From the author of the popular Million Dollar Mysteries and Smart Chick Mysteries comes a new stand–alone novel full of hidden staircases, buried secrets, and the promise of hope found in knowing God.Miranda Miller wasn’t looking for the news the day the letter came. But, trying to survive in troubled circumstances, she welcomes the chance to change her location for a period of time. The letter informs her that her grandparents’ estate is finally about to become hers. She immediately heads down to Louisiana and the old house by the bayou. There Miranda finds secrets that lead to life–changing revelations.This suspenseful story reminiscent of old Gothic tales has a complex mystery and a vivid sense of the Deep South. It shows how God can take the darkest circumstances and use them to light a bright path leading to the future.About the AuthorMindy Starns Clark is the author of many books (more than 450,000 copies sold), which include A Pocket Guide to Amish Life, Shadows of Lancaster County, Whispers of the Bayou, and The Amish Midwife. In addition, Mindy is a popular inspirational speaker and playwright. Views: 40
Long ago, mortals worshipped the deities of Olympus , which in turn gave them purpose. Often the immortals mingled with those who pleased them, taking lovers where they wished, but rarely allowing their lives to be affected by them. In the modern age, with mortals believing in them less and less, quite a few of the Olympians have withdrawn, ignoring the mortal realm completely. Some live partially among the mortals, but return often to Olympus . A select few found themselves fascinated with the mortal world, and chose to completely live among mortals, some even finding love. Worshiped: Pothos (God of Passion), Himeros (God of Sexual Desire) and the mortal Alicia. A Wish and a Threesome: Nike, Athena, and the mortal Chris. Views: 40
An ex-con hits the streets of L.A. to find her twin sister’s killer. Is it a mission of justice—or a quest for vengeance?Cody Bonner, identical twin, daughter of a major movie star, a teenage street kid in Los Angeles, a bank robber at nineteen, and a prison inmate at twenty. When she’s released after six years, she returns to L.A. with a purpose: to learn the truth about her sister Julie, who washed up on a Malibu beach a year earlier. The connection between the twins was so powerful that the day Julie died, Cody collapsed in the prison yard. Now that bond is driving her to seek justice—at any cost. Using bootleg skills she learned in prison, Cody begins to peel back the layers of mystery. Her search leads her to the darker alleys behind the dazzle of the film business, and into the world of high-powered agents, high-priced call girls, and men with a taste for sexual violence. As she homes in on her mother’s... Views: 40
A new Cold War has arrived, posing deep threats to our national security. Country after country is bending to the will of a newly resurgent Russia willing to use its vast natural gas reserves as a foreign policy sword. Suddenly the United States also finds itself needing energy from an increasingly hostile Russia. And only a handful of unsuspecting insiders can save America from ruthless Moscow oligarchs who seek to ensnare our country in ever-deeper energy dependence. In a small apartment, in the middle of a damp D.C. summer night, Tony Ruiz, special assistant to the president, gets a phone call from the White House. Blackouts in California are causing panic, the electric fences at the prison in Sacramento have powered down and prisoners are escaping, California is being plunged into a hellish nightmare. . . In a hotel room in Germany, the brilliant and feared American environmental activist Blaise Ryan is relieved to be away from the steady deterioration in her home state of California. A heated dinner argument with a powerful Russian energy executive lays bare the new alignments of world power. . . On an ordinary evening in an upscale neighborhood in Lima, a powerful Peruvian senator has a backseat conversation with managers from one of the world's most powerful natural gas companies. The senator's conversation could change the balance of power in the Western Hemisphere, and threaten the national security of the United States. . . With a master's touch for capturing the essence of the day's more dangerous scenarios, Peter Schechter's Pipeline will leave readers questioning the possibilities of what our future holds, and who has the true power to harm the world. Views: 40
"Soulshine" is the first book in the Soulshine Trilogy. The second book of the
series, "Soulquest", will be published in winter 2011. Fans of fantasy/adventure
with romance as a sub-genre will enjoy this series. This first book lays the
groundwork for the main characters. Evan is a young man (well... young LOOKING
anyway) who has been around long enough to personally know Socrates, the apostle
Paul, and Shakespeare. Michelle is a twentieth century girl who is everything
Evan has been looking for... at least everything required for him to want to
make certain that she shares his immortality! "Soulshine" culminates in a twist
of events that produces a surprising element of ironic role reversals.
