Someone is killing beautiful young women and taking extraordinary risks to carefully pose their painted bodies in public places. The first is bronze, then silver - who will be gold? Detective Sergeant Stevie Hooper, young, hard-edged and newly seconded to the Serious Crime Squad, finds herself haunted by increasingly disturbing flashbacks as the bizarre case unfolds. And, as she closes in on the killer, the carefully drawn line between her professional and personal life becomes increasingly blurred, till she doesn't know who can be trusted. Views: 64
Police officer Donal Riordan, killed and brought back to life with the heart of his undead lover beating in his chest, is getting used to a bizarre and frightening new existence. As one of the undead the living citizens of Tristopolis distrust and fear him. But death has its advantages. He can sense the presence, the thoughts the feelings of his fellow zombies, he is tireless, he can see better, hear more acutely. But none of this will necessarily save him as he begins to investigate who is behind a plot to ensorcel the entire population of Tristopolis. The plot goes right to the top and anyway who gets in the way will be killed again. And all the time the members of the Unity party are stoking the fires of hatred towards the undead. John Meaney's new series is a superb melding of the science fiction and horror genres and is perfectly timed for the resurgance of horror in the market. Views: 64
When her husband dumps her for an old girlfriend and sets all of Peachland, South Carolina, gossiping, Janey Daniels has to get away—far away—for a "sabbatical" year. She flees to Burlington, Vermont, home of Aunt May, her mother's only living relative. There she adopts Beulah, a Labrador puppy in training to become a companion dog for the blind. Not for a moment does Janey suspect that this "year of the dog" will change her life forever.Shelby Hearon is an acknowledged master at illuminating the nuances of relationships. In Year of the Dog, she explores the surprising ways that the heart heals after a betrayal. While Janey is training Beulah, Beulah leads Janey to a new love, James Maarten, a smart, "fidgety" teacher they meet at the dog park. As Janey soon discovers, James has suffered a betrayal of his own that makes it hard for him to open up and trust her with even the smallest details of his past. While Janey tries to help James, she also reaches out to her enigmatic Aunt May, a retired librarian reputed to be the friend, perhaps even the lover, of popular mystery writer Bert Greenwood. When Janey attempts to solve the twin mysteries of why her great aunt has distanced herself from the family—and what her true relationship is with Bert Greenwood—Beulah provides the clues that lead Janey to uncover the secrets of her aunt's life. By the time Beulah's stay with Janey comes to an end, the people whose lives she's linked will discover that healing and reconciliation can come in the most unexpected ways.From Publishers WeeklyHearon's 17th book, the first since Ella in Bloom (2001), is a solid story of second chances and renewing family ties. Janey Daniels, 25, is taking a "sabbatical" in Vermont from her job as a pharmacist in Peachland, S.C., after her high school sweetheart and husband of five years dumps her for an ex-girlfriend. In Vermont, with its brilliantly colored Octobers and frigid winters, Janey bonds with Beulah, a Labrador puppy she's raising to become a companion for a blind person. It's while walking Beulah that she meets James Maarten, a potential boyfriend who is secretive about his past. At Janey's insistence, James eventually comes around to opening up and reconnecting with his family. Janey's attempts at intimacy, though, are sometimes rebuffed, leaving her with Beulah to love, socialize and wonder if she will ever be able to part with. In these moments, Janey's neediness is deeply felt, but she often appears far wiser and more even-keeled than her background and youth would allow, especially regarding her budding romance. Hearon's in good, but not top, form. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistJaney Daniels, 25, is a pharmacist in Peachland, South Carolina. When her husband of five years leaves her for an old girlfriend, she takes a one-year sabbatical in Vermont to avoid the talk. While there, she raises a puppy to be a companion dog for the blind. Walking Beulah at the dog park, she meets James Maarten. Coming from a place where everybody knows everything about everybody, Janey finds it hard to deal with his reserve, in the same way she finds it hard to deal with the idea of giving up Beulah. As her need for both of them grows, so does the intimacy. At the same time, she connects with Aunt May, the black sheep of the family, and finds an ally in a strange place. This is not just a cute-sad book about loving and losing a dog but instead a complex and very real story of love and loss, changing perspectives, and making the best of what life gives you. In Hearon's more than capable hands, it is a pleasure. Elizabeth DickieCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 64
