Amazon.com Review Amazon Exclusive: Walter Mosley on Leonid McGill My new detective series about the bad-guy-turned-good, Leonid McGill, has been a long time coming. As many of you know I cut my writing teeth on the Easy Rawlins series. Those novels are concerned with a time in L.A. (and America) when life was simple, black and white so to speak. Easy was an invisible soldier in an undeclared war where survival meant breaking the rules, and the laws, of a nation where inequality was the standard and class was a tattoo indelibly wrought on its citizens’ skins. Leonid McGill, on the other hand, lives in the modern world. Rather than being a victim, he has spent his entire life as a victimizer working for professional criminals and other miscreants. He’s done jobs for the mob and bent businessmen looking to cut their losses; he’s robbed Peter to pay Paul and then turned in Paul for tax evasion. In brief – Leonid McGill has not been a good man. But Leonid has gotten as good as he’s given. Abandoned by his union organizing father at the age of twelve, Leonid watched his mother die of a broken heart within the next year. He’s gone from orphanage to foster home to the streets – fighting hard and never taking a backward step. He trained to be a boxer but found the ring of life to be a more suitable war. Leonid is married with three children (though only one of them is his by blood). He and his wife have a relationship of sorts but there is little love in that bond. One gets the feeling that the only reason he hasn’t left this loveless union is that he just doesn’t know how to back down in a fight. New York is not only McGill’s home but also the atmosphere he needs to survive. The city is his constitution and his nation. And so one day when he wakes up to realize that he has been on the wrong path for all of his fifty-odd years, Leonid does not abandon his home. Instead he decides to change direction against all the wrong that he’s done. Leonid is a man looking for redemption among the people he’s wronged in the city that he has betrayed. This challenge will be the hardest battle the aging P.I. has ever taken on. The police have a lieutenant whose only assignment is bringing Leonid down. The mob has its hooks into Leonid, refusing to accept his resolve to go straight. His favorite teenage son Twill (the product of one his wife’s many affairs) is a loveable, and loving, sociopath who needs his father to run interference for the complex and brilliant troubles he gets into. To say the least: Leonid is not your everyday detective. He is plagued by the deeds and victims of his criminal past and is therefore uncertain about the future. He has found love but holds back because of his hollow marriage. He is offered many jobs but often finds that the work itself unravels his vow to go straight. Leonid’s human body and flawed past makes him a microcosm of America at a time when we are trying to turn the tide of history. He’s a hard-boiled hero in harder-still times; a six to one underdog in the most important fight of his life – or ours. Easy Rawlins lived in my father’s world and the world of my father’s, and my own, people. Leonid McGill, however, lives in a world writ large. In Leonid’s America the truth is never only skin deep. And so to get at the underlying reality you definitely have to shed some blood. Leonid is ready to bleed for what he now knows is right. He is a hero of the first order because he fights on with no promise, or even an inkling, of victory. From Publishers WeeklyMosley leaves behind the Los Angeles setting of his Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jones series (Devil in a Blue Dress, etc.) to introduce Leonid McGill, a New York City private detective, who promises to be as complex and rewarding a character as Mosley's ever produced. McGill, a 53-year-old former boxer who's still a fighter, finds out that putting his past life behind him isn't easy when someone like Tony The Suit Towers expects you to do a job; when an Albany PI hires you to track down four men known only by their youthful street names; and when your 16-year-old son, Twill, is getting in over his head with a suicidal girl. McGill shares Easy's knack for earning powerful friends by performing favors and has some of the toughness of Fearless, but he's got his own dark secrets and hard-won philosophy. New York's racial stew is different than Los Angeles's, and Mosley stirs the pot and concocts a perfect milieu for an engaging new hero and an entertaining new series. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Views: 71
JC2 was created by the police to combat violence and drug crimes in the city. Lieutenant Black, an intense man whose past is a mystery but whose hatred of the drug Bliss is not, is the leader of the team. When the empath Calyx Starr is pulled from the streets and forced onto his team, Black must deal not only with Starr's seductions but a dangerous telepath who has targeted the empath and JC2. Views: 71
