New York Times bestselling authors Lisa Jackson, Beverly Barton, and Wendy Corsi Staub join forces to create a thrilling novel about love, revenge, and the dark secrets three women hold to a terrifying murder. . . A Killer Who Gets Away With Murder Once. . . It's been twenty years since the night Jake Marcott was brutally murdered at St. Elizabeth High School. It's a night that shattered the lives of Lindsay Farrell, Kirsten Daniels, and Rachel Alsace. It's a night they'll never forget. A killer will make sure of that. . . Finds It Easier To Kill Again. . . A 20-year reunion has been scheduled for St. Elizabeth's. For some alumni, very special invitations have been sent: their smiling senior pictures slashed by an angry red line. . . And Again. . .And Again. . . Views: 58
PLAYMATE OF THE DAYJack Ryan has a man's fists, a boy's mind, and the cunning of an ex-con. Nancy Hayes has a woman's sleek moves and the instincts of a shark. Now, in a Michigan resort town, a rich man wants Jack gone and Nancy for himself.For Ryan the choice is clear: Nancy's promises of pleasure, her crazy, thrill-seeking schemes of breaking into homes, shooting guns, and maybe stealing a whole lot of money are driving him half mad. But there's one thing Ryan doesn't know yet: his new playmate is planning the deadliest thrill of all.Razor-sharp and wholly unpredictable, The Big Bounce is an Elmore Leonard classic--a sly, beguiling story of a man, a woman, and a nasty little crime. Views: 58
It's Christmas in D.C., and rookie multimillionaire Anastasia Devlin is given the greatest gift of all—the arrival of her long-lost South African twin siblings, Juliana and Alexander. Of course, instead of gifts, the twins come bearing trouble that even the family's new fortune can't fix. Intrigued by a televangelist who builds schools in third-world countries, social activist Juliana has donated her photographic skills to helping the charismatic reverend develop a Christian amusement park...Except Julie's photos inadvertently reveal that the grounds may be a not-so-amusing cemetery for murder victims. When Juliana starts searching for answers and disappears, Alexander and Ana petition the aid of Ana's former enemy and current lover, Amadeus Graham, the family's mysterious spy in the attic. Graham, alas, is out Christmas shopping—for a new home—leaving Ana heartbroken and in the lurch without his resources. Can Ana save Christmas, catch a killer, and still... Views: 58
The hugely admired author of "The Last Fine Time" preserves and makes new the sights, smells, sounds, and poetry of country living. Klinkenborg reveals the beauty of the American landscape, not from a scenic overlook, but through a screened-in porch or from the window of a pickup driving down an empty highway in the teeth of an approaching storm. Views: 58
Margaret loves her parents and hanging out with her best friend, Maizon. Then it happens, like a one-two punch, during the summer she turns eleven: first, Margaret's father dies of a heart attack, and then Maizon is accepted at an expensive boarding school, far away from the city they call home. For the first time in her life, Margaret has to turn to someone who isn't Maizon, who doesn't know her heart and her dreams..."Ms. Woodson writes with a sure understanding of the thoughts of young people, offering a poetic, eloquent narrative that is not simply a story of nearly adolescent children, but a mature exploration of grown-up issues: death, racism, independence, the nurturing of the gifted black child and, most important, self-discovery." (The New York Times) Views: 58
Jean Ure returns with more warmth and wit in a brilliant book about what happens when two girls decide to run away from home.Fourteen-year-old Jade is fed up with fighting with her mum and step-dad, and her shy sixteen-year-old friend Honey is having a miserable time with her mum, but when Jade decides they should both run away, Honey isn't so sure.It's only when they get to London and things don't work out quite how they expected that Honey shows she has hidden depths, and Jade realises that home is not so bad after all... Views: 58
A war of dark and dangerous magic burns across the mortal earth. In The Priest of Blood, a youth named Aleric became falconer, then soldier — and finally, vampyre. In The Lady of Serpents, a dark queen rose to power among the frozen towers of her kingdom. And now, she seeks the Dark Madonna from beyond the Veil. From New York Times bestselling author Douglas Clegg comes the third book of the epic dark fantasy saga, The Vampyricon. In a world of gods and monsters, love and betrayal, handmaidens of Death, terrifying and beautiful vampyres, shapeshifting wolf women, shadow priests, epic battles, and magnificent underworld kingdoms, *The Vampyricon concludes with a titanic battle fought between the Queen of Wolves and Aleric, Falconer, the priest-king of the race of vampyres. Praise for The Vampyricon: “Astonishing. Douglas Clegg writes of…nightmares with such clarity and passion you don’t end up reading his books; you end up drinking them in. The Priest of Blood