From Edgar® Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Max Allan CollinsBASED ON THE CBS TELEVISION SHOW HAILED AS "The network's best new offering." (Wall Street Journal)Watched by nearly 18 million fans weeklyThe bodies of three young girls are discovered in the woods of Bemidji, Minnesota, the result of barbiturate poisoning. Unable to identify the victims, the local police turn to the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Profiler David Rossi learns that the girls disappeared more than ten years ago from Georgia. Further investigation reveals that the perpetrators have been involved in a cycle of kidnapping and murder for close to twenty years—and are about to start again... Views: 12
IN 2004, AT THE AGE OF FORTY-EIGHT, DR. DAVE HNIDA, a family physician from Littleton, Colorado, volunteered to be deployed to Iraq and spent a tour of duty as a battalion surgeon with a combat unit. In 2007, he went backthis time as a trauma chief at one of the busiest Combat Support Hospitals (CSH) during the Surge. In an environment that was nothing less than a modern-day M*A*S*H, the doctors main objective was simple: Get em in, get em out. The only CSH staffed by reservists who tended to be older, more-experienced doctors disdainful of authoritythe 399th soon became a medevac destination of choice because of its high survival rate, an astounding 98 percent. This was fast-food medicine at its best: working in a series of tents connected to the occasional run-down building, Dr. Hnida and his fellow doctors raced to keep the wounded alive until they could be airlifted out of Iraq for more extensive repairs. Here the Hippocratic Oath superseded that of the... Views: 12
SUMMARY:
Felix Gomez, Latino vampire detective extraordinaire, tackles a dangerous werewolf cabal in the fifth installment in Mario Acevedo's satirical supernatural series A sure-to-be-bloody civil war is brewing between rival werewolf factions, and P.I . Felix Gomez will do anything he can to make sure it doesn't explode into a vicious battle that engulfs all creatures, living and dead. Between that, the sudden reappearance of an ex-girlfriend, and a gang of other vampires trying to take off his head, this is one rumble even a fanged detective extraordinaire may not be able to handle. Views: 12
BONUS: This edition contains a reader's guide.In these spellbinding stories, Yiyun Li, Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winner and acclaimed author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and The Vagrants, gives us exquisite fiction filled with suspense, depth, and beauty, in which history, politics, and folklore magnificently illuminate the human condition. In the title story, a professor introduces her middle-aged son to a favorite student, unaware of the student's true affections. In "A Man Like Him," a lifelong bachelor finds kinship with a man wrongly accused of an indiscretion. In "The Proprietress," a reporter from Shanghai travels to a small town to write an article about the local prison, only to discover a far more intriguing story involving a shopkeeper who offers refuge to the wives and children of inmates. In "House Fire," a young man who suspects his father of sleeping with the young man's wife seeks the help of a detective agency run by a group of feisty old women. Written in lyrical prose and with stunning honesty, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl reveals worlds strange and familiar, and cultures both traditional and modern, to create a mesmerizing and vibrant landscape of life. Excerpts From the book... KindnessChapter Onei am a forty-one-year-old woman living by myself, in the same one- bedroom flat where I have always lived, in a derelict building on the outskirts of Beijing that is threatened to be demolished by government-backed real estate developers. Apart from a trip to a cheap seaside resort, taken with my parents the summer I turned five, I have not traveled much; I spent a year in an army camp in central China, but other than that I have never lived away from home. In college, after a few failed attempts to convince me of the importance of being a community member, my adviser stopped acknowledging my presence, and the bed assigned to me was taken over by the five other girls in the dorm and their trunks.I have not married, and naturally have no children. I have few friends, though as I have never left the neighborhood, I have enough acquaintances, most of them a generation or two older. Being around them is comforting; never is there a day when I feel that I am alone in aging.I teach mathematics in a third-tier middle school. I do not love my job or my students, but I have noticed that even the most meager attention I give to the students is returned by a few of them with respect and gratitude and sometimes inexplicable infatuation. I pity those children more than I appreciate them, as I can see where they are heading in their lives. It is a terrible thing, even for an indifferent person like me, to see the bleakness lurking in