In 1881, 12-year-old Rodzina Clara Jadwiga Anastazya Brodski wishes she didn’t have to board the orphan train in Chicago. But she has no home, no family, and no choice. Rodzina doesn’t believe the orphans are on their way out West to be adopted by good families. She’s sure they will become slaves to strangers. Anyway, who would ever adopt a large, tough, stubborn girl of Polish origin? As the train heads west, all Rodzina has is a small suitcase and her family memories from the past. Will Rodzina ever step off the train to find the family that deep in her heart she’s searching for? Views: 500
The Angels of Darkness, the God-Emperor's most dedicated servants, harbor a dark secret that stretches back to the great Horus Heresy, a time when humanity was torn apart by intergalactic civil war Now the horrific events from this era threaten to be unleashed as Interrogator-Chaplain Boreas gets caught up in the murderous plots of an enemy from the Chapter's shadowy past. . . . Views: 498
This year’s worth of the most powerful, the most startling, the smartest and most astute, in short, the best crime journalism. Scouring hundreds of publications, Otto Penzler and Thomas H. Cook have created a remarkable compilation containing the best examples of the most current and vibrant of our literary traditions: crime reporting.Included in this volume are Maximillian Potter’s “The Body Farm” from GQ, a portrait of Murray Marks, who collects dead bodies and strews them around two acres of the University of Tennessee campus to study their decomposition in order to help solve crime; Jay Kirk’s “My Undertaker, My Pimp,” from Harper’s, in which Mack Moore and his wife, Angel, switch from run-ning crooked funeral parlors to establishing a brothel; Skip Hollandsworth’s “The Day Treva Throneberry Disappeared” from Texas Monthly, about the sudden disappearence of a teenager and the strange place she turned up; Lawrence Wright’s “The Counterterrorist” from The New Yorker, the story of John O’Neill, the FBI agent who tracked Osama bin Laden for a decade—until he was killed when the World Trade Center collapsed. Intriguing, entertaining, and compelling reading, Best American Crime Writing has established itself as a much-anticipated annual. Views: 494
Just a few hundred genes separate humans from chimpanzees. Imagine someone altering the chimp genome, splicing in human genes to increase the size of the cranium, reduce the amount of body hair, enable speech. What sort of creature would result? Sims takes place in the very near future, when the science of genetics is fulfilling its vaunted potential. It's a world where genetically transmitted diseases are being eliminated. A world where dangerous or boring manual labor is gradually being transferred to "sims," genetically altered chimps who occupy a gray zone between simian and human. The chief innovator in this world is SimGen, which owns the patent on the sim genome and has begun leasing the creatures worldwide. But SimGen is not quite what it seems. It has secrets . . . secrets beyond patents and proprietary processes . . . secrets it will go to any lengths to protect. Sims explores this brave new world as it is turned upside down and torn apart when lawyer Patrick Sullivan decides to try to unionize the sims. Right now, as you read these words, some company somewhere in the world is toying with the chimp genome. That is not fiction, it is fact. Sims is a science thriller that will come true. One way or another. Views: 493
It is 1974 and the country is still struggling to come to terms with the Vietnam War. In the small town of Conners, Georgia, Darcy has just started high school, her older sister Adel goes to weekend dances at the local Army base, and their mother tends her beautiful garden–the biggest and best in town. But Darcy’s world is soon changed forever when her mother goes to Atlanta for tests. The diagnosis is not good–breast cancer. There is so much Darcy wants to talk to her mother about: the war and what happened to the soldiers who were there; the feelings she is having for the new (and troubled) boy in school. But she can’t. So she finds solace in her mother’s garden. There she can help the flowers her mother planted bloom.
