Seven bestselling authors. Seven sexy stories. Views: 15
This is a story that can only be told in a whisper ... In the remote outback of Western Australia during the Second World War, English anthropologist Nicholas Keene and his wife, Stella, raise a lonely child, Perdita. Her upbringing is far from ordinary: in a shack in the wilderness, with a distant father burying himself in books and an unstable mother whose knowledge of Shakespeare forms the backbone of the girl's limited education. Emotionally adrift, Perdita becomes friends with a deaf and mute boy, Billy, and an Aboriginal girl, Mary. Perdita and Mary come to call one another sister and to share a very special bond. They are content with life in this remote corner of the globe, until a terrible event lays waste to their lives. Through this exquisite story of Perdita's troubled childhood, Gail Jones explores the values of friendship, loyalty and sacrifice with a brilliance that has already earned her numerous accolades for her previous novels, Dreams of Speaking and Sixty Lights. Views: 15
Have you ever enjoyed a warm, sugary, scrumptious apple cobbler served in an individual, charming terra cotta pot? Would you kill for one? Someone has and kindergarten teacher Liza Wilcox is just the woman to solve the crime.With the help of her boyfriend, Sheriff Tom Owens, and her cyber-sidekick, Justin Weaver (a wheelchair-bound former student), she unravels the mystery behind those delicious apple pots, an eating contest, an abandoned mine, and several deaths. Views: 15
Just in time for the holidays comes the perfect winter break read! This fun, sweet, wintertime book is filled with humor and romance.The picturesque montain ski lodge is the perfect place to spend winter break...if you have a boyfriend! Otherwise, that cozy leather couch in front of the crackling fire looks a lot less inviting. Good thing that there are lots of cute, blond, sweater-wearing ski instructors around to choose from....This fun, sweet tale of holiday romance on the slopes is the perfect wintertime read! Views: 15
The Pisstown Chaos is a novel about disease and forced-relocation. Political power seems to be solely in the hands of one Reverend Herman Hooker, an “American Divine” who revels in the peoples' suffering as they are “shifted” (separated from — and then randomly coupled with — one another) by decree every five years. There are up-shifts, down-shifts, and side-shifts, but no attempt to make harmonious pairings. Chaos rages on as parasitic infestations spread and the Reverend rules with an iron fist from his Templex headquarters, spouting platitudes to the ever-moving masses.From Publishers WeeklyOhle's 1972 classic, Motorman, and its sequel, The Age of Sinatra (2004), made him a legend. Fans will rejoice—in their own dystopian way—at the arrival of this mesmerizing installment. Ohle presents a parallel universe where people travel in vehicles called Q-peds; subsist on starch bars, urpmilk and perhaps some imp-meat; and get drunk on Jake and stoned on willywhack to dull the anxieties of the age, which are many. The blighted landscape is overrun by stinkers suffering the final zombie-like stage of a parasite infection, and an unspecified Chaos perpetually threatens Pisstown. Then there is the deranged authority, the American Divine, led by Reverend Hooker. In this world, readers follow the fortunes of the Balls family. Grandmother Mildred is quarantined with a mild parasite infection and must protect a corral of stinkers from wild imps. At the family estate, Mildred's granddaughter, Ophelia, battles stinkers burrowing under the house until she receives orders from Hooker. Ophelia's brother, Roe, eventually comes under Hooker's sway as well. Ohle's creation of a vivid world, both familiar and foreign, dark and slyly humorous, makes the book a grim delight. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Views: 15
It's Eleanor who starts the Friday nights. From her scruffy house in Fulham she observes two young women with small children, separate struggling and plainly lonely and decides to invite them in and see what happens. What happens is that these very different women, Eleanor, Paula and Lindsay, are joined by three more: Jules, Blaise and Karen. Together they make up one retired professional, one budding DJ, one frazzled wife, three mothers, three singletons and five working women. Slowly, gradually and despite vast differences in background and circumstance, a group forms: a sorority of sorts, and a circle of friends. It is only when Paula meets Jackson, an enigmatic, powerful and seductive man, that the bonds that have been so closely forged are put to the test; jealousies, rivalries, even infidelities threaten everything the women have between them, even their Friday nights. Harmony is eventually restored, but not without its price: Paula must confront some unsavory truths about her relationships; Karen must completely reevaluate her priorities in life; Blaise must meet new challenges; Eleanor must admit she needs help at home; Jules has some growing up to do; and Lindsay needs a little love in her life ... With wit and warmth, Joanna Trollope explores the complexities, the sabotages, and the shifting currents of modern friendship. From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 15
