Legendary storyteller Barbara Taylor Bradford presents a spellbinding story of four women transformed by old memories and surprising revelations when they meet again at a school reunion in Paris.
As students at the prestigious Anya Sedgwick School of Decorative Arts in Paris, Alexandra Gordon, Kay Lenox, Jessica Pierce, and Maria Franconi share the challenges and excitement of developing their various artistic talents to the fullest under Sedgwick’s caring and demanding guidance. Once best friends, they part enemies, and after graduation go their separate ways, pursuing careers and establishing lives in different corners of the world. Alexandra, a set designer, becomes a leading figure in New York’s theater world. Kay, who marries and moves to Scotland, designs a successful line of clothing. Jessica, an interior designer, makes her home in California, while Maria returns to her native Italy, where she continues to work in her family’s textile business.
For each of them, the arrival of an invitation to Paris to celebrate Anya Sedgwick’s eighty-fifth birthday stirs up complicated feelings: Nostalgic memories are colored by poignant regrets, and the reluctance to revisit their own pasts mixes with curiosity about their former friends. It is ultimately their desire to deal with unfinished business that convinces all of them to attend the party. During three eventful weeks in Paris, they visit their old haunts, rekindle ties, and awaken in one another the sense of wonder, adventure, and possibilities they had shared so long ago.
Barbara Taylor Bradford has long been recognized as one of today’s finest chroniclers of women’s lives. From her blockbuster debut novel, A Woman of Substance, to her most recent bestseller, The Triumph of Katie Byrne, her books have sold more than 61 million copies worldwide. Three Weeks in Paris is vintage Bradford, filled with the emotional power and captivating plot twists her readers cherish.
From the Hardcover edition. Views: 768
Revenge has never been served so cold.
Joe Kurtz, former investigator and convicted felon, is on parole. But the years he spent in Attica didn't make his old haunts any safer. Back on the streets of Buffalo, he's already marked by a local Mafia don.
As if watching his back weren't enough work, Kurtz has also been hired by a gravely ill John Frears, whose daughter met a grisly fate at the hands of a murderer. Frears wants one thing before he dies: for Kurtz to find the fiend that the authorities couldn't. But the calculating killer--a master at changing identities--has a little unfinished business of his own. Dodging a contract on his head and tracking a serial killer on the loose, Kurtz plunges headfirst into the icy waters of revenge as both victim and avenger. Views: 766
**Lady X**
Everyone knew Lady X . . . or, at least, everyone knew *of* her. The masked courtesan was reputedly a noblewoman fallen on hard times. What Lord James had not known was that she was Lady Margaret Wentworth—the feisty sister of his best friend. Gerald claimed his sibling was beautiful, virtuous, naive; and he had forced James into an oath of protection. But when James tracked the girl to a house of ill repute, what other explanation could there be but that Maggie was London's most enigmatic wanton?
**Lord, Why?**
Snatching the wench away would be a ticklish business, and after that, things would get harder. James had to ignore his quarry's violent protests that he was an idiot, that she was never the infamous X. He had to find a way to reform the hoyden, to save her from scandal. He had to steer clear of his own meddling aunt—all while keeping his hands off those luscious goods that the rest of the *ton* had reputedly sampled. And, with Maggie, hardest of all would be keeping himself from falling in love. Views: 766
They knew us before we began to walk upright. Shamans called them guardians, mythmakers called them tricksters, pagans called them gods, churchmen called them demons, folklorists called them shape-shifters. They’ve obligingly taken any role we’ve assigned them, and, while needing nothing from us, have accepted whatever we thought was their due – love, hate, fear, worship, condemnation, neglect, oblivion.
Even in modern times, when their existence is doubted or denied, they continue to extend invitations to those who would travel a different road, a road not found on any of our cultural maps. But now, perceiving us as a threat to life itself, they issue their invitations with a dark purpose of their own. In this dazzling metaphysical thriller, four who put themselves in the hands of these all-but-forgotten Others venture across a sinister American landscape hidden from normal view, finding their way to interlocking destinies of death, terror, transcendental rapture, and shattering enlightenment.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 764
For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke tells the tale of Alexander Pearce, who ate his companions during two different attempts to escape from the Macquarie Harbour Penal Settlement on the West Coast, Tasmania. A gripping, best-selling novel and a great addition to the collection. Views: 762
Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison’s spellbinding new novel is a Faulknerian symphony of passion and hatred, power and perversity, color and class that spans three generations of black women in a fading beach town.
