They were the best of friends, they were the worst of friends ...Lizbet and Cassie are close, yet far apart. After a clueless upbringing (their parents' basic childrearing beliefs: 'play a trombone, see a monkey, get some fresh air'), the two sisters strike out in opposite directions, both desperate to escape... Cassie is skinny, clever, charismatic, successful - every right-thinking girl's worst nightmare. The one flaw in her quality-controlled life may be her marriage - and if there are any other flaws lurking, Cassie has them covered. Lizbet is plumper, plainer, dreamier - more concerned about the design on her coffee cup than whether she can afford her new house. She works reluctantly for Ladzmag, desperate to make her name as a writer, but stuck writing embarrassing articles on sex. Her one achievement is her relationship with Tim, who thinks... Views: 29
The spellbinding final instalment of The Alliance of Light. Though Athera may be free, the fight is far from over? The heartstopping conclusion to the Alliance of Light series brings Lysaer's army of Light to besiege the great citadel of Alestron. Master of Shadow, Arithon, with barely a moment's recuperation from his victory over the necromancers, has discovered that young Jeynsa s'Valerient whom he has sworn to protect, has joined the ranks of his disowned allies within the threatened citadel. Worse, following a failed rescue attempt, his beloved Elaira, his double, Fionn Areth, and the spellbinder Dakar are also trapped within Alestron's walls. The chancy wiles of Davien the betrayer must spirit Arithon across the enemy lines to attempt a bold and perilous rescue mission. Arithon must seek the heartcore of his talent, even while embroiled in a savage battle against those he has vowed to protect. But treachery strikes from deep within the duke's ranks. Lysaer's fanatics will be... Views: 29
Amazon.com ReviewAmazon Best of the Month, February 2008: From as early as grade school, the world seemed to be on Nic Sheff's string. Bright and athletic, he excelled in any setting and appeared destined for greatness. Yet as childhood exuberance faded into teenage angst, the precocious boy found himself going down a much different path. Seduced by the illicit world of drugs and alcohol, he quickly found himself caught in the clutches of addiction. Beautiful Boy is Nic's story, but from the perspective of his father, David. Achingly honest, it chronicles the betrayal, pain, and terrifying question marks that haunt the loved ones of an addict. Many respond to addiction with a painful oath of silence, but David Sheff opens up personal wounds to reinforce that it is a disease, and must be treated as such. Most importantly, his journey provides those in similar situations with a commodity that they can never lose: hope --Dave CallananFrom Publishers WeeklyExpanding on his New York Times Magazine article, Sheff chronicles his son's downward spiral into addiction and the impact on him and his family. A bright, capable teenager, Nic began trying mind- and mood-altering substances when he was 17. In months, use became abuse, then abuse became addiction. By the time Sheff knew of his son's condition, Nic was strung out on meth, the highly potent stimulant. While his son struggles to get clean, his second wife and two younger children are pulled helplessly into the drama. Sheff, as the parent of an addict, cycles through denial and acceptance and resistance. The author was already a journalist of considerable standing when this painful story began to unfold, and his impulse for detail serves him personally as well as professionally: there are hard, solid facts about meth and the kinds of havoc it wreaks on individuals, families and communities both urban and rural. His journey is long and harrowing, but Sheff does not spare himself or anyone else from keen professional scrutiny any more than he was himself spared the pains—and joys—of watching a loved one struggling with addiction and recovery. Real recovery creates—and can itself be—its own reward; this is an honest, hopeful book, coming at a propitious moment in the meth epidemic. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Views: 29
Hey! Where Is Everyone?That's what Bernie Bridges wants to know when he can't find any of his friends. Everyone has disappeared! And when he finally does find them, they're acting really weird. For instance, his shy friend Chipmunk thinks he is a fearless warrior, and football star Jennifer Ecch thinks she is a princess. What is going on?Soon Bernie realizes that everyone at Rotten School is acting! They are all playing parts in a big battle. A battle between the Dum Diddys and the Knighty Knight Knights. But it's not a real fight. It's a video game called Wungo Warriors—and everyone has to pay that spoiled rich kid Sherman Oaks to play.Bernie can't let Sherman get away with this. He has a plan to outsmart Sherman—by bringing the Wungo Warriors to life!What Bernie doesn't know, though, is that a real-life battle between the Dum Diddys and the Knighty Knight Knights could shut down Rotten School forever. Views: 29
Mia Sanchez is rocked when her partner of four years, Brenda Montalba, informs her that she has fallen out of love with her and that she's planning on leaving town for several months to give them time to "think about their future together." Mia hadn't thought words could be more painful until Brenda followed up hers with, "You've really let yourself go over the last few years." Alone, hurt, and embarrassed, Mia decides to take the advice of her sales assistant and friend Mathew "Goody" Good, the self crowned Queen of Getting Dumped when he tells her, "The best way to get over them is to get even." Views: 29