A stunning new edition of a beloved children’s classic.On the desolate Essex marshes, a young girl, Fritha, comes to seek help from Philip Rhayader, a recluse who lives in an abandoned lighthouse. She carries in her arms a wounded snow goose that has been storm-tossed across the Atlantic from Canada. Fritha is frightened of Rhayader, but he is gentler than his appearance suggests and nurses the goose back to health. Over the following months and years, Fritha visits the lighthouse when the snow goose is there. And every summer, when it flies away, Thayader is left alone once more.The Snow Goose is set in the years running up to the evacuation of Dunkirk in the Second World War. Originally published in 1940 in the Saturday Evening Post, it was brought out in book form the following year by Knopf, Michael Joseph and M&S simultaneously. It won the prestigious O Henry prize that same year and has been continually in print ever since. The Snow Goose has inspired a number of musical scores and albums, has been made into two feature films and moved generations of readers. A new feature film will be released in the coming year.Beautifully written, with a powerful ending, and breathtakingly illustrated, this is an exquisite edition of Gallico’s masterpiece.About the AuthorPaul Gallico was born in New York in 1892. He became a minor celebrity as a sports writer and then began writing short stories for magazines. Gallico went on to write many more short stories and novels, including The Poseidon Adventure in 1969. He died in 1976.Angela Barrrett is one of the most highly acclaimed British illustrators. She studied at the Royal College of Art and has illustrated a number of picture books, including a retelling of Anne Frank that has been translated into twelve different languages. Angela has won the Smarties Book Prize and the WHSmith Illustration Award. She lives in London, England. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.One November afternoon, three years after Rhayander had come to the Great Marsh, a child approached the lighthouse studio by means of the sea wall. In her arms she carried a burden.She was no more than twelve, slender, dirty, nervous and timid as a bird, but beneath the grime as eerily beautiful as a marsh faery. She was pure Saxon, large-boned, fair, with a head to which her body was yet to grow, and deep-set, violet-coloured eyes.She was desperately frightened of the ugly man she had come to see, for legend had already begun to gather about Rhayader, and the native wild-fowlers hated him for interfering with their sport.But greater than her fear was the need of that which she bore. For locked in her child’s heart was the knowledge, picked up somewhere in the swampland, that this ogre who lived in the lighthouse had magic that could heal injured things.She had never seen Rhayader before and was close to fleeing in panic at the dark apparition that appeared at the studio door, drawn by her footsteps — the black head and beard, the sinister hump, and the crooked claw. She stood there staring, poised like a disturbed marsh bird for instant flight.But his voice was deep and kind when he spoke to her.‘What is it child?’She stood her ground, and then edged timidly forward. The thing she carried in her arms was a large white bird, and it was quite still. There were stains of blood on its whiteness and on her kirtle where she had held it to her.The girl placed it in his arms. ‘I found it, sir. It’s hurted. Is it still alive?’‘Yes. Yes, I think so. Come in, child, come in.’Rhyander went inside, bearing the bird, which he placed upon a table, where it moved feebly. Curiosity overcame fear. The girl followed and found herself in a room warmed by a coal fire, shining with many coloured pictures that covered the walls, and full of a strange but pleasant smell.The bird fluttered. With his good hand Rhayader spread on of its immense white pinions. The end was beautifully tipped with black.Rhayader looked and marvelled, and said: ‘Child: where did you find it?’‘In t’ marsh, sir, where fowlers had been. What — what is it, sir?’‘It’s a snow goose from Canada. But how in all heaven came it here?’The name seemed to mean nothing to the little girl. Her deep violet eyes, shining out of the dirt on her thin face, were fixed with concern on the injured bird.She said: ‘Can ‘ee heal it, sir?’‘Yes, yes,’ said Rhayader. ‘We will try. Come, you shall help me.’There were scissors and bandages and splints on a shelf, and he was marvelously deft, even with the rooked claw that managed to hold things.He said: ‘Ah, she has been shot, poor thing. Her leg is broken, and the wing tip! but not badly. See, we will clip her primaries, so that we can bandage it, but in the spring the feathers will grow and she will be able to fly again. We’ll bandage it close to her body, so that she cannot move it until it has set, and then make a splint for the poor leg.’Her fears forgotten, the child watched, fascinated, as he worked, and all the more so because while he fixed a fine splint to the shattered leg he told her the most wonderful story. Views: 15
Sex changed everything...After marrying off her sisters, Ruby Lockhart could finally concentrate on her career. After all, love wasn't in the cards for the pragmatic Ruby. Only she could wake up the morning after her sister's wedding with a gorgeous, sexy man in her bed and have him be her best friend!Mr. Sexy-aka Luther Biggens, ex-navy SEAL-had always been Ruby's rock. Now he was her problem. She couldn't look at him without remembering the ways he'd pleasured her. More troubling than how she'd ended up in bed with Luther was that Ruby wanted to do it again... and again.... Views: 15
With her perfect memory (and plenty of zip), ninety-five-year-old Ruth Gruber--adventurer, international correspondent, photographer, maker of (and witness to) history, responsible for rescuing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees during World War II and after--tells her story in her own words and photographs.Gruber's life has been extraordinary and extraordinarily heroic. She received a B.A. from New York University in three years, a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin a year later, and a Ph.D. from the University of Cologne (magna cum laude) one year after that, becoming at age twenty the youngest Ph.D. in the world (it made headlines in The New York Times; the subject of her thesis: the then little-known Virginia Woolf).At twenty-four, Gruber became an international correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and traveled across the Soviet Arctic, scooping the world and witnessing, firsthand, the building of cities in the... Views: 15
