• Home
  • Books for 1996 year

After Caroline

Joanna Flynn was lucky to be alive. Twice in a matter of minutes she almost died on a patch of oil-slicked highway. But when the doctors told her that she would suffer no lasting effects, they were wrong. For that night the dream began... It was only of a house perched high above the sea, of a ticking clock and the lingering scent of roses. Yet night after night it awoke Joanna with a sense of panic. Its terror lingered throughout her days, urging her to do something—but what? Then two strangers on the street called her Caroline, and Joanna knew she had to find an explanation for what was happening, or she'd lose her mind. What she finally uncovered was an obituary for a woman named Caroline McKenna—a woman who looked enough like her to be her twin, a woman who was killed in a car accident on the same day Joanna should have perished. Now her torturous nightmares and a tenuous connection have brought Joanna three thousand miles across country to the town where Caroline lived--and died. Almost everyone has stories to tell about Cliffside's leading lady, and yet no one seems to have known her. Was she the shy wife or the seductress of men? The devoted mother or the selfish beauty? Too soon Joanna realizes that it's not her sanity at stake, but her life. For unraveling the mystery of Caroline means uncovering the secrets in this picturesque town, secrets someone may have killed to hide. And that someone appears all too willing to kill again. From the Paperback edition.
Views: 888

The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice

Noah Gordon’s acclaimed trilogy, spanning one thousand years in the lives of one uncommonly gifted family In The Physician, an orphan in eleventh-century London, Robert Cole, becomes a fast-talking swindler. As he matures, his strange gift—an acute sensitivity to impending death—never leaves him, and he yearns to become a healer. Arab madrassas are the only authentic medical schools, and he makes his perilous way to Persia. Christians are barred from Muslim schools, but by claiming he is a Jew, he studies under the world’s most renowned physician, Avicenna. Cole’s journey and love for a woman who must struggle against her only rival—medicine—make The Physician a riveting modern classic. In Shaman, Dr. Robert Judson Cole, nineteenth-century descendent of the first Robert Cole, travels from his ravaged Scottish homeland, through the operating rooms of antebellum Boston, to the cabins of frontier Illinois. In the wilderness he befriends the starving remnants of the Sauk tribe, who have fled their reservation. In the process, he absorbs their culture and learns native remedies that enrich his classical medical education. He marries a remarkable settler woman he had saved from illness. The Cole family is drawn into the bloody vortex of the Civil War, and their determination to survive in the midst of wilderness and violence will stay with the reader long after the final page. In Matters of Choice, Roberta Jeanne d’Arc Cole is the latest first-born descendant of Dr. Robert Cole. Favored to be named associate chief of medicine at a Boston hospital, she is married to a surgeon and owns a trophy residence in Cambridge as well as a summer house. But everything melts away. Her gender and her work at an abortion clinic cost her the hospital appointment. Her marriage fails. Crushed, she goes to her farmhouse in western Massachusetts, thinking to sell it, and finds an unexpected life. How she continues to fight for every woman’s right to choose, while acknowledging her own ticking clock and maternal yearning, makes this prize-winning third story of the Cole trilogy relevant and unforgettable.
Views: 886

Tut, Tut

Everyone’s favorite time-travelers are changing their styles!  The Time Warp Trio series now features a brand-new, eye-catching design, sure to appeal to longtime fans, and those new to Jon Scieszka’s wacky brand of humor.
Views: 877

Karen's Big Fight

Karen is upset when she learns that her step-brother, David Michael, might join her school class.
Views: 877

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus

Every child knows about Santa Claus, the jolly man who brings gifts to all on Christmas. There are many stories that tell of his life, but the delightful version relayed in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is by far the most charming and original of all. Only L. Frank Baum, the man who created the wonderful land of Oz, could have told Santa\'s tale in such rich and imaginative detail. Acclaimed children\'s artist Michael Hague has created strikingly beautiful illustrations for this wondrous holiday story. In delicate ink drawings and lush watercolor paintings he brings to life that most beloved of all childhood heroes, Santa Claus, in a gorgeous Christmas classic that will be cherished for years to come.
Views: 877

Servant of the Bones

In a new and major novel, the creator of fantastic universes o vampires and witches takes us now into the world of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the destruction of Solomon's Temple, to tell the story of Azriel, Servant of the Bones. He is ghost, genii, demon, angel--pure spirit made visible. He pours his heart out to us as he journeys from an ancient Babylon of royal plottings and religious upheavals to Europe of the Black Death and on to the modern world. There he finds himself, amidst the towers of Manhattan, in confrontation with his own human origins and the dark forces that have sought to condemn him to a life of evil and destruction. *From the Hardcover edition.*
Views: 874

