In the nine breathtaking stories that make up her celebrated tenth collection, Alice Munro achieves new heights, creating narratives that loop and swerve like memory, and conjuring up characters as thorny and contradictory as people we know ourselves.A tough-minded housekeeper jettisons the habits of a lifetime because of a teenager's practical joke. A college student visiting her brassy, unconventional aunt stumbles on an astonishing secret and its meaning in her own life. An incorrigible philanderer responds with unexpected grace to his wife's nursing-home romance. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is Munro at her best, tirelessly observant, serenely free of illusion, deeply and gloriously humane.From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 43
One of Great Britain's most beloved bestselling authors, Josephine Cox enthralls American readers with a poignant tale of broken lives redeemed.The windswept village of West Bay is hope, an escape, and a future for Kathy Wilson, who dreams of turning the empty cottage she inherited into a home free of the pain she suffered back in London. As the summer slowly passes, she puzzles silently over her fascination with an enigmatic wanderer who strolls the beach below her window.Tom Marcus needed a place to hide when the life he knew was brutally destroyed. Inexplicably drawn to this captivating loner, Kathy feels a bond forming that will radically change them both. But the shadows that haunt them will not be dismissed--until they can find the courage to open their hearts. Views: 43
Lieutenant Eve Dallas puzzles over a bizarre suicide bombing in a Wall St. office building in Leverage in Death, the latest in the #1 New York Times bestselling series from J.D. Robb...For the airline executives finalizing a merger that would make news in the business world, the nine a.m. meeting would be a major milestone. But after marketing VP Paul Rogan walked into the plush conference room, strapped with explosives, the headlines told of death and destruction instead. The NYPSD’s Eve Dallas confirms that Rogan was cruelly coerced by two masked men holding his family hostage. His motive was saving his wife and daughter—but what was the motive of the masked men?Despite the chaos and bad publicity, blowing up one meeting isn’t going to put the brakes on the merger. All it’s accomplished is shattering a lot of innocent lives. Now, with the help of her billionaire husband Roarke, Eve must untangle the reason for an inexplicable act of terror, look at suspects inside and outside both corporations, and determine whether the root of this crime lies in simple sabotage, or something far more complex and twisted. Views: 43
They are the Season sisters, bound by blood, driven apart by a tragedy. Now they are about to embark on a bittersweet journey into the unknown-an odyssey of promise and forgiveness, of loss and rediscovery.Jillian, Beatrice and Rose have gathered for the funeral of their younger sister, Meredith. Her death, and the legacy she leaves them, will trigger a cross-country journey in search of a stranger with the power to mend their shattered lives. As the emotions of the past reverberate into the present, Jillian, Beatrice and Rose search for the girls they once were, in hopes of finding what they really lost: the women they were meant to be. Views: 43
In the City, everything has a price. What's yours? At the age of twenty-eight, Dubliner Geri Molloy has put her troubled past behind her to become a major player at Steiner's investment bank in London, earning $850k a year doing business with a reclusive hedge fund manager in Hong Kong who, in return for his patronage, likes to ask her about Kant and watch while she eats exotic Asian delicacies. For five years Geri has had it all, but in the months leading up to the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991, her life starts to unravel. Abandoned by her corporate financier boyfriend, in the grip of a debilitating insomnia, and drinking far too much, Geri becomes entangled in a hostile takeover involving her boss, her client and her ex. With her career on the line as a consequence, and no one to turn to, she is close to losing it, in every sense. Taut and fast-paced, On the Floor is about making money and taking risks; it's about getting away with it... Views: 43
The human brain is the most complex object-organ that exists. It is able to develop several personalities at the same time, create body mutations, or decide when it will die. No psychiatrist has managed to control the array of personality disorders that exist currently and that they claim to know. And what about those unknown? Faith and madness are just two things that can exist inside the brain and manifest in an obsessive way. This is Tom's story, an eighteen year old man with a slight mental retardation and an array of mental and identity disorders about to explode in the most horrible way we could ever imagine. Views: 43
In his autobiography, Anthony Trollope called the Palliser Novels--that sprawling epic of Victorian England for which he is justly famous--"the best work of my life," adding "I think Plantagenet Palliser stands more firmly on the ground than any other personage I have created." But as sixteen years separated the first novel from the last, Trollope worried that readers would be unable to approach them as a whole. "Who will even know that they should be so read?" he complained. Solving this problem in particularly splendid fashion, Oxford is now reissuing the Palliser Novels in an elegantly crafted hard-bound set--with acid-free papers and durable binding--that include the wealth of illustrations that first appeared in the Oxford Illustrated Trollope years ago. Now, a whole new generation of readers can enjoy one of nineteenth-century literature's greatest achievements.While the novels center around the stately politician Plantagenet Palliser, the interest is less in politics than in the lively social scene Trollope creates against a Parliamentary backdrop. His keen eye for the subtleties of character and "great apprehension of the real" impressed contemporary writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Henry James, and in the Palliser Novels we find him at his very best. Between the covers of these books we meet a wonderfully rich variety of men and women, among them Alice Vavasor, whose waverings between suitors--and the resulting mess--prompted Trollope to ask Can Your Forgive Her?; the handsome Irish MP Phineas Finn, who grows to maturity as the novels progress; the beautiful enchantress Lizzie Eustace, whose scandalous diamonds are the talk of London high society; Ferdinand Lopez, the unctuous social climber; the elegant and witty Lady Glencora, Plantagenet's wife; and Palliser himself--first as a cabinet aspirant, later as Prime Minister--who is the connecting thread that holds the series together. Along the way we are also introduced to a host of amusing and sharply-drawn characters of less social status who, much like the bumpkins of Shakespeare, offer a distorting yet insightful fun-house mirror to the main action. Nowhere else did Trollope bring to life in such compelling fashion the teeming world of Victorian society and politics, and nowhere else did he create more memorable and living characters than those who populate these six volumes. As a group the Palliser Novels provide us with the most extensive and telling expose of British life during the period of its greatest prestige. Views: 43
Fancy a good mystery? Dive into this Sherlock Holmes tale from the pen of the master, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Drawn from Doyle's last collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans centers on a set of secret blueprints for a state-of-the-art underwater vessel—and the identity of the man who was carrying them when he fell to his death from a moving train. A must-read for fans of classic detective fiction Views: 42
"I've been waiting all my life for a man I can trust." --Lucy Gatling, medical student A dangerous predator escapes from prison near Rcd Rock, Texas and Collin Jamison, CIA Special Operations, is the only person who can get inside the murderer's mind. Just one thing's clouding his concentration -- Lucy Gatling. Voluptuous, petite and a med student observer for the coroner's office, Lucy is all business. And she thinks she's got a lead. The police aren't biting, but Collin is -- even if it's only to get closer to Lucy. Work turns into one special night and Lucy's convinced Collin is the real deal. But is it right to secretly give him information about the case? Or is it too late? Collin is on a flight back to Virginia and it just might be goodbye for good to a man she can't afford to let get away. Views: 42