In the dangerous world of the selkie underground, a selkie vampire king and a mortal woman join forces to fight the queen of darkness that would destroy them all. Lady Theodosia Barrett is blackmailed by Dubheasa, Queen of the Dark Fin-Folk, and forced to stalk the Cu Maran crypts in search of a selkie king’s pelt. What she finds is the king himself--and he isn’t only a selkie, but also a vampire. Calling upon her skills as a vampire hunter, Theo stakes him. But she doesn’t complete the kill. A year later, King Roane comes back, demanding her hand in marriage. Theo has no choice. To protect her family, she must accept. Selkie vampire King Roane Cu Mara is determined to keep his people safe from the Dark Fin-Folk. To do so, he must first solve the puzzle as to why Theo, a soul born to protect the selkies, tried to kill him. Until he can figure out why she betrayed her own kind, Roane sets out to keep a close eye on her by making her his bride. But even as Theo begins to warm Roane’s cold, vampyric heart, Queen Dubheasa plots to destroy selkie-kind in a twisted quest to make Roane her own. For she knows something that Roane doesn’t--Theo’s soul holds the key to keeping the selkie kingdom alive. Warning, this title contains the following: explicit sex, graphic language. Views: 71
Welcome to Eye Candy, the East Side's hottest nightclub where the bartenders are hot, the cocktails are fancy, and danger lurks just under the surface... Eve Webber, the gorgeous and savvy owner of Eye Candy, knows better than anyone that growing up on the wrong side of the tracks comes with certain complications. Determined to run a clean business and fix up the East Side, Eve's plans get temporarily stalled when a potential new hire walks into her bar. The sexual chemistry crackling between them is a potent distraction...even if she refuses to mix business with the promise of pleasure. Detective Matt Dorchester lives by strict rules that have kept him alive in impossible situations. When his latest undercover assignment has him playing a bartender, his desire for the passionate owner has him breaking every single one. Eve is in danger and her life depends on his secrecy. But once their attraction reaches a climactic conclusion, Matt must make a... Views: 71
For the past year, a group of high school students met at a publishing house in San Francisco every Monday night to read literary magazines, chapbooks, graphic novels, and countless articles. This committee was assisted by a group of students that met in the basement of a robot shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Together, and under the guidance of guest editor Adam Johnson, these high schoolers selected the contents of The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015. The writing in this book is very essential, if not required, like visiting the Louvre if you're in Paris. In any case, nothing in this book takes place in Paris, as far as we can recall, but it does feature an elephant hunt, the fall of a reality-TV star, a walk through Ethiopia, and much more of what Johnson calls "the most important examinations in life." The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015 includes LESLEY NNEKA ARIMAH, DANIEL ALARCÓN, BOX BROWN, REBECCA CURTIS, VICTOR LODATO,... Views: 71
Glory McNally needs to shake up her life, and with the help of her best friend, she comes up with 12 Challenges of Christmas, a list full of daring tests that will push her a way beyond her comfort zone. But Glory quickly finds out that some challenges will take more than just her wits. Some challenges will take all of her heart. But is she willing to give it, purely and unconditionally? Views: 71
Welcome to the America we don't usually talk about, a place where that nice couple down the street could be saddling up for "pony play," making and selling their own porn DVDs, or hosting other couples for a little flogging. As award-winning journalist Brian Alexander uncovers, fringe experimentation has gone suburban. Soccer moms, your accountant, even your own parents could be turning kinky. Stunned by the uninhibited questions from ordinary people on his msnbc.com column, "Sexploration" ("My wife and I have heard that a lot of couples in their thirties are playing strip poker . . . as well as skinny-dipping with other couples/friends. Any idea if this is a fashionable trend or has it been going on for some time and we never knew it?" or "I am interested in bondage and hear that there are secret bondage clubs someplace. Can you help me find them?"), Brian Alexander was driven to understand Americans' desire to get down and dirty--especially in an era where... Views: 71
In this poignant and witty debut, a bohemian and a Gucci-clad socialite form an unlikely friendship after leaving the city. Views: 71
When a deep-cover FBI agent disappears along with a ton of Semtex explosive, the government turns to Nathan McBride, former Marine sniper and covert CIA operative, to recover them.From Publishers WeeklyDebut author Peterson kicks off a series in fine style with this complex and action-packed conspiracy thriller. Former CIA sniper Nathan McBride, called in to investigate the disappearance of an undercover FBI agent who happens to be the grandson of former FBI director Frank Ortega, tracks down two homegrown arms dealers/terrorists, Leonard and Ernie Bridgestone, who have a huge supply of Semtex explosive. When McBride kills one of their men, the Bridgestones retaliate by blowing up an FBI headquarters building in California. As McBride chases them down, he discovers that what he thought was a clean-cut case of catch the terrorist is anything but, with corruption and twists that connect to Ortega and may involve McBride's own estranged senator father. Competent, intelligent, cool under pressure and romantically involved with FBI agent Holly Simpson, McBride is an extremely promising hero, and his adventures will be a big hit with thriller fans. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Views: 71