[Book of The Dray Prescot series] Beneath the two suns of Antares, the planet Kregen was truly the wonder of the universe. For there, at the inscrutable planning of unseen powers, had been gathered members of the great races of the galaxy, set down among Kregen's lands to become part of the wonderful semi civilized cities and kingdoms of that world. There, too, were natural humans, and their strivings and ambitions colored and led the struggle to create a world of peace. Dray Prescot, Earthman, had been brought there as an agent of the Star Lords, but he had made himself into a rallying point of strength in Kregen's colorful history. Now, when the worst war between the humanoid lands had finally concluded, Prescot again confronts the Star Lords, only to learn that the hard won peace was just a transition to a great hemispheric invasion that was even then raiding over the horizon. For the first time, this volume contains a full glossary of the Spikatur Cycle. Views: 64
Science Fiction. 38184 words long. Views: 64
The latest Alex Peres mystery begins with a mini-mystery currently providing cocktail party conversation to many of Provincetown's gay community: are young, beautiful, sexy, Irish Maureen Delaney and 40-ish plain-jane Mary Sloan lovers or is Maureen simply a boarder? Opinion is about evenly divided, with numerous snickers and snide remarks. But titillation rapidly turns to united outrage when word gets out that Maureen has been attacked by an unidentified man after leaving a local bar. Maureen's attorney retains Alex to investigate, but far from clearing up the mystery, Alex seems to fall ever deeper into it. Why did Maureen delay seeing a doctor until all DNA, drug and alcohol tests are iffy at best? Only one test is certain: Maureen is pregnant, not from the night of the attack, but some two months earlier Views: 64
"St Paul's cathedral stands like a cornered beast on Ludgate hill, taking deep breaths above the smoke. The fire has made terrifying progress in the night and is closing in on the ancient monument from three directions. Built of massive stones, the cathedral is held to be invincible, but suddenly Pegge sees what the flames covet: the two hundred and fifty feet of scaffolding erected around the broken tower. Once the flames have a foothold on the wooden scaffolds, they can jump to the lead roof, and once the timbers burn and the vaulting cracks, the cathedral will be toppled by its own mass, a royal bear brought down by common dogs." (p.9)It is the Great Fire of 1666. The imposing edifice of St. Paul's Cathedral, a landmark of London since the twelfth century, is being reduced to rubble by the flames that engulf the City.In the holocaust, Pegge and a small group of men struggle to save the effigy of her father, John Donne, famous love poet and the great Dean of St. Paul's. Making their way through the heat and confusion of the streets, they arrive at Paul's wharf. Pegge's husband, William Bowles, anxiously scans the wretched scene, suddenly realizing why Pegge has asked him to meet her at this desperate spot.The story behind this dramatic rescue begins forty years before the fire. Pegge Donne is still a rebellious girl, already too clever for a world that values learning only in men, when her father begins arranging marriages for his five daughters, including Pegge. Pegge, however, is desperate to taste the all-consuming desire that led to her parents' clandestine marriage, notorious throughout England for shattering social convention and for inspiring some of the most erotic and profound poetry ever written. She sets out to win the love of Izaak Walton, a man infatuated with her older sister.Stung by Walton's rejection and jealous of her physically mature sisters, the boyish Pegge becomes convinced that it is her own father who knows the secret of love. She collects his poems, hoping to piece together her parents' history, searching for some connection to the mother she barely knew.Intertwined with Pegge's compelling voice are those of Ann More and John Donne, telling us of the courtship that inspired some of the world's greatest poetry of love and physical longing. Donne's seduction leads Ann to abandon social convention, risk her father's certain wrath, and elope with Donne. It is the undoing of his career and the two are left to struggle in a marriage that leads to her death in her twelfth childbirth at age thirty-three.In Donne's final days, Pegge tries, in ways that push the boundaries of daughterly behaviour, to discover the key to unlock her own sexuality. After his death, Pegge still struggles to free herself from an obsession that threatens to drive her beyond the bounds of reason. Even after she marries, she cannot suppress her independence or her desire to experience extraordinary love.Conceit brings to life the teeming, bawdy streets of London, the intrigue-ridden court, and the lushness of the seventeenth-century English countryside. It is a story of many kinds of love — erotic, familial, unrequited, and obsessive — and the unpredictable workings of the human heart. With characters plucked from the pages of history, Mary Novik's debut novel is an elegant, fully-imagined story of lives you will find hard to leave behind.From the Hardcover edition.Review"A powerful and passionate historical story vividly set in 17th-century England. . . . Fans of novels like A.S. Byatt's Possession and Tracy Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earring will enjoy Novik's perspective on one of the great figures of English literature."