M. T. Anderson meets Cory Doctorow in the exciting sequel to Twinmaker, from #1 New York Times bestseller Sean Williams, who also coauthors the Troubletwisters series with Garth Nix.Clair and Jesse have barely been reunited when the world is plunged into its biggest crisis since the Water Wars. The d-mat network is broken. The world has ground to a halt. People are trapped, injured, dying. It's the end of the world as Clair knows it—and it's partly her fault. Now she's been enlisted to track down her friend Q, the rogue AI who repeatedly saved her life—and who is the key to fixing the system. Targeted by dupes, abandoned by her friends, and caught in a web of lies that strike at the very essence of who she is, Clair quickly finds powerful and dangerous allies. But if she helps them, will she be leading her friend straight into a trap? Caught between pro- and anti-d-mat philosophies, in a world on the brink of all-out war, Clair must decide where she... Views: 21
Jane Alexander’s best friend, Maria, vanished without a trace for seven days only to walk into her parent’s house as if nothing had happened. She claims to have no memory, but explodes with rage whenever Jane questions her about her disappearance. Jane knows that what happened is the root of her friend’s uncharacteristic behavior, but she also harbors her own dark secret from that night. Views: 21
From rising star Ros Baxter comes a love story about duty, desire, and dairy products.Ten years ago, Genevieve Jenkins let the Love of her Life ride out of town while she settled for The Safe Bet. Turns out Mr Safe Bet wasn't so safe after all, and life in her small home town of Sweet Pocket got kind of sour. The last thing she needs on top of two kids, a sick mother, a deadbeat ex and a heap of bad debt is for Mr Love of her Life to ride back into town, successful, smart, devastatingly sexy, and all the things that she can no longer be. And it doesn't help that she's dressed as cheese. One-time-bad-boy-now-Crop-King Brodie Brown is back in town on a mission of mercy, but he's keeping his guard up. He can't let this town – or the girl who broke his heart ten years before – get under his skin. He's seen what working the land can do to people, and he built his business, and a whole new life, in the big smoke far away... Views: 21
So began "Operation Damocles", a secret military mission to kill a super-weapon, and the battle for domination of the Earth. Meet a spy with human failings and a pragmatic sense of duty. Meet the woman he's ordered to kill, a newscaster with the courage to defy a media gag-rule and speak out. Meet a crotchety old rascal of a scientist, and his lifelong friend, a kindred curmudgeon and retired CIA agent -- together they engineer a world-wide rebellion. Meet an idealistic scientist willing to kill millions for his vision of liberty. And last, meet a powerful president who's willing to commit treason and mass murder in order to regain power, and a vice-president with the courage to oppose him.Political corruption, conspiracy, treason, CIA spies and an obsessed patriot determined to cure the world or kill it, they are all here. It may surprise you, which side you're on... Views: 21
More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA Views: 21
When Eppie gets squished to the size of a strawberry, ends up flying round the world, landing on Planet Sock and about to be kidnapped by a handsome alien prince, it's up to her brother Zeke to rescue her. What follows is a laugh-a-minute adventure full of short-sighted cats, space rockets, burps, possums, owls, goodies, baddies, galactic battles, movie stars, superstars, false moustaches, girls' nighties, flying horses, bright pink lipstick, footballs, diamonds, lovesick Martians and motorbike rides with the man in the moon - and that's all before mum wakes up.THE AUTHORGretel Killeen is well known as a radio and television personality and as a stand-up comedian. Her hilarious articles in various leading Australian newspapers and magazines enjoy an enthusiastic following. She has published an impressive list of best-selling books, including the runaway success My Life is a Toilet, and the popular My Sister's series. Her innovative picture books include Cherry Pie and What'll... Views: 20
