EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Demon slaying powers should come with an instruction book ...
Seriously. Why does a new hair dryer have a twelve-page how-to manual, but when it comes to ancient demon-fighting hocus-pocus, my biker witch granny gives me just half a dozen switch stars and a rah-rah speech? Oh, and a talking terrier, but that's another story. It's not like my job as a preschool teacher prepared me for this kind of thing.
So I've decided to write my own manual, The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers, because no one tells me anything. Dimitri, my "protector," may be one stud of a shape-shifting griffin, but he always thinks he can handle everything by himself. Only he's no match for the soul-stealing succubi taking over Las Vegas. If I can't figure out how to save him - and Sin City - there'll be hell to pay. Views: 9
For centuries following the fall of Rome, western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict. Meanwhile Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to catch even a glimpse of the scientific advances coming from Baghdad, Antioch, or the cities of Persia, Central Asia, and Muslim Spain. T here, philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers were steadily advancing the frontiers of knowledge and revitalizing the works of Plato and Aristotle. I n the royal library of Baghdad, known as the House of Wisdom, an army of scholars worked at the behest of the Abbasid caliphs. At a time when the best book collections in Europe held several dozen volumes, the House of Wisdom boasted as many as four hundred thousand.Even while their countrymen waged bloody Crusades against Muslims, a handful of intrepid Christian scholars, thirsty for knowledge, traveled to Arab lands and returned with priceless jewels... Views: 9
What does you in--brain or heart? Frannie asks herself this question when, a week before she turns fifteen, her dad dies, leaving her suddenly deprived of the only human being on planet Earth she feels understands her. Frannie struggles to make sense of a world that no longer seems safe, a world in which one moment can turn things so thoroughly for the worse. She discovers an elegant wooden box with an inscription: Frances Anne 1000. Inside, Frannie finds one thousand hand-painted and -carved puzzle pieces. She wonders if her father had a premonition of his death and finished her birthday present early. Feeling broken into pieces herself, Frannie slowly puts the puzzle together, bit by bit. But as she works, something remarkable begins to happen: She is catapulted into an ancient foreign landscape, a place suspended in time where she can discover her father as he was B.F.--before Frannie. Delia Ephron makes you laugh and makes you cry--often at the same time! Views: 9
Synopsis:D.I. Charlie Priest is on gardening leave – the neighbors have complained about his weeds – when the call comes. Ghislaine Curzon, girlfriend of one of the royal princes, is in Heckley to open the Curzon Centre, a new shopping mall and conference facility. But as she reveals the commemorative plaque at the opening ceremony it looks like someone has got to it first, defacing it with a single obscene word in foot-high red letters. The visiting dignitaries are aghast and the chief constable insists on Charlie investigating the case.Charlie would rather be investigating the burglaries perpetrated by a two-man gang, armed with a pit bull terrier, but he welcomes the opportunity to meet Ghislaine, known as Grizzly to her friends, at the family’s stately home in East Yorkshire. He also meets and befriends Toby, her precocious thirteen-year-old sister. The jollities cease, however, when the mayor of Heckley and driving force behind the construction of the Curzon Centre is found dead, killed by a single shot to the head.The subsequent investigation involves a cornucopia of characters from the rich farmland of East Yorkshire. As one of them tells Charlie: ‘We do things different in the country’. Charlie is not averse to doing things differently himself, to the displeasure of the superintendent in charge of the investigation, and it’s going to take more than standard police procedure to crack this case.Biography:STUART PAWSON had a career as a mining engineer, followed by a spell working for the probation service, before he became a full-time writer. He lives in Fairburn, Yorkshire, and when not hunched over the word processor likes nothing more than tramping across the moors, which often feature in his stories. He is a member of the Murder Squad and the Crime Writers' Association. Views: 9
Kate and Paul Hanlon are enjoying a beautiful May morning at the parsonage when a surprise visitor knocks on the door. Eli Weston, Copper Mill's antiques dealer, lumbers in, carrying an aged, life-size wooden mannequin that he recently discovered. When Eli shows off the intricate details of the dummy's construction, Kate realizes that this isn't any old antique-it's hiding a secret that someone wanted everyone in town to forget. Even worse, its shady past seems directly linked to the Hanlon family. Meanwhile, Phillip, Paul's friend from San Antonio, moves into town and opens an antiques store of his own. With Phillip in tow, Kate and Paul set out to uncover the truth behind the mannequin, but as rumors about Paul's family begin to surface, members of Faith Briar Church begin to wonder whether Paul is fit to minister. Can Kate set the record straight before the Hanlon reputation is tarnished for good? Views: 9
