When seventeen-year-old Valerie Russell runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system. But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends. Impulsive Lolli talks of monsters in the subway tunnels they call home and shoots up a shimmery amber-colored powder that makes the shadows around her dance. Severe Luis claims he can make deals with creatures that no one else can see. And then there's Luis's brother, timid and sensitive Dave, who makes the mistake of letting Val tag along as he makes a delivery to a woman who turns out to have goat hooves instead of feet. When a bewildered Val allows Lolli to talk her into tracking down the hidden lair of the creature for whom Luis and Dave have been dealing, Val finds herself bound into service by a troll named Ravus. He is as hideous as he is honorable. And as Val grows to know him, she finds herself torn between her affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming. Bestselling author Holly Black follows her breakout debut, Tithe , with a rich, harrowing, and compulsively readable parable of betrayal, abuse, friendship, and love. Views: 31
Paddy Meehan is dreading them finding out. Her family assume that her dogsbody job at the Scottish Daily News is a stop gap between leaving school and her big Catholic wedding to Sean Ogivly, but Paddy lies in bed at night, tracing the patterns in the artexed ceiling and dreams of being a journalist, wearing smart suits and carving a place for herself among the boozy, broken-hearted idealists she fetches and carries for.Brian Wilcox's story is consuming the city. The toddler is missing, snatched from the front garden on a busy street when his mother nipped inside to answer the phone. Glasgow braces itself for the revelation of a lone sexual predator but the police are lead to a far darker conclusion as two young boys are implicated in the crime. Everyone at the Daily News is content to believe that the boys acted alone. Only Paddy feels certain that there was an adult hand in the murder and her thirst to find it deepens when she discovers that one of the boys is a distant relation.Unsure whether she is motivated by personal ambition or social concern, Paddy tries to uncover the truth. She realises, too late, that her actions have invited a savage havoc into her own life and could lead to a catastrophic injustice as well as professional suicide.Set in Glasgow in 1981, a time shaped by betrayal and conflict, when hunger strikes, riots and unemployment decimated the old industrial heartlands, The Field of Blood is the first in a new crime series tracing the life and career of Paddy Meehan, through the momentous events of the nineteen eighties, nineties and beyond. Infused with Minais unique blend of dark humour, personal insights, true crime, and the social injustices that pervade our society, this is a novel that will grip and challenging our perceptions of childhood innocence, crime and punishment, right and wrong. Views: 31
Charlotte Ashton had never belonged anywhere--until she met worldly Alexandre Dupree. The winemaker was consulting at her family's vineyard, and soon shy Charlotte was completely under his spell. He seemed to know all her secret desires, all her dreams--as if he'd been put on earth just for her pleasure.Alexandre seduced Charlotte in all the ways she had fantasized about. He'd read her secret journal and discovered the real Charlotte--the sensual lover, the generous woman, the vulnerable virgin. Was his crime so unforgivable when all he'd wanted was her love? Yet now to maintain her trust, he would have to continue to lie.... Views: 31
Twenty-five years after frontman Quinn Forrester became an ageless vampire and his sudden unexplained departure from the band, West Side, the opening of an art gallery brings the band’s lead guitarist, Jeff West, to New Orleans. A beautiful artist, Quinn’s doppelganger son, a vampire tour, and a series of events convince Jeff vampires could exist. Will Jeff finally uncover the shocking truth? Views: 31
Altered States - Book 1BLOOD SUNSETTime, and the fallout of a nuclear holocaust, have ravaged 21st century America, but one fundamental impulse of human nature remains: the will to survive. And only the strongest do survive. Men like Ryan Cawdor, whose inner strength and stubborn resolve continue to defy the worst that Deathlands offers. With grim determination, he and his warrior group continue to face the stark and brutal choices of this new world that are often not choices at all, but imperatives. Act first, ask questions later.STRANGE QUARRYA cold sense of dèjá vu becomes reality as the group emerges from a gateway they'd survived before -- a grim graveyard of lost friends and nightmares. The consuming need to escape the dangerous melancholy of the place forces Ryan and company onto the frozen tundra, where an even greater menace awaits. The forbidding land harbors a dying tribe -- cursed members of the ancient Inuit, who seize the arrival of Ryan and his band as their last hope to appease angry gods... by offering them up as human sacrifice.In the Deathlands, the price for survival is the constant fear of death. Views: 31
Returning from finishing school in France, Louisa Hatton was full of enthusiasm for the life ahead. She was convinced it would be exciting and romantic.But her parents had already planned a very suitable marriage for her to Lord Westbridge, their new neighbour. He was a cold, hard man and he wanted Louisa despite her protests.Her parents would not support her. Her father owed Lord Westbridge money.It seemed that for help she could only turn to the mysterious, handsome Roderick Blake, whose dark eyes haunted her.But Roderick was only a groom. How could he protect Louisa from the forces ranged against her?How they faced danger together and Louisa discovered Roderick's secret is told in this thrilling romantic novel by BARBARA CARTLAND. Views: 31
In the early 1990s China finally opened for business, and Wall Street wanted to get in on the act. When the investment bankers arrived from New York with their Harvard MBAs, pinstripes and tassled loafers, ready to negotiate with the Old Cadres, the stage was set for a collision between Wall Street's billions and the world's oldest culture.This is the true story of a tough Wall Street banker who had reached the top and found that it wasn't enough. Looking for glory, he came to China to surf the next new investment wave and teamed up with an ex-Red Guard and an Englishman living in Beijing. Together, they raised over $400 million and bought up factories all over China. They thought the contracts were watertight. But then they began learning the hard way that China doesn't play by anyone else's rules. Left sitting in their boardrooms while their Chinese partners marched off in their own different directions, they watched their millions begin sliding towards the abyss. Views: 31
After two years of being deafened by the TICKTOCK of her biological clock and tormented by Mother Nature's refusal to grant her a baby, Emma Hamilton decides to go for the instant solution: finding a Russian baby in need of a home. But Emma hasn't reckoned on the route to adoption being so complicated. Between proving that she's fit to be a mother (by inventing an unblemished past and discovering an unsuspected talent for housekeeping), driving her long-suffering husband insane with madcap schemes to make them the perfect would-be parents (a few Russian verbs a night and they'll be fluent in no time), and tripping over red tape every step of the way (who knew social workers could be so terrifying?) Emma finds out that adoption is far from the easy option – and that perfection has very little to do with finding the perfect match. Views: 31
Fleeing the sorcerous destruction of a long-lost city, Conan fights side-by-side with Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, that notorious and voluptuous she-pirate. Pursued by deadly spies and assassins, the Cimmerian and Valeria find themselves caught squarely in the front ranks of a bloody and savage war. But greater peril lurks in the shadow of a vast and forbidding mountain, where the Spirit Speaker wage occult battle with God-Men, who can read the future--and summon a Living Wind that consumes the soul even as it destroys the flesh. Even a sword powered by barbarian might is of little use against spirits, much less against great beings of the elder dark, but the final struggle for survival will come down ton...Conan and the Gods of the Mountain Views: 31
