Ms. Lucy dreams of starting a sex school in San Francisco, the City of Love. After interviewing some promising candidates, including Antoinella De Luca, an artist who integrates her tools into playtime, and twin blond surfer hotties, Blaine and Wayne, Lucy launches a soft opening, Summer School. One of the first students to join, Willow, comes seeking to explore new experiences. When paired with Ted, who she feels is way out of her league, it's a game of give or give. Lucy likes it when the shy ones pair up with those with more confidence. And so do we! Views: 64
SUMMARY: Young and innocent, they came to a place they had barely heard of, prepared for war. They were American fighter pilots, trained but frightened, facing an an enemy they couldn't understand, and waging a war they had to win.... Views: 64
The wild and beautiful birds of the title are the cockatoos who - welcome trespassers in a surburban garden - transform the lives of those they condescend to visit. The Davorens, who for seven years have lived in total silence, are united suddenly in mutual worship of their exotic guests. Miss Le Cornu, the lonely spinster for whom Davoren's calls have become a needed ritual, regards the birds' descent on her chimney-pot as a privilege little short of divine grace. Savage but kind-eyed, tearing with fierce beak at his chosen victim, the cockatoo appears in many disguises in this masterly collection of short novels and stories. Essentially, the book's theme is intimacy, that close relationship in which possessive love can invade and cripple the spirit. In A Woman's Hand, and elderly man married to a proud, manipulative woman perceives in another man's magnificent isolation the stillness and contentment that he will never achieve. Allegedly raped by a... Views: 64
Book by M.C. Bolin**Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.Chapter One He was back in Long Beach, in dreamlike Los Angeles, ambling up an empty sidewalk on northbound Ocean Boulevard on a Sunday morning, and there she was. A 1967 Shelby Mustang GT-500. Satin nickel paint job, deep-set, shark-profile grill, and sculpted side panels, parked at the curb. She was beautiful. He was Randall "Memphis" Raines, dark hair, medium build, black turtleneck, black leather duster, jeans, boots--at twenty-three, the best car boost in Southern California. They were made for each other. "You gonna steal her or kneel down to her and pray?" someone said. The voice came from the street. Memphis turned at once to see another car rolling up--a 1990 Ford Thunderbird. Ice blue, chrome racing wheels, blackout glass, thundering bass in the trunk, its driver grinning bone-white teeth at the open passenger-side window. It was Atley Jackson. Black, handsome, late twenties, jocular, black T-shirt, black leather jacket, black sunglasses. In the cars black leather interior he looked like an angel from the dark side out on parole, cruising around sunny L.A. and seeing the sights. You gonna steal her or kneel down to her and pray? The T-bird's power window went up like a curtain closing, and the car rolled away in the downtown direction. Atley wasnt waiting for any kind of answer from Memphis, really. No need. They knew each other all too well. Memphis checked the street in both directions. It was deserted, even for Sunday morning. He pulled a small "slim jim" from his coat (never left home without it), a handy door-opening tool popular among uniformed police officers, AAA service representatives--and yes, car thieves. He slimmed the door panel, popping the lock from underneath the button, opened the door, and got into the bucket seat behind the wheel. He ran a cordless screwdriver over the dress panels around the steering column, thus revealing the ignitions lock cylinder. Finally he pressed a small, socketlike device known as a "gizmo" into the key slot, and with a twist of the wrist, the 320-bhp 289 V-8 engine rumbled like a jackhammer. Whats this--no seat belts? You could get a ticket for that. Oh, well. He pushed a cassette tape into the deck, and Bruce Springsteens "Ramrod" wailed from the coaxials. And then he floored it. Tires screaming, engine roaring, the smell of asphalt in the morning--these were a few of his favorite things. He had the needle halfway around the speed dial, halfway to the charge of super-satisfaction and well-being known locally as an Ocean Boulevard speed rush. Here came the sun, and the birdies were flyin. Welcome to L.A.! Have a nice day! Two unmarked South Bureau cop cars briefly spotted Memphis jetting through some intersection--too quick to tell which one. They slapped magnetic bubble-flashers on their roofs and called in a Code Three (emergency, use lights and siren)--pursuing a 510 (speeding vehicle), possible 503 (stolen), traveling south on O.B. Memphis checked them in the rearview, carved a right, and punched the accelerator again. He raced the Shelby toward