From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a brilliantly rendered life of one of our most admired American poets Since her death in 1979, Elizabeth Bishop, who published only one hundred poems in her lifetime, has become one of America's most revered poets. And yet—painfully shy and living out of public view in far-flung locations like Key West and Brazil—she has never been seen so fully as a woman and artist. Megan Marshall makes incisive and moving use of a newly discovered cache of Bishop's letters—to her psychiatrist and to three of her lovers—to reveal a much darker childhood than has been known, a secret affair, and the last chapter of her passionate romance with Brazilian modernist designer Lota de Macedo Soares. These elements of Bishop's life, along with her friendships with fellow poets Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell, both important champions of her work, are brought to life with novelistic intensity. And by alternating the... Views: 42
When her dear old Granddad -- the Grim Reaperhimself -- goes missing, Susan takes over the family business. The progeny of Death's adopted daughter and his apprentice, she shows real talent for the trade. That is until a little string in her heart goes "twang."With a head full of dreams and a pocketful of lint,Imp the Bard lands in Ankh-Morpork, yearning to become a rock star. Determined to devote his life to music, the unlucky fellow soon finds that all his dreams are coming true. Well almost.In this finger-snapping, toe-tapping tale of youth,Death, and rocks that roll, Terry Pratchett once again demonstrates the wit and genius that have propelled him to the highest echelons of parody next to Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen. Views: 42
First impressions can make or break a business deal and they definitely could be a relationship buster, but an ill-timed panic attack draws two strangers together. Unlike firefighters who run into danger, instincts tell businessman Tyson Graham to head the other way as fast as he can when he meets a certain damsel in distress. Days later, the same woman struts through his door for a job interview. Monica Wyatt might possess the outwardly beauty and the brains on paper, but Tyson doesn't trust her to work for his firm, or maybe he doesn't trust his heart around her. Views: 42
Twenty-two years ago, she ran out on the love of her life—and took a secret with her. When Randi Jean Ferguson fell for Courtland Robinson while studying abroad in London, she was ready for a life of tea and crumpets. But when she discovered Court was being forced into a shotgun wedding, there was no way she could stay—or tell him she was also pregnant with his child. Now widowed, Randi is just starting to consider finding Court—when he shows up at her door. With his son. Randi's not ready to reveal everything to Court, but if she doesn't will both their children end up scarred? The best thing to come out of Court's unhappy marriage was his son. But he's spent the last twenty-two years thinking about Randi, his California girl, his first—and only—love. Now a widower, he takes a chance he's only fantasized about and seeks her out. At last he'll solve his heart's greatest mystery—but that won't be the only surprise... Views: 42
Helen Davenport, governess for a wealthy London household, longs for a family of her own—but nearing her late twenties, she knows her prospects are dim. Then she spots an advertisement seeking young women to marry New Zealand’s honorable bachelors and begins an affectionate correspondence with a gentleman farmer. When her church offers to pay her travels under an unusual arrangement, she jumps at the opportunity. Meanwhile, not far away in Wales, beautiful and daring Gwyneira Silkham, daughter of a wealthy sheep breeder, is bored with high society. But when a mysterious New Zealand baron deals her father an unlucky blackjack hand, Gwyn’s hand in marriage is suddenly on the table. Her family is outraged, but Gwyn is thrilled to escape the life laid out for her. The two women meet on the ship to Christchurch—Helen traveling in steerage, Gwyn first class—and become unlikely friends. When their new husbands turn out to be very different than expected, the women must help one another find the life—and love— they’d hoped for. Set against the backdrop of colonial nineteenth-century New Zealand, In the Land of the Long White Cloud is a soaring saga of friendship, romance, and unforgettable adventure.** Views: 42
Proper, reserved Francesca detests chaotic London and one of its most infamous inhabitants: her birth mother, the notorious courtesan Madame Aphrodite. Lovingly raised by the devoted Lady Greentree, she's content to remain in Yorkshire, far from the scandalous parent whose life and profession shock... yet intrigue her. But a dark, dangerous stranger she rescues on the moors is awakening a most improper desire—causing Francesca to question whether she is more her mother's daughter than she ever wished to be.When Sebastian Thorne agrees to protect Aphrodite's estranged daughter from a dire threat emerging from her past, the fallen lord is unexpectedly seduced by Francesca's beauty. But a vigilante living on the shadowy edge of society has little hope to own such a prize—and unless he reclaims his abandoned title and lost honor, Sebastian will never get close enough to the bewitching lady to save her life... or win her passion. Views: 42
You feel like heaven to touch.It has been a month since plus-sized Kate Penney hooked up with the man of her dreams, her phenomenally handsome college Professor, Rust O’Brien. An incredible month in which all her physical needs and wanton hungers are fully satisfied and realized.But now Kate wants more.She wants Rust to gaze into her eyes lovingly, like he really means it. She wants to belong to him – body, mind and soul – just as she wants him to belong to her. But is she reaching? How can a man as obscure as he is ever belong to anyone?Nevertheless, tonight is the night which marks a new threshold in their physical relationship. Tonight is the night he wants to do it raw with her.But there are complex psyches at play here. Her classmate, Carlo, is in lust with her because of what she is to Rust. Rust himself is conflicted, though for reasons Kate would never have fathomed.And when desires are stoked and games are played, it all must come crashing down.NOVELLAS IN THIS SERIESThe Alpha Men’s Secret ClubThe Alpha Men’s Secret Club 2: Desire Games Views: 42
