Mother Anqelique runs a shelter for homeless mothers and their children in a run-down inner-city area, where drug addiction, prostitution and random acts of violence are facts of life. One day, newly orphaned Jamal and his sister Chantay arrive at the shelter, hungry and scared. As Angelique tries to find a new home for them, she develops a fascination with seven-year-old Jamal, who seems to inhabit a world of his own. Jamal tells her fantastic stories of a man named Jacky Wacky, who protects the poor children of the city and punishes the adults who harm them. A God-fearing woman, Angelique doesn't believe his stories at first. But strange things begin to happen whenever Jamal is around, and Mother Angelique is forced to admit that the world may contain stranger truths than her faith can explain. Views: 116
Cape Cod Promises is a new contemporary romance from New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors Bella Andre and Melissa Foster! Fall in love on Rockwell Island... Sink your toes into the sandy beaches at the heart of Cape Cod Bay, where family comes first, good friends are around every corner, and true love is waiting beneath the stars. Trent Rockwell has it all—a thriving legal practice, coownership of the Rockwell Resort, and a big, loving family. And yet his failed marriage to Reese Nicholson has haunted him for ten long years. Now that he has moved back to Cape Cod Bay to help run his family’s resort, he is surrounded by memories of Reese…and he can’t stop longing for the woman he’d always believed was his one true love. At nineteen, artist Reese Nicholson was swept off her feet by the handsome, charming, and incredibly sensual Trent Rockwell. After a whirlwind courtship, they married and moved to New York City, where they hoped all of their personal and professional dreams would come true. But six months later, Reese returned to Rockwell Island brokenhearted and disillusioned. For a decade, Trent and Reese carefully kept their distance. But all it takes is one accidental late-night encounter to immediately stir the desires they have both tried to bury deep. Powerless to resist the heat between them, every passionate kiss, loving caress, and heartfelt apology draws them closer together. So close that they can’t help but wonder if the promises they once made to love each other forever are still true… ABOUT THE AUTHORS BELLA ANDRE is the New York Times, USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of “The Sullivans” and “The Morrisons” series. Having sold more than 4 million books, Bella Andre’s novels have been #1 bestsellers around the world and have appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists 28 times. She has been the #1 Ranked Author at Amazon (on a top 10 list that included Nora Roberts, JK Rowling, James Patterson and Steven King), and Publishers Weekly named Oak Press (the publishing company she created to publish her own books) the Fastest-Growing Independent Publisher in the US. Known for “sensual, empowered stories enveloped in heady romance” (Publishers Weekly), her books have been Cosmopolitan Magazine “Red Hot Reads” twice and have been translated into ten languages. Winner of the Award of Excellence, The Washington Post called her “One of the top writers in America” and she has been featured by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and TIME Magazine. Bella also writes the New York Times bestselling Four Weddings and a Fiasco series as Lucy Kevin. MELISSA FOSTER is a New York Times & USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of the “Snow Sisters“, “The Bradens“, “The Remingtons” and “Seaside Summers” series. She writes sexy and heartwarming contemporary and new adult romance with emotionally compelling characters that stay with you long after you turn the last page. Her books have been recommended by USA Today’s book blog, Hagerstown Magazine, The Patriot, and MENSA Bulletin. Melissa is the founder of the World Literary Café and Fostering Success. When she’s not writing, Melissa helps authors navigate the publishing industry through her author training programs on Fostering Success. Melissa has been published in Calgary’s Child Magazine, the Huffington Post, and Women Business Owners magazine. Melissa is also the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling, and award-winning historical fiction novel, “Have No Shame“, as well as several other award winning suspense and women’s fiction titles. Melissa enjoys discussing her books with book clubs and reader groups, and welcomes an invitation to your event.** Views: 116
A man known only as Keller is thinking about Samuel Johnson's famous quote that "'patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel'... If you looked at it objectively, he had to admit, then he was probably a scoundrel himself. He didn't feel much like a scoundrel. He felt like your basic New York single guy, living alone, eating out or bringing home takeout, schlepping his wash to the Laundromat, doing the Times crossword with his morning coffee... There were eight million stories in the naked city, most of them not very interesting, and his was one of them. Except that every once in a while he got a phone call from a man in White Plains. And packed a bag and caught a plane and killed somebody. Hard to argue the point. Man behaves like that, he's a scoundrel. Case closed." But Lawrence Block is such a delightfully subtle writer, one of the true masters of the mystery genre, that the case is far from closed. In this beautifully linked collection of short stories, we gradually put together such a complete picture of Keller that we don't so much forgive him his occupation as consider it just one more part of his humanity. After watching Keller take on cases that baffle and anger him into actions that fellow members of his hit-man union might well call unprofessional, we're eager to join him as he goes through a spectacularly unsuccessful analysis and gets fooled by a devious intelligence agent. We miss the dog he acquires and loses, along with its attractive walker. Like Richard Stark's Parker, Keller makes us think the unthinkable about criminals: that they might be the guys next door--or even us, under different pressures. For a small selection of the many Blocks in paperback, try Coward's Kiss, A Long Line of Dead Men, The Sins of the Fathers, Such Men Are Dangerous, and especially When the Sacred Ginmill Closes. Views: 116
