After losing her parents and brother in a car accident, Callie dropped out of college and went to live in the small town where her family used to spend the summers. A year later, and struggling to move on, she keeps to herself and wants to be left alone. So she’s not too happy when her new neighbor keeps knocking on her door. Nash Wheeler, a 25-year-old construction worker from Chicago, inherited the house next to Callie’s and is living there while he renovates it. Outgoing, confident, and never one to back down from a challenge, Nash sets out to get to know his new neighbor, inviting her over for dinner and offering to fix things around her house. As much as his persistence annoys her, Callie finds herself attracted to the tall, muscular, blue-eyed guy next door. And the more time she spends with him, the more she realizes how much they have in common. Like Callie, Nash has experienced loss, but when he opens up to her about it, she’s not willing to do the same. It’s too personal. Nash is just her neighbor. Just some guy living there for the summer. But is that really all he is? Or is he the one person who can finally help her move on? Views: 27
Publisher's WeeklyForsaking his customary thriller territory, Littell ( The Revolutionist ) here finds fertile new ground in the farther reaches of mathematics, which prove a wellspring of rich and consistently surprising comedy. When Lemuel Falk, a Russian ''theoretical chaoticist on the lam from terrestrial chaos,'' arrives to take up his visiting fellowship at Backwater University, he is immediately confronted by a blizzard of Americana: is it absolute confusion or, as Lemuel suspects, merely ''fool's randomness''--the facade of disorder behind which lurks a pure meaning? Many turn to him for the answer: a dope-smoking Orthodox rabbi seeking ''the chaos at the heart of the heart of the Torah,'' a libidinous female barber named Occasional Rain, and a multinational throng of spooks and spies all seeking to use Lemuel's mathematical genius for their encryption programs. A not-quite-innocent abroad fleeing Stalinist ghosts, the professor quests across the spiraling chaos of the American landscape, becoming in succession or in combination a lover, theologian, political protestor, media celebrity, homicide investigator and, finally, a refugee in the deceptively tranquil aisles of the local E-Z Mart. Littell's fast-paced satire is by turns bawdy, cerebral and touching. Library JournalWhen Lemuel Falk first arrives from the Soviet Union to take up a visiting professorship at the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Chaos-Related Studies in upstate New York, he expects to discover a land where streets are paved with Sony Walkmans. Instead, he encounters a beautiful female barber who cadges luxury items from the grocery store, state troopers protecting the construction of a nuclear waste dump, and a serial murderer whose victims show absolutely no connection with each other. Drawn in to these issues--at first helplessly and then with more determination--the beleaguered Russian is able at last to confront and deal with his own past. Quirky characters and linguistic byplay insure the book's appeal to sophisticated readers. Littell is the author of An Agent in Place (Bantam, 1991) . -- Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass. BookList - Denise Perry Donavin"I am on the lam from terrestrial chaos, but I seem to take chaos with me wherever I go," states Lemuel Falk, a Soviet professor of chaos visiting an American institute dedicated to such studies. Beyond the basic chaos of the universe, Lemuel creates a good deal of the garden variety through his ignorance of American idioms and culture and his dealings with students at a nearby university. Along the way, he works to discover the identity of a serial killer, which after all is just a study of randomness--"his life's passion." Heavy-hitting humor from the author of "The Once and Future Spy" (1990). Views: 27
Midnight Thirsts by Tori L. Ridgewood, Sara R. Feldman, Olivia Ritch, Megan Hussey & Imari JadeVampgasm, It Was A Dark and Horny Night by Megan Hussey:Kat is a horror author with writer's block; that is until her hunky best friend provides some sexy inspiration. Could he be the vamp of her dreams?Bite Me by Imari Jade: (GLBS - M/M)Beck Griffin had no idea what he was getting into when he accepted the offer to move into a stately New Orleans' mansion with three gorgeously pale men. But all it took was one kiss from Tristan Armont to make him forget all the spooky stuff he saw.Mist and Midnight by Tori L. Ridgewood:Stalked by a cruel and relentless vampire, Charlotte is on the run. Fleeing the city, the powers of magick her only protection, she couldn't afford to fall for the hot modern prospector Pike Mahonen. Can she avoid temptation in a small town, to keep them both safe?Lahaina Noon by Sara R. Feldman:Hawaii is paradise if you're just a tourist. For... Views: 27
No matter how hard life is, humanity has the power to make it better – or even worse.Parliament of Rooks, the new historical paranormal novel in the award-winning Yorkshire Ghosts series, contrasts the beautiful, inspiring village of Haworth today with the slum – or rookery – it was during the industrial revolution: rife with disease, heartache, poverty, and employing child slavery in the mills.In 2017, life expectancy in the UK is 81.In 1848 Haworth, it was 22.Nine-year-old Harry Sutcliff hates working at Rooks Mill and is forever in trouble for running away to the wide empty spaces of the moors – empty but for the song of the skylark, the antics of the rabbits, and the explorations of Emily Brontë. Bound together by their love of the moors, Emily and Harry develop a lasting friendship, but not everyone is happy about it – especially Martha, Harry's wife.As Martha's jealous rages grow in ferocity, Harry does not realise the danger he is in. A hundred and fifty years later, this... Views: 27
