Gaston Leroux is France's most famous author of detective and mystery fiction. The author of The Phantom of the Opera penned a large amount of excellent short fiction, and 'In Letters of Fire' is one of his best-remembered tales. Many of the earliest ghost stories, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Views: 1 072
SECOND SIGHT AND SEDUCTION…
Daniel Mackenzie lives up to the reputation of the scandalous Mackenzie family—he has wealth, looks, and talent, and women love him. When he meets Violet Bastien—one of the most famous spiritual mediums in England—he immediately knows two things: that Miss Bastien is a fraud, and that he’s wildly attracted to her.
Violet knows she can’t really contact the other side, but she’s excellent at reading people. She discerns quickly that Daniel is intelligent and dangerous to her reputation, but she also finds him generous, handsome, and outrageously wicked. But spectres from Violet’s past threaten to destroy her, and she flees England, adopting yet another identity.
Daniel is determined to find the elusive Violet and pursue the passion he feels for her. And though Violet knows that her scandalous past will keep her from proper marriage, her attraction to Daniel is irresistible. It’s not until Daniel is the only one she can turn to that he proves he believes in something more than cold facts. He believes in love. Views: 1 072
This rousing and splendid Civil War series continues with the story of Nate Starblick as he serves under General Robert E. Lee himself, culminating in the famous, bloody battle of Antietam. Views: 1 072
Celebrated author Laurie R. King dazzles mystery lovers once again in this, her second Kate Martinelli mystery. The story unfolds as a band of homeless people cremate a beloved dog in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. When it comes to incidents like this, the authorities are willing to overlook a few broken regulations. But three weeks later, after the dog's owner gets the same fiery send-off, the SFPD knows it has a serious problem on its hands. Other than the fact that they're dealing with a particularly grisly homicide, Inspector Kate Martinelli and her partner, Al Hawkin, have little else to go on. They have a homeless victim without a positive ID, a group of witnesses who have little love for the cops, and a possible suspect, known only as Brother Erasmus. Kate learns that Erasmus is well-acquainted with the park's homeless and with the rarefied atmosphere of Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union, yet he remains an enigma to all. It's apparent that he is by no means crazy—but he is a fool. Kate begins the frustrating task of interrogating a man who communicates only through quotations. Trying to learn something of his history leads her along a twisting road to a disbanded cult, long-buried secrets, the thirst for spirituality, and the hunger for bloody vengeance. Views: 1 072
Rhiannon, a wild and fierce half-human girl, tamed a winged horse to escape the vicious satyricorn tribe who raised her. In the human world, the handsome apprentice-witch Lewen has convinced her to stay with him and learn to use her strong magical talents. But before her training can commence, Rhiannon must answer for a past crime in... THE SHINING CITY
Imprisoned in Sorrowgate Tower, Rhiannon awaits trial for murder and treason. While her days are spent in anticipation of Lewen's visits, her nights are haunted by the malevolent ghost of a dead queen, hungry to live again. But not many care to listen to the prophetic dreams of a girl who has already been convicted in most people's minds.
Then Lewen begins to cool toward her, and Rhiannon suspects one of the princesses has worked a spell to steal his heart. In a world filled with dark spirits and forbidden magic, conspiracy and intrigue, Rhiannon vows to win back her lover and escape once more, to save the land before it's too late.... Views: 1 070
These are the first three stories of the Tollins. Yes, they do have wings, but no, they aren't fairies. Tollins are a lot less fragile than fairies. In fact, the word fragile can't really be used to describe them at all. They are about as fragile as a house brick.
In "How to Blow Up Tollins" a fireworks factory comes to the village of Chorleywood and the Tollins find themselves being used as industrial supplies. Being blasted into the night sky or spun round on a Catherine wheel is nowhere near a much fun as it sounds. It's up to one young Tollin to save his people from becoming an ingredient.
In "Sparkler and the Purple Death" our hero looks execution in the face. Luckily, the executioner's mask in backwards.
Finally, in "Windbags and Dark Tollins" Tollin society faces a threat from the Dorset countryside, which, again, is much more frightening and nail-bitingly dramatic than it actually sounds. Views: 1 069
Imperium...Conspirata...and now, the long-awaited final volume of the author's best-selling Cicero trilogy.
With Dictator, Robert Harris brings the saga of Cicero's life to a time when some of the most epic events in human history occurred: the collapse of the Roman republic, the subsequent civil war, the murder of Pompey and the assassination of Julius Caesar. Yet the question it asks is a timeless one: how is political freedom to be safeguarded against the triple threat of unscrupulous personal ambition, of an electoral system dominated by vested financial interests, and of the corrupting impact of waging ceaseless foreign wars? And in the very human figure of Cicero--brilliant, flawed, frequently fearful, and yet ultimately brave--Harris gives us a hero for both his own time, and for ours. Views: 1 068
Unscathed from the wars, Gervase Frant finally returns to his father's estate to claim his rightful title. Now he must establish himself as the new head of the house and ignore his family's rising hostility.
Bonus features include a glossary for the Regency period and Regency rituals and a Georgette Heyer short story: To Have the Honour, which is one of the stories included the work: Pistols for Two Views: 1 067
A self-confident performance by an old hand. . . . Mr. Fraser clearly enjoys being master of such a wide and wild plot and makes sure to leave room in it for his most famous creation, the eponymous hero of his "Flashman" adventure series."-- "The New Yorker Views: 1 067
Each of these exciting stories, told in the voice of one of the 11-year-old volunteers at the Wild at Heart Animal Clinic, offers a first-hand account of animal emergencies and rescues. This series is sure to win the hearts of readers who are wild about animals!The clinic is swamped with sick and abused puppies. Maggie suspects they've come from an illegal puppy mill, and she's determined to find it and shut it down. But Gran has too many other things to worry about -- like Maggie's grades and a new houseguest, Zoe. Can Maggie find the puppy mill on her own? Views: 1 067
Twelve-year-old Sumiko feels her life has been made up of two parts: before Pearl Harbor and after it. The good part and the bad part. Raised on a flower farm in California, Sumiko is used to being the only Japanese girl in her class. Even when the other kids tease her, she always has had her flowers and family to go home to.
