24 HOURS --- that's how long it takes a madman to pull off the perfect crime. He's done it before, he'll do it again, and no one can stop him.
But this time, he's just picked the wrong family to terrorize. Because Will and Karen Jennings aren't going to watch helplessly as he victimizes them. And they aren't going to let him get away with it. Views: 388
The stunning conclusion to Dennis Cooper's five-book cycle, Period earned its author the accolade "a disquieting genius" by Vanity Fair and praise for his "elegant prose and literary lawlessness" by The New York Times. The culmination of Cooper's explorations into sex and death, youth culture, and the search for the ineffable object of desire, Period is a breathtaking, mesmerizing final statement to the five-book cycle it completes. Cooper has taken his familiar themes -- strangely irresistible and interchangeable young men, passion that crosses into murder, the lure of drugs, the culpabilities of authorship, and the inexact, haunting communication of feeling-and melded them into a novel of flawless form and immense power. Set in a spare, smoke-and-mirror-filled world of secret Web sites, Goth bands, Satanism, pornography, and outsider art, Period is a literary disappearing act as mysterious as it is logical. Obsessive, beautiful, and darkly comic, Period is a stunning achievement... Views: 387
The Aldens have joined a bicycle race! Three days of riding and camping should be fun for everyone. Even Grandfather joined the race. But right from the word “Go!” things go wrong: misleading road signs by day and collapsing tents by night. Henry’s first flat tire could be bad luck, but three flat tires point to foul play. But who is playing foul—and why? The Boxcar Children are determined to solve the mystery before they cross the finish line. Views: 386
The Bone Yard is a dystopian thriller set in Edinburgh during the harsh winter of 2021. Rogue detective Quintilian Dalrymple, a former bureaucrat who left his high-ranking job to work for the parks service and solve mysteries on the side, sets about catching a serial killer with a peculiar signature. The killer bites out the victim's throat, cuts out the tongue, removes the genitals, and leaves in the cavity a cassette of the electric blues of Clapton, Hendrix, and others. In the allegedly crime-free Edinburgh city-state (which is expressly modeled on Plato's Republic, but in practice resembles every cliché of pre-1990 Eastern Bloc regimes), blues music is contraband. So are casual sex, monogamy, fattening foods, all drugs, and more-than-weekly showers. So why does the killer leave cryptic messages via electric blues?Johnston won Britain's John Creasey Award for best first crime novel with 1999's Body Politic, and in The Bone Yard he possibly takes for granted that his readers already know and care about Dalrymple and his cohorts. Character development is scanty, so the playful rivalry between Dalrymple and sidekick Davie, for example, is mostly conveyed through edginess and four-letter words. Their terseness is juxtaposed against the obfuscatory language of the council, the "iron Boy Scouts" who gradually become implicated in the four grisly murders and a related scheme. The serial murderer's infelicitous musical clues lead Dalrymple to discover a dangerous drug remarkably like Viagra, which is being manufactured illegally within the Edinburgh city-state. Dalrymple travels to a zoo, a slaughterhouse, and a foul fishing boat to find the lab, which may be tied to the mysterious "Bone Yard" that the council shrouds in top-level security and secrecy. In addition, a nubile exotic dancer meets an untimely end, leading the two detectives and Dalrymple's tough ex-girlfriend Katharine to the Three Graces sex club, which caters to Edinburgh's rich and burgeoning tourist population. Readers trolling for mysteries set in exciting locales may thus be gratified by The Bone Yard, which is a blend of 1984 (though with inferior prose), The China Syndrome, and Showgirls. The plot moves briskly through dark terrain, both physically and philosophically. It's got a relentlessly downbeat tenor, but Johnston intricately ties together the threads of the four murder victims and their psychopathic killer, and the secret of the Bone Yard. --Kathi Inman Berens Views: 386
Now in its fourth hardcover printing, Define "Normal" has become a word-of-mouth phenomenon. This is a thoughtful, wry story about two girls--a "punk" and a "priss"--who find themselves facing each other in a peer-counseling program, and discover that they have some surprising things in common. A brand-new reading-group guide written by the author is included in the back of this paperback edition. Views: 385
Martin Conisby, embittered by his five years of slavery on the Spanish galleon Esmeralda, escapes during a sea fight and makes his way back to England, determined to avenge himself on Richard Brandon, who was the cause of his father\'s death and his own ill-treatment. Broken in body and spirit, he arrives home just in time to save from the hands of robbers a beautiful girl, Lady Joan Brandon, the daughter of the man whom he has sworn to punish. In a tavern he meets a pal, Adam Penfeather, who unfolds to him the story of Black Bartlemy, an infamous pirate, and his treasure buried on an island--treasure of fabuous value that has been the dream and hope of roving adventurers along the Spanish Main for many years. Views: 382