"Soulquest" reveals the fate of the myriad of interesting "Soulshine" characters
and introduces an enigmatic young time traveler and visitor from the future
named "Tristan Heat", whose name will be the title of the final book in the
trilogy. An ancient elixir that prevents aging, time travel and a romance
spanning the ages... a combination that will keep the pages turning! Views: 40
From Publishers WeeklyBestseller Woods's third thriller to feature prominent New Mexican attorney Ed Eagle (after Short Straw and Santa Fe Rules) opens with a bang, but soon devolves into a fairly predictable cat-and-mouse game. Ed and his girlfriend, actress Susannah Wilde, are watching the Los Angeles trial on Court TV of his villainous ex-wife, Barbara, who stands accused of arranging for his murder, when a reporter announces that Barbara has escaped from custody just before the not guilty verdict. Soon, suitably disguised and under an alias, Barbara contrives to meet a recent widower, Palo Alto billionaire Walter Keeler, at a luxury spa and has him proposing marriage and making a new will in her favor. Meanwhile, her hatred for her ex unquenched, Barbara schemes to have Ed and Susannah killed. Bodies, innocent and otherwise, pile up, but there's little suspense about the outcome, and an improbable coincidence involving the billionaire may strike some as a plot weakness. Author tour. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ReviewPraise For Stuart Wood’s Short Straw “Woods keeps [his characters] moving smartly around the playing board like so many checkers . . . .”—_Kirkus Reviews_ (starred review) “A taut tale of a very bad woman out to fleece a very good man. . . . Scarcely an excess word gets in the way of the briskly moving plot.”—_Publishers Weekly_ Views: 40
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.WWJBD? Chelsea Swan asked herself as she headed out to the loading dock of the medical examiner's office of Bear Claw, Colorado. The e-speak stood for What Would James Bond Do? and served as her mantra, though some days she replaced 007's name with some of her other favorite fictional spies: Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt, Jack Bauer and the like.Regardless of who she was trying to channel on a given day, the mantra meant one thing: don't be a wuss. On the scale of fight or flight, Chelsea fell squarely in the "flight" category, which wouldn't be such a big deal if another part of her didn't long for adventure, for the sort of danger she read about and watched on TV, and experienced secondhand through her bevy of cop friends.She'd gone into pathology because she'd wanted to be near police work without actually carrying a gun, and because she liked medicine, but didn't want to be responsible for another human being's life. She was good at fitting together the clues she found during an autopsy, and turning them into a cause of death. She liked the puzzles, and the knowledge that her work sometimes helped the families understand why and how their loved one had died. Occasionally she'd even even assisted the Bear Claw Creek Police Department in finding a killer, and the success had given her a serious buzz.Most days the job was rewarding without being actively frightening. Then there were days like today, when even James Bond might've hesitated. Chelsea figured she was entitled to some nerves, though, because while she was certainly no stranger to death, today was different. The dead were different.The four incoming bodies belonged to terrorists, mass murderers who'd been incarcerated in the ARX Supermax prison two hours north of Bear Claw, and who'd died there under suspicious circumstances. The knowledge that she'd be autopsying their bodies in under an hour gave Chelsea a serious case of the willies as she headed out to meet the prison transport van. No matter how many times she told herself the dead deserved justice, she couldn't talk herself into believing it in this case.Besides, the bodies came with major political baggage, which meant the ME's office would be under microscopic scrutiny.Unfortunately, they didn't have a choice in the matter.Three of the men, who went by the names of al-Jihad, Muhammad Feyd and Lee Mawadi, were international-level terrorists who'd been convicted of the Santa Bombings that had rocked the Bear Claw region three years earlier. The fourth, Jonah Fairfax, had tortured and murdered two federal agents in the days leading up to a bloody government raid on a militant anarchists' compound up in northern Montana, and had apparently hooked up with the terrorists inside the prison, despite being in 24/7 solitary confinement. The four were seriously bad news.Chelsea, who usually managed to find the upside of any situation, wished the prison had stuck to its standard procedure of handling everything internally, including autopsies. Unfortunately, budget cuts had forced Warden Pollard to pare back his medical staff. When the four prisoners had died of unknown causes within an hour of one another, Pollard had requested an outside autopsy and the state had turfed the bodies to Bear Claw."Lucky us," Chelsea muttered as she pushed through the doors leading to the loading dock, which opened onto a narrow alley separating the two big buildings that housed the ME's office and the main station house of the Bear Claw Creek Police Department.Two other members of the ME's office were already waiting on the