That all changes after the horrific events of Pearl Harbor. Other Americans start to suspect that all Japanese people are spies for the emperor, even if, like Sumiko, they were born in the United States! As suspicions grow, Sumiko and her family find themselves being shipped to an internment camp in one of the hottest deserts in the United States. The vivid color of her previous life is gone forever, and now dust storms regularly choke the sky and seep into every crack of the military barrack that is her new "home."
Sumiko soon discovers that the camp is on an Indian reservation and that the Japanese are as unwanted there as they'd been at home. But then she meets a young Mohave boy who might just become her first real friend...if he can ever stop being angry about the fact that the internment camp is on his tribe's land.
With searing insight and clarity, Newbery Medal-winning author Cynthia Kadohata explores an important and painful topic through the eyes of a young girl who yearns to belong. Weedflower is the story of the rewards and challenges of a friendship across the racial divide, as well as the based-on-real-life story of how the meeting of Japanese Americans and Native Americans changed the future of both. Views: 1 067
Chapter 1
FIRST CONVERSATION SAN FRANCISCO
In the spring of 2000, Walter Murch, at the suggestion of Francis Ford Coppola, began to re-edit "Apocalypse Now, "afilm he had worked on back in 1977-1979 both as sound designer and as one of the four picture editors. Twenty-two years later, all the takes and discards and "lost" scenes and sound elements(carefully preserved in climate-controlled limestone caves in Pennsylvania) were brought out of vaults to be reconsidered. "Apocalypse Now "is a part of the American subconscious. And in some way this wasthe problem.Having dinner with the novelist Alfredo Veeacute;a in San Francisco, after spending my first day with Walter at Zoetrope, I mentioned what was happening with the re-editing of "Apocalypse Now, "and Veeacute;a immediately launched into Marlon Brando's monologue about the snail on a razor blade. This was followed, during dinner, by Vea's precise imitation of DennisHopper's whine: "What are they gonna say about him? What are they gonna say? That he was a kind man? That he was a "wise "man? . . ." For Veeacute;a, who fought in Vietnam, "Apocalypse Now "was "the "movie about the war. It was the work of art that caught it for him, that gave him a mythological structure he could refer to, that showed him what he had gonethrough and would later write about himself in books such as "Gods Go Begging." So those working on the new "Apocalypse Now "were aware that there would be problems connected with theirdismantling and restructuring a "classic." It was now public property.
"It "has "become part of the culture," said Murch. "Andthat's not a one-way street, as you know from your writing. As much as a work affects the culture, the culture mysteriously affects the work. "Apocalypse Now "in the year 2000 is a very differentthing from the physically exact-same "Apocalypse Now "in the second before it was released in 1979."
The idea for a new version grew out of Coppola's desire toproduce a DVD of "Apocalypse Now "with a number of major scenes that were-for reasons of length-eliminated from the 1979 version. Also, 2000 was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fallof Saigon, so it seemed appropriate to re-evaluate editorial decisions that had originally been made while the war was still a vividly painful bruise on the nation's psyche. But rather than have the restoredscenes appear in isolation, appended in their own chapter, why not integrate them into the body of the film as originally intended? The problem was that the editing and sound work on the excised material had never beenfinished, and one scene in particular was eliminated before it was completely shot. Fortunately, the negative and original sound for all this material were perfectly preserved in original laboratory rolls, and could beretrieved, two decades later, as if the film had been shot a few weeks earlier.
And so Walter Murch was now working in San Francisco, in the old Zoetrope building. Mostly he had to collect andreconsider the material for three large sequences that were cut from the film in 1978-a medevac scene involving Playboy Bunnies; further scenes with Brando in the Kurtz compound; and a ghostly, funereal dinnerand love scene at a French rubber plantation. In Eleanor Coppola's book about the making of the film, she Views: 1 066
For the first time Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles are available in the United States in quality paperback editions.
Fifth in the legendary Lymond Chronicles, The Ringed Castle leaps from Mary Tudor's England to the barbaric Russia of Ivan the Terrible. Francis Crawford of Lymond moves to Muscovy, where he becomes advisor and general to the half-mad tsar. Yet even as Lymond tries to civilize a court that is still frozen in the attitudes of the Middle Ages, forces in England conspire to enlist this infinitely useful man in their own schemes.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 1 066
Palestine. For most of us, the word brings to mind a series of confused images and disjointed associations-massacres, refugee camps, UN resolutions, settlements, terrorist attacks, war, occupation, checkered kouffiyehs and suicide bombers, a seemingly endless cycle of death and destruction. This novel does not shy away from such painful images, but it is first and foremost a powerful human story, following the life of a young girl from her days in the village of al-Tantoura in Palestine up to the dawn of the new century. We participate in events as they unfold, seeing them through the uneducated but sharply intelligent mind of Ruqayya, as she tries to make sense of all that has happened to her and her family. With her, we live her love of her land and of her people; we feel the repeated pain of loss, of diaspora and of cross-generational misunderstanding; and above all, we come to know her indomitable human spirit. As we read we discover that we have become part of Ruqayya's family, and her voice will remain with us long after we have closed the book. Views: 1 064