someone else's life.I have no hobby that takes me outside my flat during my spare time. I do not own a television set, but I have a roomful of books at least half a century older than I am. I have never in my life hurt a soul, or, if I have done any harm unintentionally the pain I inflicted was the most trivial kind, forgotten the moment it was felt-if indeed it could be felt in any way. But that cannot be a happy life, or much of a life at all, you might say. That may very well be true. "Why are you unhappy?" To this day, if I close my eyes I can feel Lieutenant Wei's finger under my chin, lifting my face to a spring night. "Tell me, how can we make you happy?"The questions, put to me twenty-three years ago, have remained unanswerable, though it no longer matters, as, you see, Lieutenant Wei died three weeks ago, at age forty-six, mother of a teenage daughter, wife of a stationery merchant, veteran of Unit 20256, People's Liberation Army, from which she retired at age forty-three, already afflicted with a malignant tumor. She was Major Wei in the funeral announcement. I do not know why the news of her death was mailed to me except perhaps that the funeral committee-it was from such a committee that the letter had come, befitting her status- thought I was one of her long-lost friends, my name scribbled in an old address book. I wonder if the announcement was sent to the other girls, though not many of them would still be at the same address. I remember the day Lieutenant Wei's wedding invitation arrived, in a distant past, and thinking then that it would be the last time I would hear from her.I did not go to the funeral, as I had not gone to her wedding, both of which took place two hours by train from Beijing. It is a hassle to travel for a wedding, but more so for a funeral. One has to face strangers' tears and, worse, one has to repeat words of condolence to irrelevant people.When I was five, a peddler came to our neighborhood one Sunday with a bamboo basket full of spring chicks. I was trailing behind my father for our weekly shopping of rationed food, and when the peddler put a chick in my palm, its small body soft and warm and shivering constantly, I cried before I could... Reviews Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice... "A literary voice that brings to mind Nabokov's description of Chekhov's narrative style: 'The story is told in the most natural way possible...the way one person relates to another the most important things in his life, slowly and yet without a break, in a slightly subdued voice.' As in reading Chekhov, one is struck by how profoundly important the lives or ordinary people are made to seem, and by what a sizable chunk of existence -- an entire life or several lives -- has been compressed into a few pages....[Yiyun Li] succeeds in making the details of a very particular (and very sharply drawn) time and place express something broader and more universal....[Li's stories] have the power to create hushed intervals that resonate with emotion....Gold Boy, Emerald Girl is an example of the treasure an artist can fashion from the raw materials of ordinary existence." San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, Cover Review... "Li's collection well deserves a celebration with its sophistication and honesty, which often derive from a deep understanding of the history, culture and politics of China, and of their impact on ordinary people. . . . Yes, sorrows may arise during times of reflection, but it's impossible not to fall in love with the privacy and tranquility of the time and place." Marie Claire... "With their quiet authority, exquisite control, and illumination of those quicksilver moments on which entire lives pivot, Li's tales lodge in your rib cage long after you've finished reading....[Li will] remind you of what it's like to be human in today's increasingly fragmented world." Cleveland Plain Dealer... "Breathtaking....starkly wondrous....gorgeous fiction....Yiyun Li writes in simple, penetrating prose....[Li] is an impresario of our essential loneliness. Still, these nine stories are not sad, but astringently beautiful." Junot Díaz... "Li is extraordinary . . . a storyteller of the first order . . . each tale in this collection is as wild and beautiful and thorny as a heart. . . Li inhabits the lives of her characters with such force and compassion that one cannot help but marvel at her remarkable talents." Vogue... "Masterly....nuanced....Li conjures a bewildering new economy China, but her eloquent understanding of people struggling to help one another 'make a world that would accommodate their loneliness' feels universal." Elle... "Delectable....subtle and assured....[Li] finds the pulse points in the lives of her Chinese and Chinese-American characters and renders her findings with empathy and exactitude." Time Out New York... "Li displays a staggering poise and grace in her latest collection of short stories....the yarns spun in Gold Boy, Emerald Girl prove to be as varied as humanity itself." New York Observer... "[Li's] writing is minimal, yet packed with detail. At times, it feels like she is reporting in the manner of a journalist; at others she teeters on the verge of lyricism, often walking this line within a single paragraph." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)... "A stellar assortment of stories...further proof that Li deserves to be considered among the best living fiction writers." Publishers Weekly (starred review)... "Brilliant...a frighteningly lucid vision of human fate." About the Author Yiyun Li is the author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and The Vagrants. A native of Beijing and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she is the recipient of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the Whiting Writers' Award, and the Guardian First Book Award. In 2007, Granta named her one of the best American novelists under thirty-five. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories, among others. She teaches writing at the University of California, Davis, and lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their two sons. Views: 12
The new novel in Kelley Armstrong's bestselling Women of the Otherworld series showcases the fascinating Savannah Levine, a powerful young witch with a rebellious past and a troublesome heritage. The orphaned daughter of a sorcerer and a half-demon, Savannah is a terrifyingly powerful young witch who has never been able to resist the chance to throw her magical weight around. But at twenty-one she knows she needs to grow up and prove to her guardians, Paige and Lucas, that she can be a responsible member of their supernatural detective agency. So she jumps at the chance to fly solo, investigating the mysterious deaths of three young women in a nearby factory town, as a favour to one of the agency's associates. At first glance, the murders look garden-variety human, but on closer inspection signs point to otherworldly stakes. Soon Savannah is in over her head. She's run off the road and nearly killed, haunted by a mystery stalker and freaked out when the brother of one of the dead women is murdered when he tries to investigate the crime. To complicate things, something weird is happening to her powers. Pitted against shamans, demons, a voodoo-inflected cult and garden-variety goons, Savannah has to fight to ensure her first case isn't her last. And she also has to ask for help, perhaps the hardest lesson she's ever had to learn. Views: 12
When Mary Lanyon takes on the job of temporary housekeeper at Downe, a famous Merino stud, she is looking forward to staying in a gracious homestead with the wealthy Hazlitt family. The owner's wife, Clio, has been ill, and Mary's task is to get the house back into shape in the lead-up to the wedding of the only son and heir, Martin.When she arrives, however, Mary realises things are not right. Clio Hazlitt rarely ventures from her room. The house is shabby, redolent of dust and secrets. As a friendship develops between the women, Mary discovers answers to the questions that have puzzled her: What is the nature of Clio's illness? What has caused the grim estrangement between Clio and her husband? And why did Clio give up playing music, when she says it meant so much to her?A Darker Music is a gripping mystery that takes you into the heart of rural Western Australia, and into one family's troubled past. Views: 12
One of the most remarkably inventive voices of his generation, author Will Self delivers a new and stunning work of fiction. In Walking to Hollywood, a British writer named Will Self goes on a quest through L.A. freeways and eroding English cliffs, skewering celebrity as he attempts to solve a crime: who killed the movies.When Will reconnects with his childhood friend, the world suddenly seems disproportionate. Sherman Oaks, scarcely three feet tall at forty-five, and his ironically sized sculpturesreplicas of his body varying from the gargantuan to the minisculespark in Will a flurry of obsessive-compulsive thoughts and a nagging desire to experience the world by foot. Ignoring his therapist and nemesis Zack Busner, Self travels to Hollywood on a mission to discover whoor whatkilled the movies. Convinced that everyone from his agent, friends, and bums on the street are portrayed by famous actors, Self goes undercover into the dangerous world... Views: 12
Rufus Miller is a mystery. It's the one fact the entire town of Sentinel Pass can agree on. And Rufus has no intentions of solving the riddle. He likes his privacy. His cabin and his work suit him just fine, thanks. Then Rachel Grey shows up. The energetic entrepreneur has decided Rufus is her ideal client and is full of marketing ideas to make him a household name. And he's tempted. Not by her impressive strategy, but by her. Suddenly the guy least likely to answer a direct question wants to open up. Wants to share his space with her. Wants her to know all the skeletons in his closet. And that urge to be with Rachel so completely is the biggest mystery of all. Views: 12
