In this devilishly clever collection of short fiction, renowned humorist Owen Egerton leads us on a wildly surprising, darkly comic, and often heart-wrenching ride into the terrible beauty of life's end. With razor wit and compassionate insight, Egerton has a crafted a work that brilliantly explores the pain and wonder of life, knowing that with the turn of any corner death could be panhandling for your soul. Views: 45
In Ted Bell's scorching follow-up to his New York Times bestseller Assassin, intrepid intelligence operative Alex Hawke must thwart a secret, deadly alliance between China and France before they annihilate everything and everyone in their headlong rush toward world domination. Aboard the Star of Shanghai in the south of France, an American spy is held captive. He possesses vital, explosive intelligence linking two nations and one horrifying plot. If he is not rescued, he faces certain torture and inevitable death. Nearby, in a seaside hotel, a man still haunted by the loss of his wife two years earlier finds comfort in the arms of a beautiful Chinese actress--but is she to be trusted? So begins Pirate, an electrifying thriller marking the return of international counterterrorist Alex Hawke. In Paris, a ruthless descendant of Napoleon has risen to power, hell-bent on restoring France's former glory. His fiery ambitions are cynically stoked by a coterie of cold-blooded Mandarins, plotting behind the gates of Beijing's Forbidden City. Cloaked in secrecy, this unholy alliance devises a twisted global plan, backed by China's growing nuclear arsenal, that will send America and the world to the brink of a gutwrenching showdown. With the aid of his old friend and former Navy SEAL, Stokely Jones, Hawke sets out to investigate the deadly connections that bind the French-Chinese axis. Together, they discover that a powerful German industrialist may hold the key, somewhere inside the walls of his Bavarian mountain lair. Meanwhile, clues to an old and gruesome murder in Paris lead to New York City, where horrifying evidence could finally bring a madman to his knees. In the end, as American and British forces prepare to defend a sovereign and oil-rich Gulf nation against unwilling occupation, the terror is all too real. The world is once more balanced on the knife-edge of a full-blown nuclear confrontation. Hawke must once more prepare to hurl himself deep into the nightmare visions of madmen. He must garner every ounce of strength, courage, and useful pain from his past. He must defeat this enemy or else forfeit the lives of untold thousands, including his own, to an axis of evil no historian could have ever predicted. Packed with unrelenting action, glamour, and high style, and featuring the spectacular Alex Hawke, who time and again transports readers to the edge of danger, Pirate is a spellbinding thriller. Be prepared for Alex Hawke's most daunting and heart-pounding mission yet. Here is an author who gets you in the palm of his hand...and then clenches his fist!Review"Very Bondlike...." -- The New York TimesFrom the Inside Flap"PIRATE is the third and best of the Hawke novels, an already brilliant series of derring-do and contemporary swashbuckling that contain more action and interesting characters than most books do in three." - Joe Hartlaub Views: 45
Laura Pritchett is an award-winning author who has quickly become one of the west's defining literary voices. We first met hardscrabble ranchers Renny and Ben Cross in Laura's debut collection, and now in Stars Go Blue, they are estranged, elderly spouses living on opposite ends of their sprawling ranch, faced with the particular decline of a fading farm and Ben's struggle with Alzheimer's disease. He is just on the cusp of dementia, able to recognize he is sick but unable to do anything about it —the notes he leaves in his pockets and around the house to remind him of himself, his family, and his responsibilities are no longer as helpful as they used to be. Watching his estranged wife forced into care-taking and brought to her breaking point, Ben decides to leave his life with whatever dignity and grace remains.As Ben makes his decision, a new horrible truth comes to light: Ray, the abusive husband of their late daughter is being released from prison early.... Views: 45
THERE WAS A BABY...Zach Corbett--as notorious for his badboy behavior as he was famous for his baby-blue eyes--is back in Tobias, Wisconsin. After eight years away, he knows he isn't coming back to any kind of warm family homecoming--but he has no idea he is coming home to a little girl who turns out to be his daughter.BUT WILL THERE BE A WEDDING?Fran Dalton never knew the woman who gave birth to Nell, but she's known Zach forever. Except, now he's different...changed. What was he doing all those years he was away? How is he adjusting to being a father? And why is he looking at Fran like she's the reason he's come back home? Views: 45