One of John Guare's classic plays, Landscape of the Body tells the story of a woman's unfulfilled life and premature death — and her reflections from the grave. Betty travels to New York to convince her sister Rosalie to leave her gritty New York City life and come home to bucolic Maine. After dying in a freak bicycle accident, Rosalie revisits the world she left behind. From the beyond Rosalie witnesses Betty effortlessly easing into her previous persona — moving into her apartment, taking over her job, but then Betty abruptly loses her teenage son to a gruesome murder. In a sardonic turn of events, Betty finds herself the primary suspect in her son's death. Guare brilliantly moves back and forth in time and space to create and affecting study of the American dream gone awry. Views: 29
Strangers are moving into Blacklin County, and none of them is any stranger than Seepy Benton, a math teacher whom the county judge suspects is a wild-eyed radical. Benton and Max Schwartz, who has opened a music store, are among the students in the Citizens’ Sheriff’s Academy, which seemed like a good idea when Sheriff Dan Rhodes presented it to the county commissioners. However, when a mobile home explodes and a dead body is found, the students become the chief suspects, and the commissioners aren’t happy. To make matters worse, there’s another murder, and one of Rhodes’s old antagonists returns with his partner in crime to cause even more trouble. As always in Blacklin County, there are plenty of minor annoyances to go along with the major ones. For one thing, there’s a problem with the county’s Web page. The commissioners blame Rhodes, who knows nothing about the Internet but is supposed to be overseeing their online presence. Then there’s the illegal alcohol being sold in a local restaurant. It was produced in a still that Rhodes discovered after the explosion of the mobile home, and he’s sure it has some connection to the murders. It’s another fun ride with genre veteran Bill Crider, and, once again, it’s up to Sheriff Dan Rhodes to save the day before Blacklin County becomes the crime capital of Texas. Views: 29
EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The *Rant Limited Edition*** **is specially packaged in a one-piece preprinted case, printed black, with the title created in spot gloss; a 4-color slipcase that matches the original jacket of the trade book; a 1/8" ribbon marker; a signed tip-in sheet, speckled edges; and an exclusive 1300-word "Automotive Afterword" entitled "Recipes for Disasters" which is not available in print anywhere but only in this limited edition. **“Like most people I didn’t meet Rant Casey until after he was dead. That’s how it works for most celebrities: After they croak, their circle of friends just explodes…”***Rant* is the mind-bending new novel from Chuck Palahniuk, the literary provocateur responsible for such books as the generation-defining classic Fight Club and the pedal-to-the-metal horrorfest Haunted. It takes the form of an oral history of one Buster “Rant” Casey, who may or may not be the most efficient serial killer of our time. **“What ‘Typhoid Mary’ Mallon was to typhoid, what Gaetan Dugas was to AIDS, and Liu Jian Lun was to SARS, Buster Casey would become for rabies.” **A high-school rebel who always wins (and a childhood murderer?), Rant Casey escapes from his small hometown of Middleton for the big city. He becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing. On appointed nights participants recognize each other by such designated car markings as “Just Married” toothpaste graffiti and then stalk and crash into each other. Rant Casey will die a spectacular highway death after which his friends gather testimony needed to build an oral history of his short, violent life. Their collected anecdotes explore the possibility that his saliva caused a silent urban plague of rabies and that he found a way to escape the prison house of linear time…**“The future you have, tomorrow, won’t be the same future you had, yesterday.”–Rant Casey**Expect hilarity, horror, and blazing insight into the desperate and surreal contemporary human condition as only Chuck Palahniuk can deliver it. He's the postmillennial Jonathan Swift, the visionary to watch to learn what's–uh-oh–coming next. Views: 29
From BooklistIf you are looking for a hard-nosed European police procedural, put Miloszewski’s Entanglement high on your list. The setting is modern-day Warsaw, but the atmosphere at times is as gray and bleak as that of a cold war spy thriller. The protagonist, however, isn’t Richard Widmark in a trench coat; rather, it’s the spiffy-dressing prosecutor Teo Szacki. Prematurely gray at 35, Szacki is confronted by a corpse with a shish-kabob skewer in his eye. The body was discovered in a wing of a Catholic church that was rented out for an avant garde psychotherapy session in which participants act out traumatic events in their lives. The therapist conducting the session, as well as the members of the group, are middle-class folk with no untoward pasts. But Warsaw is a city with a past. The secret police may be out of power, but they are by no means incapable of looking out for themselves. Szacki, though not above bending the moral code in his favor, is a no-nonsense cop. He puts lawbreakers away, never mindthe extenuating circumstances. Is he up to taking on the old secret police? The answer Miloszewski gives is wholly realistic if a bit disappointing to those who would like a Hollywood ending (but ever so satisfying to the rest of us). --Steve Glassman Review"This is a carefully plotted story that continues to engage the reader from the opening sentence to the final scene. The author provides a rich sense of place, interesting characters, and a view of life in contemporary Warsaw."—_ILOVEAMYSTERY.com_ Views: 29
