Barbara Erskine returns with this beautiful and haunting tale of dark forces and mystical powers. In present-day Cambridge, Abi, a recently ordained priest of the Church of England, is appointed to a notoriously difficult parish. The priest in charge is the charismatic but fundamentalist Kier. He objects to her mysticism, her practice of healing in particular. When she sees a vision of a congregation in an old church, Kier accuses her of witchcraft, but Abi soon sees more visions; an entire Roman family history, dark with betrayal and a promise of bloody revenge. With foreboding forces building up to violence, Abi must battle the approaching terror along with her own personal demons, drawing upon the expertise of Druidry and shamanism from a questionable source! Views: 900
Esme Brentmore doesn't care that revenge isn't a suitable job for a woman. She's determined to avenge the murder of her beloved father, an enigmatic English aristocrat who lived in self-imposed exile. Honor demands that Esme let nothing and nobody stand in her way. That includes the handsome wastrel who's become entangled in her life, whose charm does not make up for his lazy and irresponsible character.
Having gambled away his entire family fortune, Varian St. George, Lord Edenmont, now lives by his wits and winning ways. A man who has always taken the path of least resistance --- preferably in soft beds with willing women --- he does not want to become embroiled in a mad quest with a hot-tempered and heavily armed redhead.
But forced to travel together through an exotic land, the mismatched pair soon discovers that friction can produce some very dangerous sparks ... Views: 900
Michel Faber's first collection of short stories reveals an extraordinarily vivid imagination, a deep love of language and an adventurous versatility. Playful, yet profoundly moving, wickedly satirical yet sincerely humane, these tales never fail to strike unexpected chords. The title story, 'Some Rain Must Fall' (winner of the 1998 Ian St James Award), juxtaposes the tragic circumstances of traumatised schoolchildren with the interior monologue of a teacher/psychologist enlisted to aid their recovery. In the pseudo-sci-fi 'Fish' (winner of the Macallan/Scotland on Sunday competition in 1996) a mother tries to protect her child in a terrifying world where fish swim through the streets and lurk in alleyways. Faber has an exciting talent, rich and assured, with a dazzling reach. Some Rain Must Fall is one of the most engaging debuts for years and is refreshingly different from anything else you are likely to read this year. Views: 899
After losing her parents, Arcineh Bryant lives with her grandfather as a girl. But growing up without her family causes her to hold resentment toward the man who took her in. Years later, when she meets a man she thinks she may love, she doubts whether she can trust her own heart. A character-rich journey leads Arcineh back to her grandfather's home where there are surprises, questions, and for the first time in her life, an answer to "who will love me forever?" This compelling story about a woman's hunger for acceptance and wholeness points the reader home to God's love. Views: 899
Adrian Hunter has concealed his identity and posed as a servant to assist his powerful uncle. He’s on the verge of obtaining the information he needs when circumstances spiral out of his control. He’s caught alone with a woman he scarcely knows. When they’re discovered in this compromising circumstance, he’s forced to marry her at gunpoint. Luckily, his uncle should be able to obtain an annulment. All Adrian has to do is complete his mission…and not consummate the marriage, no matter how enticing the bride may be.
Lady Camilla Worth has never expected much out of life—not since her father was convicted of treason and she was passed from family to family. A marriage, no matter how unfortunate the circumstances under which it was contracted, should mean stability. It’s unfortunate that her groom doesn’t agree. But Camilla has made the best of worse circumstances. She is determined to make her marriage work. All she has to do is seduce her reluctant husband. Views: 898
A spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood.
Lexie Sinclair is plotting an extraordinary life for herself.
Hedged in by her parents' genteel country life, she plans her escape to London. There, she takes up with Innes Kent, a magazine editor who wears duck-egg blue ties and introduces her to the thrilling, underground world of bohemian, post-war Soho. She learns to be a reporter, to know art and artists, to embrace her life fully and with a deep love at the center of it. She creates many lives--all of them unconventional. And when she finds herself pregnant, she doesn't hesitate to have the baby on her own.
