From the critically acclaimed author of The 25th Hour, a captivating novel about war, courage, survival — and a remarkable friendship that ripples across a lifetime.
During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible.
By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men. Views: 818
It has been years since Elizabeth “Betts” McGee has returned to her once-adored Bulls Island in the Carolina Lowcountry—ages since tragic fate coupled with nasty rumors ended her engagement to fabulously wealthy Charleston golden boy J.D. Langley. Having successfully reinvented herself as a top New York banking executive, Betts is now heading up the most important project of her career. But it’ll transform the untouched island she loved in her youth into something unrecognizable. And it’s forcing her to return to the bosom of her estranged family, where she may not be welcomed with open arms—and uniting her with ex-flame J.D., who’s changed . . . but perhaps not enough.
"Bulls Island" is a satisfying tale of honor, chance, and star-crossed love, infused with Southern wit, grace, and charm from the "New York Times" bestselling author of "The Christmas Pearl" and "The Land of Mango Sunsets." Views: 818
This collection of literature attempts to compile many classics that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.This collection of literature attempts to compile many classics that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them. Views: 815
There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road.
A calico cat, about to have kittens, hears the lonely howl of a chained-up hound deep in the backwaters of the bayou. She dares to find him in the forest, and the hound dares to befriend this cat, this feline, this creature he is supposed to hate. They are an unlikely pair, about to become an unlikely family. Ranger urges the cat to hide underneath the porch, to raise her kittens there because Gar-Face, the man living inside the house, will surely use them as alligator bait should he find them. But they are safe in the Underneath...as long as they stay in the Underneath.
Kittens, however, are notoriously curious creatures. And one kitten's one moment of curiosity sets off a chain of events that is astonishing, remarkable, and enormous in its meaning. For everyone who loves Sounder, Shiloh, and The Yearling, for everyone who loves the haunting beauty of writers such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Flannery O'Connor, and Carson McCullers, Kathi Appelt spins a harrowing yet keenly sweet tale about the power of love and its opposite, hate the fragility of happiness and the importance of making good on your promises. Views: 814
This prequel to Crown Duel is about the early life of Vidanric Renselaeus, Marquis of Shevraeth, who as a courtly, well-mannered teen coached in the noble art of dueling, finds himself thrown into the infamous cavalry command academy in Marloven Hess. There, instead of reading theories about statecraft, he is forced to learn about command from the inside--and what it means to be king. Views: 808
Jamal is middle-aged, though reluctant to admit it. He has an ex-wife, a son he adores, a thriving career as a psychoanalyst and vast reserves of unsatisfied desire. "Secrets are my currency," he says. "I deal in them for a living." And he has some of his own. He is haunted by Ajita, his first love, whom he hasn't seen in decades, and by an act of violence he has never confessed. With great empathy and agility, Kureishi has created an array of unforgettable characters -- a hilarious and eccentric theater director, a covey of charming and defiant outcasts and an ebullient sister who thrives on the fringe. All wrestle with their own limits as human beings; all are plagued by the past until they find it within themselves to forgive. Comic, wise and unfailingly tender, Something to Tell You is Kureishi's best work to date, brilliant and exhilarating. Views: 804
Excerpt - There is a lot of entertainment and also a great deal of truth in this story. We recommend it highly. PROFESSOR CARBONIC was diligently at work in his spacious laboratory, analyzing, mixing and experimenting. He had been employed for more than fifteen years in the same pursuit of happiness, in the same house, same laboratory, and attended by the same servant woman, who in her long period of service had attained the plumpness and respectability of two hundred and ninety pounds. Views: 804
Eugenie Markham is a shaman for hire, paid to bind and banish creatures from the Otherworld. But after her last battle, she's also become queen of the Thorn Land. It's hardly an envious life, not with her kingdom in tatters, her love life in chaos, and Eugenie eager to avoid the prophecy about her firstborn destroying mankind. And now young girls are disappearing from the Otherworld, and no one - except Eugenie - seems willing to find out why. Eugenie has spilled plenty of fey blood in her time, but this enemy is shrewd, subtle, and nursing a very personal grudge. And the men in her life aren't making things any easier. Her boyfriend Kiyo is preoccupied with his pregnant ex, and sexy fey king Dorian always poses a dangerous distraction. Views: 804