loading ramp: Chelsea's boss and friend, Chief Medical Examiner Sara Whitney, and their newly hired assistant, Jerry Osage. Under normal circumstances there wouldn't have been a welcoming committee for the bodies, but these were far from normal circumstances. The deaths had gained national media attention at a time the ME's office would've strongly preferred otherwise.That worry was in Sara's eyes as she turned to Chelsea, but her voice held its normal brisk, businesslike tone when she said, "I'm glad you're here. Chief Mendoza wants me to come out front and say a few words for the cameras so we can sneak the van in the back way while the newsies are distracted." Sara slipped out of her fall-weight wool jacket and held it out, revealing a jade-toned skirt suit that perfectly complemented her shoulder-length, honey-colored hair and arresting amber eyes. "Take this in case you're waiting long."The mid-October day was unusually cool, thanks to a sharp breeze that brought frigid air down from the snow-covered Rockies. It was just another change in the unusually unpredictable weather they'd been having lately. The mix of snow squalls and torrential downpours had triggered landslides in Bear Claw Canyon as well as the hills west of the city, taking out roads and at one point even prompting evacuation of the Bear Claw Ski Resort, which was just starting to gear up for the winter season.For the moment, though, the skies were clear, the wind sharp. The Rocky Mountains were a dark blur on the horizon, well beyond the huge wilderness of Bear Claw Canyon State Park, which formed an unpopulated buffer between the city suburbs and the ARX Supermax prison.Chelsea shivered involuntarily, though she couldn't have said whether the chill came from the wind biting through the thin scrubs she wore over her casual slacks and shirt, or the thought of how little actually separated them from an enclosure housing two thousand or so of the worst criminals in the country.She took Sara's coat and drew it over her shoulders. "Thanks."The garment was too long everywhere and she didn't have a prayer of buttoning it across the front, mute testimony that Sara was tall and lean and willowy, whereas Chelsea was none of those things.Five-five if she stretched it, tending way more toward curvy than willowy, Chelsea wore her dark, chestnut-highlighted hair in a sassy bob that brushed her chin, used a daily layer of mascara to emphasize the long eyelashes that framed her brown eyes, and considered her smile to be her best feature. If life were a movie, she would probably play the best friend's supporting role to Sara's elegant lead, and that was okay with her.Some people were destined to do great things, others small ones. That was just the way it was.Within the ME's office, Chelsea was good at the small things. She was the best of them at dealing with the families of the dead, mainly because she genuinely liked people. She enjoyed meeting them and learning about them, and she liked knowing that the information she gave them often helped ease the passing of their loved ones. She might not be saving the world, but she was, she hoped, making the natural process of death a bit easier, one family at a time.At the moment, though, she didn't particularly care if the incoming bodies were tied to people who had loved them and wanted answers. As far as she was concerned, monsters like the four dead men didn't deserve autopsies or answers. They deserved deep, unmarked graves and justice in the afterlife."I wish the prison had kept the bodies," Sara grumbled, her thoughts paralleling Chelsea's. Then she sighed, clearly not looking forward to the impromptu press conference. "Okay, I'll go do the song and dance and leave you guys to the real work."The snippiness implied by her words was more self-directed than anything—as the youngest chief medical examiner in city history, and a woman to boot, she'd found herself doing far more politicking and crisis management than she'd expected, when Chelsea knew she'd rather be in the morgue, doing the work she'd trained for.The two women had only met the year before, when Sara had pulled Chelsea's résumé out of a stack of better-qualified applicants because she'd been looking to build a young, cutting-edge team that combined empathy with hard science and innovation. That had been great until six months later, when the young, aggressive mayor who'd recruited Sara had stepped down in the wake of an embezzlement scandal, and his old-guard deputy mayor had taken over and promptly started undoing a large chunk of his predecessor's work.Acting Mayor Proudfoot hadn't yet managed to disassemble the ME's office, but he was trying. That had Sara, Chelsea and the others watching their backs at every turn these days."We've got this," Chelsea assured her boss. "You go make us look good, okay?"Sara shot her a grateful smile and headed inside. When the door shut at her back, Chelsea glanced at Jerry. She grinned at the sight of the assistant's obvious discomfort in the sharp air. "Dude, your nose is turning blue."Dark-haired and brown-eyed, the twenty-something Florida native was having a tough time adjusting to his first cold snap, having moved to Bear Claw just that summer to be with his park-ranger girlfriend. But Jerry was a hard worker and an asset to the team. He didn't accept her invitation to bitch about the cold, instead saying, "The van's late. Wonder if the