Later, in present-day London, a young painter named Elina dizzily navigates the first weeks of motherhood. She doesn't recognize herself: she finds herself walking outside with no shoes; she goes to the restaurant for lunch at nine in the morning; she can't recall the small matter of giving birth. But for her boyfriend, Ted, fatherhood is calling up lost memories, with images he cannot place.
As Ted's memories become more disconcerting and more frequent, it seems that something might connect these two stories-- these two women-- something that becomes all the more heartbreaking and beautiful as they all hurtle toward its revelation.
Here Maggie O'Farrell brings us a spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood. Like her acclaimed The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, it is a "breathtaking, heart-breaking creation." (The Washington Post Book World) and it is a gorgeous inquiry into the ways we make and unmake our lives, who we know ourselves to be, and how even our most accidental legacies connect us. Views: 898
She lost everything to the scheme of an evil servant. But she might just gain what she’s always wanted…if she makes it in time.
The impossible was happening. She, Magdalen of Mallin, was to marry the Duke of Wolfberg. Magdalen had dreamed about receiving a proposal ever since she met the duke two years ago. Such a marriage was the only way she could save her people from starvation. But why would a handsome, wealthy duke want to marry her, a poor baron’s daughter? It seemed too good to be true.
On the journey to Wolfberg Castle, Magdalen’s servant forces her to trade places and become her servant, threatening not only Magdalen’s life, but the lives of those she holds dear. Stripped of her identity and title in Wolfberg, where no one knows her, Magdalen is sentenced to tend geese while she watches her former handmaiden gain all Magdalen had ever dreamed of.
When a handsome shepherd befriends her, Magdalen begins to suspect he carries secrets of his own. Together, Magdalen and the shepherd uncover a sinister plot against Wolfberg and the duke. But with no resources, will they be able to find the answers, the hiding places, and the forces they need in time to save both Mallin and Wolfberg? Views: 898
A stunning departure, a surprising and compelling return…From Anne Rice, perennial best seller, single-handed reinventor of the vampire cosmology-a new, exhilarating novel, a deepening of her vampire mythology, and a chillingly hypnotic mystery-thriller.
"What can we do but reach for the embrace that must now
contain both heaven and hell: our doom again and again and
again…" -from *The Vampire Lestat*
Rice once again summons up the irresistible spirit-world of the oldest and most powerful forces of the night, invisible beings unleashed on an unsuspecting world able to take blood from humans, in a long-awaited return to the extraordinary world of the Vampire Chronicles and the uniquely seductive *Queen of the Damned*("mesmerizing" -*SF Chronicle*), a long-awaited novel that picks up where *The Vampire Lestat* ("brilliant…its undead characters are utterly alive" -*New York Times*) left off more than a quarter of a century ago to create an extraordinary new world of spirits and forces-the characters, legend, and lore of all the Vampire Chronicles.
The novel opens with the vampire world in crisis…vampires have been proliferating out of control; burnings have commenced all over the world, huge massacres similar to those carried out by Akasha in *The Queen of the Damned*…Old vampires, roused from slumber in the earth are doing the bidding of a Voice commanding that they indiscriminately burn vampire-mavericks in cities from Paris and Mumbai to Hong Kong, Kyoto, and San Francisco.
As the novel moves from present-day New York and the West Coast to ancient Egypt, fourth century Carthage, 14th-century Rome, the Venice of the Renaissance, the worlds and beings of all the Vampire Chronicles-Louis de Pointe du Lac; the eternally young Armand, whose face is that of a Boticelli angel; Mekare and Maharet, Pandora and Flavius; David Talbot, vampire and ultimate fixer from the secret Talamasca; and Marius, the true Child of the Millennia; along with all the other new seductive, supernatural creatures-come together in this large, luxuriant, fiercely ambitious novel to ultimately rise up and seek out who-or what-the Voice is, and to discover the secret of what it desires and why…
And, at the book's center, the seemingly absent, curiously missing hero-wanderer, the dazzling, dangerous rebel-outlaw-the great hope of the Undead, the dazzling Prince Lestat… Views: 898
"We must be bound to one another then. Bound by hell-forged chains and fate-haunted circumstance. Well, then - let it be thus so - and men will have cause to tremble and flee when they hear the names of Elric of Melnibone and Stormbringer, his sword. We are two of a kind - produced by an age which has deserted us. Let us give this age cause to hate us."