is a bloody gem.” Christopher Rice, New York Times bestselling author of The Vines and Heaven's Rise. "If you like Game of Thrones and vampires, you're going to love The Vampyricon." - Robert Swartwood, USA Today bestselling author of The Serial Killer's Wife and New Avalon. "A dark tale of swords, sorcery, and vampires." -- Christine Feehan, NY Times bestselling author. "Douglas Clegg has accomplished a rarity in the horror vein...This book will sink its teeth into you" -- The Kansas City Star "Richly layered, beautifully rendered foray into a past filled with sorcery and mystery -- and a rousing good story." -- Kelley Armstrong, New York Times bestselling author Stunning...gives the iconic vampire a massive makeover. -- Publishers Weekly, starred review. Discover Douglas Clegg's fiction: Lights Out Neverland The Children’s Hour The Halloween Man You Come When I Call You The Hour Before Dark Nightmare House Bad Karma Goat Dance Breeder Afterlife Purity Dark of the Eye The Words Wild Things Red Angel Night Cage Mischief The Infinite The Abandoned The Necromancer Isis Naomi The Nightmare Chronicles The Attraction Night Asylum The Priest of Blood The Lady of Serpents The Queen of Wolves *From Publishers WeeklyA titanic battle that pits vampyre against vampyre in a war that will determine for eternity whether the undead will coexist with the living caps the conclusion to Clegg's majestic Vampyricon trilogy (after The Priest of Blood and The Queen of Serpents). Aleric, the foreordained Priest of Blood, recounts his escape from the gladiatorial penal colony Aztlanteum with his lover, Pythia, and their efforts to find a haven where they can safely indulge their vampyre needs. Fate draws Aleric inexorably to Myrryd, the former home of Medhya, Queen of Serpents, who was banished beyond the Veil for her overreaching ambitions but who schemes to sneak back and enslave the world under vampyre dominion. Empowered by Merod, the Great Serpent who spawned the vampyre civilization, Aleric raises an army of vamps and mortals for a cataclysmic clash described with the vivid color and intense imagination that have been the saga's hallmarks. Clegg crafts a fitting finale ornamented with prose that modulates between the sensual and regal and that distinguishes his series as one of the more memorable modern vampire epics. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistFormer falconer and vampyre messiah Aleric flees with Pythia, who made him a vampyre, trailed by assorted enemies, the most dangerous of them Enora, queen of the Wastelands, who wants to call the Dark Mother into the world to destroy or enslave living and undead alike. Aleric must now prove himself the true messiah by raising and leading a vampyre army and persuading the undead that their true task is to protect, not merely use, the living, which proves hard to sell. Not quite as exciting as The Lady of Serpents (2006), the Vampyricon trilogy's conclusion still should satisfy fans. Murray, Frieda Views: 58
What happens when the person you love doesn't love you back? Your heart will Burn.Penny has loved him for a long time.Unfortunately, Matthew does not feel the same.Penny decides to put her feelings for Matthew aside and move on. And as soon as Penny stops loving Matthew, he reveals that he has feelings for her. Matthew's love comes at a dark price. Burn is a tragic tale of unrequited love and loss Views: 58
Product Description“The whole world can be found in this city. . . .”–from the Preface Fifty years ago, New York City had only a handful of ethnic groups. Today, the whole world can be found within the city’s five boroughs–and celebrated New York Times reporter Joseph Berger sets out to discover it, bringing alive the sights, smells, tastes, and people of the globe while taking readers on an intimate tour of the world’s most cosmopolitan city. For urban enthusiasts and armchair explorers alike, The World in a City is a look at today’s polyglot and polychrome, cosmopolitan and culturally rich New York and the lessons it holds for the rest of the United States as immigration changes the face of the nation. With three out of five of the city’s residents either foreign-born or second-generation Americans, New York has become more than ever a collection of villages–virtually self-reliant hamlets, each exquisitely textured by its particular ethnicities, history, and politics. For the price of a subway ride, you can visit Ghana, the Philippines, Ecuador, Uzbekistan, and Bangladesh. As Berger shows us in this absorbing and enlightening tour, New York is an endlessly fascinating crossroads. Naturally, tears exist in this colorful social fabric: the controversy over Korean-language shop signs in tony Douglaston, Queens; the uneasy proximity of traditional cottages and new McMansions built by recently arrived Russian residents of Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. Yet in spite of the tensions among neighbors, what Berger has found most miraculous about New York is how the city and its more than eight million denizens can adapt to–and even embrace–change like no other place on earth, from the former pushcart knish vendor on the Lower East Side who now caters to his customers via the Internet, to the recent émigrés from former Soviet republics to Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach and Midwood whose arrival saved New York’s furrier trade from certain extinction. Like the place it chronicles, The World in a City is an engaging hybrid. Blending elements of sociology, pop culture, and travel writing, this is the rare book that enlightens readers while imbuing them with the hope that even in this increasingly fractious and polarized world, we can indeed co-exist in harmony. