When Sammy must spend weeks alone with his grandfather, he learns that the old man isn't quite as boring as he thought . . .When his parents leave for Detroit, Sammy is left alone with his out-of-touch grandfather in a dull, creaky house. All Sammy wants to do is run away to rejoin his folks. But Grandpa's world holds a few surprises, including a majestic crane found in the woods with a broken wing. Sammy finds himself seeing his grandfather's world through new, wild eyes. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Betsy Byars including rare images from the author's personal collection. Views: 44
One of Hollywood's hottest action-film writers, James Byron Huggins is a master at keeping the action rolling and the pages turning. Here, the author of Cain ("may be the thriller of the year" -- BookPage), unleashes a lightning-quick tale that pits a man born out of his time against the future's deadliest creation. Nathaniel Hunter could track anyone -- or anything -- on earth. Now the military desperately needs him for a mission that his ultrasensitive instincts tell him he should refuse. A beast is loose somewhere north of the Arctic Circle. It has already decimated a secret research facility and annihilated a squad of elite military guards. And the raging creature is headed south toward civilization, ready to wreak bloody devastation. It's a job that Hunter can't turn down, but he soon discovers that his prey is terror incarnate, a half-human abomination created by a renegade agency through a series of outlawed genetic experiments. It has man's cunning, a predator's savageness, and a prehistoric power that has transcended the ages. And even if Hunter survives its unrelenting hunger for human blood, he'll still have to confront the grim reality that it may have grown immortal.Amazon.com ReviewThe first time we meet Nathaniel Hunter, the world's greatest tracker, he and his giant black wolf, Ghost, arrive at the scene of a massive search for a lost boy. "With primordial strength--an almost frightening animal strength brought to life with a single word--the enormous wolf turned, massive muscles bunching and hardening beneath the heavy black coat. The huge head, as broad as an anvil, went to the ground as it padded toward the treeline." No wonder Sylvester Stallone has bought James Byron Huggins's latest thriller for the movies! What a role--and the part of Hunter isn't bad, either...Hunter, a historic-looking mountain man who dresses in stylish leather garments designed by himself, finds the boy quickly and is ready to set off for Manchuria in search of a rare Siberian tiger when an even more dangerous target surfaces in the wilds of Alaska. An illicit medical experiment has gone wrong, and the attempt to combine the recovered DNA of one of our more violent and predatory predecessors with that of modern man has resulted in a creature whose amazing powers of brain and muscle are matched only by its survival instincts.As readers of his previous thrillers (Cain and Leviathan) already know, Huggins can make the most outlandish material instantly credible by creating scenes of great power and imagination. He also knows more about weapons and ways of killing people and animals than anyone. There's nothing cozy or literary about his work, but the action is nonstop and fully absorbing. --Dick AdlerFrom Publishers WeeklyHuggins's latest thriller (after the biblical Cain), about the clinical combination of modern man with the recovered DNA of a super-predatory but mercifully extinct proto-human, avoids falling into mere mindless action fiction by its unusually deft characterization. In the near future, illegal medical experiments in Alaska have created this nearly indestructible creature of incredible cunning and savagery, who goes on a rampage through the ranks of the research stations. To cover their blunder, the government sends out an elite team of special-operations warriors, led by the title character, Nathaniel Hunter, a mountain man born out of time and the best tracker in the world. Meanwhile, U.S. marshals are on the trail of the secret and the cover-up, intervening in the action in an unexpected way. Huggins's pacing is nonstop; his visual imagination is so compelling that the book will work splendidly as a movie; and the action scenes are fine if the reader has the stomach for a high body count. The author's expertise on weapons and wilderness survival keeps the narrative interest high, as do the well-fleshed characters such as Hunter; Bobbi Jo, the female sniper; and Takakura, a Japanese equally at home with modern weapons as with his ancestral katana. Huggins also chillingly gets inside the head of the savage, highly intelligent beast. This is a feast for gun nuts and pure entertainment for the more dedicated thriller reader. (Jan.) FYI: Hunter has been optioned for film by Sylvester Stallone.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 44
Like many adopted children, Teal Rhines has always wondered about her biological parents. Who they were. Why they'd abandoned her. In all of her imaginings, she's never gotten close to the truth: her parents were vampire hunters. When her new bodyguard, the attractive Elias Bane, shows interest in her, she never dreams that he is a part of the same supernatural world that her mother fled. Views: 44
Since 1953, North and South Korea have been in a stalemate…until now. Led by a group of hard-line generals bent on taking South Korea by force, North Korean troops roll across the border. Lieutenant Blake and his men are dropped behind enemy lines with one objective: eliminate the generals — by any means necessary Views: 44
