'I had thought that for me there could never again be any elation in war. But I had reckoned without the liberation of Paris - I had reckoned without remembering that I might be a part of that richly historic day. We were in Paris on the first day - one of the great days of all time.' (Ernie Pyle, US war correspondent)The liberation of Paris was a momentous point in twentieth-century history, yet it is now largely forgotten outside France. Eleven Days in August is a pulsating hour-by-hour reconstruction of these tumultuous events that shaped the final phase of the war and the future of France, told with the pace of a thriller. While examining the conflicting national and international interests that played out in the bloody street fighting, it tells of how, in eleven dramatic days, people lived, fought and died in the most beautiful city in the world. Based largely on unpublished archive material, including secret conversations, coded messages, diaries and eyewitness... Views: 52
FAMILY MANA story written for the heart—and from the heart...by the bestselling author of Jacob's Girls.Bryan's niece. Jennifer's daughter. He knows it. She doesn't.Dashing ladies' man, brilliant entrepreneur and bachelor uncle, Bryan Chambers is now a bachelor father. That's because suddenly—tragically—he's the only remaining family his eleven-year-old niece, Nicki, has. And obviously he's not doing a good enough job of surrogate fathering, as Nicki simply isn't getting over her parents' deaths. There's only one thing that interests Nicki these days and that's finding the woman who gave her away eleven years before. Her birth mother.Desperate to help his niece, Bryan tracks down Jennifer Teal, Nicki's birth mother. She's twenty-seven—beautiful, successful and unmarried. But there's a hitch or two.The first hitch? She doesn't seem to like kids. The second? Bryan's... Views: 52
Seattle, May 1988: Why would up and coming musician Craig Adler OD on heroin just days before signing a major record deal?Craig's band was the first of the new Seattle music scene to break out of the Northwest and they were about to hit the big time. With everything to live for, Craig had been clean for months; everybody swore it.Music journalist Laura Benton is determined to find the answer. But as she digs into the story, the pieces don't quite add up—and then the threats begin. Just a phone call at first, then a bullet in the mail...and as the threats escalate, her dreams turn to nightmares in the Emerald City and Laura finds herself desperately fighting for her reputation—and her life. Views: 52
Ethan Winfield has never been an academic or athletic star like his older brother, Peter. But does that make him a failure? Of course not. Still, Ethan and his best friend, Julius Zimmerman, decide that they qualify to found an exclusive club: Losers, Inc.No sooner have they done this, however, than both boys fall in love with the new student teacher. Ethan knows right away that to impress Ms. Gunderson he has to excel. Instead of reading the shortest book for his report, he has to read the longest. Instead of working with Julius on the worst project for the science fair, he has to make the best one—alone.Unfortunately, it isn't Ms. Gunderson who falls for Ethan, but Lizzie Archer, class nerd. The teasing is unbearable! So without regard for Lizzie's feelings—and over Julius's objections—Ethan helps hatch a plot to prove that he's not Lizzie's boyfriend. The result is that even as he reports on a book that's longer than any Peter read in the sixth... Views: 52
A woman is murdered five years after her alleged death. The first in the Chase Dagger Series which combines mystery with fantasy. (Every detective should have a shapeshifter for a partner.) The attendant breezy sex, violence, and action, coupled with bits of Indian lore and Einstein the talking macaw, should have readers clamoring for the projected next novel. -- Library Journal. Views: 52
New York Times bestselling author Diana Palmer revisits a classic tale of a rogue rancher falling in love at long lastNo one expects heartbreaker cowboy Jobe Dodd to settle down and take a wife. Sandy Regan, his longtime rival, takes that as a challenge. She is determined to make the rugged Texan her own, now and forever. As Sandy and Jobe work on the range together, unexpected sparks fly and set passion ablaze. Can she lasso a cowboy's hardened heart for good? Originally published in 1997 as Jobe in A Long Tall Texan Summer Views: 52
In a frighteningly plausible tale, a new independent state emerges from the Chinese Democratic Revolution and the fall of the Soviet Empire. This state calls itself Greater Manchuria, and is nuclear-armed thanks to its new leader. It also stands in close proximity to Japan, which has come to feel abandoned by the West. In order to assure its public that Greater Manchuria will never use its weapons against Japan, the Japanese execute a plan involving the launch of a new and devastating weapon known as the Scorpion. Yet the Japanese plan has more than military repercussions, as worldwide outrage at the Japanese attack provokes the U.N. to blockade the trade-dependent nation. But Japan resolves to destroy the blockade and does, using its superior submarine fleet and a squadron of Firestar fighters. Admiral Michael Pacino returns as advisor to Captain David Kane, whose "mission impossible" is to sink the Japanese sub fleet. Barracuda, Final Bearing is an absolutely accurate representation by a veteran Navy officer of submarine combat, both as it exists today and as it will surely exist in the very near future. Views: 52
Praise for Chronal Engine: “Think Survivor and Robinson Crusoe, with a helping of Jurassic Park and a seasoning of The Time Machine.” —School Library Journal “This is exactly the book young dino fans would write themselves.” —Booklist In this time-travel dinosaur adventure, Max Pierson-Takahashi and his friend Petra return to the days of the dinosaurs, where they must survive attacks from mosasaurs, tyrannosaurs, and other deadly creatures, including a vengeful, pistol-toting girl from the 1920s. The fast pace, mind-bending time twists, and Greg Leitch Smith’s light, humorous touch make this an exciting, fun choice for readers looking for adventure and nonstop action. Views: 52