From the Legendary Western Writer....BM BOWER Views: 382
The Adventure of the Devil\'s Foot by Arthur Conan Doyle Views: 378
Bred for loyalty, strength and endurance, the easy-going and sociable Siberian Husky is a very pure and ancient breed, dating back 4,000 years or more. First bred by the Chukchis, a semi-nomadic people of northeastern Siberia, to hunt reindeer and pull sleds, the Siberian is an active breed that loves the outdoors. Prized for their great beauty, intelligence, wonderful way with children and lack of "dog smell," they are also more free-spirited (and free-ranging) than many other popular breeds, and have a reputation for stubbornness and relentlessness in pursuit of a goal.Is this breed right for you and your family? Siberian Huskies For Dummies answers this and all your questions about getting, caring for and living with a Husky. Siberian devotee--she has eight of her own--Diane Morgan gets you up and running with what you need to know to:Find and deal with reputable breedersChoose the right Husky for youHou sebreak and socialize your new... Views: 377
When a tenth-century Viking's ship blows off course, he finds himself in the twenty-first century and in the arms of a successful and beautiful American psychologist. Views: 375
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. Views: 373
Each of these exciting stories, told in the voice of one of the 11-year-old volunteers at the Wild at Heart Animal Clinic, offers a first-hand account of animal emergencies and rescues. This series is sure to win the hearts of readers who are wild about animals!Dr. Mac's cat is missing! Sunita leads a search party to look for him and discovers a large colony of wild cats living by the railroad tracks. There she also meets a group of angry neighbors who want to get rid of the cats for good. Can Sunita save them before animal control takes them away? Views: 371
Published here for the first time, this text presents a collection of recently-discovered stories by John Fante. Views: 368
British writer Kazuo Ishiguro won the 1989 Booker Prize for The Remains of the Day, which sold over a million copies in English alone and was the basis of a film starring Anthony Hopkins. Now When We Were Orphans, his extraordinary fifth novel, has been called “his fullest achievement yet” (The New York Times Book Review) and placed him again on the Booker shortlist. A complex, intelligent, subtle and restrained psychological novel built along the lines of a detective story, it confirms Ishiguro as one of the most important writers in English today. London’s Sunday Times said: “You seldom read a novel that so convinces you it is extending the possibilities of fiction.”
The novel takes us to Shanghai in the late 1930s, with English detective Christopher Banks bent on solving the mystery that has plagued him all his life: the disappearance of his parents when he was eight. By his own account, he is now a celebrated gentleman sleuth, the toast of London society. But as we learn, he is also a solitary figure, his career built on an obsession. Believing his parents may still be held captive, he longs to put right as an adult what he was powerless to change as a child, when he played at being Sherlock Holmes — before both his parents vanished and he was sent to England to be raised by an aunt.
Banks’ father was involved in the importation of opium, and solving the mystery means finding that his boyhood was not the innocent, enchanted world he has cherished in memory. The Shanghai he revisits is in the throes of the Sino—Japanese war, an apocalyptic nightmare; he sees the horror of the slums surrounding the international community in “a dreamscape worthy of Borges” (The Independent). “We think that if we can only put something right that went a bit awry, then our lives would be healed and the world would be healed,” says Ishiguro of the illusion under which his hero suffers.
It becomes increasingly clear that Banks is not to be trusted as a narrator. The stiff, elegant voice grows more hysterical, his vision more feverish, as he comes closer to the truth. Like Ryder of The Unconsoled, Ishiguro’s previous novel, Banks is trapped in his boyhood fantasy, and he follows his obsession at the cost of personal happiness. Other characters appear as projections of his fears and desires. All Ishiguro’s novels concern themselves with the past, the consequences of denying it and the unreliability of memory.
It is from Ishiguro’s own family history that the novel takes its setting. Though his family is Japanese, Ishiguro’s father was born in Shanghai’s international community in 1920; his grandfather was sent there to set up a Chinese branch of Toyota, then a textile company. “My father has old pictures of the first Mr. Toyota driving his Rolls-Royce down the Bund.” When the Japanese invaded in 1937, the fighting left the international commune a ghetto, and his family moved back to Nagasaki.
When We Were Orphans raises the bar for the literary mystery. Though more complex than much of Ishiguro’s earlier work, which has led to mixed reactions, it was published internationally (his work has been published in 28 languages) and was a New York Times bestseller. Views: 367