In life, Bill Cosey enjoyed the affections of many women, who would do almost anything to gain his favor. In death his hold on them may be even stronger. Wife, daughter, granddaughter, employee, mistress: As Morrison’s protagonists stake their furious claim on Cosey’s memory and estate, using everything from intrigue to outright violence, she creates a work that is shrewd, funny, erotic, and heartwrenching.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 760
The third book of The Crucible, an exciting new historical fantasy from the author of the popular Axis Trilogy. The crises enveloping Europe begin to alter the mentality of the world. People are no longer content with their lot in life; they have grown ambitious and disruptive. The Church is losing its grip, not only are the heresies raging out of control, but more and more priests are speaking out against the Roman Church... the order of the world is dissolving into chaos. Neville faces his own crisis as he begins to question his faith. Inflitrating many social circles, gathering information for the Church, he meets the heretic priest John Wycliffe and the peasant rebel Wat Tyler. He suspects strongly that they are shapeshifting demons... yet he cannot help but agree with their criticisms of the traditional structures of society and of the Church itself. Neville does not know it, but his soul has become the ultimate battleground. The choices he makes will dictate the final outcome of the battle between the forces of good, and those of evil. Views: 756
Best known for the ever popular Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and the Caldecott Medal winner The Little House, Virginia Lee Burton wrote and illustrated stories that have been entertaining children, parents, and grandparents for more than sixty years. Many of her books—with themes that honor a simple way of life and celebrate heroes who endure through determination and by adapting to change—have become classic American tales. With an introduction by Barbara Elleman, author of Virginia Lee Burton: A Life in Art,this handsome collection commemorates four of Burton’s most popular stories, each featured complete and unabridged. Their appeal today, as strong as when the books were first published, is a tribute to one of America’s most innovative illustrators, designers, and writers of stories for children. Views: 755
The Carolinas, 1699: The citizens of Fount Royal believe a witch has cursed their town with inexplicable tragedies, and they demand that beautiful widow Rachel Howarth be tried and executed for witchcraft. Presiding over the trial is traveling magistrate Issac Woodward, aided by his astute young clerk, Matthew Corbett. Believing in Rachel's innocence, Matthew will soon confront the true evil at work in Fount Royal.
After hearing damning testimony, magistrate Woodward sentences the accused witch to death by burning. Desperate to exonerate the woman he has come to love, Matthew begins his own investigation among the townspeople. Piecing together the truth, he has no choice but to vanquish a force more malevolent than witchcraft in order to save his beloved Rachel and free Fount Royal from the menace claiming innocent lives. Views: 753
In her new novel, perennial bestseller Anne Rice fuses her two uniquely seductive strains of narrative -- her Vampire legend and her lore of the Mayfair witches -- to give us a world of classic deep-south luxury and ancestral secrets. Welcome to Blackwood Farm: soaring white columns, spacious drawing rooms, bright, sun-drenched gardens, and a dark strip of the dense Sugar Devil Swamp. This is the world of Quinn Blackwood, a brilliant young man haunted since birth by a mysterious doppelgänger, “Goblin,” a spirit from a dream world that Quinn can’t escape and that prevents him from belonging anywhere. When Quinn is made a Vampire, losing all that is rightfully his and gaining an unwanted immortality, his doppelgänger becomes even more vampiric and terrifying than Quinn himself. As the novel moves backwards and forwards in time, from Quinn’s boyhood on Blackwood Farm to present day New Orleans, from ancient Athens to 19th-century Naples, Quinn seeks out the legendary Vampire Lestat in the hope of freeing himself from the spectre that draws him inexorably back to Sugar Devil Swamp and the explosive secrets it holds. A story of youth and promise, of loss and the search for love, of secrets and destiny, Blackwood Farm is Anne Rice at her mesmerizing best.From the Hardcover edition. Views: 752
Novella published following "Red".