The New York Times bestselling author of The Wednesday Sisters returns with a moving and powerfully dynamic World War II novel about two American journalists and an Englishman, who together race the Allies to Occupied Paris for the scoop of their lives.Normandy, 1944. To cover the fighting in France, Jane, a reporter for the Nashville Banner, and Liv, an Associated Press photographer, have endured enormous danger and frustrating obstacles—including strict military regulations limiting what women correspondents can. Even so, Liv wants more.Encouraged by her husband, the editor of a New York newspaper, she's determined to be the first photographer to reach Paris with the Allies, and capture its freedom from the Nazis.However, her Commanding Officer has other ideas about the role of women in the press corps. To fulfill her ambitions, Liv must go AWOL. She persuades Jane to join her, and the two women find a guardian angel in Fletcher, a British military... Views: 116
The Jazz Age comes alive with a love story for the ages: a rugged Prohibition agent and a saucy flapper from one of Appalachia's most notorious bootlegging families... Manhattan, present dayElla Hawthorne thinks she's going crazy when she hears strange noises coming from the walls of her new apartment late at night. When she discovers that it used to be home to a speakeasy during the Jazz Age, she's determined to discover the building's secrets. Manhattan, 1924Geneva 'Gin' Kelly, a smart-mouthed, red-haired flapper, reluctantly agrees to help rugged Prohibition enforcement agent Oliver Anson catch her stepfather, a notorious bootlegger. But the truth will shake Manhattan society to its foundations... Views: 116
Obsession puts Lilith within the grasp of immortality, but the price for living forever creates a different, much darker fixation. Views: 116
From Man Booker International Prize winner Ismail Kadare comes a dizzying psychological thriller of twisted passions, dual identities, and political subterfuge. Set against the tumultuous backdrop of the war in the Balkans, The Accident closely documents an affair between two young lovers caught in each other’s webs.The Accident opens upon the death of a young man and woman, both Albanian citizens, who perished when their taxi careened off the road, flinging them both from the backseat of the car. The driver survived, though his claims of being distracted by what he saw in the rearview mirror don’t convince officials that it could’ve caused him to lose control of the car, that he must’ve suffered psychological trauma that’s caused him to believe he actually saw what he claims: that the pair was about to kiss.They don’t believe him because, as an investigation into the accident and the lives of its victims are opened, officials learn that the two had been lovers for twelve years. But the nature of their relationship is frustratingly opaque. The man, Besfort Y, was an analyst working for the Council of Europe on western Balkan affairs; the beautiful young woman, Rovena, an intern at the Archaeological Institute of Vienna. They’d been leaving the Miramax Hotel and were on their way to the airport. Though the accident is a bit curious, it’s still tremendously surprising to the police and archivists when the governments of two Balkan countries ask to inspect the file on the accident, and to learn that Serbia and Montenegro had been keeping both victims under surveillance for quite some time. The Serbian response sparks the Albanian secret service into action too, suspicious of an organized political murder. On their way to discounting their theory, the Albanian government unearths a tremendous amount of information on the couple’s perplexing union, including letters that vary wildly in tone, from ordinary correspondence between lovers (mostly from her) to others written in a manner that suggests their relationship was nothing more than that between a call girl and her client—cold, distant, factual (mostly from him). They discover that the relationship had taken a horribly toxic turn within the last year, that Besfort was becoming tired of Rovena, wanted to get rid of her; that she was in agony over his ability to both neglect and oppress her at the same time. They also learned that Besfort Y had many contacts throughout Europe inside most of the human rights organizations, that he was closely tied to political and military information, and that he was the kind of person to be a thorn in the flesh of Yugoslavia and might in a way be called responsible for its bombing—thus Serbia and Montenegro’s interest in him. Still, the war was over at the time of his death, making political motives unreliable.Their investigation also leads them to famous pianist, Liza Blumberg, known as Lulu Blum, who claims to be Rovena’s former lover, and