Landon Thomas (In Defense of Love) brings a new definition to the word "prodigal," as in prodigal son, brother or anything else imaginable. It's a good thing that God's love covers a multitude of sins, but He isn't letting Landon off easy. His journey from riches to rags proves to be humbling and a lesson well learned.Real Estate Agent Octavia Winston is a woman on a mission, whether it's God's or hers professionally. One thing is for certain, she's not about to compromise when it comes to a Christian mate, so why did God send a homeless man to steal her heart?Minister Rossi Tolliver (Crowning Glory) knows how to minister to God's lost sheep and through God's redemption, the game changes for Landon and Octavia.Sequel to In Defense of Love. Views: 52
Over the past three decades, the most adventurous practitioners of the literary arts of science fiction, fantasy, and horror have been transforming those genres into something all but unrecognizable. In Conjunctions' game-changing New Wave Fabulists issue, guest editor Peter Straub has put together an anthology of innovative literary reinventions of traditional \u201cpulp\u201d forms. Contributors range from Jonathan Lethem to Neil Gaiman, from John Crowley to Kelly Link, from Elizabeth Hand to China Mi\u00e9ville. Gary K. Wolfe and John Clute contribute essays on the ongoing evolution of genre, while the brilliant cartoonist Gahan Wilson has created the cover and original frontispieces for each story. Views: 52
A finalist for the Booker Prize, this ferociously comic tale of love gone sour is the finest novel to date from the author of the national bestsellers, "An Italian Education" and "Italian Neighbors".Amazon.com ReviewJerry Marlow is on a coach hurtling from Milan to Strasbourg, even though he loathes coaches and everything they stand for: ...all the contemporary pieties of getting people together and moving them off in one direction or another to have fun together, or to edify themselves, or to show solidarity to some underprivileged minority and everybody, as I said, being of the same mind and of one intent, every individual possessed by the spirit of the group, which is the very spirit apparently of humanity, and indeed that of Europe, come to think of it, which this group is now hurtling off to appeal.Jerry, suffice to say, is not a team player--not even when it comes to saving his own job. Together with a group of colleagues and students from the University of Milan, he's off to the European Parliament to protest new Italian laws against hiring foreigners--a cause which he opposes, appealing to an institution he's not sure should exist.So why is Jerry on the coach in the first place? Because she is there--the same she for whom Jerry left his wife and daughter and who has since broken his heart. The unnamed she in question is a beautiful French woman (of course), a hellcat in bed (it goes without saying), and an intellect of notable refinement (naturellement). She was also unfaithful, and now they scarcely speak to one another. The rest of this dark and often savagely funny novel (shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize) consists of one great Joycean rant, a stream-of-consciousness harangue that circles obsessively around sex, the treachery of she, and Jerry's boundless misanthropy. In between we get glimpses of the bus and its motley cast of characters, including, most vividly, Vikram Griffiths, part Welsh, part Indian, with his nervous tics and his self-consciously Welsh accent and his shaggy mutt, Dafydd. As one might deduce from the title, the dream of the new, unified Europe looms behind this tale like--well, like a big, unwieldy metaphor, given expression in the form of Jerry's affair. As a meditation on the continent's future, the novel works surprisingly well, and though it initially takes some time to sort out the looping rhythms of Parks's prose, the reader's patience is repaid in spades. --Mary ParkFrom Publishers WeeklyThis darkly comic and inherently tragic novel by the versatile Parks (Tongues of Flame; Italian Neighbors) charts the emotional disintegration of a 45-year-old man mourning the end of an affair. In narrator Jeremiah Marlowe, Parks embodies the man of intellect in helpless thrall to his emotions. We meet Jerry on a bus traveling with a polyglot load of colleagues and nubile female students from the Milan university where he teaches to Strasbourg, where they will present a petition to the European Parliament protesting the Italian government's decision to limit the salaries and tenure of foreign professors. Although he doesn't care about his dead-end job, Jerry has come along because she will be there. His former mistress, never identified by name, is a Frenchwoman who casually betrayed Jerry after he had left his wife and teenage daughter for her. Jerry's pain, jealousy and sense of futility rise to the point of frenzy as he obsesses about his ex-mistress's cool repudiation of what he felt was the most meaningful relationship of his life. His headlong interior monologue, frantic with self-loathing and despair, is, for all its rambling rush, tightly controlled. While the book is essentially farcical, it is also profoundly sad to witness a man at the end of his tether willfully subjecting himself to the proximity of the woman who is the source of his anguish. Moreover, Jerry's agitated thoughts encapsule a brilliant meditation about the shallowness of popular culture at the end of the 20th century, made more vivid to Jerry by the bon mots of classical literature that spring to his mind at every turn of events. He mockingly compares the myths of a united Europe and of a perfect love against the realities of self-involved nations and individuals. One aspect of the dramatic denouement seems too pat, but Parks caps it with a fitting ending. Though being trapped in the head of a feverishly loquacious narrator may not be everybody's ideal of a bookish voyage, Parks's portrayal of a cerebral mind preyed upon by unbearable emotions makes a compelling story. (Oct.) FYI: Europa was shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 52
Sober and disillusioned with London, tabloid journalist Stephen Larkin reluctantly accepts an assignment to cover a gangland funeral back home in Newcastle. Several years earlier he had left sick and disgusted, vowing never to return, but the pull of the city, and the promise of a juicy story, finally persuades him to return. While there, Larkin's old flame Charlotte asks him to check out the alleged suicide of her friend Mary - a course of action that will leave Larkin bruised, battered and with some painful memories of the city he was trying to forget. Dark, compelling and relentless, Mary's Prayer is a razor-edged crime debut from a powerful new voice in crime fiction. Views: 52