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.Chapter 1 So You Thought You Knew Astoria ... For half a century, Astoria in Queens has been a neighborhood of cafés where dark-haired Greek men sip strong coffee and smoke strong cigarettes while talking in Greek late into the night. It is a place of quiet sidewalks lined with tenderly fussed-over brick and shingle row houses, where a solitary widow in black can be glimpsed scurrying homeward as if she were on the island of Rhodes. The cafés are still teeming, the houses tidy. But the Greek hold on the neighborhood has slowly been weakening. Successful Greeks have been leaving for leafier locales. As a result, there are moments when Astoria has a theme-park feel to it, a cardboard façade of a Greek Main Street with cafés named Athens, Omonia, and Zodiac and Greece’s blue and white colors splashed everywhere, but a diminishing number of actual Greeks living within. That’s because other groups have been rising up to take their place. On a Friday on Steinway Street, one of Astoria’s commercial spines, several hundred men from North African and Middle Eastern countries were jammed into Al-Iman Mosque, a marble-faced storefront that is one of several Muslim halls of worship that have sprung up in Astoria. Some wore ordinary street clothes, some white robes and knit white skullcaps. There were so many worshipers that thirteen had to pray on the sidewalk, kneeling shoeless on prayer mats and touching their foreheads and palms to the ground. When the prayers were over, El Allel Dahli, a Moroccan immigrant, emerged with his teenage son, Omar, telling of the plate of couscous and lamb he had brought as a gift to the poor to honor the birth that morning of his daughter, Jenine. “I am very happy today,” he told me. urishing mosque, but down Steinway Street, as far as his eyes could see, there were Middle Eastern restaurants, groceries, travel agencies, a driving school, a barber shop, a pharmacy, a dried fruit and nuts store, a bookstore—twenty-five shops in all. In the cafés, ragrant tobacco that comes in flavors such as molasses and apple. Sometimes these men—taxi drivers, merchants, or just plain idlers—play backgammon or dominoes or watch Arabic television shows beamed in by satellite, but mostly they schmooze about the things Mediterranean men talk about when they’re together— soccer, politics, women—while waiters fill up their pipes with chunks of charcoal at $4 a smoke. In classic New York fashion, Steinway Street is a slice of Arabic Algiers on Astoria’s former Main Street, renamed after a German immigrant who a century before assembled the world’s greatest pianos a few blocks away. And it is not just Middle Easterners and North Africans who are changing the neighborhood’s personality. Those settling in Astoria in the past decade or two include Bangladeshis, Serbians, Bosnians, Ecuadorians, and, yes, even increasingly young Manhattan professionals drawn by the neighborhood’s modest rents, cosmopolitan flavors, and short commute to midtown Manhattan. More vibrant than them all seem to be the Brazilians, who have brought samba nightclubs and bikini-waxing salons to streets that once held moussaka joints. When Brazil won the World Cup in 2002, Astoria’s streets were turned into an all-night party, and when the team lost in 2006, the streets were leaden with mourning. New York can be viewed as an archipelago, like Indonesia a collection of distinctive islands, in its case its villagelike neighborhoods. Each island has its own way of doing things, its own flavor, fragrance, and indelible characters. But, as a result of the roiling tides of migration and the unquenchable human restlessness and hunger for something better and grander, most of these neighborhoods are in constant, ineluctable flux. Some transform with astonishing swiftness as if hit by a flood; a few suffer erosion that is scarcely detectable until one day its inhabitants realize that what was there is gone. Astoria was an appropriate jumping-off point for my three-year-long ramble around the city because it is a classic New York neighborhood, a place that has long had a sharply defined character and a distinct place in the city’s landscape, but one that has been turned into a Babel of cultures by the waves of immigration set off by the 1965 law. When New Yorkers dropped the name Astoria, it was understood they were talking about an enclave where Greek was spoken and Greek folkways were observed. So