who is convinced that Befort Y intended to murder Rovena, even if it meant that he’d die with her. Lulu later reveals that Besfort often confided top secret, conspiratorial information to Rovena and later regretted it—easy motive for a violent man to turn on his too-informed lover. Correspondence between Rovena and other friends soon confirmed that she was desperate to free herself of Besfort, but hadn’t the willpower. But a witness from Besfort’s life claims that he too was afraid—of what he didn’t know, but that it merely had to do with a woman with whom he mistakenly” got involved. It was evident that the case was at a standstill; both governments soon felt the case go cold and abandoned their efforts to solve the mystery. It wasn’t until some time later that a single researcher took up the investigation and nearly solved the riddle of the accident. He imagines the last forty weeks of their lives:As the passion fades and hostilities rise between the lovers, both are prone to reminisce about their beginnings. Rovena remembers first hearing about Besfort as a university student, whispers of some quarrel over Israel that would likely result in him losing his teaching job. Upon their first meeting, Besfort invites the then-betrothed Rovena to a three-day conference in central Europe where they sleep together on the first night, their passionate affair immediately consuming. The minute she arrives home, Rovena tells her fiancé that she is in love with another man who is sometimes intimate with other men, as Besfort revealed to her now that Albania had changed enough for bisexuality to be accepted, or at least not feared.From the get-go Rovena can tell that Besfort is haunted—his moods vary wildly, she feels suffocated by him and yet disposable. Still, she decides to devote her life to him, following him throughout Europe whenever he needs to switch countries, living from hotel rooms. Rovena’s tolerance of the arrangement doesn’t last long, however; as the years pass, Rovena begins to resent Besfort for making her feel like a kept woman. Her needs lead her to a one-night stand with a German man at a club. It is not her first infidelity: back when she was still a student and Besfort was traveling, she’d slept with a Slovakian friend too. And some years later, their estrangement allows for her romantic relationship with Lulu, an involvement that began merely as a way to start freeing herself from Besfort’s control and influence. The sexual nature of the women's relationship does make Besfort even more controlling, causing him to call her all the time. Lulu tries everything she can to convince Rovena to forget Besfort, that he’s poisoned her mind and heart. She even goes as far as to propose marriage, but her proposal has the opposite effect on Rovena: all it really does is make Rovena bitter and angry that Besfort isn’t the one who asked her to marry. Rovena’s contact with Besfort increases at this time, leading to jealousy on Lulu’s part and desperate attempts to win Rovena back. Eventually Rovena’s indecision wears on Lulu who soon collapses with frustration, screams for Rovena to return to her warmonger and terrorist.The resulting jealousies and estrangements lead to a transformation in Besfort’s lust, but in no way diminish it. He begins to inch closer to his initial impulses to completely dominate Rovena. He decides that the only way he can establish full control over her is to take her very life in his hands; in other words, to murder her. Without going that far, he instead suggests a divorce, a shift to client and call-girl. An introduction of other men and lovers as a means to not only be free of their own toxic bonds, but to cause a distance that will deepen their lust for one another. Though his mind is twisted and tortured enough that he winds up shooting in her bed one evening, but purposefully in a place that won’t kill her. She doesn’t fight him, knows it’s coming and allows it to happen; she rises after he falls back to sleep, dresses the wound, and also go back to bed. It’s not discussed again.Under this new arrangement, the pair secretly travels to The Hague under the guise of a having a holiday in Denmark. On the second night of their arrival, Rovena wakes up alone in the hotel room. For a moment, she’s startled by her solitude and fears she’s not in the right room. She notices that the aftershave on the bathroom counter is familiar, but none of Besfort’s clothes are hung in the closets as usual. His bags are the same, but inside she finds a folder full of war pictures of dead children—and their addressed to Besfort. As she travels into town, she learns of a tribunal at The Hague and deduces that Besfort must be there, that they’ve traveled in secret because he didn’t want anyone to know he would be at the courts—but was he summoned himself or his he merely a spectator? She never finds out for sure.A week before the accident, Rovena and Besfort are once again apart, though connected through thought. She wants to call him, but restrains herself; he sits a thousand miles away worrying that she might be pregnant. The researcher shockingly stops here, never making it through their last week or the day of the accident. It remains incomplete to him. He knows only of Besfort’s request for a leave of absence from work three days before the accident was granted, but not why the leave was requested or where he was those three days. He knows that Lulu alleged that Besfort murdered Rovena the night before the accident. The researcher attempts to talk to the cab driver again, convinced he holds the key, but the man won’t give him anything