The Passenger, follows the story of a woman who gets a flat tire, leading to a stretch of bad luck as she becomes a passenger in a car bound for Hell. Views: 748
It was a summer morning in 1982 when soldiers ravaged the village of Chupan Ya, raping and killing women and children. Twenty-three victims are said to lie in the well where, twenty years later, Dr. Temperance Brennan and a team from the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation now dig. No records were kept. To their families, the dead are "the disappeared."Forensic anthropologist for the medical examiners in North Carolina and Montreal, Tempe is in Guatemala for a month's service to help some families identify and bury their dead. She digs in a cold, damp pit where she finds a hair clip, a fragment of cloth, a tiny sneaker. Her trowel touches something hard: the hip of a child no more than two years old.
It's heartbreaking work. Something savage happened here twenty years ago. The violence continues today. The team is packing up for the day when an urgent satellite call comes in. Two colleagues are under attack. Shots ring out, and Tempe listens in horror to a woman's screams. Then there is silence. Dead silence.
With this new violence, everything changes, both for the team and for Tempe, who's asked by the Guatemalan police for her expertise on another case. Four privileged young women have vanished from Guatemala City in recent months. One is the Canadian ambassador's daughter. Some remains have turned up in a septic tank, and Tempe unfortunately knows septic tanks.
Teaming with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolome Galiano, and with Montreal detective Andrew Ryan, who may have more than just professional reasons to join her on the case, Tempe soon finds herself in a dangerous web that stretches far beyond Guatemala's borders. The stakes are huge. As power, money, greed, and science converge, Tempe must make life-altering choices.
From cutting-edge science in the lab, where Tempe studies fetal bones and cat hair DNA, to a chilling en-counter in a lonely morgue, "Grave Secrets" is powerful, page-turning entertainment from a crime fiction superstar who combines riveting authenticity with witty, elegant prose. Views: 746
The bestselling author of The Surgeon returns and so does that chilling novel's diabolical villain. Though held behind bars, Warren Hoyt still haunts a helpless city, seeming to bequeath his evil legacy to a student all-too-diligent . . . and all-too-deadly.
THE APPRENTICE
**It is a boiling hot Boston summer. Adding to the city's woes is a series of shocking crimes, in which wealthy men are made to watch while their wives are brutalized. A sadistic demand that ends in abduction and death.
The pattern suggests one man: serial killer Warren Hoyt, recently removed from the city's streets. Police can only assume an acolyte is at large, a maniac basing his attacks on the twisted medical techniques of the madman he so admires. At least that's what Detective Jane Rizzoli thinks. Forced again to confront the killer who scarred her, literally and figuratively, she is determined to finally end Hoyt's awful influence . . . even if it means receiving more resistance from her all-male homicide squad.
But Rizzoli isn't counting on the U.S. government's sudden interest. Or on meeting Special Agent Gabriel Dean, who knows more than he will tell. Most of all, she isn't counting on becoming a target herself, once Hoyt is suddenly free, joining his mysterious blood brother in a vicious vendetta. . . .
Filled with superbly created characters (and the medical and police procedural details that are her trademark) The Apprentice is Tess Gerritsen at her brilliant best. Set in a stunning world where evil is easy to learn and hard to end, this is a thriller by a master who could teach other authors a thing or two. Views: 746
It starts when Cal gets off the train at the wrong stop in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. He's stranded. Following a muddy path leads him to a castle that appears to be deserted. But inside is Corbenic, a magnificent hotel filled with rich people preparing for a banquet and Cal is their guest of honor. During the meal, he experiences a disturbing vision, but when he is asked to talk about what he has seen, he denies it. What if he's becoming crazy, like his mother? When Cal wakes the next morning, the elegant castle turns out to be nothing more than an abandoned ruin. But something inside him has changed he now knows he needs to right the wrongs in his life. It will be a difficult journey, and if Cal achieves his goal, it will not be without cost. The first step he must return to Corbenic. Views: 746
