Tito Amato returns from an operatic tour expecting to relax with his family. Instead he finds his merchant brother Alessandro imprisoned on a trumped-up smuggling charge, a capital crime in 1740 Venice. The senator who controls Alessandro’s fate is determined to have a Venetian as the next pope. He forces Tito to Rome to sing at the villa of a powerful, music-loving cardinal who will control the coming papal election. Spying as he serenades Cardinal Fabiani and his guests, Tito peers into the dark mirror of Roman politics. Pope Clement XII is sinking fast, and two candidates emerge as leading contenders for St. Peter’s throne. Will Fabiani support the highborn Venetian whose secret passion is tinkering with electrical experiments? Or the humble cardinal with the gift of healing and a mysterious past? The discovery of a beautiful corpse in Fabiani’s garden complicates Tito’s mission. Fabiani believes that a member of his household killed the young maid in a fit of madness, but Tito follows clues that indicate a more complex motive, assisted by his irrepressible manservant Benito and Englishman Gussie Rumbolt. From the heights of the Janiculum Hill to the muddy waters of the Tiber, from a cozy Trastevere cookshop to the chilly corridors of the Quirinal Palace, the trio wrestles with events that could change the course of history. Can Tito stop the killer and affect the election before Pope Clement takes his last breath? Or will Alessandro face the scaffold? Views: 53
The Green Zone, Baghdad, 2003: in this walled-off compound of swimming pools and luxurious amenities, Paul Bremer and his Coalition Provisional Authority set out to fashion a new, democratic Iraq. Staffed by idealistic aides chosen primarily for their views on issues such as abortion and capital punishment, the CPA spent the crucial first year of occupation pursuing goals that had little to do with the immediate needs of a postwar nation: flat taxes instead of electricity and deregulated health care instead of emergency medical supplies. In this acclaimed firsthand account, the former Baghdad bureau chief of The Washington Post gives us an intimate portrait of life inside this Oz-like bubble, which continued unaffected by the growing mayhem outside. This is a quietly devastating tale of imperial folly, and the definitive history of those early days when things went irrevocably wrong in Iraq.From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 53
EDITORIAL REVIEW:
In the moments leading up to the Rapture, nobody knows it is coming as the clock silently ticks down. Choices are made. The stage is set as Nicolae Carpathia ruthlessly eliminates any obstacles in his rise to power. In the twinkling of an eye, loved ones disappear without a good-bye. Heaven rejoices as millions are welcomed into the unspeakable presence of God. The darkest days may lie ahead for those who have been left behind. On o6-o6-o6, read the story that leads you right into *Left Behind*. Views: 53
Suzannah (known as Zannah) and Adrian are planning to marry in May, the loveliest time of year. Zannah has always wanted a beautiful, traditional wedding and feels she missed out the first time round when she married Cal, father of her daughter Isis.Now, the two families are to meet for the first time. Will the slightly bohemian Gratrixes from Cheshire and the wealthy Ashtons from the Home Counties like each other? The meeting will take place on neutral territory, at a lunch party in the home of Zannah's great aunt Charlotte in London—but no one anticipates the reaction when Zannah's mother and Adrian's stepfather first meet, and a series of events is set in motion with consequences no one expected...As the story unfolds, full of drama, conflict, revelations, reconciliations and romance, the two families plus several outsiders move forward towards the inevitable Big Day. Not everyone will get what they want. Not all marriages are made in heaven... Views: 53
In these ten stories, Ford mines literary gold from the wind-scrubbed landscape of the American West - and from the guarded hopes and gnawing loneliness of the people who live there. A refugee from justice driving across Wyoming with his daughter; an unhappy girlfriend and a stolen Mercedes; a boy watching his family dissolve in a night of tragicomic violence; two men and a woman swapping hard-luck stories in a frontier bar as they try to sweeten their luck. Rock Springs is a masterpiece of taut narration, cleanly chiselled prose, and empathy so generous that it feels like a kind of grace. Views: 53
In a rainy ditch in a Devon wood, a hitchhiker is found dead. Almost a year later, on another rainy night, another murder; this time, however, the victim is found just outside a pub called I Am the Only Running Footman, near Berkeley Square in London's fashionable Mayfair District. Devon policeman Brian Macalvie is convinced that the two murders are connected. And thus, in his eighth case, Richard Jury is drawn into the so-called Porphyria killings. A particularly elusive pair of murders. From the streets of London to the village of Somers Abbas, Jury and Macalvie are joined by the stolid if hypochondriac Sergeant Wiggins and the reluctant Melrose Plant. They meet in another pub, the Mortal Man, and, amidst the clatter and cry of the Warboys family, they ponder a labyrinthine set of clues. Views: 53
### From Publishers Weekly
Far from Haines's fluffy Southern cozies in tone, if not geography, this thriller from the author of *Crossed Bones* aims at a noirish literary quality it only partly achieves. On the plus side are powerful scenes of suspense and a moody evocation of time and place. Eschewing anything so obvious as naming an actual date, Haines makes it clear through subtle clues that the action is happening just after the end of WWII. The entrenched racial structure of a small Mississippi town of that era is similarly well done. Chief among the novel's shortcomings is the heavy-handed rendering of the love story between a mixed-race beauty, Jade Dupree, and all-white deputy Frank Kimble. Other interracial relationships are integral to the story, but the tantalizing possibility of a strong unifying theme is lost in banality and cliché. After society queen Marlena Bramlett, Jade's white half-sister, is brutally raped and Marlena's young daughter kidnapped, the plot thickens like cold grits. Haines loses control as her story builds to a discordant conclusion, which could be setting up a sequel but otherwise fails to satisfy. *(Apr.)* Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
### Review
Praise for Carolyn Haines
*Library Journal *named *Penumbra* one of its Best Mysteries of 2006.
"Haines's sentences neatly and exactly delineate passionate emotions and richly drawn characters." --*Rocky Mountain News *on *Judas Burning* "Like the heat of a Deep South summer, Ms. Haines's novel has an undeniable intensity; it's impossible to shake its brooding atmosphere." --*The New York Times Book Review *on *Judas Burning* "Clever and impressive." --*Publishers Weekly *on *Hallowed Bones* "A writer of exceptional talent." *--**Milwaukee** Journal* on *Them Bones* * * "Wickedly funny. Devilishly clever. Scintillatingly Southern. Carolyn Haines is an author to die for." --Carolyn Hart, author of *April Fool Dead* * * "The past rises up and grabs the present by the throat in this riveting look into a small town's dark heart. Fans of Haines's Bones series will welcome this latest novel's haunted characters and driving narrative." --Julia Spencer-Fleming, Edgar finalist and author of *To Darkness and to Death* Views: 53
The legend of Sheila NaGeira looms large in the early history of the New World.And it stretches back to Ireland in the 1500s and an ancient crone, Sheila Na Gig, whose form still haunts church doorways.NaGeira tells two interlocking stories. The first is of eighty-year-old Sheila, a midwife and healer living apart from a settlement at the North American Bristol plantation in 1660. The second, a parallel tale, tracks Sheila's early life in Dublin's English Pale where she is caught in the crossfire of politics and tragedy. Even after she escapes persecution, leaving her enemies far behind, Sheila finds that forces can still resurface to conspire against her. Views: 53