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, a Canadian bestseller, is a novel about Newfoundland that centres on the story of Joe Smallwood, the true-life controversial political figure who ushered the island through confederation with Canada and became its first premier. Narrated from Smallwood's perspective, it voices a deep longing on the part of the Newfoundlander to do something significant, “commensurate with the greatness of the land itself.” Smallwood’s chronicle of his development from poor schoolboy to Father of the Confederation is a story full of epic journeys and thwarted loves, travelling from the ice floes of the seal hunt to New York City, in a style reminiscent at times of John Irving, Robertson Davies and Charles Dickens. Absorbing and entertaining, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams provides us with a deep perspective on the relationship between private lives and what comes to be understood as history and shows, as E. Annie Proulx commented, “Wayne Johnston is a brilliant and accomplished writer.”The New York Times said, “this prodigious, eventful, character-rich book is a noteworthy achievement: a biting, entertaining and inventive saga.... a brilliant and bravura literary performance.”Amazon.com ReviewIn 1949, Joseph Smallwood became the first premier of the newly federated Canadian province of Newfoundland. Predictably, and almost immediately, his name retreated to the footnotes of history. And yet, as Wayne Johnston makes plain in his epic and affectionate fifth novel, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Smallwood's life was endearingly emblematic, an instance of an extraordinary man emerging at a propitious moment. The particular charm of Johnston's book, however, lies not merely in unveiling a career that so seamlessly coincided with the burgeoning self-consciousness of Newfoundland itself, but in exposing a simple truth--namely, that history is no more than the accretion of lived lives.Born into debilitating poverty, Smallwood is sustained by a bottomless faith in his own industry. His unabashed ambition is to "rise not from rags to riches, but from obscurity to world renown." To this end, he undertakes tasks both sublime and baffling--walking 700 miles along a Newfoundland railroad line in a self-martyring union drive; narrating a homespun radio spot; and endlessly irritating and ingratiating himself with the Newfoundland political machine. His opaque and constant incitement is an unconsummated love for his childhood friend, Sheilagh Fielding. Headstrong and dissolute, she weaves in and out of Smallwood's life like a salaried goad, alternately frustrating and illuminating his ambitions. Smallwood is harried as well by Newfoundland's subtle gravity, a sense that he can never escape the tug of his native land, since his only certainty is the island itself--that "massive assertion of land, sea's end, the outer limit of all the water in the world, a great, looming, sky-obliterating chunk of rock."The Colony of Unrequited Dreams bogs down after a time in its detailing of Smallwood's many political intrigues and in the lingering matter of a mysterious letter supposedly written by Fielding. However, when he speculates on the secret motives of his peers, or when he reveals his own hyperbolic fantasies and grandiose hopes--matters no one would ever confess aloud--the novel is both apt and amiable. Best of all is to watch Smallwood's inevitable progress toward a practical cynicism. It seems nothing less than miraculous that his countless disappointments pave the way for his ascension, that his private travails ultimately align with the land he loves. This is history resuscitated. --Ben GutersonFrom Publishers Weekly"As lived our fathers, we live not,/Where once they knelt, we stand./With neither God nor King to guard our lot, We'll guard thee, Newfoundland": so rings the resigned, ironic patriotism practiced by the inhabitants of the bitter-cold northerly territory in Johnston's (Human Amusements) grand and operatic novel, a bestseller and literary prize nominee in Canada. Treating the history of Newfoundland as a bad jokeAwhose punch line is finally delivered on April 1, 1949, when the in-limbo British territory joins in confederation with CanadaAJohnston's most compelling character (in a book that teems with eccentrics, drunks, swindlers and snobs), Sheilagh Fielding, writes a condensed version of the classic History of Newfoundland. The terse and mordant chapters of this masterwork, to which she devotes all her energies (when not scribbling furiously in her epistolary diary or eking out the columns of her daily political satire, "Field Day") are interleaved in the narrative to great effect. The bulk of the book comprises the autobiographical musings of historical figure Joe Smallwood, whose rise through local socialist activism to international political eminence culminates in his orchestration of the treaty with Canada. It is dwarf-sized Smallwood's tireless ambition, as well as his crippling romantic insecurity, that keep him forever at arm's length from his childhood love and best friend Fielding. In their hometown of St. John's, in Manhattan's downtown tenements, in the desolate railroad man's cabin where Fielding holes up with a typewriter and a bottle of Scotch, Smallwood and Fielding torment and intrigue one