Johnson gave dangerous instructions to his Secret Service agents and ­engaged in extensive philandering at the White House. </p></div>


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<p class="description">Ronald Reagan's autobiography is a work of major historical importance. Here, in his own words, is the story of his life--public and private--told in a book both frank and compellingly readable. Few presidents have accomplished more, or been so effective in changing the direction of government in ways that are both fundamental and lasting, than Ronald Reagan. Certainly no president has more dramatically raised the American spirit, or done so much to restore national strength and self-confidence. Here, then, is a truly American success story--a great and inspiring one. From modest beginnings as the son of a shoe salesman in Tampico, Illinois, Ronald Reagan achieved first a distinguished career in Hollywood and then, as governor of California and as president of the most powerful nation in the world, a career of public service unique in our history. Ronald Reagan's account of that rise is told here with all the uncompromising candor, modesty, and wit that made him perhaps the most able communicator ever to occupy the White House, and also with the sense of drama of a gifted natural storyteller. He tells us, with warmth and pride, of his early years and of the elements that made him, in later life, a leader of such stubborn integrity, courage, and clear-minded optimism. Reading the account of this childhood, we understand how his parents, struggling to make ends meet despite family problems and the rigors of the Depression, shaped his belief in the virtues of American life--the need to help others, the desire to get ahead and to get things done, the deep trust in the basic goodness, values, and sense of justice of the American people--virtues that few presidents have expressed more eloquently than Ronald Reagan. With absolute authority and a keen eye for the details and the anecdotes that humanize history, Ronald Reagan takes the reader behind the scenes of his extraordinary career, from his first political experiences as president of the Screen Actors Guild (including his first meeting with a beautiful young actress who was later to become Nancy Reagan) to such high points of his presidency as the November 1985 Geneva meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, during which Reagan invited the Soviet leader outside for a breath of fresh air and then took him off for a walk and a man-to-man chat, without aides, that set the course for arms reduction and charted the end of the Cold War. Here he reveals what went on behind his decision to enter politics and run for the governorship of California, the speech nominating Barry Goldwater that first made Reagan a national political figure, his race for the presidency, his relations with the members of his own cabinet, and his frustrations with Congress. He gives us the details of the great themes and dramatic crises of his eight years in office, from Lebanon to Grenada, from the struggle to achieve arms control to tax reform, from Iran-Contra to the visits abroad that did so much to reestablish the United States in the eyes of the world as a friendly and peaceful power. His narrative is full of insights, from the unseen dangers of Gorbachev's first visit to the United States to Reagan's own personal correspondence with major foreign leaders, as well as his innermost feelings about life in the White House, the assassination attempt, his family--and the enduring love between himself and Mrs. Reagan. "An American Life "is a warm, richly detailed, and deeply human book, a brilliant self-portrait, a significant work of history.</p>


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<p class="description">Everyone wants to define the man who signed his name “A. Lincoln.” In his lifetime and ever since, friend and foe have taken it upon themselves to characterize Lincoln according to their own label or libel. In this magnificent book, Ronald C. White, Jr., offers a fresh and compelling definition of Lincoln as a man of integrity–what today’s commentators would call “authenticity”–whose moral compass holds the key to understanding his life.Through meticulous research of the newly completed Lincoln Legal Papers, as well as of recently discovered letters and photographs, White provides a portrait of Lincoln’s personal, political, and moral evolution. White shows us Lincoln as a man who would leave a trail of thoughts in his wake, jotting ideas on scraps of paper and filing them in his top hat or the bottom drawer of his desk; a country lawyer who asked questions in order to figure out his own thinking on an issue, as much as to argue the case; a hands-on commander in chief who, as soldiers and sailors watched in amazement, commandeered a boat and ordered an attack on Confederate shore batteries at the tip of the Virginia peninsula; a man who struggled with the immorality of slavery and as president acted publicly and privately to outlaw it forever; and finally, a president involved in a religious odyssey who wrote, for his own eyes only, a profound meditation on “the will of God” in the Civil War that would become the basis of his finest address.Most enlightening, the Abraham Lincoln who comes into focus in this stellar narrative is a person of intellectual curiosity, comfortable with ambiguity, unafraid to “think anew and act anew.” A transcendent, sweeping, passionately written biography that greatly expands our knowledge and understanding of its subject, A. Lincoln will engage a whole new generation of Americans. It is poised to shed a profound light on our greatest president just as America commemorates the bicentennial of his birth.</p>


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From Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind comes a startling look at how America lost its way and at the nation's struggle, day by day, to reclaim the moral authority upon which its survival depends. From the White House to Downing Street, from the fault-line countries of South Asia to the sands of Guantfnamo, Suskind offers an astonishing story that connects world leaders to the forces waging today's shadow wars and to the next generation of global citizens. Tracking down truth and hope within the Beltway and far beyond it, Suskind delivers historic disclosures with this emotionally stirring and strikingly original portrait of the post-9/11 world.In a sweeping, propulsive, and multilayered narrative, The Way of the World investigates how America relinquished the moral leadership it now desperately needs to fight the real threat of our era: a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists. Truth, justice, and accountability become more than mere words in this story. Suskind shows where the most neglected dangers lie in the story of "The Armageddon Test" -a desperate gamble to send undercover teams into the world's nuclear black market to frustrate the efforts of terrorists trying to procure weapons-grade uranium. In the end, he finally reveals for the first time the explosive falsehood underlying the Iraq War and the entire Bush presidency.While the public and political realms struggle, The Way of the World simultaneously follows an ensemble of characters in America and abroad who are turning fear and frustration into a desperate-and often daring-brand of human salvation. They include a striving, twenty-four-year-old Pakistani _migr_, a fearless UN refugee commissioner, an Afghan teenager, a Holocaust survivor's son, and Benazir Bhutto, who discovers, days before her death, how she's been abandoned by the United States at her moment of greatest need. They are all testing American values at a time of peril, and discovering solutions-human solutions-to so much that has gone wrong.For anyone hoping to exercise truly informed consent and begin the process of restoring the values and hope-along with the moral clarity and earned optimism-at the heart of the American tradition, The Way of the World is a must-read.