Break My Fall is a new adult love story revolving around shy, naïve Lee Bennett and her bold, and outrageous new roommate Kyle Carter. Their intense chemistry and desire pulls them together. But with so many obstacles between them and the world seemingly hell bent on tearing them apart, will Kyle be the man to break her fall? Views: 45
What if Stephanie Plum had an ex-cokehead for a sister? Gorgeous twin crime fighters battle a bunch of shady dudes in screenwriter Colt's vivacious debut, the first in a planned trilogy. Kerry and Terry McAfee are both tall, lanky and red-headed, but the similarity stops there: Terry's done time for cocaine possession and has a thing for dangerous women; Kerry's a UCLA grad with a fondness for dark, funny men. Together they're the L.A. PI firm Double Indemnity Investigations, a two-woman, perpetually broke organization dedicated to solving crimes, no job too big or small. When their aunt Reba, the Canasta Queen of Beverly Hills, sends her wealthy friend Lenore to ask the twins for their help in finding the $10,000 her playboy husband ran off with, Kerry and Terry find themselves up to their matching leather jackets in trouble. All roads lead to Dr. Hattrick, a pill-dispensing plastic surgeon who performs face-lifts on the Beverly Hills ladies-who-lunch crowd, but a cast of similarly menacing ne'er-do-wells, including a gun-toting Russian moll, a sleazy lawyer and a cop with a mullet and an attitude, keep the surprises coming. This is a fast-paced, gum-snapping, snarky chick-lit mystery with sparkle to spare. Views: 45
Vampire Julian Gaston has restlessly roamed the earth for three hundred years, taking his pleasure in the arms of lovely women and at the throats of his human prey. His nature compels him to take the blood of innocent humans, even as his compassion for fragile human life tempers his greed. Rich, handsome and powerful, Julian slips from place to place, yet loneliness is an overriding theme for a man nearly immortal and isolated from his own kind. Grace Davis has always known there was something "wrong" about her-she has a secret fascination with all things vampire and an unrequited longing for the sweet taste of blood. Abandoned at birth, she doesn't yet know her true nature. When Julian appears in her life, he offers delicious passion and dark discovery. Julian wrenches Grace from her safe but lonely humanity into something dark and dangerous, yet overwhelmingly sensual and explicit. The whisper of true love beckons but it comes wrapped in blood-soaked cruelty, gossamer sweetness and sizzling passion. Grace is led into sensual submission to a vampire who demands obedience and returns a pure passion in a fiery exchange of power and love. Views: 45
No man can take too much of a good thing, not even in tropical Key West. When beach-connoisseur Taco Bob decides on a road trip, he leaves the Conch Republic in search of the beautiful woman who broke his heart, and the ultimate trout recipe. But soon after he leaves town, the entire state is in an uproar when a young man on a mission from Texas makes off with the most prized souvenir in Key West. Meanwhile, a sexy but twisted cult leader shows up, determined to find some magical gold idols so she can rule the world, or at least the world of lingerie fashion. But first she has to deal with a renegade bounty hunter, a nearly invisible rival from her past, and the untold thousands of people cramming into Key West for the biggest outdoor concert in the state’s history. Taco Bob is going to have plenty of surprises waiting when he returns to the southernmost city in the US. At least it was the southernmost city when he left. Views: 45
Daniel has reached the dangerous age of forty and has just embarked on his first affair – a source of mingled guilt and ecstasy. His wife, Penny, seems unaware, but, worryingly, his thirteen-year-old stepdaughter has stopped speaking. He first met Penny and Pippa in Paris – two flame-haired innocents abroad, as seemingly happy-go-lucky as he was conventional and shy. Now, nine years on, Pippa is mute, Penny frustrated, and Daniel himself torn between his mistress and his family. The pressures slowly build, until at last he agrees to visit a Welsh healer who has set up camp on the site of a derelict lead-mine in one of the remotest parts of Wales. As a child of only seven, Daniel had been sent away to boarding school in Wales and, after the horror of his 'prison-years', has vowed never to return there. The grim memories blast back, however, once he sets foot in the camp and, though the healer may be a charlatan and his fellow campers range... Views: 45
