Elizabeth Barrett Browning might have written about the length and breadth of love, but Abby Randolph has given up on all that, preferring to spend her time between her cluttered "needs work" apartment and an overcrowded antiques mart optimistically named Objects of Desire. Yet Abby can't help but wonder what happened to her earlier passionate self . . . Then the Antiques Roadshow comes to town, and Abby joins thousands of Boston's hopefuls at the crack of dawn, artifact in hand. But there, among the carousel horses and bedraggled stuffed animals, Abby's rather squalid piece of porcelain gets the star treatment. And from the moment the show airs, everything changes—friendships, her career, love affairs, even the way she views herself and others—as life comes rushing back at Abby Randolph full force. Views: 30
The Bowman triplets always attract trouble. So when twelve-year-olds Michael, Luke and Samantha ruin a classmate's costume party, they're chased by the school bullies into the city sewers. Locked inside, they discover a different kind of exit . . . A Knock-Knock Door. It's a gateway to another world, where sharks fly, swashbucklers scheme and party costumes become real. Soon, the triplets are mistaken for famous heroes and enlisted to fight the biggest trouble of all: a rampaging monster. Can you solve the puzzles and help bring our three adventurers home? Views: 30
The deadliest weapon is the truthAfter a life on the front lines, Army Ranger John Holliday is now teaching at West Point Military Academy. But when his uncle passes away, Holliday discovers a medieval sword among his things - sinisterly wrapped in Adolf Hitler's personal battle standard. Then someone viciously burns down his uncle's house and Holliday's secret fears about the mysterious sword ring alarmingly true. Holliday must delve into the past and piece together the puzzle that was his uncle's life - his involvement with the enigmatic warriors known as the Knight's Templar. But his search for answers soon becomes a race against a ruthless and cunning opponent, willing to die for their cause. Can Holliday live long enough to reveal the treacherous but critical truth?About the AuthorPaul Christopher is the pseudonym of a bestselling US novelist who lives in the Great Lakes region. Views: 30
Award-winning screenwriter Malla Nunn delivers a stunning and darkly romantic crime novel set in 1950s apartheid South Africa, featuring Detective Emmanuel Cooper -- a man caught up in a time and place where racial tensions and the raw hunger for power make life very dangerous indeed. In a morally complex tale rich with authenticity, Nunn takes readers to Jacob's Rest, a tiny town on the border between South Africa and Mozambique. It is 1952, and new apartheid laws have recently gone into effect, dividing a nation into black and white while supposedly healing the political rifts between the Afrikaners and the English. Tensions simmer as the fault line between the oppressed and the oppressors cuts deeper, but it's not until an Afrikaner police officer is found dead that emotions more dangerous than anyone thought possible boil to the surface. Views: 30
Examining ideas of belonging and being an outsider, this story follows Billy, a young school teacher and drifter who arrives in Australia's remote far north in search of his past, his Aboriginal roots, and his future. Through masterful language and metaphor, as well as a sophisticated tone that is both subtle and spirited, the novel finds Billy in a region not only of abundance and beauty but also of conflict, dispossession, and dislocation. On the frontier between cultures, Billy must find where he belongs in what is ultimately a powerful portrayal of the discovery of self and a sensitive exploration of race and culture. Views: 30
This time Mac has gone too far. For Helm to impersonate a Communist courier to whom he bears no resemblance is suicide, and that isn't all. Someone wants to get the layout of the Alaskan North-west Coastal Defence System, but they aren't the goodies or the baddies. So who the hell are they? And who is the mysterious Holz that Helm is meant to kill? Views: 30
Cult favorite Tony Vigorito invokes a kind of chaos theory in Nine Kinds of Naked that gleefully turns any expectation of time, space, or plot on its head. A prisoner spins a playing card into a somersault, stirring a wind that becomes a tornado that takes off the roof of a church in nearby Normal, Illinois. Elizabeth Wildhack is born in that church and someday she will meet that prisoner, a man named Diablo, on the streets of New Orleans—where a hurricane-like Great White Spot hovers off the coast. But how is it all interconnected? "Comparisons of this novel to the works of Tom Robbins are both obvious and appropriate: the story meanders around in an entertaining manner, never getting too serious about itself; the characters are splendidly loopy, close to caricature but never quite reaching it; and the situations in which they find themselves are comic, dramatic, and everything in between."—Booklist Views: 30
Pursuing the thief who stole her father's treasure, a young Irish girl encounters some strange characters when she stows away on the ship that is laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1865. Views: 30
Billy Cutshaw, a former astronaut who fell into madness, lives in a large castle that is actually an insane asylum for military personnel. Views: 30
Arthur Nersesian's underground literary treasure is an unforgettable slice of gritty New York City life...and the darkly hilarious odyssey of an anonymous slacker. He's a perennial couch-surfer, an aspiring writer searching for himself in spite of himself, and he's just trying to survive. But life has other things in store for the fuck-up. From being dumped by his girlfriend to getting fired for asking for a raise, from falling into a robbery to posing as a gay man to keep his job at a porno theater, the fuck-up's tragi-comedy is perfectly realized by Arthur Nersesian, who manages to create humor and suspense out of urban desperation. "Read it and howl," says Bruce Benderson (author of User), "and be glad it didn't happen to you." Views: 30
