"Science writers get into the game with all kinds of noble, high-minded ambitions. We want to educate. To enlighten," notes guest editor Amy Stewart in her introduction to The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016. "But at the end of the day, we're all writers . . . We're here to play for the folks." The writers in this anthology brought us the year's highest notes in the genre. From a Pulitzer Prize–winning essay on the earthquake that could decimate the Pacific Northwest to the astonishing work of investigative journalism that transformed the nail salon industry, this is a collection of hard-hitting and beautifully composed writing on the wonders, dangers, and oddities of scientific innovation and our natural world.The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016 includes Kathryn Schulz, Sarah Maslin Nir, Charles C. Mann, Oliver Sacks, Elizabeth Kolbert, Gretel Ehrlich, and others Views: 35
A dozen years after the collapse of the Third Reich, four adolescents commit a gratuitously violent assault and robbery in a Viennese park. So begins Jelinek's (The Piano Teacher) brilliant new novel, an unrelenting and horrifying exploration of postwar Austria, where the sins of the fathers are visited upon a new generation too disaffected to understand the source of its inarticulate rage. Jelinek's prose is breathless and incisive as she paints psychological portraits of her characters in swift, sure brushstrokes. Among the group of young criminals in the park are Rainer Witkowski, a liar and a coward who fancies himself a poet, an intellectual and a leader of men, and his twin sister, Anna, who responds to rejection by losing her ability to speak. Their father, Otto, is a brutally sadistic, crippled ex-Nazi who takes pornographic pictures of his battered wife and whose sexual abilities are failing now that the aphrodisiac of Auschwitz is only a dim memory. He is unrepentant; history, he believes, has forgiven him. The son cites Sartre's proposition that history does not exist. But it does, and it repeats itself here in an explosion of sickeningly familiar violence. Views: 35
Buried secrets from the Nazi era threaten to destroy an Austrian composer It's been years since Lucas Corinth, world-renowned composer, has set foot in the town of his birth. In that time, Europe has been torn apart by war, but Gries, an exquisite little village nestled deep within the Alps, has not been touched—at least not perceptibly. In this high-altitude paradise, the scars lie just below the surface. As a young man, Corinth worked with the resistance, helping refugees evade the Nazis and escape across the Swiss border. When the operation was discovered, he escaped. His best friend was not so lucky. Back in Gries as the guest of honor for the town's annual music festival, Corinth receives a message: The past has not been forgotten, and vengeance will be exacted. Corinth was born in Gries, and if he's not careful, he'll die there too. Views: 35
Gripping, action-packed thriller from the bestselling author of BRAVO TWO ZERO, Andy McNab, and Robert Rigby, veteran of many successful TV screenplays. Ideal for adventure-seeking readers.Danny Watts's grandfather, Fergus, was a traitor. One of the worst sort. An SAS explosives expert who betrayed his country and his Regiment for money. Drug money. He was arrested and left to rot and die in a Columbian jail.At least, that's what seventeen-year-old Danny is told when his hopes of becoming a soldier are destroyed for ever. But he knows something the army doesn't seem to know. Fergus Watts is alive and in the UK, living in secret under an assumed name - but where? Fergus is Danny's only living relative. Burning with fury and desire for revenge, Danny sets out to track down his grandfather and expose him. In doing so he sets in train an explosive sequence of events which throw Danny and Fergus together on the run from the people who want Fergus, and now Danny, dead.Packed... Views: 35
When soon-to-be-wed Tanya Clark is confronted with her fiancé's naked corpse hanging from a wardrobe rail in the upmarket Melbourne apartment they share, her life is torn apart. Two months later, distraught and unable to cope, she drowns her sorrows in a lethal cocktail of alcohol and prescription drugs.On the other side of Australia, a grieving Jemma Dalton struggles to come to terms with the suicide of her only sibling. Despite there being no evidence to the contrary, Jemma refuses to accept Tanya had intended to kill herself. Not her sister. Then the coroner's report reveals that at the time of her death she had been six weeks pregnant. The will, too, raises more questions than it answers. How did a young woman on a personal assistant's wage amass shares worth in excess of $1,000,000?In a desperate bid to uncover the truth, Jemma puts her own life at risk and starts to probe the shadows of her sister's life. But shadows, like bones, grow brittle with age. The consequences can be deadly. Views: 35