another, each harboring the shame and fury of a secret from their school days that has gone unresolved. In a book of this magnitude and inventivenessAsome of Fielding's quips are hilarious, and Johnston proves himself cunning at manipulating and animating historical factAit is perhaps the device of this lifelong secret that most tests the reader's faith: that full disclosure resolves all the complicated mysteries of this book is slightly disappointing. Nonetheless, the variety provided by Fielding's writings is delightful, and this brilliantly clever evocation of a slice of Canadian history establishes Johnston as a writer of vast abilities and appeal. BOMC and QPB selections; author tour. (July) FYI: Johnston's comic novel, The Divine Ryans (not published in the U.S.), will be released by Anchor in August to coincide with the film version, starring Pete Postlethwaite.Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 20
An uplifting short story following on from Amy's Wartime Christmas, Amy's Seaside Secret is an engaging read, exclusive to eBook from Pam Weaver, author of Always in My Heart.Worthing, 1944.Police Woman Amy Hobbs has been patrolling the streets of the seaside town for six months, upholding the law for its residents. But as the only female officer in the constabulary, dealing with old-fashioned attitudes from senior officers is a daily battle. When a call comes in from local fishermen who have spotted a woman's body floating in the River Rife, Amy accompanies Sergeant Goble to investigate. With an opportunity to prove she's just as good an officer as the men, Amy launches into the case to solve the mystery and apprehend the perpetrator.Meanwhile, a spate of thefts have been reported across the town with everything from coal and milk, to food and bikes, mysteriously disappearing. A strange tramp has been spotted by locals and it... Views: 20
This series is based on the best-selling adult Left Behind series. Readers will see the Rapture and Tribulation through the eyes of four kids who have been left behind. Views: 20
Fantasy. 67880 words long. September 2004 Hard Shell Word Factory Views: 20
John Tollefson, a son of Lake Wobegon, has moved East to manage a radio station at a college for academically challenged children of financially gifted parents in upstate New York. Having achieved this pleasant perch, John has a brilliant idea for a restaurant specializing in fresh sweet corn. And he falls in love with an historian named Alida Freeman, hard at work on a book about a nineteenth-century Norwegian naturopath, an acquaintance of Lincoln, Thoreau, Whitman, and Susan B. Anthony. Caught up in his own ambitions, John visits home in Minnesota to sit in the Sidetrack Tap and the Chatterbox Cafe and listen to the talk he has heard all his life, and in that familiar landscape he discovers what is truly important to him. It all comes down to the Lake Wobegon code: Cheer Up, Make Yourself Useful, Mind Your Manners, and Avoid Self-Pity. Views: 20
A richly crafted novel set in seventeenth-century Japan, The Concubine's Tattoo unfolds with all the excitement of a superb murder mystery and a sweeping, sensuous portrait of an exotic land. Sano Ichrio, the Shogun's most honorable investigator, is summoned to the imperial palace to find the murderer of Harume, a young concubine poisoned while applying a lover's tattoo. Sano's new bride, Reiko, insists on helping him with the case. Reiko's samurai blood and warrior's skill alarm her new husband, who expected a docile wife. But Reiko is only the first of man surprises...As subtle as the finest lacquered screen, as powerful as the slash of a sword, The Concubine's Tattoo vividly brings to life a story of murder, jealousy, sexual intrigue, and political storms that keeps is in its spell until the final, shattering scene. Views: 20
From the legendary literary master, winner of the National Book Award and New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates, a collection of ten spellbinding stories that maps the eerie darkness within us allInsightful, disturbing, and mesmerizing in their lyrical precision, the stories in Lovely, Dark, Deep display Joyce Carol Oates's astonishing ability to make visceral the fear, hurt, and uncertainty that lurks at the edges of ordinary lives. In "Mastiff," a woman and a man are joined in an erotic bond forged out of terror and gratitude. "Sex with Camel" explores how a sixteen-year-old boy realizes the depth of his love for his grandmother—and how vulnerable those feelings make him. Fearful that her husband is vanishing from their life, a woman becomes obsessed with keeping him in her sight in "The Disappearing." "A Book of Martyrs" reveals how the end of a pregnancy brings with it the end of a relationship. And in the title story, the elderly Robert... Views: 20
