The true story of one man's determination to master the world's deadliest helicopter and of a split-second decision that changed the face of modern warfare. Ed Macy bent every rule in the book to get to where he wanted to be: on Ops in the stinking heat of the Afghan summer, with the world's greatest weapons system at his fingertips. It's 2006 and he is part of an elite group of pilots assigned to the controversial Apache AH Mk1 gunship programme. So far, though, the monstrously expensive Apache has done little to disprove its detractors. For the first month 'in action' Ed sees little more from his cockpit than the back end of a Chinook. But everything changes in the skies over Now Zad. Under fire and out of options, Ed has one chance to save his own skin and those of the men on the ground. Though the Apache bristles with awesome weaponry, its fearsome Hellfire missile has never been fired in combat. Then, in the blistering heat of the firefight, the trigger is pulled. It's a split-second decision that forever changes the course of the Afghan war, as overnight the gunship is transformed from being an expensive liability to the British Army's greatest asset. From that moment on, Ed and his squadron mates will face the steepest learning curve of their lives - fighting an endless series of high-octane missions against a cunning and constantly evolving enemy. Ed himself will have to risk everything to fly, fight and survive in the most hostile place on earth. Views: 18
Jem is a joyful mystery to Alice. She is something to give thanks for. And when she disappears from Alice's life, as suddenly as she entered it, a whirl of glamour, subversion and literary references, Alice is left bereft. But then she meets Giovanni, presumptuous and hectoring, passionate and beautiful, who leads her back to her childhood friend and the mystery and chaos still surrounding her. Alice finds herself being seduced all over again... Views: 18
Sisters are born, not chosen. . .Maddie Crane is grappling with the disappearance of Cordelia LeClaire, and trying to escape the grasp of The Sisters of Misery--an insidious clique of the school's most powerful girls, whose pranks have set off a chain of horrific events, and who have Maddie in their sights. . . Beware the sister betrayed. . .Now in a prestigious boarding school far away from her mysterious hometown of Hawthorne, Massachusetts, Maddie feels free from danger. But when an unmarked envelope arrives at her dorm containing a single ominous tarot card, Maddie realizes with terror that some secrets won't stay buried. Knowing she must return to Hawthorne--a town still scarred by the evil of the Salem witch trials--Maddie prepares to face the fears of her past...and the wrath of the sister she wronged. Praise for Megan Kelley Hall and Sisters of Mercy "An exciting, dangerous, and mysterious world! Megan... Views: 18
The New York Times called Sir Edward Feathers one of the most memorable characters in modern literature. A lyrical novel that recalls his fully lived life, Old Filth has been acclaimed as Jane Gardam?s masterpiece, a book where life and art merge. And now that beautiful, haunting novel has been joined by a companion that also bursts with humor and wisdom: The Man in the Wooden Hat.Old Filth was Eddie?s story. The Man in the Wooden Hat is the history of his marriage told from the perspective of his wife, Betty, a character as vivid and enchanting as Filth himself.They met in Hong Kong after the war. Betty had spent the duration in a Japanese internment camp. Filth was already a successful barrister, handsome, fast becoming rich, in need of a wife but unaccustomed to romance. A perfect English couple of the late 1940s.As a portrait of a marriage, with all the bittersweet secrets and surprising fulfillment of the 50-year union of two remarkable people, the novel is a triumph. The Man in the Wooden Hat is fiction of a very high order from a great novelist working at the pinnacle of her considerable power. It will be read and loved and recommended by all the many thousands of readers who found its predecessor, Old Filth, so compelling and so thoroughly satisfying.From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Octogenarian Gardam's latest, told with quintessentially British humor, bookends the two-time Whitbread winner's earlier novel, Old Filth, about a barrister who becomes a renowned lawyer in the Far East whose nickname, Filth, speaks volumes: failed in London, try Hong Kong. This book concentrates on the courtship and marriage of Filth and his wife, Betty, and then flits across the years to their final days, revealing a backstory of secret trysts and desires that each concealed from the other during their long, childless marriage. Filth and Betty's early days in Hong Kong tingle with the weight of the past: Betty spent the war starving in a Japanese internment camp in Shanghai; Filth talks in his sleep in the passionate Malay of his childhood. The supporting characters in their steamy, crowded world are a bizarre lot (a card-flinging Chinese dwarf among them). Gardam's prose is witty and precise, and the hole in the middle of the story is obviously to be filled by reading (or rereading) Old Filth. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. About the AuthorJane Gardam has been awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a lifetime's contribution to the enjoyment of literature; has twice won a Whitbread Award and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She was awarded an OBE in January 2009. Views: 18
Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, Caribbean & Canada and the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award; Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Book Award, and the Winterset AwardWhen a whale beaches itself on the shore of the remote coastal town of Paradise Deep, the last thing any of the townspeople expect to find inside it is a man, silent and reeking of fish, but remarkably alive. The discovery of this mysterious person, soon christened Judah, sets the town scrambling for answers as its most prominent citizens weigh in on whether he is man or beast, blessing or curse, miracle or demon. Though Judah is a shocking addition, the town of Paradise Deep is already full of unusual characters. King-me Sellers, self-appointed patriarch, has it in for an inscrutable woman known only as Devine’s Widow, with whom he has a decades-old feud. Her granddaughter, Mary Tryphena, is just a child when Judah washes ashore, but finds herself tied to him all her life in ways she never expects. Galore is the story of the saga that develops between these families, full of bitterness and love, spanning two centuries. With Paradise Deep, award-winning novelist Michael Crummey imagines a realm where the line between the everyday and the otherworldly is impossible to discern. Sprawling and intimate, stark and fantastical, Galore is a novel about the power of stories to shape and sustain us. Views: 18
The next heart-pounding chapter in Fulmer’s Storyville series featuring New Orleans detective Valentin St. Cyr Autumn 1913. Valentin St. Cyr has been absent from his Storyville stomping grounds for some months, trying to make it in the straight detective world and make a go of it with his longtime love, Justine. But then a man is found dead in a Storyville brothel.The madam immediately turns to the creole detective for help.He resists, but when several more bodies turn up in Storyville, Valentin can’t help but come to the aid of the place—and the people—he tried to leave behind.Just when he has the case wrapped around his finger, it turns out Valentin has been played.The police captain thinks he’s meddling and may be guilty of murder.He’s on the run, and Justine has turned her back on him, retaliating with a handsome young fellow in a very sporty car. But is she being lured into a trap too?Taking us back to his acclaimed and much-loved Storyville series, in Lost River award-winning author David Fulmer marks a heart-pounding return to the streets of early-1900s New Orleans. From Publishers WeeklyIn Shamus-winner Fulmer's enjoyable fourth mystery to feature Valentin St. Cyr (after 2006's Rampart Street), the Creole detective must stop a crime wave in Storyville, New Orleans' legendary red-light district, in 1913. St. Cyr, who's been working for a respectable law firm in a better part of town, reluctantly decides to help his former employer, Tom Anderson (aka the king of Storyville), after a dead man with a bullet hole in his chest turns up in the parlor of one of Anderson's bordellos. Enter the contender for queen of Storyville, Evelyne Dallencort, a jaded society matron and her equally jaded young lover, Louis Jacob, and the body count rises. With his usual lucid prose, Fulmer details the grubby crib life that exploited scores of women prostitutes while padding rich men's wallets. At times, though, the cartoonish Dallencort sounds too much like a modern woman who's wandered into the wrong book. Still, those looking for some jazzy early 20th-century chills won't be disappointed. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistAfter two stand-alones, Fulmer returns to his Valentin St. Cyr series, set in turn-of-the-century New Orleans. St. Cyr, the Creole detective, has sworn off his life as a fixer for Storyville boss Tom Anderson, hoping to cement his relationship with former prostitute Justine. Then bodies start turning up around Storyville’s high-class brothels, and St. Cyr is drawn back into his old life. But are the murders only catnip to lure the Creole into a deadly trap? Fulmer tends to rework familiar themes—St. Cyr’s determination to escape Storyville, for example—but his feel for atmosphere and his increasingly subtle hand with character development keep the series from going stale. The latter is particularly evident this time in Fulmer’s more rounded portrayals of the aging Anderson, his run as de facto mayor of Storyville nearly over, and the steel-willed Justine, the one-time prostitute determined to find a new life, even it means giving up St. Cyr. Early on, this series’ main appeal was its setting, but now it can hold its own with the most character-driven of historical mysteries. --Bill Ott Views: 18