it was striking to me as I walked the streets how much of that accent had faded. Astoria’s Greek population has been cut by a third in the past two decades, by some unofficial estimates, to 30,000 from 45,000, with official, if undercounted, census figures even gloomier, putting the number of people who claimed Greek ancestry at just 18,217, or 8.6 percent of the neighborhood’s residents. The decline of the Greeks can be seen as an old New York story, no different from the shrinking of the Jewish population on the Lower East Side or the number of Italians along Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. As immigrants of one nationality make it, they forsake the jostling streets, and newer immigrants, hoping to make their fortunes, move in. “It’s an upward mobility kind of thing,” said Robert Stephanopoulos, dean of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral on East Seventy-fourth Street and father of George (Bill Clinton’s press secretary and now an ABC broadcaster). But the fact that it is an oft- told story is scant consolation for longtime Greek residents who have tried to rekindle the old country in this new one. They find a bittersweet quality to the changeover. On the one hand, it affirms their community’s upswing; on the other, their village in New York is withering. “In New York everything turns around,” Peter Figetakis, forty-eight, a Greek-born film director who has lived in Astoria since the 1970s, told me. “Now the Hindus and Arabs, it’s their time.”ndus and Arabs, it’s their time.” For the newer residents, the mood is expansive. On a two-block stretch of Steinway between Twenty-eighth Avenue and Astoria Boulevard, there is a veritable souk, with shops selling halal meat, Syrian pastries, airplane tickets to Morocco, driving lessons in Arabic, Korans and other Muslim books, and robes in styles such as the caftan, the abaya, the hooded djellaba, and the chador, which covers the body from head to toe, including much of the face. Indeed, a common street sight is a woman in ankle-length robe and head scarf— hijab—surrounded by small children. Laziza of New York Pastry, a Jordanian bakery, may have baklava superior to that made by the neighborhood’s Greeks. With two dozen such Arabic shops, the Steinway strip outpaces the city’s most famous Middle Eastern thoroughfare, Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue, which was started by Lebanese and Syrian Christians, not Muslims. In cafés and restaurants once owned by Greeks and Italians, television shows from Cairo and news from Qatar- based Al Jazeera are beamed in on flat-screen televisions. Some cafés are open round-the-clock so taxi drivers can stop in and have their sheeshah and an espresso. Noureddine Daouaou, a taxi driver from Casablanca who has lived in the United States for more than twenty years, said he prefers Astoria to other places in New York where Arabs cluster because the neighborhood has a cosmopolitan mix of peoples. “You don’t feel homesick,” he said. “You find peace somehow. You find people try to get along. We can understand each other in one language.” The number of Arab speakers in the neighborhood the city designates as Queens Community Board 1 (the city is broken into fifty-nine community boards that offer advice on land-use and budget issues) rose from 2,265 in 1990 to 4,097 in 2000, an 80 percent increase, and will be far larger in the next census. For the Middle Easterners, the attraction to Astoria seems to be the congenial Mediterranean accent: foods that overlap with such Greek delicacies as kebab, okra, lentils, and honey-coated pastries, and cultural harmonies such as men idling with one another in cafés. “They feel more comfortable with Greeks,” George Mohamed Oumous, a forty-five-year-old Moroccan computer programmer, said of his fellow Arabs. “We’ve been near each other for centuries. You listen to Greek music, you think you could be listening to Egyptian music.” Ali El Sayed, who is Steinway’s Sidney Greenstreet, the man aware of this mini-Casablanca’s secrets, was a pioneer. A broad-shouldered Alexandrian with a shaved head like a genie, Sayed moved to Steinway Street in the late 1980s to open the Kabab Café, a narrow six-table cranny filled with Egyptian bric-a-brac, stained glass, and a hookah or two. It sells a tasty hummus and falafel plate. “How’s the food, folks?” he’ll sometimes ask, displaying his American slang. “I’m just an insecure guy, so I need to ask.” He found Astoria congenial because it was easy to shop for foods, such as hummus and okra, that he uses in his cooking. Within a few years the neighborhood had enough Arabs and other Muslims to support its first mosque, which was opened in a onetime pool hall on Twenty-eighth Avenue. Sayed told me that Egyptians in Astoria are proud to be Americans, proud to blend into American society. Indeed, Egyptians and other Arabs and Muslims are assimilating in the United States with as much enthusiasm as earlier immigrant groups. In London, Paris, and Hamburg, there is far more ambivalence. Even two and three generations after t... Views: 58