girls is an erotic spree, a journey into the most forbidden corners of male desire, a story about men who have been rendered numb by their power, who have sacrificed everything for success, who have lost their souls and can find meaning only by living vicariously, obsessively through young women. Views: 42
After twenty years of loyal service, Detective Jane Bauer is just two months and one case away from leaving the NYPD for a cushy desk job. Her last assignment: working for a special unit that tackles unsolved crimes. At a crossroads in her personal life, Jane relishes the chance to lose herself in a challenging investigation.Four years ago, Arlen Quill was found dead in the entryway to his apartment building--leaving no clues, no witnesses, and no leads. When Jane decides to interview Quill's old neighbors, she makes a startling discovery: Every single occupant at the time of the murder subsequently disappeared. Like any seasoned New Yorker, Jane knows that mere homicide isn't enough to drive people from their rent-controlled apartments. In Hell's Kitchen, where a cold case suddenly heats up--Jane soon finds herself face-to-face with a killer. . . .From the Paperback edition. Views: 42
In his critically acclaimed new novel, Tim Gautreaux fashions a classic and unforgettable tale of two brothers struggling in a hostile world.In a lumber camp in the Louisiana cypress forest, a world of mud and stifling heat where men labor under back-breaking conditions, the Aldridge brothers try to repair a broken bond. Randolph Aldridge is the mill’s manager, sent by his father—the mill owner—to reform both the damaged mill and his damaged older brother. Byron Aldridge is the mill's lawman, a shell-shocked World War I veteran given to stunned silences and sudden explosions of violence that make him a mystery to Randolph and a danger to himself. Deep in the swamp, in this place of water moccasins, whiskey, and wild card games, these brothers become embroiled in a lethal feud with a powerful gangster. In a tale full of raw emotion as supple as a saw blade,* *The Clearing is a mesmerizing journey into the trials that define men’s souls. From the Trade Paperback edition.Amazon.com ReviewIn Tim Gautreaux's first novel, The Next Step in the Dance, the author staked a literary claim to Louisiana bayou country. In his second novel, The Clearing, he colonizes that claim. The atmosphere of the novel is humid and snake-infested, a swamp alive with mosquitoes and hungry alligators, stinkbugs and stench, flooding and freezing alternately. The setting provides a fitting backdrop for the bare subsistence lives of the people who live there.The time is 1923, the place a family-owned mill, and the people a motley collection made up of a manager from Pennsylvania, his brother the constable, poor white and black loggers, three women, Sicilians, and polyglot Cajuns. Byron, the constable, a golden boy before the war, eldest son and heir apparent to a timber fortune, returned from France a damaged man, no longer interested in family or future. He drifted away from home and lost contact. When the novel begins, he has been found in this Louisiana backwater and his brother, Randolph, is dispatched to manage the family mill until the cypress forest is cleared and to bring Byron home. What happens to them in this hermetically sealed redoubt is a story of intense and forgiving brotherly love, as Randolph struggles to reclaim Byron and to maintain decency against formidable odds. They must deal with the Sicilians who own the gambling, liquor and women and will do anything to hang onto this franchise; the loggers who work and fight in equal part; and each other, not as the boys they were, but as the men they are.You might learn more about old-time logging than you ever wanted to know, but the story is as compelling as Cold Mountain or All the Pretty Horses and just as well written. --Valerie RyanFrom Publishers WeeklyA godforsaken mill town in the cypress swamps of Louisiana is the setting for a bitter power struggle in this darkly lyrical, densely packed second novel by Gautreaux (The Next Step in the Dance). In 1923, Raymond Aldridge sets out for the mill town-called Nimbus-in search of his brother, Byron. The two men are the heirs to a Pennsylvania timber empire, but ever since Byron came back from World War I, he has shunned his family. Before the war, he was a charming young man with a charmed life; now he works as a constable at the Nimbus mill and listens obsessively to sentimental popular tunes on his Victrola. When Raymond arrives, he assumes charge of the mill, which his father has purchased, and tries to understand how and why his much-admired older brother has come to this pass. Their reacquaintance is complicated by Byron's feud with a gang of Sicilians who control the liquor, girls and card games that make up the only viable entertainment in town. In battling them, Byron has turned as ruthless as they, and killings are as common as alligator sightings in Nimbus. The violence turns even deadlier when three women are mixed up in the fray: Raymond's feisty wife, Lillian; Byron's sturdy wife, Ella; and May, Raymond's almost-white housekeeper, who gives birth to a son who looks remarkably like an Aldridge. Gautreaux's prose is gorgeous, though his virtuosic images ("a nearly blind horse... its eyes the color of a sun-clouded beer bottle") sometimes pile up precariously, threatening to teeter into overkill. The novel adroitly evokes the murky miasma and shadowy half-light of the treacherous Louisiana swamps, their gloom and murderous undercurrents echoing the grisly wartime slaughter Byron is unable to forget. Gautreaux is perhaps the most talented writer to come out of the South in recent years, and this all-enveloping novel further confirms his skill and powers.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 42
SUMMARY: Mr. Dixon a member of the Ulster Association of Magicians, has gone missing—along with one hundred thousand pounds in cash. Israel Armstrong, bighearted and overly inquisitive, should stick to delivering library books to out-of-the-way readers and not get involved in the investigation. But of course, he can't help himself—which costs him his job and earns him a place of dishonor among the police's prime suspects. Can Israel clear his name and get his van back? Will the exhibition of old local photos he's been driving around County Antrim offer clues to Mr. D.'s whereabouts? And is a romance in the offing with winsome barmaid Rosie Hart? All will be revealed! Views: 42
