**Lincoln Rhyme is back, on the trail of a killer whose weapon of choice cripples New York City with fear.**
The weapon is invisible and omnipresent. Without it, modern society grinds to a halt. It is electricity. The killer harnesses and steers huge arc flashes with voltage so high and heat so searing that steel melts and his victims are set afire.
When the first explosion occurs in broad daylight, reducing a city bus to a pile of molten, shrapnel-riddled metal, officials fear terrorism. Rhyme, a world-class forensic criminologist known for his successful apprehension of the most devious criminals, is immediately tapped for the investigation. Long a quadriplegic, he assembles NYPD detective Amelia Sachs and officer Ron Pulaski as his eyes, ears and legs on crime sites, and FBI agent Fred Dellray as his undercover man on the street. As the attacks continue across the city at a sickening pace, and terrifying demand letters begin appearing, the team works desperately against time and with maddeningly little forensic evidence to try to find the killer. Or is it killers...?
Meanwhile, Rhyme is consulting on another high-profile investigation in Mexico with a most coveted quarry in his crosshairs: the hired killer known as the Watchmaker, one of the few criminals to have eluded Rhyme's net.
Juggling two massive investigations against a cruel ticking clock takes a toll on Rhyme's health. Soon Rhyme is fighting on yet another front - and his determination to work despite his physical limitations threatens to drive away his closest allies when he needs them most... Views: 710
A sparkling collection of Zadie Smith's nonfiction over the past decade.
Zadie Smith brings to her essays all of the curiosity, intellectual rigor, and sharp humor that have attracted so many readers to her fiction, and the result is a collection that is nothing short of extraordinary.
Split into four sections—"Reading," "Being," "Seeing," and "Feeling"—Changing My Mind invites readers to witness the world from Zadie Smith's unique vantage. Smith casts her acute eye over material both personal and cultural, with wonderfully engaging essays-some published here for the first time-on diverse topics including literature, movies, going to the Oscars, British comedy, family, feminism, Obama, Katharine Hepburn, and Anna Magnani.
In her investigations Smith also reveals much of herself. Her literary criticism shares the wealth of her experiences as a reader and exposes the tremendous influence diverse writers—E. M. Forster, Zora Neale Hurston, George Eliot, and others—have had on her writing life and her self-understanding. Smith also speaks directly to writers as a craftsman, offering precious practical lessons on process. Here and throughout, readers will learn of the wide-ranging experiences—in novels, travel, philosophy, politics, and beyond—that have nourished Smith's rich life of the mind. Her probing analysis offers tremendous food for thought, encouraging readers to attend to the slippery questions of identity, art, love, and vocation that so often go neglected.
Changing My Mind announces Zadie Smith as one of our most important contemporary essayists, a writer with the rare ability to turn the world on its side with both fact and fiction. Changing My Mind is a gift to readers, writers, and all who want to look at life more expansively. Views: 710
In downtown Chicago, Esther Vaughan disappears from her apartment without a trace. A haunting letter addressed to My Dearest is found among her possessions, leaving her roommate Quinn Collins to question how well she really knew her friend. Meanwhile, in a small town an hour outside Chicago, a mysterious woman appears in the quiet coffee shop where eighteen-year-old Alex Gallo works as a dishwasher. He is immediately drawn to her, but what starts as an innocent crush quickly spirals into something far more sinister.
As Quinn searches for answers about Esther, and Alex is drawn further under the stranger's spell, master of suspense Mary Kubica takes readers on a taut and twisted thrill ride that builds to a stunning conclusion and shows that no matter how fast and far we run, the past always catches up with us. Views: 710
The Undiscovered Chekhov gives us, in rich abundance, a new Chekhov. Peter Constantine's historic collection presents 38 new stories and with them a fresh interpretation of the Russian master. In contrast to the brooding representative of a dying century we have seen over and over, here is Chekhov's work from the 1880s, when Chekhov was in his twenties and his writing was sharp, witty and innovative.
Many of the stories in The Undiscovered Chekhov reveal Chekhov as a keen modernist. Emphasizing impressions and the juxtaposition of incongruent elements, instead of the straight narrative his readers were used to, these stories upturned many of the assumptions of storytelling of the period.
