At first, the deaths seem random. A young Portland couple brutally murdered in a game gone awry...a Chicago woman who plummeted to her death from an office building...an aspiring screenwriter asphyxiated in his New York apartment. But the macabre souvenirs television reporter Sydney Jordan receives hint at a connection that is both personal and terrifying. After events in her own life went wrong, Sydney fled to Seattle with her teenage son. But instead of getting a fresh start, Sydney is plagued by strange occurrences. Someone is watching, someone who knows her intimately...someone who's just waiting to play the next move in a twisted game. She is his chosen one. Every murder is a sign, and soon, Sydney will understand why each victim had to suffer - and why she's the next in line. Views: 27
When Gillian discovers Kate McPherson's diary, detailing the stunning secrets of an exclusive sex club, it sparks her own sexual desires, and she's determined to become the club's newest member. Though unsure of this high-powered attorney's true motives, Mike Bellamy - one of the club's most accomplished dominants - takes on her training, putting Gillian through a rigorous initiation to determine her true sexual desires and ensure her obedience. Meanwhile, Kate finds herself undergoing a grueling probation for having allowed the club's secrets to fall into the hands of an outsider. Views: 27
This collection contains seven of Harper Bliss's signature novelettes. Set in locations from the US to Thailand, from Berlin to Tuscany, these stories are packed full of romance and lady love. I STILL REMEMBERSuccessful news anchor Elise returns to her hometown after running away from a love she couldn't understand nor act upon twenty years ago. When she bumps into her old best friend Amy, the one she had to get away from, all that was left unspoken bubbles to the surface and they revisit the past in more ways than one. A HIGHER EDUCATIONAt an economics conference Gail Garvey ends up sharing a room with a teacher she had a crush on twenty years ago. They're both professors now, and Gail's crush has long faded, but finding herself in the same room as Professor Joanne Ferguson two nights in a row proves to be more challenging than Gail would like to believe. A HARD DAY'S WORKJo fancies her straight, married boss Amanda. She's convinced her crush is a hopeless one, until a... Views: 27
Tight plotting, Solid Finish Because he’s a damn good writer James Lee Burke knows how to keep a plot going from start to finish with no loose ends or out-of-the-blue surprises that amateurishly attempt to explain and finish off a narrative. He easily weaves several ancillary situations into the story line of The Tin Roof Blowdown. These are of interest on their own, but more importantly they serve to expand and add often curious layers to the main show that centers around the eye of mayhem left behind by a pair of hurricanes. I bring this up since I just finished reading a book by Jeffrey Deaver titled The Cold Moon. The bad guy, a most interesting sociopath called The Watchmaker who is a brilliant killer with machinations of Machiavellian stature, is the author of a poem about a cold moon, so one would suppose that he would figure prominently in the denouement of the novel. He doesn’t. Not at all. He escapes from the cops and vanishes from the book with nearly one-hundred pages left, obviously setting a not-so-subtle stage for a return in another Deaver effort. This strikes me as venal artifice by a writer who certainly has reached a point of financial and critical security where such shenanigans are unnecessary and beneath him. None of this fakery for Burke. From the first book I read by him years ago, The Neon Rain to others that included Black Cherry Blues, The Lost Get-Back Boogie, Jolie Blon’s Bounce, and now this one, Burke has played it straight telling his stories and making sure loose ends are tied up when the last page is read. And like I said he can write. I said he smiled. That’s not quite right. Jude shined the world on and slipped its worst punches and in a fight knew how to swallow his blood and never let people know he was hurt. He had his Jewish mother’s narrow eyes and chestnut hair, and he combed it straight back in a hum, like a character in a 1930s movie. Somehow he reassured others that the earth was a good place, that the day was a fine one, and that good things were about to happen to all of us. Tight, succinct descriptions like the one above or similarly structured vignettes connect and in doing so glide the reader from scene to scene. None of this is as easy as Burke makes it look. That’s called skill. He’s got it in spades. But this is to be expected of a man who’s written more than twenty-five novels, a man who divides his time between seemingly disparate locations – Missoula, Montana and New Iberia, Louisiana. Living in these two places seems to give him an expanded and sympathetic view of the world and those of us who bump and grind our way through it making his characters and their short comings easily assimilated, allowing the reader to experience sympathy and often empathy. The setting of The Tin Roof Blowdown is largely post-apocalypse Louisiana following the devastation wrought by first Hurricane Katrina then Rita. The landscape has been reduced to a naturally nuked wasteland where murder, rape and theft are the order of the day perpetrated by both punks run amok and many cops. Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Detective Dave Robicheaux is deployed to New Orleans, the once grand city now reduced to a feudal state without electrical power, clean water, food or any sense of societal order. Bloated bodies – humans, cats, dogs – float in flooded streets or lie tangled in downed, shattered trees. In this chaos Robicheaux must locate two serial rapists, a morphine-addicted priest, and a vigilante who quite possibly is more dangerous than the thugs looting the city and shooting at rescue helicopters overhead. Based on past books, just another day at the office for Robicheaux. Burke’s got so much going on here that it would be easy for him to inadvertently confuse the reader, if not himself, beyond salvation allowing the book to devolve into a miasma of none-related tales – a rag-tag collection of short stories pretending to be a novel. Again his skill and also confidence as a writer never allows this to happen. Not even close. Each section and chapter advances the drama logically and without undo cliff hangings. A good example is when a killer stalking the detective’s daughter is spotted outside a cabin. Out among the willows, I saw the solitary fisherman lean down in his boat and pick up something from the bottom. He knocked his hat off his head to give himself better vision and raised the rifle to his shoulder. I could not make out the features of his face, but the moon had started to rise and I saw the light gleam on his bald head inside the shadows. I was already out the screen door and running down the slope when he let off the first round. So many mystery writers would then wander off for a chapter or several on another tangent leaving a person wondering what’s going on back at the bayou. Not Burke. He again displays his confidence by moving directly forward with the above scene in the next chapter. He knows that each element in his books can stand on its own and doesn’t need the tired device of leaving the reader up in the air for pages on end to maintain interest in the overall narrative arc. And Burke slips in sharp, humorous observations on the human condition throughout the book like this one following an argument between Robicheaux and his wife, a former nun. I just went outside and started the truck, my face hot, my ears ringing with the harshness of our exchange. The yard had fallen into shadow and cicadas were droning in the trees, like a bad headache that won’t go away. Just as I was backing into the street, regretting my words, trying to accept Molly’s anger and hurt feelings, she came out on the gallery and waved good-bye. That’s what happens when you marry nuns. For those who’ve not yet read Burke, The Tin Roof Blowdown is a great place to start. For those who are already fans of his, this mystery is merely one more top-notch effort by a most talented author. Views: 27
After losing three significant battles to the humans, the Kzin begin to wonder if their combative diplomatic style is working and decide to reevaluate their strategy, in a volume featuring contributions by Larry, Niven, S. M. Stirling, Thomas T. Thomas, and Jerry Pournelle. Reissue. Views: 27
Way back when they were in wizards' school together, Elerius was the best student the teachers had ever seen, but Daimbert barely managed to get out with a diploma, after all that embarrassment with the frogs. Now, years later, Elerius has served as Royal Wizard at a series of ever bigger and more powerful kingdoms, while Daimbert has remained wizard of the tiny kingdom of Yurt and may be the only person who can make the world safe for mediocrity.Review... entertaining encounters with monsters, old school chums, gypsies, and an amorous nixie. For balance, there are also some serious subjects under consideration, such as the fundamental conflict of magic and religion. --LocusA fast moving story that wraps all of its many separate threads into one coherent whole. --Science Fiction ChronicleContains humor, romance, and adventure--something for everyone! --Kliatt Views: 27
Ocean Under the Ice is the second of four sequels to the science fiction novel Rocheworld by Robert L. Forward (Baen Books, New York, 1990). The other sequels are: Return to Rocheworld, Marooned on Eden, and Rescued from Paradise. In Ocean Under the Ice, the human explorers of the Barnard Star system and their large, friendly, amoebae-like alien friends, the “flouwen”, explore an Europa-like moon about the gas-giant Gargantua. They find two bizarre life forms, one living on the ice, and one living in the ocean under the ice, that are as different and yet as related as butterflies and caterpillars. Views: 27
An exciting new tale of a brumby, a boy and a bushranger in the Animal Stars series. (Book 5) Ages: 9 - 13 A story of survival, second chances ... and a dance with danger. Young Billy Marks is a pickpocket, transported to the penal colony of New South Wales. He and his mate reckon they'll become bushrangers- but that's before Billy's had a chance to see the bush up close. And when he buys the big white brumby stallion, covered with scars but refusing to bend to any man's will, he knows he made the right choice. Billy's daughter Mattie Jane thinks her father can ride any horse who ever lived ... and so can she! But when tragedy strikes, the Marks clan, including Mattie and her beloved horse, Rebel Yell, will need all the courage they can find to keep the family together. the deeds and disputed stories of Jackie French's own ancestors inspire another novel - a novel of proud and gutsy horses, trailblazing farmers and their resilient wives, and desperate men forced to break the law... Views: 27
"A powerful debut novel" following two cousins on a dangerous road trip from New York to Las Vegas (Booklist, starred review). Odessa Rose is the kind of guy who gives the term "hair-trigger temper" a whole new meaning. His violent nature has, more than once, produced blood. Dess was a college wrestling star who blew it all just shy of graduation when he lost a match and beat another wrestler to a pulp. Since his inglorious dismissal from college, he's been parking cars for a living in downtown New York. It's there that his cousin Gary finds him and lures him away to Las Vegas. Gary has some uncontrollable impulses of his own: hugely overweight, he's a compulsive gambler, playing fast and loose with thousands of dollars. But now there's an enforcer tailing him, a sunglasses-wearing thug who has no trouble breaking hands, arms, legs. Gary needs protection in Vegas. Who better than his strong, volatile cousin Dess? What do you... Views: 27