driver got lost or stuck in the media circus or something."Chelsea pulled out her cell and checked the time display, frowning when she saw that he was right, the transpo coming from the prison was a good fifteen minutes overdue. "Maybe I should call the prison dispatcher and see if there's been a delay.""Never mind. I think I see them."Sure enough, a plain-looking van nosed its way into the alley, then spun away from them and started backing toward the cement loading dock, its brake lights flashing as the driver struggled to navigate the tight, unfamiliar alley, which was made even tighter by an obstacle course of trash bins and parked vehicles.Unmarked and unremarkable, the van looked like nothing special on first glance, but a closer inspection revealed that it was reinforced throughout, with mesh on the small back windows.Through the mesh, Chelsea could see one of the guards' faces. His eyes were a clear, piercing blue, and a thin scar ran through one of his dark eyebrows, probably tangible evidence of the dangers that came from working within the ARX Supermax.As the van's r... Views: 40
A brutally honest account of love, marriage, families and death.It wasn't until years later that I realised the obvious - the difference between us and the mythical normal family I was certain existed, was in fact the fiction... There is always so much more and it swims, shimmering beneath the surface, glittering with all the inherent contradictions of who we are, the changes that time brings and the very elusiveness of a life slipping through our fingers. Births Deaths Marriage is about life and how we really live it. These true tales move from visits to nudist communes, to losing your virginity; to going to couples' counseling and coping with death in the family. From a bohemian childhood in the seventies to becoming a mother and a writer, Georgia Blain explores a new land - true life in all its extraordinary richness - taking us deep into the heart of how we love, learn, fail, and try to learn again. Views: 40
Two very different women from two very different worlds meet by accident...literally.Collier Ann Torrington, a blue-blooded southern Californian, is running from her family, their money and her father's ruthless political ambitions. Meri Margaret Donovan lives on a Blue Ridge Mountain farm and refuses to see the world beyond her back gate. Their dramatic meeting is only the first of the tests that knock both women way out of their comfort zones.Just when it seems like Collier and Meri might find détente, the intrigue and destructive manipulations of Collier's family threaten her independence and Meri's way of life. There is only one way to survive the onslaught: together. But Meri's own shadows of the past threaten her ability to believe in any kind of future. Views: 40
A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun is the autobiography of convicted felon Noel 'Razor' Smith. An extraordinarily vivid account of how a tearaway kid from South London became a career criminal, it is both a searing indictment of a system that determinedly brutalized young offenders and a frank, unsentimental acknowledgement of the thrills of the criminal life. Shocking, fascinating and frightening by turns, it also reveals Razor Smith to be a remarkably talented writer. Views: 40
SUMMARY:"From the "New York Times" bestselling coauthors of "Shooter" comes a novel that evokes the merciless, heartpounding action that author and top-ranked Marine Corp sniper Jack Coughlin experienced in real life...""Tight, suspenseful...Here's hoping this is the first of many Swanson novels." --"Booklist"An American general is captured in the Middle East by terrorists who threaten to behead him in days. Moments before rendered unconscious, he hears his captors speaking American English. Who are these people?"The action reaches a furious pitch."--"Publishers Weekly"""Gunnery Sgt. Kyle Swanson, a top Marine sniper, is vacationing on a yacht in the Mediterranean when he receives orders to mount a top-secret mission to rescue the general. But as Swanson and the Marines prepare to land in the Syrian desert, they unwittingly fly into an ambush. How did the enemy have details of a mission known only to a few high-level American officials? "A renowned sniper, Coughlin recounts battlefield action with considerable energy."--"The Washington Post"Now Swanson--the sole survivor among his men--must journey into the dark heart of the desert to achieve his mission. But soon he will encounter the most dangerous enemies of all: His fellow Americans. Their sworn enemy: The captured general whose fate now rests in Sniper Swanson's hands... Views: 40
Emmy Addison was an ordinary girl - almost. If you didn't count the fact that her parents were rich (very), her best friend was a boy (and a soccer star), and she could talk to rodents (and they talked back), she was very ordinary indeed. But she hadn't been that way for long . . . It was only a few weeks ago that Emmy and her friends Ratty and Joe got rid of the evil Miss Barmy, the nanny who had nearly ruined Emmy's life - and the lives of five other girls who went missing. Miss Barmy is now a rat. How much harm can she still do? Lynne Jonell has created a hilarious, inventive, and irresistibly rodent-friendly sequel to EMMY AND THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING RAT. Views: 40
Warhammer 40,000: The Horus Heresy Book 8 Views: 40