—*Vancouver Sun"A magnificent novel of seventeenth-century London. . . . Conceit is a mind-expanding creation of a distant world in often-exhilarating detail, seen, heard, felt, smelled and tasted. . . . Reading Conceit is like settling into a multi-course feast that shifts your ideas of food, of the wonders that art can conjure from the staples of life. . . . Buy the book. Find a free weekend and a quiet place. Do not Google. Step away from the remote. Enter London, 1666, the blaze of death and life. Recall what it means to know a world through the surface of a page, created in the words of a gifted stranger, made uniquely yours by your own storehouse of experience and the mystery of your subconscious. . . . Conceit will cut a reviving swath through your tech-addled world."—The Globe and Mail"[An] extraordinary debut novel. . . . As delightful as Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and as erudite and readable as A.S. Byatt’s Possession."—Quill and Quire*, starred review"A hearty, boiling stew of a novel, served up in rich old-fashioned story-telling. Novik lures her readers into the streets of a bawdy seventeenth-century London with a nudge and a wink and keeps them there with her infectious love of detail and character. A raunchy, hugely entertaining read that will leave you at once satiated and hungry for more."—Gail Anderson-Dargatz, author of The Cure for Death by Lightning"A gorgeous, startling, deeply moving novel. . . . A feast, a pageant, a seduction of words."—Thomas Wharton, author of Icef... About the AuthorCalled "a magnificent novel of seventeenth-century London" by The Globe and Mail, Conceit has been warmly received by book clubs and was chosen as a Book of the Year by both Quill & Quire and The Globe and Mail. It was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller, won The Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and was called one of the "top ten hottest new Canadian books" of 2008 by AbeBooks.Mary Novik was raised in a large family in Victoria, British Columbia and has been passionate about books all her life. She was inspired to write Conceit when she was visiting St. Paul's Cathedral in London and discovered that John Donne's effigy was the only monument that survived the Great Fire of 1666. That night, Mary had a dream in which his daughter Pegge braved the holocaust to rescue her father's statue. Why? From that one question, Conceit began to unfold.Mary lives in Vancouver, where she is writing a novel set in 14th-century Avignon. Views: 64
Everyone knows that all the members of the St. John family are destined for greatness - all, that is, except the rebellious Chase St. John. Then, as the fates would have it, a lifetime of drinking, gambling and womanising catches up and leads him to a fateful incident which changes his life. Harriet Ward, on the other hand, has always felt the weight of responsibility caring for her mother and two brothers, but drawing the line at marrying a stuffy bore to save her home, she creates an imaginary fiance, Captain John. There is no one more surprised than she when Chase conveniently shows up, wounded by an unknown attacker, to fill the role of her suitor. As they pose as lovers and begin to unravel the mystery of Chase's assailant, they soon realise that their imaginary love has quickly turned into reality. Views: 64
This storybook deals with childhood cancer."When will you take a chance?"It was a question Catherine Wilson had asked herself--when would she stop worrying about her son and start focusing on life? The truth was she was scared her son would relapse; scared she had forgotten how to live; scared the emotions one particular man brought to life would lead to heartbreak. Catherine wanted to be brave. And accepting Nathan Conners into her family's life was one of the toughest decisions she had to make. Because if she wasn't careful, Nathan would not only make Catherine believe in herself again...but also in love.... Views: 64
Buffalo wings of steel!Just how stupid is Stupid Chicken? Bernie Bridges thinks the superfowl cartoon character is a dumb cluck! And the same goes for his chirpy sidekick, Little Cluck-Cluck.But why not make a buck from a cluck? Bernie tries to sell Stupid Chicken T-shirts to his pals.One problem—half the school hates Stupid Chicken. Their hero is Drastic Duck, the Caped Quacker.Now Bernie finds himself caught in the middle of the battle between the Clucks and the Quacks! Views: 64
