Fourteen-year-old Dylan Kershaw's idea of a dream holiday includes at least three things: beaches to bask on, cosmopolitan culture, and a chance for romance (or at least his first kiss) with another boy. Unluckily for Dylan, his mum's treating the family to the least dreamy holiday ever: a £9.50 break at Starcross Sands, Cornwall's Crummiest Caravan Park.But Starcross Sands might not be so bad after all, especially if Dylan can win the heart of Jayden-Lee, the gorgeous boy in the caravan next-door. There's only one thing standing in true love's way: the park's massive hamster mascot, Nibbles, who seems to have it in for both Dylan and his romantic chances. Dylan's best friend, Kayla, claims that appearances can be deceptive: so is Jayden-Lee just as lovely beneath the surface, and what could be lurking under Nibbles' furry face?Boy Meets Hamster is the laugh-out-loud funny debut novel from Birdie Milano. Views: 43
The Edgar-nominated author of Gun Monkeys is back with a thrill-a-minute suspense novel that mixes crime and academia—with hilarious results. Here Victor Gischler draws us into a wild and wicked world, where tenured professors are busy burying bodies, cash-up-front P.I.'s hunt for missing coeds and one desperate street-tough has to decide which he'd rather be: a live poet or a dead criminal. An unlucky grad student just got himself killed in a robbery gone bad. And as lowly drug lieutenant Harold Jenks races with the killer out of the alley, a light goes off in his head: He'll steal the dead kid's identity. Now Jenks, who once lorded it over seven square blocks in East St. Louis, is headed due west. With a.32 in his pocket, a 9mm Glock taped across his back, and a rap sheet nearly as long as Finnegans Wake, he's cruising the halls of academia as Eastern Oklahoma U's newest grad student, looking for action and hoping he can stay one couplet ahead of his violent past. While this new bad boy on campus makes mincemeat of his metaphors, across campus visiting professor Jay Morgan has a more pressing problem: What to do about the dead coed in his bed. The professor's no killer, but try telling that to private eye Deke Stubbs. With the professor on the lam and Stubbs hot on his trail, more trouble blows into town. Now, as St. Louis drug boss Red Zach and his minions converge on Fumbee, Oklahoma, looking for a consignment of missing cocaine, the bullets start flying faster than the zingers at a faculty hate fest. For Morgan and Jenks, now desperate fugitives from poetic justice, survival means learning new skills—and learning fast. Because if they find out they're bottom-of-the-class, that means they're already dead. Featuring the sleaziest, sorriest, and most captivating group of criminal lowlifes, sexed-up academics, poets, and rappers ever to collide in one crime novel, The Pistol Poets speeds deliriously to its electrifying payoff. Views: 43
Fans of Brandon Mull's Fablehaven series and The Spiderwick Chronicles will dive into this magical, mythical fantasy series from Kari Sutherland and Tui T. Sutherland, author of the Wings of Fire series. Filled with unicorns, dragons, phoenixes, and other fairy tale creatures, the Menagerie is a highly guarded secret facility in the small town of Xanadu, Wyoming. At least, it was a secret--until six griffin cubs escaped.If Logan and Zoe don't get the cubs back fast, the entire Menagerie will be shut down. The race is on and the resulting adventure is only the beginning of a thrilling series that will leave readers wanting a magical menagerie of their very own. Views: 43
Sabina Murray's first book since she won the PEN/Faulkner Award for The Caprices seduces with its dark delight in her taboo subject.When we meet Katherine, the winning-and rather disturbing-twenty-three-year-old narrator, she has just left Italy and arrived in New York City, but what has propelled her there is a mystery. She soon strikes up an affair with a middle-aged Russian émigré novelist she meets on the subway, and almost immediately moves into his apartment. Katherine's occasional allusions to a frighteningly eccentric mother and tyrannical father suggest a somberness at the center of her otherwise flippant and sardonic demeanor. Soon restless, she begins journeying across the continent, trailed, everywhere she goes, by a string of murders. As the ritualistic killings begin to pile up, Katherine takes to meditating on cannibalism in literature, art, and history. The story races toward a hair-raising conclusion, while Katherine and the reader close in on the... Views: 43
This bonus e-only short story is the perfect introduction to bestselling author Virginia Smith's latest series, Tales from the Goose Creek B&B. Set in the years before the Richardsons launch their bed and breakfast scheme, the quirky residents of the small Kentucky town are all in a tizzy over the upcoming Fall Festival. Alison, Al and Millie's headstrong daughter, astounds everyone with the news that she's getting married—in three weeks—to a Colombian! As her parents frantically try to stop the nuptials, Dr. Horatio, Goose Creek's beloved veterinarian, is determined to solve the mystery of the six-toed kittens that have been popping up all over town.This charming prequel will make you laugh out loud, fall in love with the delightful residents of Goose Creek, and remind you why you love reading. Views: 43