From the Hardcover edition. Views: 492
After the first blizzard of an early winter, a Mennonite college girl with a troubled past appears curled up and bloodied outside the offce of her childhood psychiatrist. Mute for many years as a child, Martha Lehman is again not talking. That same morning, the wealthy mother of Martha’s boyfriend is found murdered in her mansion in the country west of Millersburg, Ohio. Professor Mi chael Branden and Sheriff Bruce Robertson begin an investigation that, in the space of a single weekend, implicates Martha, threatens to tear apart the fabric of Millersburg College, pits one professor against another, and brings Caroline Branden near to a breaking point over the girl she once tried so fervently to help and who now seems determined to let no one help her at all. As Martha struggles to understand her enigmatic past and as Professor Branden wrestles with the murder of the college 6's leading benefactor, the real story of Martha Lehman emerges—born Amish, converted to Mennonite, and drawn to the English world for the worst of reasons. In Cast a Blue Shadow, his fourth Ohio Amish Mystery, P. L. Gaus continues to explore the thresholds of culture and faith among the Amish sects and their English neighbors of northern Ohio. Through interwoven plots, Gaus portrays these ways of life at odds with one another despite their seeming harmony. Coupling those clashes with the petty and desperate scufflings of academic politics, Gaus spins a suspenseful tale of power, pride, and tested faith. With Cast a Blue Shadow, Professors Branden and Gaus have done it again. Views: 491
Sarah Brandt, a midwife in turn-of-the-century New York City, has seen more than her share of joy and sorrow, birth and death. Now she will see for the first time how the squalor of the streets can breed madness and murder…The Prodigal Son Mission on Mulberry Bend stands as a refuge for girls who otherwise would have to live by selling the only thing they have of value—themselves. The work being done there so impresses Sarah that she volunteers to help out however she can—with clothes, with medical assistance, with the organization of a benefit dinner. And when one of the girls is found dead and refused burial because of her former life, Sarah’s passion for justice is aroused.Reluctantly, Sergeant Frank Malloy agrees to look into the death, if only to keep Sarah from endangering herself by pursuing the matter. But Sarah cannot be kept out of the investigation—and just as Malloy feared, her attempts to find the cause of the unfortunate girl’s death in the circumstances of her life put her in deadly danger—from an unexpected source…** Views: 490
The Barrier by Rex Beach (c. 1908 Blue Hardcover with gold color lettered spine.) Views: 489
Despite the odds stacked up against them, the Remnants seem to be surviving in the Rock's harsh environment while living peacefully with the inhabitants, but this new world still has its set of problems that Billy cannot handle. Views: 489
The War of the Spider Queen explodes!From the burning sands of Anauroch to the limitless labyrinth of the Underdark, an epic quest for the very essence of the Spider Queen takes one startling turn after another. Powerful forces are at work to find answers to where Lolth has gone. She may return as something greater than she was, or she may have gone from her drow children forever, leaving them to their own devices in a chilling Condemnation... Views: 488
*"Sometimes I wonder....Can a ghost find you, if she wants to?"* An intricate tale of love, haunting memories, and renewal, Second Glance begins in current-day Vermont, where an old man puts a piece of land up for sale and unintentionally raises protest from the local Abenaki Indian tribe, who insist it\'s a burial ground. When odd, supernatural events plague the town of Comtosook, a ghost hunter is hired by the developer to help convince the residents that there\'s nothing spiritual about the property. Enter Ross Wakeman, a suicidal drifter who has put himself in mortal danger time and again. He\'s driven his car off a bridge into a lake. He\'s been mugged in New York City and struck by lightning in a calm country field. Yet despite his best efforts, life clings to him and pulls him ever deeper into the empty existence he cannot bear since his fiancée\'s death in a car crash eight years ago. Ross now lives only for the moment he might once again encounter the woman he loves. But in Comtosook, the only discovery Ross can lay claim to is that of Lia Beaumont, a skittish, mysterious woman who, like Ross, is on a search for something beyond the boundary separating life and death. Thus begins Jodi Picoult\'s enthralling and ultimately astonishing story of love, fate, and a crime of passion. Hailed by critics as a "master" storyteller (Washington Post), Picoult once again "pushes herself, and consequently the reader, to think about the unthinkable" *(Denver Post). Second Glance,* her eeriest and most engrossing work yet, delves into a virtually unknown chapter of American history -- Vermont\'s eugenics project of the 1920s and 30s -- to provide a compelling study of the things that come back to haunt us -- literally and figuratively. Do we love across time, or in spite of it? Views: 487
Just why do humpback whales sing? That\'s the question that has marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn and his crew poking, charting, recording, and photographing very big, wet, gray marine mammals. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite me.Trouble is, Nate\'s beginning to wonder if he hasn\'t spent just a little too much time in the sun. \'Cause no one else on his team saw a thing -- not his longtime partner, Clay Demodocus; not their saucy young research assistant; not even the spliff-puffing white-boy Rastaman Kona (né Preston Applebaum). But later, when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot -- and his research facility is trashed -- Nate realizes something very fishy indeed is going on.By turns witty, irreverent, fascinating, puzzling, and surprising, Fluke is Christopher Moore at his outrageous best. Views: 486
Arriving home, warrior Andrew Ross discovered his castle ravaged by fire, his father and all who lived within its walls dead. Yet alive amidst the carnage was a woman with the face of an angel who claimed to have special powers. Had Andrew's enemy sent her to destroy him--or could she do as she claimed and wield her magic to uncover his enemy?
Gwenellen Drummond had always struggled to control the mystical powers that ran in her family--until a spell gone awry brought her to the aid of a fierce Highland laird out for vengeance, and her true gift was revealed. But would she win Andrew's love and trust in time to save his clan...and his shattered soul? Views: 483