Here is "Sarah Bernhardt Comes to Town," written as a series of telegrams, beginning with "Have been drinking to Sarah's health all week! Enchanting! She actually dies standing up!..." In "Confession...," a thirty-nine year old bachelor recounts some of the fifteen times chance foiled his marriage plans. In "How I Came to be Lawfully Wed," a couple reminisces about the day they vowed to resist their parents' plans that they should marry. And in the more familiarly Chekhovian "Autumn," an alcoholic landowner fallen low and a peasant from his village meet far from home in a sad and haunting reunion in which the action of the story is far less important than the powerful impression it leaves with the reader that each man must live his life and has his reasons. Views: 709
Laura Diaz is a passionate character, intimately connected to many historical events. Through her story, Fuentes writes the journal of the Mexican twentieth century, supporting his novel with facts and characters that define the shape of today's Mexico. Views: 709
Two rival photographers searching for mutual harmony while tempting the raw powers of nature and action will engage in a game of photographic mayhem on the ice fields of Greenland to resolve a bet that one can produce a better calendar than the other. Will Jake the action junkie win? Or will Kate's eye for tranquility claim her victory? Can their mutual respect even survive such harsh conditions?In 1992, photographers Jake and Kate are sent to Greenland to shoot a calendar highlighting the ice country in its fiercest majesty. Both believe their styles are better than the other’s, so much in fact that they split the assignment into two separate calendars, “Icy Wonders” and “Greenland’s Fury,” and make a bet that one can outsell the other by the end of the year in an all-out commercial war. Their rivalry is heated in spite of the frigid cold they walk, eat, and sleep in, but at the end of the day, only one can win. Is it the spirited Jake, who will bait a herd of muskoxen into a fight just to make his calendar month amazing, or the zen-like Kate, who has an eye for the risky tranquility of sleeping wolves, that will win the calendar battle of the year?Their adventure takes them through several harrowing turns as each photo shoot puts them closer to that line between victory or defeat. But nothing prepares them for the moment when their respective styles come back to bite them and they are forced to reconcile their differences. Will their understanding of each other bring them closer together, or will their stubborn ideas enhance their rivalry? And what long-term effects will their exciting yet frightening adventure leave with them once the calendars are released and the bet is settled? Can they handle the fame that follows them into the twenty-first century?In “Lightstorm,” these opposing forces of nature will find out just how wild their ambitions can get and how drastically one week in Greenland can change their lives forever. Views: 709
In the days just before the rise of the Internet a music scene begins in the small Midwestern city of Terre Haute, Indiana and the local club owner has a fierce vision of the town becoming the next Seattle. But there is a long way to go for these scruffy upstarts. Some obstacles: a big-time music journalist with motivational difficulties, antics of the musicians and a politician out to make a nameIn the days just before the rise of the Internet a music scene begins in the small Midwestern city of Terre Haute, Indiana and the local club owner has a fierce vision of the town becoming the next Seattle. But there is a long way to go to get from a haven for scruffy upstarts to international fame. Some of the obstacles: a big-time music journalist with motivational difficulties, the antics of the musicians and their fans, a politician looking to make a name and the club owner’s own personal drive. Throughout it all, the music flows, but will that be enough? Views: 709
In the war-ravaged England of 1940, Charlotte Bromley is sure of only one thing: Kitty McLaughlin is her best friend in the whole world. But when Charlotte's scientist father makes an astonishing discovery that the Germans will covet for themselves, Charlotte is faced with an impossible choice between danger and safety. Should she remain with her friend or journey to another time and place? Her split-second decision has huge consequences, and when she finds herself alone in the world, unsure of Kitty's fate, she knows that somehow, some way, she must find her way back to her friend. Written in the spirit of classic time-travel tales, this book is an imaginative and heartfelt tribute to the unbreakable ties of friendship. Views: 709
A pleasure seeking prince, a selfish giant, and more: Wilde's fairy tales, first published in 1888, for childlike people from eighteen to eighty." Views: 709
Haiku and Senryu are both tiny seventeen-syllable poems that paint a word picture of a moment in time and space. This Japanese form has been a favourite with Pam Crane for many years, building up into a verse journal - and often replacing a forgotten camera!Haiku and Senryu are both tiny seventeen-syllable poems that paint a word picture of a moment in time and space. This Japanese form has been a favourite with Pam Crane for many years, building up into a verse journal - and often replacing a forgotten camera! Haiku are strictly concerned with seasons and the natural environment; Senryu can express anything - a mood, an event, an idea, even a joke. They have become so popular in the West that both versions are now erroneously called Haiku in the media, and questions on BBC TV's 'Pointless' quiz are often framed as 'Haiku' (though this makes them very difficult to read!) Views: 708
Museums and Women gathers twenty-nine short stories from the 1960s and early 1970s. It is John Updike’s most various collection, a book as full of departures and surprises as the historical period that produced them. Some stories, such as the title piece, have the tone and personality of essays. Others objectify the chimeras of middle-class life, especially life in a fictional New England enclave called Tarbox. The illustrated jeux d’esprit in the section called “Other Modes” place Updike somewhere between Robert Benchley and Donald Barthelme as a toymaker in prose. Crowning the collection are five scenes from the marriage of Richard and Joan Maple, a story sequence with the narrative interest and cumulative power of a novel. Views: 708
In this short story enhanced with beautiful illustrations, the bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and Beartown delivers an insightful and poignant tale about finding out what is truly important in life.
A father and a son are seeing each other for the first time in years. The father has a story to share before it’s too late. He tells his son about a courageous little girl lying in a hospital bed a few miles away. She’s a smart kid—smart enough to know that she won’t beat cancer by drawing with crayons all day, but it seems to make the adults happy, so she keeps doing it.
As he talks about this plucky little girl, the father also reveals more about himself: his triumphs in business, his failures as a parent, his past regrets, his hopes for the future.
Now, on a cold winter’s night, the father has been given an unexpected chance to do something remarkable that could change the destiny of a little girl he hardly knows. But before he can make the deal of a lifetime, he must find out what his own life has actually been worth, and only his son can reveal that answer.
With humor and compassion, Fredrik Backman’s The Deal of a Lifetime reminds us that life is a fleeting gift, and our legacy rests in how we share that gift with others. Views: 708
A scintillating novel of fate, accidents, and moral dilemmas
Set in the time of the Vietnam War, this story concerns the plight of a young American, happily installed in a perfect job in England, engaged to a wonderful girl, who is suddenly drafted to a war he disapproves of.
What is duty here, what is self-interest, what is cowardice? Austin Gibson Grey, the accidental man of the title, is accident-prone, also prone to bring disaster to his friend sand relations. He blames fate. But are we not all accidental, one of his victims asks. Fate and accidents make deep moral dilemmas for the characters in the long and complex tale. Views: 708
