Turned into a succubus against her will, Olivia Rhodes has lived the past 120 years as a slave to her cruel and vindictive vampire master. She’s escaped him, but he’s closing in fast. Her only hope? The fallen angel that abandoned her when she was turned, David Thornton. But David betrayed her a long, long time ago... Views: 45
Mystic Water, an enchanted Southern town where anything can happen, is sprinkling its magic on the unsuspecting assistant librarian, Emma Chase, who feels lost in a life of disappointment. Plagued with an everyday existence of past tragedies and regrets, Emma has relinquished her future to her job of sorting books in the library. Her only friend, as it seems, is head librarian, Mordecai Wallach, the sturdy father-figure who tries to right her floundering ship.One night after the library has closed, Emma hears voices coming from the archives section. She finds peculiar visitors who seem all too familiar, and she unexpectedly entangles herself in the long-held secrets of the library’s magic. When Emma must take control of the library in Morty’s absence, she realizes he hasn’t been entirely honest with her.While trying to discover the truth, she comes face-to-face with James Grey, a handsome military man with a history of his own and an irresistible... Views: 45
The Devil Wears Prada meets Sex and the City in a wickedly funny debut novel about a girl who lands a dream internship at a magazine in New York City. If only she hadn't lied about being a dating expert on her resume...Harper Anderson has always thought she should have been born somewhere more glamorous than Palo Alto, California. After all, how many water polo matches and lame parties in classmates' backyard can one girl take? Already resigned to working at a juicery for the summer, Harper is shocked when the ultra-prestigious teen magazine, Shift, calls to say they want her to be their teen dating blogger for the summer. All she needs to do is get her butt to New York in two days. There's just one teeny, tiny problem: Apart from some dance floor make-outs, Harper doesn't have a whole lot of dating experience. So when Shift's application asked for an "edgy" personal essay, Harper might have sort of misappropriated her friends'... Views: 45
Trapped in the realm of Faerie, Rosamunde can only be released by true love - but the man she loved is dead. Padraig yearns to be more than a friend... can he win her heart forever? A novella linked to my Rogues of Ravensmuir and Jewels of Kinfairlie trilogies, originally published in the Mammoth Book of Irish Romance. The story was edited for space constraints there - this is the WHOLE story. Views: 45
Facing life alone at an advanced age, Julius Herz cannot shake the sense that he should be elsewhere, doing other things. Walking through bustling streets that seem increasingly alien to him, he’s confronted by life’s pressing questions with an urgency he has never known before: what do we owe the people in our lives? How should we fill our days? Feeling fortified despite the growing ache in his heart, Herz finds himself also blessed with a stirring sense of exhilaration. After a lifetime of deferring to others’ stronger wills, he faces a future of possibility, the only constraint the deeply ingrained habits of his mind. Profound and deeply resonant, Making Things Better explores the quandaries of aging, longing, and self-discovery with transfixing precision and spellbinding acuity.From Publishers WeeklyMaking things better has been Julius Herz's lifelong responsibility. He is yet another character in Brookner's sepia photograph album of dutiful sons and daughters trapped by familial duties into stoic existences. Like many of her protagonists, Julius is an outsider whose assimilated Jewish parents settled in London to escape the Nazis and never really fit in. His older brother Freddy's nervous breakdown, which ended his incipient career as a concert pianist, hurled their parents into bottomless grief, and firmly placed Julius under obligation to minister to the needs of all three. Now they are all dead. At 73, retired from an undemanding and unfulfilling job and amicably divorced, Julius faces existential questions with a sense of panic. He's desperate to find a purpose for the rest of his life, to create some companionship and perhaps even intimacy, and to put an end to his lonely interior exile. Brookner's gentle exploration of Julius's emotional dilemma is pursued with exquisite precision and empathy. In her novels, fate is cruel and hope of happiness a chimera, yet her characters are so fully realized that one feels the beat of life in their veins and longs for them to yield to their stifled urge for freedom. In Julius's case, the resurgence of sexual desire and an unexpected letter from the cousin he has loved since their youth in Berlin provide insights into what he belatedly recognizes as "the fallacious enterprise of making things better." While he grasps at a last chance at happiness, the narrative becomes a meditation on the longing for love, its risks and dangers, and how its absence makes life itself null and void. If Brookner treads a small territory again and again, there is no sense of dej… vu or of staleness. She has the facility to make each of her extended character studies (this is her 21st novel) ring with psychological truth.