Twenty-five years ago, a young Australian museum curator named Tim Flannery set out to research the fauna of the Pacific Islands. Starting with a survey of one of the most inaccessible islands in Melanesia, the young scientist found himself ghost whispering, snake wrestling and Quadoi hunting in search of a small bat that turned out not to be earthshatteringly interesting.With accounts of discovering, naming and sometimes eating new mammal species; being thwarted or aided by local customs; and historic scientific expeditions, Flannery, now one of the world's top environmentalists, takes us on an enthralling journey through some of the most diverse and spectacular places on earth. Views: 67
10 September 1961: at the boomerang-shaped racetrack at Monza, in northern Italy, half a dozen teams are preparing for the Italian Grand Prix. It is the biggest race anyone can remember. Phil Hill - the first American to break into the top ranks of European racing - and his Ferrari teammate, Count Wolfgang von Trips - a German nobleman with a movie-star manner - face each another in a race that will decide the winner of the Formula One drivers' championship. By the day's end, one man will clinch that prize. The other will perish face down on the track. In The Limit, Michael Cannell tells the thrilling story of two parallel lives that come together in tragedy on a hot late-summer afternoon. He charts their careers from childhood and adolescence lived in the shadow of world war; through their gruelling experiences in such deadly road races as the Mille Miglia and the 24 Hours of Le Mans; to their coming of age in the hothouse atmosphere of Enzo Ferrari's Formula One team of the late 1950s. The quiet and self-contained Hill was a pathological worrier who vomited before a race and enjoyed Bartok and Shostakovich - rather than Campari and debauchery - thereafter; the dashing von Trips lived life as fast as he drove his 'sharknose' Ferrari, and yearned to inspire a nation fractured and traumatized by war. Both men strove to attain the perfect balance of speed and control that drivers called 'the limit': to drive under that limit was to run the risk of failure; to go beyond it was to dice with death. The Limit is a vivid and atmospheric recreation of a lost world of seductive glamour and ever-present danger. Michael Cannell tells a moving and unforgettable tale of high speed and burning rivalry - and of young lives lived in the shadow of oblivion. Views: 67
Victim in the VineyardJessica Fletcher is visiting the Napa Valley wine country while doing research for her next book, and invites her old friend, Scotland Yard detective George Sutherland to join her at a cozy Bed and Breakfast. No sooner do they arrive than they find the valley abuzz over the murder of a waiter at the restaurant owned by infamous ex-Hollywood heavyweight Bill Ladington. Ladington's blatant womanizing and involvement in a bitter vineyard land dispute have already marked him as a dubious character-and a possible suspect.But when Ladington turns up dead himself from a supposed "suicide," Jessica knows that a murderer is on the loose-and with a little help from George, she must try and bottle up a motive for murder from an extensive list of less-than-vintage suspects... Views: 67
Kitty Norville is back and in more trouble than ever. Her recent run-in with werewolves traumatized by the horrors of war has made her start wondering how long the US government might have been covertly using werewolves in combat. Have any famous names in our own history might have actually been supernatural? She's got suspicions about William Tecumseh Sherman. Then an interview with the right vampire puts her on the trail of Wyatt Earp, vampire hunter. But her investigations lead her to a clue about enigmatic vampire Roman and the mysterious Long Game played by vampires through the millennia. That, plus a call for help from a powerful vampire ally in San Francisco, suddenly puts Kitty and her friends on the supernatural chessboard, pieces in dangerously active play. And Kitty Norville is never content to be a pawn. . . . Views: 67
The spectacular new book in "New York Times"-bestselling author W.E.B. Griffin's Honor Bound saga of World War II espionage. Wars come to an end. But then new ones begin. Just weeks after Hitler's suicide, Cletus Frade and his colleagues in the OSS find themselves up to their necks in battles every bit as fierce as the ones just ended. The first is political-the very survival of the OSS, with every department from Treasury to War to the FBI grabbing for its covert agents and assets. The second is on a much grander scale-the possible next world war, against Joe Stalin and his voracious ambitions. To get a jump on the latter, Frade has been conducting a secret operation, one of great daring-and great danger-but to conduct it and not be discovered, he and his men must walk a perilously dark line. One slip, and everyone becomes a casualty of war.(source: Bol.de) Views: 67
Duke Wolff was a flawless specimen of the American clubman -- a product of Yale and the OSS, a one-time fighter pilot turned aviation engineer. Duke Wolff was a failure who flunked out of a series of undistinguished schools, was passed up for military service, and supported himself with desperately improvised scams, exploiting employers, wives, and, finally, his own son.In The Duke of Deception, Geoffrey Wolff unravels the enigma of this Gatsbyesque figure, a bad man who somehow was also a very good father, an inveterate liar who falsified everything but love.From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 67
The town of Black Rock is under a dark cloud. Four single women have disappeared, and there are no leads as to their whereabouts. Until one evening after work, pretty real-estate broker Layla West fends off an attacker, and becomes the newest obsession of a deranged serial killer.... Desperate for protection, Layla seeks refuge at the remote cabin of Jacob Grayson, the brother of the local sheriff. A former FBI agent, Jacob still bears the guilt of a similar case gone fatally wrong. Now Jacob's growing desire for Layla could tempt him into letting his guard down...with potentially deadly results. Views: 67