This short story from the anthology FaceOff pairs Raymond Khoury and Linwood Barclay—and features characters from their bestselling novels—in a one-of-a-kind thriller matchup.FBI Agent Sean Reilly (hero of Khoury’s five-million-copy bestseller The Last Templar) is tracking a criminal who is in possession of a lethal biological agent and threatening to unleash it on innocent civilians. But now Reilly has a bigger problem: his quarry, known online as Faustus, has created an explosive diversion and stolen a truck from a restaurant parking lot—and inside that truck is a teenage girl. General contractor and single dad Glen Garber (of Barclay’s 2011 bestseller The Accident) had stopped to grab a snack for his daughter Kelly when they both got caught up in the chaos in the parking lot. Thinking she’d be safest in the truck, he ordered her inside, and that was the last time he saw her. Agent Reilly must... Views: 44
SUMMARY: Julius Caesar's career, recounted by a Roman general awaiting death for treason. The narrator, one of the conspirators who killed Caesar, attempts to justify the murder on grounds that Caesar was a megalomaniac, with ambitions of being a god. By the author of Augustus. Views: 44
After watching one of the few true friends she has fall from the battlements during battle and taken as a prisoner. Eloen along with two of her soldiers go against orders and sneak past the enemy lines in a effort to rescue their companion. along the way they learn that the Ablaians are not so different from themselves putting the decade long war into a different perspective. Views: 44
The day after Liyana got her first real kiss, her life changed forever. Not because of the kiss, but because it was the day her father announced that the family was moving from St. Louis all the way to Palestine. Though her father grew up there, Liyana knows very little about her family's Arab heritage. Her grandmother and the rest of her relatives who live in the West Bank are strangers, and speak a language she can't understand. It isn't until she meets Omer that her homesickness fades. But Omer is Jewish, and their friendship is silently forbidden in this land. How can they make their families understand? And how can Liyana ever learn to call this place home?**From School Library JournalGrade 5-9. An important first novel from a distinguished anthologist and poet. When Liyana's doctor father, a native Palestinian, decides to move his contemporary Arab-American family back to Jerusalem from St. Louis, 14-year-old Liyana is unenthusiastic. Arriving in Jerusalem, the girl and her family are gathered in by their colorful, warmhearted Palestinian relatives and immersed in a culture where only tourists wear shorts and there is a prohibition against boy/girl relationships. When Liyana falls in love with Omer, a Jewish boy, she challenges family, culture, and tradition, but her homesickness fades. Constantly lurking in the background of the novel is violence between Palestinian and Jew. It builds from minor bureaucratic annoyances and humiliations, to the surprisingly shocking destruction of grandmother's bathroom by Israeli soldiers, to a bomb set off in a Jewish marketplace by Palestinians. It exacts a reprisal in which Liyana's friend is shot and her father jailed. Nye introduces readers to unforgettable characters. The setting is both sensory and tangible: from the grandmother's village to a Bedouin camp. Above all, there is Jerusalem itself, where ancient tensions seep out of cracks and Liyana explores the streets practicing her Arabic vocabulary. Though the story begins at a leisurely pace, readers will be engaged by the characters, the romance, and the foreshadowed danger. Poetically imaged and leavened with humor, the story renders layered and complex history understandable through character and incident. Habibi succeeds in making the hope for peace compellingly personal and concrete...as long as individual citizens like Liyana's grandmother Sitti can say, "I never lost my peace inside."?Kate McClelland, Perrot Memorial Library, Greenwich, CTCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsLiyana Abboud, 14, and her family make a tremendous adjustment when they move to Jerusalem from St. Louis. All she and her younger brother, Rafik, know of their Palestinian father's culture come from his reminiscences of growing up and the fighting they see on television. In Jerusalem, she is the only outsider'' at an Armenian school; her easygoing father, Poppy, finds himself having to remind her--often against his own common sense--of rules forappropriate'' behavior; and snug shops replace supermarket shopping--the malls of her upbringing are unheard of. Worst of all, Poppy is jailed for getting in the middle of a dispute between Israeli soldiers and a teenage refugee. In her first novel, Nye (with Paul Janeczko, I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You, 1996, etc.) shows all of the charms and flaws of the old city through unique, short-story-like chapters and poetic language. The sights, sounds, and smells of Jerusalem drift through the pages and readers glean a sense of current Palestinian-Israeli relations and the region's troubled history. In the process, some of the passages become quite ponderous while the human story- -Liyana's emotional adjustments in the later chapters and her American mother's reactions overall--fall away from the plot. However, Liyana's romance with an Israeli boy develops warmly, and readers are left with hope for change and peace as Liyana makes the city her very own. (Fiction. 12+) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Views: 44