Imrryr, the dreaming city; Yyrkoon, the hated usurper; Cymoril, the beloved... all had fallen to the fury and unearthly power of the albino prince and his terrible sword. An Elric faced at last the fate that was to be his in this haunted era - that he must go forth, sword and man as one, and havoc and horror would be forever at his forefront until he found his Purpose that was yet obscured to him. Views: 898
Lauren Reynolds wanted only two things in life—to run her father’s horse breeding business and Colt Matthews. Fearing Colt would take her position within the family business, she tried to push him far away from her heart.
When life could no longer keep Lauren and Colt apart, their two worlds became one. Every second of every moment, they spent together. Their love bloomed into something neither of them imagined—a bond so strong Lauren and Colt believed nothing would ever stand in their way.
However, life threw a cruel twist into Colt and Lauren’s planned happily ever after. Will fate let them live out the life they dreamed of, or will one of them be left alone, lost and angry?
“I’ll spend forever holding you … even if it’s only in my memory.” Views: 897
Winner of an MGM prize: A doctor finds love with a talented, handsome younger man—who happens to be her patient
Hilary Mansell is a talented young doctor, but she is unlucky in love and still recovering from losing out on a keenly sought appointment, one that was awarded to none other than her former lover. A new position in the scenic Cotswolds offers the balm of tranquillity. But life proves less than placid when Hilary meets Julian on her hospital rounds. He is attractive, intelligent, and recovering from a riding injury. He is also much younger than Hilary and dealing with an overbearing mother.
The two lovers are captured in unforgettable richness by Mary Renault’s pen. The intimacy of their feelings, the nuances of romance, and the cadence of pitch-perfect dialogue render Return to Night a love story like no other. Views: 897
The third novel in the New York Confidential series by long-established NYT bestselling romantic suspense author Heather Graham. This is the author's romantic-suspense stream, in addition to her successful ongoing mass market paperback paranormal romantic suspense series.
Psychologist Kieran Finnegan is thrust into the middle of an investigation into human trafficking when a desperate woman shoves an infant into her arms and then flees...only to be murdered minutes later on a busy Manhattan street. Despite the fact that it isn't an FBI case, Special Agent Craig Frasier starts poking around, because Kieran can't stop thinking about the child and the victim. Their one lead comes through the pub, Finnegan's on Broadway. One of the waitresses also volunteers at a church outreach center, and had been in contact with a distraught young pregnant woman, whom she recommended Kieran to as someone who might be able to help her. When Kieran goes to the outreach center to do some off-the-books investigating of her own, she is approached by two women who are worried for their missing friend, and who reveal that they were part of a human trafficking ring that did business in babies. As Craig and Kieran delve deeper into the underbelly of NYC trying to find out more, the dangerous elements of the ring come to the surface, hoping to silence Kieran before she exposes them. Views: 897
A new paperback with a gorgeous cover from the upcoming movie!
In 1914, Joey, a beautiful bay-red foal with a distinctive cross on his nose, is sold to the army and thrust into the midst of the war on the Western Front. With his officer, he charges toward the enemy, witnessing the horror of the battles in France. But even in the desolation of the trenches, Joey's courage touches the soldiers around him and he is able to find warmth and hope. But his heart aches for Albert, the farmer's son he left behind. Will he ever see his true master again? Views: 897
Never, ever cry. . . Seventeen-year-old Eureka won't let anyone close enough to feel her pain. After her mother was killed in a freak accident, the things she used to love hold no meaning. She wants to escape, but one thing holds her back: Ander, the boy who is everywhere she goes, whose turquoise eyes are like the ocean. And then Eureka uncovers an ancient tale of romance and heartbreak, about a girl who cried an entire continent into the sea. Suddenly her mother's death and Ander's appearance seem connected, and her life takes on dark undercurrents that don't make sense. Can everything you love be washed away? Views: 897