Brooke Malone is ready to start over, and the last thing she wants is the distraction of a relationship. As a successful attorney, Lucas Mathews could have any woman he wants. But he wants Brooke, the one woman who doesn���t seem interested. Views: 35
From Publishers WeeklyInternational bestseller Nesser makes his U.S. debut with this classy and rewarding whodunit, which won the Swedish Crime Writers' Academy Prize for Best Novel in 1994. Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, a veteran of 30 years of police work who appreciates fine food and drink, reluctantly cuts short his vacation to help the police chief of the remote town of Kaalbringen and his small crew investigate two ax murders. When the killer claims a third victim and the town's best police investigator disappears without a trace, Van Veeteren, who has left only one case unsolved in his long career, intensifies his hunt. The contemplative inspector believes that in every case a point is reached where enough information has been gathered to solve the crime with "nothing more than some decent thinking." The trick is knowing when that point is reached. Thompson's smooth translation makes this worthy mystery readily accessible to American readers. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistStarred Review In the 10 years since the appearance of the first Henning Mankell novel in the U.S., Scandinavian crime writers have been arriving on these shores in steadily escalating numbers. The invasion continues with the U.S. debut of the internationally acclaimed Nesser. Like Mankell's Kurt Wallander, Nesser's Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is certainly world weary, the horrors of twenty-first-century crime weighing heavily on his twentieth-century shoulders, but there is also more than a little Maigret in the Stockholm sleuth. Both sides of his personality are on view here, as Van Veeteren is called away from vacation to help out in distant Kaalbringen, where an ax-wielding serial killer appears to be on the loose. Relying on intuition and charm, the inspector slowly ingratiates himself with the residents of the insular community and bumbles toward a solution, much in the manner of Commissaire Adamsberg, another Maigret descendant, in Fred Vargas' Paris-set Have Mercy on Us All (2005), also a late--arriving U.S. debut from a European mystery star. No reader of hard-boiled crime fiction should miss the Scandinavians, and Nesser immediately vaults to near-Mankell status. Let's hope Borkmann's Point, which won the Swedish Crime Writers' Best Novel Award for 1994, is only the first of a steady stream of Nesser imports. Bill OttCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 34
Sometimes, you have to fight fire with fire. Or demons with demons. The
paladins have a storied history, one tainted by a twisted sacrifice. To
fight the demon lords intent on taking over their world, they had to
make a deal with one. Under this pact, paladin Cedric Arrington
is forged into a weapon. Wearing his black armor to signal to all of
Nirendia his dark allegiance, he is a man beset by shadow on a quest to
send all demons back to the Abyss. A demon lord named Orcus
emerges from the underworld, and the foundations of the human kingdom of
Surdel begin to fracture and weaken. Undead rise without the
Necromancer. Demons pour out of Mount Godun at the heart of the tranquil
realm, and no one but the paladins can smite the fiery creatures back
to where they came from. Cedric is joined by Prince Jayden of
the dark elven Etyria Empire, who have fought their share of undead and
evil creatures under their ancient, fallen cities for thousands of
years. They search for hope. They search for a weapon capable of
defeating a demon lord. As King Aethis Eldenwald looks for
answers to his demon and undead problem, old enemies from the south seek
vengeance for recent wrongs. Meanwhile, in the capital Kingarth, the
Necromancer Ashton Jeraldson is held hostage by a father grieving the
loss of his famous son. When Ashton’s pleas for release fall on deaf
ears, he is given a tantalizing choice: stay prisoner while the world
burns or make his own deal with the darkness. Views: 34
Romance. 85043 words long. Views: 34
A terminally ill teenager is forced to choose between her religion and her life Adam doesn't think much of it when Miriam faints in class. She's an oddball, a student who hardly talks, never makes eye contact, and wears clothes that seem straight out of the nineteenth century. She says she feels OK, and he wants to believe her. But when she passes out while they're working on an English assignment, Adam takes Miriam to the last place she wants to go: the hospital. Miriam has bone cancer. She believes that God will heal her, but if He doesn't, she plans to let herself die. Miriam is a member of a devout religious sect in which women have little power and medicine is strictly forbidden. In order for Miriam to forgo treatment, Adam's father sues the state on her behalf—even as Adam himself tries to convince her to accept the doctors' help. As her illness rages on, Miriam will teach Adam the meaning of love and faith—and he will give her a... Views: 34