"The lively story of the Civil War's most unlikely—and most uncelebrated—genius." —The Wall Street Journal General Montgomery C. Meigs, who built the Union Army, was judged by Lincoln, Seward, and Stanton to be the indispensable architect of the Union victory. Civil War historian James McPherson calls Meigs "the unsung hero of northern victory."Born to a well to do, connected family in 1816, Montgomery C. Meigs graduated from West Point as an engineer. He helped build America's forts and served under Lt. Robert E. Lee to make navigation improvements on the Mississippi River. As a young man, he designed the Washington aqueducts in a city where people were dying from contaminated water. He built the spectacular wings and the massive dome of the brand new US Capitol. Introduced to President Lincoln by Secretary of State William Seward, Meigs became Lincoln's Quartermaster. It was during the Civil War that Meigs became a national... Views: 27
At thirty, Piper Kincaid feels too young to be dying. Cancer has eaten away her strength. Yet with all the questions of her future before her, she's adrift in the past, remembering the fateful summer she turned fourteen and her life changed forever. What Piper dreaded came to pass: her restless, artistic mother, finally left. She had a brother who loved her, but her mother's absence, her father's distance, and a volatile secret threatened to destroy everything... Now Piper is once again left with the jagged pieces of a shattered life. If she is ever going to survive, she'll have to begin with the summer that broke them all... Views: 27
Your presence is requested for another installment in the tale of Julia and Clay, two red-hot lovers. Come inside their world of passion and suspense once more for a deliciously erotic and heart-poundingly dangerous story of pearls, handcuffs, thieves, mobsters, poker and pleasure in the city of sin… Happy endings don’t come easily. They’re hard-won and Clay Nichols is going to have to keep earning his… Now living together in New York with her debt safely paid off, sexy bartender Julia Bell and hot-as-hell entertainment lawyer Clay thought their future was clear sailing. But life doesn’t work that way and the fiery lovers run into a slew of new challenges as Clay tries to put a ring on it. Trouble looms in every corner–trouble from clients, trouble with timing, and, most of all, trouble from her past returns on their trip to Vegas. A dangerous man who knows much more about Julia than he should surfaces in Sin City where they’re supposed to be enjoying a weekend getaway. Following her in the casino, watching her every move at the pool, targeting her as she plays poker. Too bad Clay is called away repeatedly, leaving Julia alone in a sprawling hotel full of dark corners, back rooms, and unsavory characters. Can Clay save her from danger one more time, and then finally get down on one knee? Or will he be too late for the woman he adores? Views: 27
Liverpool, 1939. Lonely historian Tom Baines is at work on a study of the city's architectural past but the ominous news from Europe, together with his burgeoning friendship with Richard, a young photographer, and his beautiful wife, Bella, are proving a distraction. When the bombings begin, Tom joins up as 'rescue man', retrieving the wounded and dying from the ruins of buildings, but the love affair he embarks on soon leads him into a very different kind of danger. Views: 27
When Maryanne Paynter is ten, her beloved mother dies and she is taken by her great uncle to live with the Reverend Mr Cudlipp at Beckford. Her life is unexceptional until, a little before her twenty-first birthday, Viscount Danbury takes her to Castle Cedars, the country estate of the Duke of Wiltshire where she is taken to see the Dowager Duchess, a frail, bedridden old lady who is apparently anxious to make her acquaintance. Furious with the way she is treated Maryanne runs from the house, only to fall into the arms of a mysterious man walking through the woods who seems unusually interested in the occupants of Castle Cedars. She is unsure whether he is a gypsy, a poacher or an escaped prisoner of war, for the war with Napoleon has just ended with the dictator’s defeat and imprisonment of the island of Elba.Later, she learns that her mother was the daughter of the fifth Duke of Wiltshire, who disowned her when she married a man of whom they disapproved. But now the old man is dead and the dowager is anxious to bring Maryanne back into the family. Instead of returning to the rectory, she is to live with Viscount Danbury and his son, Mark, and spoiled daughter, Caroline.It is the beginning of a new and bewildering life, not made easier by old scandals and the occasional reappearance of the intriguing man she met in the wood, who seems to have a string of pseudonyms and disguises. There is mystery and danger, a proposal and more scandal and Maryanne, in the thick of it, does not know whom to trust. Mark or the man who calls himself variously le Choucas, Jack Daw or Adam St Pierre? Views: 27
