"Start talking, or we cut your fingers off, one by one.”The Straight Man told them the truth. They gave him a month to come up with the money. He’d been burned, but The Mob didn’t care. He owed them ten grand. Where would he get it?He sat down to think.Burglary was a field open to almost any fool, the prisons were full of them.Kidnapping would bring in tons of federal smoke. The idea of winning money gambling had built a lot of casinos.International gun running was controlled by the Spanish people and the government.Loan sharking was done legally by the banks for a mortgage on your soul, and illegally by The Mob for a mortgage on your life.Cattle rustling was open to everyone, some restaurants would go under without it.Hijacking was out ... it takes a well-organized gang for that, The best shot would be a one-time stunt that hadn’t been pulled before, like the first sky-jacker. He’d thought it out and been the only one to ever get away clean. America, The Straight Man decided, is a nation of specialists. Views: 110
Hamilton Stark is a New Hampshire pipe fitter and the sole inhabitant of the house from which he evicted his own mother. He is the villain of five marriages and the father of a daughter so obsessed that she has been writing a book about him for years. Hamilton Stark is a boor, a misanthrope, a handsome man: funny, passionately honest, and a good dancer. The narrator, a middle-aged writer, decides to write about Stark as a hero whose anger and solitude represent passion and wisdom. At the same time that he tells Hamilton Stark's story, he describes the process of writing the novel and the complicated connections between truth and fiction. As Stark slips in and out of focus, maddeningly elusive and fascinatingly complex, this beguiling novel becomes at once a compelling meditation on identity and a thoroughly engaging story of life on the cold edge of New England. Views: 95
Raven
Out of the bonds of slavery arose a beautiful warrior...Feared across the land, her blade was stained with the blood of thousands...
Raven
Accompanied by her mysterious teacher, Spellbinder, she was invincible. Together they would face the savage butchery of battle and the gathering forces of evil.
Raven
The lovely Krya, wife of Kahrsaam's ruler, has been abducted. Held captive in a strange and distant land. Raven and Spellbinder and her only hope. But they must withstand the foraces of a powerful new evil and conquer the wrath of an old enemy--the dark sorcerer Belthis. As swords clash in fearsome battle, Belthis leads them deep into the frozen regions of the North, where his magic holds rule...even over the dead.
A Time of Ghosts
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Quag Keep was the first novel based on the world of Dungeons & Dragons by the legendary grand mistress of SF/Fantasy, Andre Norton. Once, they were role-playing gamers in our world.They came from different places and different backgrounds.Now they're summoned together by some magical force…to a land that mirrors the games they used to play.Quag KeepCan they band together to unlock the secret of their summoning--and rescue from the legendary Quag Keep the person who may be able to return them home?At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied. Views: 91
"This book is just that: reflections of a highly polished mind that uncannily approximate the century's fragments of shattered traditions." — Time A companion volume to Illuminations, the first collection of Walter Benjamin's writings, Reflections presents a further sampling of his wide-ranging work. Here Benjamin evolves a theory of language as the medium of all creation, discusses theater and surrealism, reminisces about Berlin in the 1920s, recalls conversations with Bertolt Brecht, and provides travelogues of various cities, including Moscow under Stalin. Benjamin moves seamlessly from literary criticism to autobiography to philosophical-theological speculations, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest and most versatile writers of the twentieth century. Views: 86
Old Mr Quenenden seems not to have an enemy in the world: having retired to a cottage in Berkshire, he leads an idyllic life breeding tropical plants. Which is why it comes as a complete shock when his body is discovered in his greenhouse - murdered.In London, Peter Blair is hard at work on his own investigation into top-level blackmail in the City, but he quickly realises that the two cases have more in common than meets the eye.A complex botanical clue means Peter must dig deep to stand a chance of solving the crime - but do the answers lie on home soil after all?Wonderfully crafted yet grippingly tense, Death in the Greenhouse is a vintage J.R.L. Anderson mystery. Views: 73
Peg Leg Lapie, a crusty old sailor, is found mysteriously murdered in a most incongruous setting: a picturesque cottage near Paris, where he lived attended only by his young housekeeper, Felicie. But Lapie was not alone -- Maigret, chief inspector of the Paris police, is sure of it. A man at work in his garden, wearing clogs and a straw hat, does not suddenly drop his tools to go indoors and fetch a bottle of brandy to drink alone in the summerhouse. There must have been another glass that someone removed. But Felicie, in her red hat trimmed with an iridescent feather, proves a champion adversary, as skilled in innuendo and evasion as Maigret is in deduction.** Views: 70
The ability to see other-dimensional rings that float in Earth's atmosphere was a late mutation of a few space-age humans. Daryl was under the care of the institution for muters, and she had discovered that if you jumped through the right ring at the right time it would land you in another dimensional world and another shape. Spaceling is the story of Daryl's desperate efforts to unravel the mystery of why she was being held captive and of what was really going on in a certain alien dimension. Because she was sure it was all bad and that someday everyone would thank her for the revelation. But instead everyone was engaged in a wild effort to hold her down, to keep her on this Earth, and to keep the world simply intact! Views: 70
SUMMARY:This spring, Poul Anderson, winner of the Nebula Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement, published Operation Luna, the long-awaited sequel to Operation Chaos. Here, available as a beautifully repackaged trade paperback, is the science fantasy extravaganza that started it all. In a war waged against black magic, the fact that Steve is a werewolf and his wife is a highly skilled witch is not unusual. But their adventures prove very unusual, even for their world, when they are given the task of neutralizing an enemys ultimate weapon, the worlds most powerful demon.