Minx

It takes a minx to tempt a rogue...Beautiful and feisty Henrietta Barrett has never followed the dictates of society. She manages her elderly guardian′s estate, prefers to wear breeches rather than dresses, and answers to the unlikely name of Henry. But when her guardian passes away, her beloved home falls into the hands of a distant cousin. And it takes a rogue to tame her...William Dunford, London′s most elusive bachelor, is stunned to learn that he′s inherited property, a title...and a ward bent on making his first visit his last. Henry is determined to continue running the Cornwall estate without help from the handsome new lord, but Dunford is just as sure he can change things...starting with his wild young ward. But turning Henry into a lady makes her not only the darling of the town, but an irresistible attraction to the man who thought he could never be tempted.
Views: 869

Dangerous Love

From the Booker Prize-winner Ben Okri: a classic love story set in a country trying to come to terms with its past. An epic of daily life, DANGEROUS LOVE is a story of doomed love, of star-crossed lovers, separated not by their families, but by the very circumstances of their lives. 'I hope among my novels this one achieves something I have long sought.' BEN OKRI.
Views: 860

Enchanter

Enchanter is a stunning epic fantasy. In this spellbinding sequel to Battleaxe, Sara Douglass returns us to a world in the grip of prohecy and war.
Views: 852

Starman

Following on from BattleAxe and Enchanter, Starman concludes the Axis trilogy with an unexpected and startling climax. Axis and his army are forced to march north as Gorgrael breaks through Jervois Landing and invades Tencendor with ice and terror.
Views: 843

Not Nice on Ice

When someone erases her name from a sign up list for skating flower girls, Nancy investigates.
Views: 839

Infinity's Shore

For the fugitive settlers of Jijo, it is truly the beginning of the end. As starships fill the skies, the threat of genocide hangs over the planet that once peacefully sheltered six bands of sapient beings. Now the human settlers of Jijo and their alien neighbors must make heroic—and terrifying—choices. A scientist must turn against the benefactors she's been trained to love. A heretic must rally believers for a cause he never shared. And four youngsters find that what started as a simple adventure—imitating exploits in Earthling books by Verne and Twain—leads them to the dark abyss of mystery. Meanwhile, the Streaker, with her fugitive dolphin crew, arrives at last on Jijo in a desperate search for refuge. Yet what the crew finds instead is a secret hidden since the galaxies first spawned intelligence—a secret that could mean salvation for the planet and its inhabitants … or their ultimate annihilation.
Views: 834

The Ringworld Throne

Come back to the Ringworld . . . the most astonishing feat of engineering ever encountered. A place of untold technological wonders, home to a myriad humanoid races, and world of some of the most beloved science fiction stories ever written! The human, Louis Wu; the puppeteer known as the Hindmost; Acolyte, son of the Kzin called Chmeee . . . legendary beings brought together once again in the defense of the Ringworld. Something is going on with the Protectors. Incoming spacecraft are being destroyed before they can reach the Ringworld. Vampires are massing. And the Ghouls have their own agenda--if anyone dares approach them to learn. Each race on the Ringworld has always had its own Protector. Now it looks as if the Ringworld itself needs a Protector. But who will sit on the Ringworld Throne? "Niven's work has been an intriguing and consistent universe, and this book is the keystone of the arch. . . . [His] technique is wonderfully polished, his characters and their situations are nicely drawn . . . wraps up (maybe) a corner of a very interesting universe". --San Diego Union-Tribune
Views: 833

Voice of the Fire

In a story full of lust, madness, and ecstasy, we meet twelve distinctive characters that lived in the same region of central England over the span of six thousand years. Their narratives are woven together in patterns of recurring events, strange traditions, and uncanny visions. First, a cave-boy loses his mother, falls in love, and learns a deadly lesson. He is followed by an extraordinary cast of characters: a murderess who impersonates her victim, a fisherman who believes he has become a different species, a Roman emissary who realizes the bitter truth about the Empire, a crippled nun who is healed miraculously by a disturbing apparition, an old crusader whose faith is destroyed by witnessing the ultimate relic, two witches, lovers, who burn at the stake. Each interconnected tale traces a path in a journey of discovery of the secrets of the land. In the tradition of Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill, Schwob's Imaginary Lives, and Borges' A Universal History of Infamy, Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell, Lost Girls) travels through history blending truth and conjecture, in a novel that is dazzling, moving, sometimes tragic, but always mesmerizing. Now available in paperback for the first time in America! With an Introduction by Neil Gaiman, a signature of full-color plates by JosE Villarrubia, and a cover design by Chip Kidd.
Views: 824

Sky Trillium

Long ago, the great war of enchantment almost destroyed the World of the Three Moons. Millennia later, the balance of nature is just beginning to recover from all that magic gone awry...until an unknown evil stirs...and severe earthquakes, widespread volcanic eruptions, and disastrous weather rock the land once more. Only the legendary Sky Trillium can heal the ancient wounds of the world. The Sky Trillium is made from the three talismans of the princesses Kadiya, Anigel, and Haramis - but Anigel is missing, and Kadiya's talisman has lost its potency. What's more, someone else - someone with evil magic of his own - is after the three talismans for himself. If he succeeds in his plan, then the world will surely be destroyed. But even if the three sisters are able to regain all three of their talismans, will they be strong enough to control the awesome magic of the Sky Trillium?
Views: 822