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistIn her twenty-first novel, Brookner presents yet another exquisitely rendered portrait of a deep-thinking loner well on in years who is granted startling insights into the undercurrents that have shaped his staid life. Julius Herz has exemplified obedience, uncomplainingly sacrificing even the most modest desires to meet the needs of his inept and unhappy parents and strange older brother. The family fled Germany for London once being Jewish became a liability, and somehow they never recovered from the shock of their exile, a fate seemingly avoided by Julius' glamorous aunt and her sexy and petulant daughter, Fanny, the great unrequited love of Julius' life. Now all alone after a brief marriage to a nurse, Julius struggles to maintain his dignity under the assault of age and utter solitude. Brookner is a master at depicting the stormy inner weather of an outwardly placid life, and she has conjured a munificent consciousness in Julius, a devotee of Freud who pays careful attention to his dreams and to his responses to everything from a painting by Delacroix of Jacob struggling with the angel to the "magnificent indifference of nature." As Julius mulls over his past and experiences frissons of desire when a beautiful young woman moves in downstairs, he comes to understand that he has been beguiled more by his fantasies then by his actual life, and his arduous and compelling journey of self-discovery becomes a conduit for profound reflections on what we owe others and on how we define ourselves. Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 45
Riveting . . . vibrant and unsparing." —Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review)Superb. . . . Startlingly original." —Library Journal (starred review)Once I started reading these stories, I couldn't stop. They absorbed me thoroughly, with their taut narratives and evocative language—the language of a poet." —JAY PARINI, author of Jesus: The Human Face of God and The Last StationSherwood Anderson would recognize this world of lonely, longing characters, whose surface lives Coffey tenderly plumbs. These beautiful stories—spare, rich, wise and compelling—go to the heart." —FREDERIC TUTEN, author of Self Portraits: Fictions and Tintin in the New WorldWhether [Coffey is] writing about a sinning priest or a man who's made a career out of branding or about himself, we can smell Coffey's protagonists and feel their breath on... Views: 45
From the author of the Aurealis-winning Kumiko and the Dragon comes the final captivating book in the Kumiko and the Dragon trilogy. Kumiko is used to having a dragon guarding her night and day, but what she doesn't quite know is why she needs one ... Since discovering the secret of the Shadow Catchers, a group of powerful sorcerers determined to steal magic at any cost, Kumiko knows it's only a matter of time before her family's link to dragons puts them all in grave danger. Is there a way to stop the Shadow Catchers once and for all and will Kumiko take the risk? Kumiko and the Shadow Catchers follows Kumiko's last and most exciting adventure as she travels through a world of shadows and dark magic in order to find freedom for herself and the kingdom of dragons. Views: 45
MY HEART WANTS A KIND OF JUSTICE THE LAW CAN’T GIVE On a dark, rainy night I drove my overstuffed junker car back to a town I never expected to see again. And when I needed a rescue by the side of the road, a six-foot tall piece of hot, unfinished business named Mark was what the universe sent me. Three years earlier I’d fled town (and Mark) to follow my wrongly-convicted father to his federal prison, working crappy jobs to stay afloat and visit him every second I could. But now Dad’s dead and I’m mysteriously offered the best job of my life at the college where his life blew up when he was accused of a crime he didn’t commit. Someone wants me here. Desperately. I’m hoping it’s Mark. Because if it’s not, I’m in more danger than I ever imagined. And if it is? Mark may be the most dangerous choice of all. RETURN is book 1 in the Coming Home romantic suspense trilogy by Meli Raine.**
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Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at fifty, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that would cripple Casanova. With all of Bukowski's trademark humor and gritty, dark honesty, this 1978 follow-up to Post Office and Factotum is an uncompromising account of life on the edge. Views: 45
Different Victims - The blonde film student. The brunette paralegal. The red-headed artist.Different Methods - The first victim is strangled. The second is stabbed repeatedly. And the third is pushed out of an open window.Same Madman - In the city of Seattle, no single woman is safe. From afar he watches the ones he so desperately wants. Willing to do whatever it takes to prove his love. But should his latest obsession betray him, he will have no choice but to punish her. By finding new and brutal ways to teach her a lesson. And by finally loving her - to death... Views: 45