'Sometimes, ' whispered Jody. 'I think school dinners would be alright if it wasn't for her.'Mrs Chipchase, the nasty dinner lady, makes lunch hour at St Barty's really unpleasant. That is, for everyone but her 'favourite friend', Hamish Bigmore. Up to his usual tricks, Hamish is allowed to eat chocolate instead of ghastly school dinners!Mr Majeika decides it's time to sort out the menu... Views: 9
Filled with breathtaking scenes and vivid (Publishers Weekly) imagery, national bestselling author Douglas Carlton Abramss riveting ecological thriller blends shockingly true facts with a powerful narrative that pulls readers into a dangerous race through a majestic and mysterious world. Dedicated scientist Elizabeth McKay has spent almost a decade cracking the code of humpback whale communication. Their song, the most complex in nature, may in fact reveal unimaginable secrets about the animal world. When a humpback whale swims up the Sacramento River with a strange and unprecedented song, Elizabeth must decipher its meaning in order to save the whale and ultimately much more. But as her work captures the medias interest, powerful forces emerge to stop her from revealing the animals secrets. Soon, Elizabeth is forced to decide if her discoveries are worth losing her marriage, her career, and possibly her life. Working closely with leading... Views: 9
Amazon.com ReviewAmazon Best Books of the Month, April 2011: Out of the belly of a whale, Michael Crummey pulls the marvelous story of Paradise Deep, a remote settlement on the northern Newfoundland coast, a place "too severe and formidable, too provocative, too extravagant and singular and harrowing to be real," teeming with fierce rivalries, affections, and loyalties spanning five intertwined generations. His tale opens in a hungry winter, when a beached humpback arrives as an unexpected gift and the townspeople convene to claim their piece. From a slit in its gut spills a man--white, mute, and eerily alive--who assumes a central role in the lineage of the Divine family. Alternately feared as a devil and revered as a healer, Judah fathers a fish-scented son with the raven-haired Mary Tryphena. Their family comprises the heart of the town's rich mythology, with all its ghosts, mermaid trysts, strange accidents, miraculous babies, and impossible loves, rendered in language so gorgeously raw, it will transport you to a land whose sky is "alive with the northern lights, the roiling seines of green and red like some eerily silent music to accompany the suffering below." --Mari MalcolmFrom Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Crummey (River Thieves) returns readers to historic Newfoundland in his mythic and gorgeous latest, set over the course of a century in the life of a hardscrabble fishing community. After a lean early-19th-century winter, a whale beaches itself and everyone in town gathers to help with the slaughter. But when a woman known only as Devine's Widow—when she's not called an outright witch—cuts into the belly, the body of an albino man slides out. He eventually revives, turns out to be a mute, and is dubbed Judah by the locals. Judah's mystery—is his appearance responsible for the great fishing season that follows?—is only one among many in this wild place, where the people are afflicted by ghosts and curses as much as cold and hunger. Crummey's survey eventually telescopes to the early 20th century, when Judah's pale great-grandson, Abel, sequesters himself amid medical debris in an old hospital where his opera singer cousin, Esther Newman, has returned and resolved to drink herself to death. But before she does so, she shares with him the family history he never knew. Crummey lovingly carves out the privation and inner intricacies that mark his characters' lives with folkloric embellishments and the precision of the finest scrimshaw. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. Views: 9
John D. Porter, a struggling PhD student in Middle Eastern studies, has unexpectedly been thrown into the adventure of his life...which may result in the end of it. An ancient manuscript and city are uncovered in the southern mountains of Guatemala, igniting conflict between fellow archaeologists and attracting the gaze of a far more ruthless and powerful entity. Porter races against a secret society who will do all within its power to hide the truth contained in the ancient codex, to make it disappear. They’ve done it in the past....they will do it again. James Steimle leads you into a secret world of cutthroat scholars where some finds are best left undiscovered. Views: 9
Visitors are more than welcome in the isolated rural town of Hopkins Bend. The town needs them for their annual sacrifices...and entertainment. Now outsiders have stumbled into the town's traps. Some will be held for their captors' perverse, degrading amusement, but some will face a far more gruesome end at the yearly Holiday Feast. The townspeople hope their unholy ritual will protect them from the curse that befell the Kincher family. For more than a century the Kinchers have been changing, mutating, becoming gradually less human. And at the center of it all lies the dark secret, the malignant evil that controls Hopkins Bend and has made its residents truly...DEPRAVED. Views: 9
