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Many generations ago, a mysterious cataclysm struck the world. Governments collapsed and people scattered, to rebuild where they could. A mutation, "the Change," arose, granting some people unique powers. Though the area once called Los Angeles retains its cultural diversity, its technological marvels have faded into legend. "Las Anclas" now resembles a Wild West frontier town... where the Sheriff possesses superhuman strength, the doctor can warp time to heal his patients, and the distant ruins of an ancient city bristle with deadly crystalline trees that take their jewel-like colors from the clothes of the people they killed. Teenage prospector Ross Juarez's best find ever – an ancient book he doesn't know how to read – nearly costs him his life when a bounty hunter is set on him to kill him and steal the book. Ross barely makes it to Las Anclas, bringing with him a precious artifact, a power no one has ever had before, and a whole lot of trouble. Views: 55
Interweaving two captivating stories of romance and intrigue, humor and faith, The Emerald Isle wraps up the multi-colored threads of Angela Elwell Hunt's The Heirs of Cahira O'Connor series in a page-turning conclusion that will satisfy both spirit and heart. Resisting her confining, traditional role as a king's daughter, fiery-spirited Cahira O'Connor dreams of practicing her bow, not of capturing a husband. But when Norman invaders challenge the borders of the Kingdom of Connacht, Cahira finds both the one man who could win her heart and an irresistible calling to fight for the land and people she loves. To Kathleen O'Connor, the story of Cahira's deathbed vow was nothing more than a legend - until her research revealed that it was true. Now, in Ireland for the wedding of her best friend Taylor and his fiancee, Maddie O'Neil, Kathleen struggles to fit in at the O'Neils' farm, Ballyshannon, and focus on her research into the life of her ancestor Cahira.... Views: 55
When at last Zac became aware, he found himself in a place that had been stripped of every shred of colour. Some pain was like that, so intense, so personal, that it tore away all subtlety from the world and left nothing but obliterating darkness and flashes of blinding, impenetrable light . . . The pain they had inflicted had been, literally, unimaginable. The sort of pain that makes a man do anything, say anything,to make it stop. Zac Kravitz has upset someone. Someone very important. He has been tortured and cast, barely alive, into an ancient prison deep in the republic of Taargistan. Bordering Russia, China and Afghanistan and ringed by high mountains, the country is a land of deep snows and still deeper suspicions, and its about to swallow Zac, to drag him from his cell and execute him. But he has a friend. Harry Jones is a former soldier, now a politician, a man of extraordinary skills and an enduring sense of guilt. He owes Zac. The debt must be repaid, no matter what the cost. Harry is forced to team up with a tough-talking American-born MP, Martha Riley.She doesnt much like Harry, the feeling is mutual, yet Harry needs her, more than he could ever realize. Theirs is a journey that takes them not only to Taargistan but also into their fractured pasts, where they must confront old obsessions. Theirs is a story of honour and love that will push them to the limits of their endurance, and then beyond. To have any chance of success, Harry must once again become the man he thought he had left behind many years ago a desperate, utterly ruthless fighter, ready to eliminate anyone who gets in his way. It will take him to a place of immense and almost unendurable suffering, where dying becomes the easy option.Yet Harry Jones is not a man who has ever taken the easy option. He doesnt know when to stop fighting, even when hes standing on a trapdoor with an executioners noose around his neck. Views: 55
London, May 1945. Freya Wyley, twenty, meets Nancy Holdaway, eighteen, amid the wild celebrations of VE Day, the prelude to a devoted and competitive friendship that will endure on and off for the next two decades. Freya, wilful, ambitious, outspoken, pursues a career in newspapers which the chauvinism of Fleet Street and her own impatience conspire to thwart, while Nancy, gentler, less self-confident, struggles to get her first novel published. Both friends become entangled at university with Robert Cosway, a charismatic young man whose own ambition will have a momentous bearing on their lives. Flitting from war-haunted Oxford to the bright new shallows of the 1960s, Freya plots the unpredictable course of a woman's life and loves against a backdrop of Soho pornographers, theatrical peacocks, willowy models, priapic painters, homophobic blackmailers, political careerists. Beneath the relentless thrum of changing times and a city being reshaped, we glimpse... Views: 55
The first in an acclaimed series of historical novels--including Tiberius and Caesar--reconstructs the lost memoirs of Augustus, recounting the life of the founder of the Roman Empire in his own frank, forceful style Views: 55
James A. Garfield may have been the most extraordinary man ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back. But the shot didn't kill Garfield. The drama of what happened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in turmoil. The unhinged assassin's half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president as the object of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power--over his administration, over the nation's future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As... Views: 55