new. He speaks again to Lulu, who holds firm that Rovena and Besfort had a maniacal, treacherous love built on dangerous games and the quest to procure a still-imagined level of love and necessity. He needed to own her, thus his reduction of her from idealized lover to call-girl and then, as she surmises, to her ultimate death at his hands. She also felt his impulse to kill her was borne in part from his fear that he’d bared his secret depths to this woman and could no longer accept that truth. To not believe that he killed her would be to not believe in their love. Finally Lulu reveals to the researcher that she knows Besfort killed Rovena because she herself harbored a secret plan to do the very same thing. She is also convinced that Rovena was killed before the accident and was not present in the car at all; that Besfort carried a dummy with him, a doll. The researcher starts at this news—there were indeed police reports that mentioned a dummy. But when he confronts the driver again, whom he now thinks was involved in the cover-up, the man still claims that he’s unsure about what he saw. The researcher is convinced that the driver was startled when Besfort attempted to kiss the doll, or perhaps even the corpse of Rovena, and that’s why he lost control.Lulu then reneges her story about the murder when she's convinced that Rovena is alive, that she attended Lulu's recent concert, her hair dyed blonde, her name know Anevor (Rovena backwards), that they made love before Rovena fled in the early morning hours. In the end, the researcher must surrender to the fact that it’s impossible to deduce the last week of Besfort and Rovena’s lives, or the true nature of their unnatural and obsessive love. Views: 116
Instantly reminiscent of the work of Osamu Dazai and Patricia Highsmith, Fuminori Nakamura's latest novel is a dark and twisting house of mirrors that philosophically explores the violence of aesthetics and the horrors of identity.A young writer arrives at a prison to interview a convict. The writer has been commissioned to write a full account of the case, from its bizarre and grisly details to the nature of the man behind the crime. The suspect, a world-renowned photographer named Kiharazaka, has a deeply unsettling portfolio--lurking beneath the surface of each photograph is an acutely obsessive fascination with his subject.He stands accused of murdering two women--both burned alive--and will likely face the death penalty. But something isn't quite right, and as the young writer probes further, his doubts about this man as a killer intensify. He soon discovers the desperate, twisted nature of all who are connected to the case, struggling to... Views: 116
Paul Chowder, the poet protagonist of Nicholson Baker's widely acclaimed novel The Anthologist, is turning fifty-five and missing his ex-girlfriend, Roz, rather desperately. As he approaches the dreaded birthday, Paul is uninspired by his usual artistic outlet (although he's pleased that his poetry anthology, Only Rhyme, is selling "steadily"). Putting aside poetry in favor of music, and drawing on his classical bassoon training, Paul turns instead to his new acoustic guitar with one goal in mind: to learn songwriting. As he struggles to come to terms with the horror of America's drone wars and Roz's recent relationship with a local NPR radio host, Paul fills his days with Quaker meetings, Planet Fitness workouts, and some experiments with tobacco. Written in Baker's beautifully unconventional prose, and scored with musical influences from Debussy to Tracy Chapman to Paul himself, Traveling Sprinkler is an enchanting, hilarious—and very... Views: 116
Convinced he has a greater chance to die--of boredom--at his desk job than he ever faced in narcotics, Las Vegas police sergeant Ron Yeager agrees to slip off the retirement track long enough to head up an undercover task force designed to combat the recent surge in auto thefts.Then he meets his inexperienced team of officers, most of whom seem completely incapable of infiltrating the seamy underbelly of Sin City. In particular, Mackenzie "Mack" Hazard's determination to wear her faith like a badge threatens to send Yeager's blood pressure skyrocketing. And then there's maverick Jesse Lunden, who thinks he's learned all he needs to know in his three years of undercover work.As Yeager gambles his reputation on transforming this group of egos and eccentrics into a force to be reckoned with, he stumbles onto a much bigger scheme than anyone expected. This could be the showstopper of their careers--if his back doesn't give out first.This second book in the... Views: 116
Blissfully unaware that Atlantica Flight 1945 from Atlanta to Amsterdam is about to make aviation history, First Officer Danny McSweeney focuses his energies on navigating the turbulent personalities of an eccentric female captain, a co-pilot with a talent for tactless comments and conspiracy theories, and a lead flight attendant with an outsized attitude that definitely exceeds the limits for carry-on baggage.On the other side of the cockpit door, the unscheduled in-flight entertainment includes a potbellied pig, a jittery diamond courier, and the recently jilted Lucy Meredith, whose personal mantra of "What Would Oprah Do?" will be challenged by the sudden appearance of her ex and his new traveling partner. On her left sits Hank Hazard, whose unusually polite but constant requests--prompted by his covert role as a spy for the airline--test the limits of the crew's customer service. But as Lucy and the rest of the crew discover, Hank's odd behavior is linked to... Views: 116