A Wraeththu Mythos novel, sequel to The Hienama. The young Wraeththu har, Gesaril, has been shamed and cast out of Jesith, after an inappropriate affair with his hienama, Ysobi. Ysobi's reputation was at stake, so Gesaril was made the scapegoat. Taken in by Huriel Har Kyme, a codexia of the famed Alba Sulh academy, Gesaril vows to begin his life anew in the Wraeththu city of learning. He is determined to put the past and its ghosts behind him, to restore his name and prove to hara he is not what Ysobi painted him to be. But sometimes the past will not lie quietly in its grave, and Gesaril soon learns he must confront the restless ghosts and fight them. Ysobi is not done with him, but no har will believe him. If he is to retain his sanity and his hard won new life, Gesaril must win this bitter war alone, with magic dark and light. This is a powerful story of obsession, betrayal and doomed love, sure to be a hit with Wraeththu fans and followers of the dark and Gothic alike. Views: 803
Around the World in Eighty Days (French: Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) is a classic adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, published in 1873. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager (roughly £1.6 million today) set by his friends at the Reform Club. It is one of Verne\'s most acclaimed works. The story starts in London on Tuesday, October 1, 1872. Fogg is a rich English gentleman living in solitude. Despite his wealth, Fogg lives a modest life with habits carried out with mathematical precision. Very little can be said about his social life other than that he is a member of the Reform Club. Having dismissed his former valet, James Foster, for bringing him shaving water at 84 °F (29 °C) instead of 86 °F (30 °C), Fogg hires a Frenchman by the name of Jean Passepartout as a replacement. At the Reform Club, Fogg gets involved in an argument over an article in The Daily Telegraph stating that with the opening of a new railway section in India, it is now possible to travel around the world in 80 days. He accepts a wager for £20,000 (equal to about £1.6 million today) from his fellow club members, which he will receive if he makes it around the world in 80 days. Accompanied by Passepartout, he leaves London by train at 8:45 P.M. on Wednesday, October 2, 1872, and is due back at the Reform Club at the same time 80 days later, Saturday, December 21, 1872. Views: 803
New York Times bestselling author of The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates returns with a dark, wry, satirical tale—inspired by an unsolved American true-crime mystery.
"Dysfunctional families are all alike. Ditto 'survivors.'"
So begins the unexpurgated first-person narrative of nineteen-year-old Skyler Rampike, the only surviving child of an "infamous" American family. A decade ago the Rampikes were destroyed by the murder of Skyler's six-year-old ice-skating champion sister, Bliss, and the media scrutiny that followed. Part investigation into the unsolved murder; part elegy for the lost Bliss and for Skyler's own lost childhood; and part corrosively funny exposé of the pretensions of upper-middle-class American suburbia, this captivating novel explores with unexpected sympathy and subtlety the intimate lives of those who dwell in Tabloid Hell.
Likely to be Joyce Carol Oates's most controversial novel to date, as well as her most boldly satirical, this unconventional work of fiction is sure to be recognized as a classic exploration of the tragic interface between private life and the perilous life of "celebrity." In My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike, the incomparable Oates once again mines the depths of the sinister yet comic malaise at the heart of our contemporary culture. Views: 802
A local radio station is holding the Great Detective Race, and the Boxcar Children have entered the contest! They solve riddles and search all over town for clues leading to the grand prize. But when some of the clues turn out to be fake, it’s clear that someone is playing unfairly! Who could be trying to ruin the race—and why? Views: 801
Token Creek — 1884
Jessie Wheeler knows how to take care of herself and her girls. The owner of Token Creek's general store has been doing it for a long time—nearly eight years—since the day her husband walked out on her.
Seth Redding, Jessie's husband, has done a lot of thinking in those years, some of it in a jail cell. Looking back on their marriage, he can't believe he left Jessie and their baby. It was true that Jessie had her own way of doing things and could be hardheaded. But they had shared a special kind of love too, at least early on. If only he'd known then what he knows now...
Seth is a changed man, but will he ever be able to show Jessie that? Will she even let him try? Views: 799
Saying Toby Klein is an unlikely cheerleader is like saying Paris Hilton might be into guys-understatement of the year. But as a Bayport High cheerleader and an undercover government operative, she's living a life that's anything but typical. Being on the Squad has its benefits, but just as Toby is getting the hang of protocol and pep rallies, fate kicks things up anotch. "From the Paperback edition." Views: 798
Alexander McCall Smith, best-selling author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, has turned his hand to humour. The delightful result is a creation of comic genius. For in the unnaturally tall form of Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, we are invited to meet a memorable character whose sublime insouciance is a blend of the cultivated pomposity of Frasier Crane and of Inspecteur Clouseau’s hapless gaucherie. Von Igelfeld inhabits the rarefied world of the Institute of Romance Philology at Regensburg, a world he shares with his equally tall and equally ridiculous colleagues, Professors Florianus Prinzel and Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer. Their unlikely adventures are described in three deliciously funny instalments: Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances. Views: 795