Review"One of science fiction's most revered writers." --_USA Today_ "_Operation Chaos_ was one of the truly fine fantasies of the 1970s, a fantasy whose magic was so splendidly engineered that you felt it was as logical--and as likely--as our real technology." --Harry Turtledove, author of Between the Rivers "Anderson has produced more milestones in contemporary science fiction than any one man is entitled to." --Stephen R. Donaldson "One of science fiction's masters." --_Starlog_-- ReviewProduct DescriptionThis spring, Poul Anderson, winner of the Nebula Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement, published Operation Luna, the long-awaited sequel to Operation Chaos. Here, available as a beautifully repackaged trade paperback, is the science fantasy extravaganza that started it all. In a war waged against black magic, the fact that Steve is a werewolf and his wife is a highly skilled witch is not unusual. But their adventures prove very unusual, even for their world, when they are given the task of neutralizing an enemys ultimate weapon, the worlds most powerful demon.
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Sequel to This other Eden Views: 69
Long before the world of the Ganymeans blew apart, millennia ago, the strange race of giants had vanished. All that remained of them was a wrecked ship, abandoned on a frozen moon of Jupiter. Now Earth's scientists were there, determined to ferret out the secret of the lost race. Then suddenly the Ganymeans returned, bringing with them answers that would alter all Mankind's knowledge of human origins . . . Views: 69
Riding on the Yorkshire moors, Emma meets a handsome stranger. Later, she is horrified to learn he is the man convicted of murdering her father 13 years ago, Matthew Sutcliffe, and back from transportation to Australia. Now wealthy, having found gold, he still protests his innocence. Emma finds herself believing him, but who then is the killer? Historical Romantic Suspense/Gothic by Nancy Buckingham; originally published by Eyre Methuen [UK] Views: 69
Tangier, a sweeping novel of romance and intrigue set in a fabled North African resort, may remind readers of the Alexandria Quartet. In this book Tangier is more than just a place; it is a city of unholy loves. Titled Europeans, Moroccan hustlers, aging former Nazis, decadents of every sort play out their rituals, competing for stunning lovers and social power.Their schemes and passions are a subject of fascination to the hero of the book, a brilliant young police inspector. But even as he is fascinated he is also repelled, searching always to understand the privileged foreign colony, to unravel its weave of secrets. He finds the key, finally, in the person of a beautiful Eurasian woman, whose own mysterious past he manages to unveil. Through her eyes he comes to see Tangier in a new way. Sustained by her love he rediscovers the city and finds a different role in it for himself.Against the drama of this love story other characters emerge: An America Consul becomes embroiled in an affair with his Vice-Consul's wife. A retired British character actor strives to preserve his dignity as his friends betray him and he feels an intimation of his death. A Canadian gossip columnist struggles not to lose himself in the gay world of Tangier. There is a young Frenchman corrupted by his love for an older woman; a radical Arab surgeon; a fifth-rate Soviet spy-a "burnt-out case"; squabbling writers; cruel social arbiters; a male prostitute named "Pumpkin Pie".Watched closely by the police inspector as they slip in and out of each others' lives, these and other characters ignore the storm that gathers slowly above their town. In the end it sweeps them up with dizzying force. Tangier is revealed in a violent and dazzling finale.PRAISE FOR TANGIER—Publisher’s Weekly: “Colorful - panoramic - an atmospheric novel of conflict, vengeance, intrigue and deceit against the exotic background that is Tangier - a novel which also possesses genuine psychological insights.” —Washington Post: “The city is the main character of this intricate novel in which East and West meet convulsively and with mutual puzzlement. William Bayer keeps scrupulously the narrative promises he has made and implied, the strands woven so cleverly and in such complex patterns, dyed with a strong influence of atmosphere, that one proceeds willingly, even hastily, through the close-packed pages. As the pages turn and evidence accumulates, its hard to avoid the conclusion that what we have on our hands is the work of a moralist. Bayer conceals what he is up to with considerable skill until the reader is firmly hooked and it is too late to back out.” —Erie PA Times: “You can’t possibly read the novel Tangier by William Bayer without wanting someday to visit this exotic North African city. Tangier would be worth reading if it were nothing more than a novel of mood, a travelogue, in effect, describing one of the most mysterious cities in the world. But Bayer’s Tangier is much more than that; it is also a fine thriller and a psychological novel of considerable insight.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Tangier is a compulsive page-turner. Once you begin this exotic, erotic novel about the foreign colony in the Moroccan city of the title, you’ll not be able to stop. In short, William Bayer’s Tangier contains all the ingredients a reader could ask of an atmospheric action novel. But the book is more, a psychological novel of extraordinary insights. This is a novel that stays in the mind.” — Los Angeles Times: “The graceful prose is as dazzling as the white washed city in full sun...” —Harvard Magazine: “Titled Europeans jostle Moroccan hustlers and aging Nazis in an unremitting struggle for lovers and social power. Atmospheric fiction tinged with cynicism.” Views: 68
The attempts by English Benedictine monks to transfer to their monastery the sacred bones of an obscure Welsh saint are hindered by strange visitations and the murder of a Welsh villager. Views: 68