Benjamin Franklin was not only one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a leading writer, publisher, inventor, diplomat, scientist, and philosopher. He is well-known for his experiments with electricity and lightning, and for publishing “Poor Richard’s Almanac” and the Pennsylvania Gazette. He served as Postmaster General under the Continental Congress, and later became a prominent abolitionist. He is credited with inventing the lightning rod, the Franklin Stove, and bifocals. A year after Benjamin Franklin’s death, his autobiography, entitled “Memoires De La Vie Privee,” was published in Paris in March of 1791. The first English translation, “The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, LL.D. Originally Written By Himself, And Now Translated From The French,” was published in London in 1793. Known today as “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,” this classic piece of Americana was originally written for Franklin’s son William, then the Governor of New Jersey. The work portrays a fascinating picture of life in Philadelphia, as well as Franklin’s shrewd observations on the literature, philosophy and religion of America’s Colonial and Revolutionary periods. Franklin wrote the first five chapters of his autobiography in England in 1771, resumed again thirteen years later (1784-85) in Paris and later in 1788 when he returned to the United States. Franklin ends the account of his life in 1757 when he was 51 years old. Considered to be the greatest autobiography produced in Colonial America, Franklin’s Autobiography is published here in 14 chapters. Views: 55
MR. AUGUSTWilde Man: Rancher Mac Wilde desperately needed a woman's help.Not-so-wild Woman: Kara Kirby could be a wonderful wife, but would she agree to Mac's marriage proposal?Mac knew Kara hadn't come to Montana to find a husband! But this rugged cowboy needed Kara -- not for himself, but to take care of his four rambunctious kids. There was no way he was going to let her get away without putting a ring on her finger, but Kara wasn't about to agree to a marriage without love!MAN OF THE MONTH: This single father needs a mother for his kids -- and a wife for himself! Views: 55
Maya Angelou, the bestselling author of On the Pulse of Morning, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now, and other lavishly praised works, is considered one of America's finest poets. Here, four of her most highly acclaimed poems are assembled in a beautiful gift edition that provides a feast for the eyes as well as the heart. (Poetry)From the Hardcover edition. Views: 55
A young seventheeth-century Jesuit priest's mission takes him into the wilderness of New France, where he discovers that a darker mission has already begun at St. Barthélemy.Being the Last True Testament and Relation of Father Alphonse Nyon; Given at Montréal, Québec in the form of a Letter to the Very Reverend Father Vincenzo Caraffa, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, at Rome (Anno Domini 1650).This novella is excerpted from Michael Rowe's Enter, Night, the book that Paul Goat Allen (BarnesandNoble .com) called "the vampire fiction release of the year." Views: 55
Enormously visceral, emotionally gripping, and imbued with the belief that justice is possible even after the most horrific of crimes, Alice Sebold's compelling memoir of her rape at the age of eighteen is a story that takes hold of you and won't let go.Sebold fulfills a promise that she made to herself in the very tunnel where she was raped: someday she would write a book about her experience. With Lucky she delivers on that promise with mordant wit and an eye for life's absurdities, as she describes what she was like both as a young girl before the rape and how that rape changed but did not sink the woman she later became.It is Alice's indomitable spirit that we come to know in these pages. The same young woman who sets her sights on becoming an Ethel Merman-style diva one day (despite her braces, bad complexion, and extra weight) encounters what is still thought of today as the crime from which no woman can ever really recover. In an account that is at once... Views: 55
In this superb memoir, the bestselling author of In Country and other award-winning books tells her own story, and the story of a Kentucky farm family, the Masons of Clear Springs. Like Russell Baker's Growing Up, Jill Ker Conway's The Road from Coorain, and other classic literary memoirs, Clear Springs takes us back in time to recapture a way of life that has all but disappeared, a country culture deeply rooted in work and food and family, in common sense and music and the land. Clear Springs is also an American woman's odyssey, exploring how a misfit girl who dreamed of distant places grew up in the forties, fifties, and sixties, and fulfilled her ambition to be a writer. Views: 54
The Simney family, of Hazelwood Hall, have a dubious history. Sir George Simney, who was travelling in Australia before the baronetcy fell to him, sleeps with a shotgun by his side. When he is found dead in the library, the Reverend Adrian Deamer will not rest until he has discovered who is responsible. This is an absorbing tale narrated by Simney's widow, Nicolette, and by young Harold, who has just joined the C.I.D. Views: 54