the Pacific Ocean, down the early-morning, harbortown streets now echoing with the woeful siren cry. Turning north again, he encountered a two-cycle delay backed up at the light and gutterballed around it, skating the shoulder. A new pursuit car slipped into his wake--the South Bureau operations dispatch was broadcasting a chase report on an open channel, and now every cruiser in the harbor area was in on the act, closing the net. The trap itself was set for an on-ramp to the Terminal Island Freeway. They herded him there, never doubting the suspects intentions to outrun them and then stow the car under a bridge or in the parking deck of a mall in the back-country suburbs. It would wait there, tucked between mothers minivans, for the truck from the chop shop to come. Traffic control had a detour in progress and two aging cruisers nose to nose like a gate in the ramp. A news traffic copter was on the scene too, ready to put the live feed on TV. A lucky cruiser met him head-on and flashed its headlights, spooking him in exactly the intended direction. He swerved onto the entrance ramp, pedal to the metal, aimed point-blank at the roadblock. Uniformed officers scattered as he gunned it, then at the last possible second, he bailed out--banged the gearshift into neutral and yanked the parking brake, putting her into a spin, popping her up the curb, and flipping her over the guardrail and into a side roll in the path of something with an air horn, coming on like a locomotive. He screamed-- --and woke up in a cold sweat. It was a dream. Only a dream! The nightmare was still to come. Views: 64
Sometimes, what we all wish for can happen in the Twilight Zone. Other times, our wishes come true on just a simple suburban street. Caro Rosefield must investigate a very strange foreclosed home. A nightmare or maybe a new future? On Bryant Street, anything seems possible. And anything can happen. Views: 64
This is a comprehensive account of the eight religious wars between the Christian West and the Muslim East that dominated the Middle Ages. Calling themselves "pilgrims of Christ," thousands of Europeans from all stations in life undertook the harsh and bloody quest to reclaim Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and Christ's tomb for Christendom.Robert Payne brings to life every step of the Crusaders' thousand-mile journey: the deprivation; the desperate, rapacious, and brutal raids for food and supplies; the epic battles for Antioch, Jerusalem, and Acre; the barbarous treatment of captives; and the quarrelling European princes who vied for power and wealth in the Near East. An epic tale of the glorious and the base, of unshakable faith and unspeakable atrocities, The Dream and the Tomb captures not only the events but the very essence of the Crusades. Views: 64
Daniel Jacobus, reclusive blind concert master and amateur sleuth, returns to solve a most despicable crime and to clear an innocent manJust after his Carnegie Hall swansong and before his imminent departure for retirement in France, beloved violinist and humanitarian Rene Allard is brutally murdered with a mysterious weapon. His young African American rival, crossover artist BTower, is spotted at the scene of the crime hovering over the contorted body of Allard with blood on his hands. In short order the aloof and arrogant BTower is convicted and sentenced to death, in part the result of the testimony of blind and curmudgeonly violin pedagogue Daniel Jacobus, like millions of others, an ardent admirer of Allard. Justice has been served...or has it? Jacobus is dragged back into the case kicking and screaming, and reluctantly follows a trail of broken violins and broken lives as it leads inexorably to the truth, and to his own mortal peril. Views: 64
OR33140, an unarmed robot, conducts a revolution against heavily armed fellow machines in a bid to free 10,000 Humans from a fortress where they have been held prisoner and murdered and tortured for 100 years, since the end of the wars. And all for the love of Little Eve, the girl who danced for OR33140, the girl the machine adored. She spat in the machine's eye, for the benefit of mankind. Views: 64
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: 64
When Tony's mother is sent to jail, he is sent to stay with a great uncle he has never met in Sierra Nevada. It is a daunting move—Tony's new world bears no semblance to his previous one. But slowly, against a remote and remarkable backdrop, the scars from Tony's troubled past begin to heal. With his Tió and a search-and-rescue dog named Gabe by his side, he learns how to track wild animals, is welcomed to the Cowboy Church, and makes new friends at the Mountain School. Most importantly though, it is through Gabe that Tony discovers unconditional love for the first time, in Mountain Dog by Margarita Engle. A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2013 Views: 63