The Right Address sears through the upper crust of New York's glittering Park Avenue scene to dish the dirt on the ladies who lunch, the gents who club, and the desperate climbers who will stop at nothing to join the backstabbing, champagne-sipping, socialite-eat-socialite stratosphere. When Melanie Sartomsky, wily Floridian flight attendant, snares billionaire divorcée Arthur "the coffin king" Korn, she is catapulted into the crème de la crème of Park Avenue society, where hiring the wrong decorator is tantamount to social suicide, and where, if you're anyone, your personal assistant has a personal assistant. But Melanie quickly discovers that in the world of the rich and idle, malicious gossip is as de rigeur as owning twenty pairs of Manolo Blahniks. And despite her frenzied plunge into the charity circuit and the right dinner reservations, her neighbors are Givenchy-clad vultures who see her as nothing more than a reinvented trailer trollop. To... Views: 43
Waiting to Exhale meets Church Folk as five female attorneys do brunch each week to trade tales about their love lives, law firms, and the Lord!Meet Capri, an attorney at a top Houston firm. She seems to have it all together all the time until a seductive client topples her self-control. Then there's Jermane, a devout Catholic who met her husband in law school and has never been with another man. But now her workaholic marriage is threatened by temptation.Angel, on the other hand, sees men merely as a means to sex. Her scorn for love of all kinds--godly or otherwise--is challenged by a serious health scare. Meanwhile, Jewel bases her dating choices on the size of a man's bank account until she meets a new flame who causes her to reconsider her requirements. Finally, there's Lexi, the link between the ladies, who provides sage advice while praying for Mr. Right. But what happens when depression hits hard? Through conversation... Views: 43
With the redolent atmosphere of Ian Rankin and the spine-chilling characters of Thomas Harris, Mo Hayder's The Devil of Nanking, takes the reader on an electrifying literary ride from the palatial apartments of yakuza kingpins to deep inside the secret history of one of the twentieth century's most brutal events: the Nanking Massacre.A young Englishwoman obsessed with an indecipherable past, Grey comes to Tokyo seeking a lost piece of film footage of the notorious 1937 Nanking Massacre, footage some say never existed. Only one man can help Grey. A survivor of the massacre, he is now a visiting professor at a university in Tokyo. But he will have nothing to do with her.So Grey accepts a job in an upmarket nightspot, where a certain gangster may be the key to gaining the professor's trust. An old man in a wheelchair surrounded by a terrifying entourage, the gangster is rumored to rely on a mysterious elixir for his continued health. Taut, gritty, sexy, and harrowing, The... Views: 43
THE BURNING LEGION HAS COME. Led by the mighty Archimonde, scores of demonic soldiers now march across the lands of Kalimdor, leaving a trail of death and devastation in their wake. At the heart of the fiery invasion stands the mystic Well of Eternity -- once the source of the Night Elves' arcane power. But now the Well's energies have been defiled and twisted, for Queen Azshara and her Highborne will stop at nothing to commune with their newfound god: the fiery Lord of the Burning Legion...Sargeras. The night elf defenders, led by the young druid, Malfurion Stormrage, and the wizard, Krasus, fight a desperate battle to hold back the Legion's terrible onslaught. Though only embers of hope remain, an ancient power has risen to aid the world in its darkest hour. The dragons -- led by the powerful Aspect, Neltharion -- have forged a weapon of incalculable power: the Dragon Soul, an artifact capable of driving the Legion from the world forever. But its use may cost far more than any could have foreseen. The second novel in an original trilogy of magic, warfare, and heroism based on the bestselling, award-winning electronic game series from Blizzard Entertainment. Views: 43
From gifted new writer Tasha Alexander comes a stunning novel of historical suspense set in Victorian England, meticulously researched and with a twisty plot that involves stolen antiquities, betrayal, and murder And Only to Deceive For Emily, accepting the proposal of Philip, the Viscount Ashton, was an easy way to escape her overbearing mother, who was set on a grand society match. So when Emily's dashing husband died on safari soon after their wedding, she felt little grief. After all, she barely knew him. Now, nearly two years later, she discovers that Philip was a far different man from the one she had married so cavalierly. His journals reveal him to have been a gentleman scholar and antiquities collector who, to her surprise, was deeply in love with his wife. Emily becomes fascinated with this new image of her dead husband and she immerses herself in all things ancient and begins to study Greek. Emily's intellectual pursuits and her desire to learn more about Philip take her to the quiet corridors of the British Museum, one of her husband's favorite places. There, amid priceless ancient statues, she uncovers a dark, dangerous secret involving stolen artifacts from the Greco-Roman galleries. And to complicate matters, she's juggling two very prominent and wealthy suitors, one of whose intentions may go beyond the marrying kind. As she sets out to solve the crime, her search leads to more surprises about Philip and causes her to question the role in Victorian society to which she, as a woman, is relegated. Views: 43