Short-listed for the 2008 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel Joe Grundy is an ex-heavyweight boxer whose main claim to fame was that he got knocked out by champ Evander Holyfield. Now he's chief of security for a posh old hotel, the Lord Douglas, in downtown Vancouver, and life is pretty good. But then a young neo-hippie inherits more than half a billion dollars and decides to give it all away. As soon as the kid checks into the Lord Douglas with the intention of holding a press conference to announce the scheme, Joe knows big trouble is headed his way, especially when the kid winds up dead. Grundy sets out to discover who murdered the would-be philanthropist only to collide with suspects and sucker punches around every corner. Joe had some pretty tough battles during his days in the ring, but this time the stakes are higher, the opponents are lethal, and the final count could be fatal. Views: 23
Lenore is Cornelia's mother--and Cornelia's fix-up project. What does it matter that Cornelia won't talk to anyone and is always stuck in the easiest English class at school, even though she's read more books than anyone else? She feels strong in the fixing. She cooks vegetable soup so Lenore will eat something other than Ring Dings; she lures her out of bed with strong coffee and waffles. She looks after the house when Lenore won't get out of bed at all. So when Lenore and her boyfriend take off for Vegas leaving Cornelia behind with eccentric Aunt Agatha, all Cornelia can do is wait for her to come back. Aunt Agatha sure doesn't want any fixing. Maybe this time it's Cornelia who could use it?From the Hardcover edition. Views: 23
Real estate agent Kate Doyle knew divorce was messy, but she didn't expect it to be bloody. Kate agrees to sell the home of old friends who're locked in a bitter divorce. She's hoping the upscale house will be an easy sell in the Colorado college town. But her hopes turn to horror when she walks into the lawyer-client's study to find him brutally murdered—stabbed in the throat. "A crime of passion," says Kate's police detective brother-in-law. The prime suspect is Kate's close friend, the spurned wife, who begs Kate to help her.Kate's meddling turns up some surprising suspects. The successful lawyer deceived numerous ex-lovers as well as his wife. He'd also played off one land developer against another, dangling a choice tract of land as bait. Businesses were ruined and fortunes lost. Had the loser taken revenge on the wily lawyer? Or had an ex-lover killed in jealous rage? Kate's real estate license helps her dig into the scheming lawyer's dealings as she sifts clues from... Views: 23
Ruby returns to the scene of a recent heartbreak, only to find the woman her lover left her for around every corner. A soap opera of gleeful rumours and turf wars ensues, and Ruby comes to wonder why a woman she’s never spoken to now embodies all of her problems.Review“To read Thea Lim is to read the very heart of humanity.” —George Elliott Clarke, Laureate, 2001Governor General’s Award for Poetry winner About the AuthorThea Lim grew up in Singapore and now lives in Toronto. Her work has been published in The Utne Reader, Shameless Magazine, and the anthology Between Myself and Them: Stories of Disability and Difference (Second Story Press). Views: 23
Ever wonder what could bring a demon to the gates of heaven?
Aliisza and Kaanyr Vhok have returned from their attempted invasion of Menzoberranzan and turned their sights on Sundabar. But before she can complete a mission in that beseiged city, Aliisza finds herself in the one place a demon would never want to go, no matter how sure she is of her wits and cunning: the very heart of Celestia!
Join everyone's favorite succubus and her half-fiend boyfriend, introduced in the War of the Spider Queen series, in the first installment of their own exciting new trilogy!
