Leo Bronski, an alcoholic Vietnam vet, is on shaky ground with his employer, the U. S. Postal Service in Anchorage. His boss transfers him to a "dry" Western Alaska village to serve as temporary postmaster for a month. After Bronski arrives he is told to find out if the previous postmaster had actually committed suicide—or was murdered."This is no cozy crime novel. It is masculine and hard edged, with plenty of action and even a bit of sex along with its mystery. The author shows rare skill in balancing the thrilling with sensitive subject matter."— Shana Loshbaugh, Kenai Peninsula Clarion Views: 68
By piecing the lives of selected individuals into a grand mosaic, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel J. Boorstin explores the development of artistic innovation over 3,000 years. A hugely ambitious chronicle of the arts that Boorstin delivers with the scope that made his Discoverers a national bestseller.Amazon.com ReviewHistorian Daniel J. Boorstin brings his customary depth and range to this compelling book on Western art, taking on everything from European megaliths (Stonehenge, for example) to Benjamin Franklin's autobiography ("the first American addition to world literature"). Boorstin does not aim at being comprehensive--he much prefers to linger over certain "heroes of the imagination" as he surveys human accomplishment in the fields of architecture, music, painting, sculpting, and writing--yet The Creators certainly feels comprehensive, as Boorstin carefully places everything he describes within a grand tradition of aesthetic achievement. Boorstin knows that good history demands good writing, and his prose makes this big book easy to absorb. "This is a story," he writes, "of how creators in all the arts have enlarged, embellished, fantasized, and filigreed our experience"--an apt description of the role art plays in our life and an equally apt description of the way Boorstin interprets it for readers. (The Creators also is the second volume of a trilogy that starts with The Discoverers and concludes with The Seekers, although none of these books requires any knowledge of the others.) --John J. MillerFrom Publishers WeeklyIn an ambitious companion volume to The Discoverers, Boorstin undertakes an interpretative history of creativity in Western civilization encompassing all the arts. Creativity, he suggests, is a relatively recent phenomenon with Judeo-Christian roots: the Jews' covenant with Yahweh "sealed . . . man's capacity to imitate God as a creator," and Christianity, by turning our gaze to the future, "played a leading role in the discovery of our powers to create." In the eminent historian's Eurocentric scenario, the Buddha "aimed at Un-Creation" and intimated the existence of a supreme power who was "no model for man the creator." Likewise, Boorstin presents Islamic religion as "the inhibitor of the arts," and his chapter-length forays into Chinese painting and Japanese architecture are unsatisfying, leaving the impression that the truly great creative endeavors are the province of the West. Nevertheless, this is an enormously stimulating volume, an epic work of immeasurable riches. Boorstin contemplates architects' attempts to conquer time and outlast the brief span of human life through prehistoric megaliths, Egypt's pyramids, Greek temples, the Roman Pantheon and modern-day skyscrapers. He offers wonderfully attuned readings of varied versions of the human comedy from Boccaccio and Chaucer to Balzac. Modern writers, he asserts, created the self by probing "the wilderness within," as chapters here on Melville, Dostoyevski, Kafka, Joyce and Virginia Woolf attest. Highly opinionated and quirky, Boorstin says virtually nothing about Mozart's unique triumphs of the spirit, yet he exalts Beethoven as a "prophet and pioneer." Packed with shrewd, pithy judgments and entertaining biographical profiles of Dante, Da Vinci, Goethe, Ben Franklin, Picasso and dozens more, this eloquent, remarkable synthesis sets the achievements of individual creative geniuses into a coherent narrative framework of humanity's advance from darkness and ignorance. First serial to U.S. News & World Report; BOMC main selection. (Sept.) .Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 68
TWO MISSING GIRLS. TWO BRUTAL MURDERS. ALL CONNECTED TO ONE FARM HOUSE. WHO IS TO BLAME?When pretty and popular teenagers Piper Hadley and Tash McBain disappear one Sunday morning, the investigation captivates a nation but the girls are never found.Three years later, during the worst blizzard in a century, a husband and wife are brutally killed in the farmhouse where Tash McBain once lived. A suspect is in custody, a troubled young man who can hear voices and claims that he saw a girl that night being chased by a snowman.Convinced that Piper or Tash might still be alive, clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin and ex-cop Vincent Ruiz, persuade the police to re-open the investigation. But they are racing against time to save the girls from someone with an evil, calculating and twisted mind...ReviewSay You're Sorry truly lives up to the hype of being unputdownable Sunday Telegraph Michael Robotham knows how to scare people Bayside Bulletin A first-rate psychological thriller Sunday Age The well-drawn characters on either side of the crime make fine supports for a wounded hero in a wounded world Sunday Herald Robotham delivers another nail-biting thriller Adelaide Advertiser A chilling psychological thriller Coffs Coast Advocate A new thriller from Australian Michael Robotham is always eagerly awaited Pittwater Life A gripping new psychological thriller Hawkesbury Courier This is Robotham in top form Saturday Age 'You know you're in for a ride with a Robotham book ... skilfully unspools gripping yarns, spiked with humour to put you in peril of missing your train stop Who Weekly About the AuthorBefore writing full-time Michael Robotham was an investigative journalist in Britain, Australia and the US. He is the pseudonymous author of ten best-selling non-fiction titles, involving prominent figures in the military, the arts, sport and science. He lives in Sydney with his wife and three daughters. Views: 68
In this novel of menace and eroticism, Richard Ford updates the tradition of Conrad for the age of cocaine smuggling. The setting is Oaxaca, Mexico, where Harry Quinn has come to free his girlfriend's brother, Sonny, from Jail and, ideally, to get him away form the suavely sadistic drug dealer who suspects Sonny of having cheated him. "His prose has a taut, cinematic quality that bathes his story with the same hot, mercilessly white light that scorches Mexico."--New York Times Book ReviewFrom the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 68
Erica Shaw spends her week babysitting the country’s bestselling authors for one of the top publishing companies in New York City. But on Friday nights she escapes to D.C., where her sexy-lipped musician boyfriend, Warren Prince, works and performs. Their connection is fierce, and the couple promises to never miss a weekend together. But when real life walks in—an overbearing father, an alcoholic mother, office politics, and a lucrative job contract—the couple starts unraveling at the seam. Tempers flare, violence breaks, while new lovers eagerly wait in the wings—to claim both of them.
Drenched in the perils of passion and the sweet sounds of jazz, Johnson dives deep into the world of ambition and the stumbling blocks of family. Clever, fast-paced and sexy, Love in a Carry-On Bag is a modern day love story that marks the healing power of forgiveness and begs the question, how much baggage is really too heavy to carry? Views: 68
It's the school multi-cultural-day lunch and Hank Zipzer is cooking up chaos. Views: 68