A novel based on the screenplay by Martin Brest. Views: 18
David and Abby Treasure seem to have everything together: a perfect marriage, a perfect son, and a perfect life. But one simple phone call turns their world upside down. Years ago, David had an affair outside of his marriage, and though he never knew it, the affair produced a daughter. Now his former lover calls with heartbreaking news: his daughter is dying of leukemia. Her only hope for survival is a bone marrow transplant-from David or his son. Can David and Abby set aside their betrayal and anger to save a little girl's life? If they can make it through, they may find that their love for one another and their faith in God can be redeemed . . . and grow stronger than ever before. Views: 18
Ramona just wants everyone to be happy. If only her father would smile and joke again, her mother would look less worried, her sister would be cheerful, and Picky-picky would eat his cat-food. But Ramona's father has lost his job, and nobody in the Quimby household is in a very good mood.Ramona tries to cheer up the family as only Ramona can -- by rehearsing for life as a rich and famous star of television commercials, for instance -- but her best efforts only make things worse. Her sister, Beezus, calls her a, pest, her parents lose patience with her, and her teacher claims she's forgotten her- manners. But when her father admits he wouldn't trade her for a million dollars, Ramona knows everything is going to work out fine in the end. Views: 18
Seeking shelter in a Parisian cafe from a sudden rainstorm, John Patterner meets the exotic Sabiha and his carefully mapped life changes forever. Resonant of the bestselling Conditions of Faith, Alex Miller's keenly awaited new novel tells the deeply moving story of their lives together, and of how each came undone by desire.Strangers did not, as a rule, find their way to Chez Dom, a small, rundown Tunisian cafe on Paris' distant fringes. Run by the widow Houria and her young niece, Sabiha, the cafe offers a home away from home for the North African immigrant workers working at the great abattoirs of Vaugiraud, who, like them, had grown used to the smell of blood in the air. But when one day a lost Australian tourist, John Patterner, seeks shelter in the cafe from a sudden Parisian rainstorm, the quiet simplicities of their lives are changed forever. John is like no-one Sabiha has met before - his calm grey eyes promise her a future she was not yet even aware she wanted. Theirs becomes a contented but unlikely marriage - a marriage of two cultures lived in a third - and yet because they are essentially foreigners to each other, their love story sets in train an irrevocable course of tragic events.Years later, living a small, quiet life in suburban Melbourne, what happened at Vaugiraud seems like a distant, troubling dream to Sabiha and John, who confides the story behind their seemingly ordinary lives to Ken, an ageing, melancholy writer. It is a story about home and family, human frailties and passions, raising questions of morals and purpose - questions have no simple answer.Lovesong is a simple enough story in many ways - the story of a marriage, of people coming undone by desire, of ordinary lives and death, love and struggle - but when told with Miller's distinctive voice, which is all intelligence, clarity and compassion, it has a real gravitas, it resonates and is deeply moving. Into the wonderfully evoked contemporary settings of Paris and Melbourne, memories of Tunisian family life, culture and its music are tenderly woven. Views: 18
CHALLENGE AT SECOND BASE Stan Martin's chances of playing second base seem next to zero at the start of the season. His rival for the position, Gary Newman, looks tough to beat. Stan loves baseball-maybe even more than his brother, Phil, who played pro ball until quitting suddenly the year before-but after experiencing a few setbacks, Stan is tempted to quit too. Then Stan receives a mysterious note telling him to stick it out-and soon Stan finds himself face-to-face with the challenge at second base. Views: 18