*From the Paperback edition.* Views: 23
This collection of more than twenty-five critical essays, speeches, and biographical pieces chosen by Diana Wynne Jones before her death in 2011 is essential reading for the author's many fans and for students and teachers of the fantasy genre and creative writing in general. The volume includes insightful literary criticism alongside autobiographical anecdotes, revelations about the origins of the author's books, and reflections about the life of an author and the value of writing for young people. Reflections features the author's final interview, a foreword by award-winning author Neil Gaiman, and an introduction by Charlie Butler, a senior lecturer in English at the University of West England in Bristol. Views: 23
When police detective Will Grayson and his partner, Helen Walker, investigate the violent death of Stephen Bryan, a gay academic, their first thoughts are of an ill-judged sexual encounter or a fatal lovers’ quarrel: The man’s face was like a glove that had been pulled inside out. But they soon shift focus to the book Bryan was writing about the life and mysterious death of fifties film star Stella Leonard. While Bryan’s sister puts herself in danger by conducting her own investigation, Grayson and Walker peel away the secrets of a family blighted by a lust for wealth and power and by its perverted sexuality. On the heels of his critically acclaimed Frank Elder series, John Harvey delivers a page-turner both subtle and devastating.From Publishers WeeklyAcclaimed British author Harvey takes a break from his popular Charlie Resnick series (Lonely Hearts, etc.) with this well-written but unexciting police procedural. Stephen Bryan, a gay academic specializing in film studies, has been bludgeoned to death in his shower. Cambridge Det. Insp. Will Grayson and Det. Sgt. Helen Walker soon focus on Bryan's spurned lover, Mark McKusick, but the theft of one of Bryan's manuscripts, which deals with a 1950s film star whose great-niece is now one of the bad girls of British cinema, leads the detectives to wonder whether the professor's digging into the past led to his murder. While the solution is anticlimactic and the excerpts from a fictional screenplay add little to the plot or atmosphere, Grayson and Walker emerge as fully developed characters whose choice of career has taken its toll on their health and family lives. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistStarred Review Along with his Frank Elder series, the successor to the now-classic Charlie Resnick novels, Harvey writes the occasional stand-alone. This one, set, like both of his series, in Nottingham, moves in a new direction for the multitalented author, whose usual milieu is the mean streets of the inner city, where poverty and racism breed crime. Here, on the other hand, he takes us behind the closed doors of the powerful, where closeted secrets rattle their chains until violence erupts. Two stories come together as police detectives Will Grayson and Helen Walker investigate the bludgeoning death of a gay film historian. Was it a crime of passion, or did the scholar’s current project, a biography of 1950s actress Stella Leonard, whose death mirrored the demise of the character she played in a celebrated film noir, somehow move the killer to action? The investigation proceeds, in typically detailed fashion, with the detectives fighting their way out of seeming dead ends while dealing with multiple personal issues; but this time the story has a new level, as Harvey juxtaposes flashbacks to the actress’ life and snippets from the script of her classic film. By doing so, that sense of inevitability, which is at the heart of film noir, re-creates itself offscreen, producing a frisson that drives the action, with past and present feeding off one another much in the manner of Ross Macdonald. More successfully, perhaps, than any other writer of a successful mystery series, Harvey continues to reinvent himself in novel after novel. --Bill Ott Views: 23
A Novel of the Noble Dead DESCRIPTION: Magiere the Dhampir was created by a shadowy, long-forgotten enemy of many names-an enemy who the elf Leesil was trained from childhood to kill. They were brought together by the Fay to forge an alliance that might have the power to stand against the forces of dark magics. But as Magiere and Leesil uncover the truth, they discover just how close the enemy has always been... Views: 23
A vicious newspaperman is murdered, and every scribe in the office is a suspect It is winter in London, and the coal is running short. The chill on Fleet Street is so severe that the men who run the presses for Youth's Companion are too cold to work. Despite the freeze, their editor—the vile Mr. Bassett—will not spare a shilling for coal. He is behind on paying his employees, has been accused of stealing his writers' ideas, and refuses to hire any up-and-coming literary talent, be it Oscar Wilde or Arthur Conan Doyle. It is no surprise when the editor is found murdered. The question is, which of his enemies got to him first? Doyle enlists Charles Dodgson—better known as Lewis Carroll—to look into the murder. When the police try to pin the killing on the slighted Mr. Wilde, it is up to Doyle and Dodgson to clear Wilde's name and find the true killer of the cruelest man on Fleet Street. Views: 23
