Once upon a time in Botswana in Africa there was a little girl who would later grow up to be a famous detective: Precious Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Having already cracked the case of the missing cakes at school, she now has a new mystery to solve.
Precious Ramotswe has two new friends at school and they have the funniest and most resourceful pet you can imagine. But they are upset that their family's most valuable possession, their cow, has gone missing. Precious has a plan to find the missing animal but she needs the help of another in her search. Will she succeed and and what obstacles will she face on her path? Views: 982
A bomb set in one of New York's busiest places is discovered before it explodes. But relief turns to terror when the police realize it is just a warning of greater devastation to come. The city calls on Detective Michael Bennett, pulling him away from a seaside vacation with his ten adopted children and their beloved nanny, Mary Catherine--leaving his entire family open to attack.
Bennett enlists the help of a former colleague, FBI Agent Emily Parker. His affection for Emily grows into attraction and then something stronger, and his relationship with Mary Catherine takes an unexpected turn. Another horrifying crime leads Bennett to a shocking discovery that exposes the killer's pattern--and the earth-shattering enormity of his plan. Views: 982
A young girl's body is fished out of the Thames. Very sad but not so extraordinary. That is, not until Special Branch discover two unusual items. The only telephone number in the late Emma Dupre's diary was Bond's; also a new kind of credit card. Apparently legitimate, but unknown.
Emma, well-connected, ex-junkie, had also been involved with a new religious sect - The Society of the Meek Ones led by the charismatic Father Valentine. The Society upholds traditional moral values and is harmless. Or is it? Why does Father Valentine have links with Vladimir Scorpius, the vanished international arms dealer?
James Bond is called in to unravel the threads with the help of the beautiful Harriett Horner, in a labyrinthine tale which brings him face to face with the most sadistic and evil opponent of his career. Views: 982
Young Japanese seaman Hiro Tanaka, inspired by dreams of the City of Brotherly Love and trained in the ways of the samurai, jumps ship off the coast of Georgia and swims into a net of rabid rednecks, genteel ladies, descendants of slaves, and the denizens of an artists' colony. In the hands of T. Coraghessan Boyle, praised by Digby Diehl in Playboy as "one of the most exciting young fiction writers in America," the result is a sexy, hilarious tragicomedy of thwarted expectations and mistaken identity, love, jealousy, and betrayal. Views: 982
In this final book of Novik's series, Captain Will Laurence and his extraordinary dragon, Temeraire, are ordered to escort and protect a precious cargo of valuable dragon eggs from Istanbul to England. Original. “A splendid series.”–Anne McCaffrey“Naomi Novik has done for the Napoleonic Wars what Anne McCaffrey did for science fiction: constructed an alternate reality in which dragons are real in a saga that is impressively original, fully developed, and peopled with characters you care about.”–David Weber, author of the Honor Harrington seriesAfter their fateful adventure in China, Capt. Will Laurence of His Majesty’s Aerial Corps and his extraordinary dragon, Temeraire, are waylaid by a mysterious envoy bearing urgent new orders from Britain. Three valuable dragon eggs have been purchased from the Ottoman Empire, and Laurence and Temeraire must detour to Istanbul to escort the precious cargo back to England. Time is of the essence if the eggs are to be borne home before hatching.Yet disaster threatens the mission at every turn–thanks to the diabolical machinations of the Chinese dragon Lien, who blames Temeraire for her master’s death and vows to ally herself with Napoleon and take vengeance. Then, faced with shattering betrayal in an unexpected place, Laurence, Temeraire, and their squad must launch a daring offensive. But what chance do they have against the massed forces of Bonaparte’s implacable army? Views: 981
The author initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile"!), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's Rimbaud. Rimbaud entrapped by the communist revolution, entrapped in a somber farce. Views: 981
“This is the original Game of Thrones.” George R.R. Martin.
A collection of the first three books in Maurice Druon’s epic historical fiction series, The Accursed Kings.
“Accursed! Accursed! You shall be accursed to the thirteenth generation!”
The Iron King – Philip the Fair – is as cold and silent, as handsome and unblinking as a statue. He governs his realm with an iron hand, but he cannot rule his own family: his sons are weak and their wives adulterous; while his red-blooded daughter Isabella is unhappily married to an English king who prefers the company of men.
A web of scandal, murder and intrigue is weaving itself around the Iron King; but his downfall will come from an unexpected quarter. Bent on the persecution of the rich and powerful Knights Templar, Philip sentences Grand Master Jacques Molay to be burned at the stake, thus drawing down upon himself a curse that will destroy his entire dynasty…
This bundle collects the first three novels of The Accursed Kings: THE IRON KING, THE STRANGLED QUEEN and THE POISONED CROWN. Views: 981
Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs (first published under the French title L'Homme qui Rit in April 1869) is a sad and sordid tale -- not the sort of tale of the moment Hugo was known for. It starts on the night of January 29, 1690, a ten-year-old boy abandoned -- the stern men who've kept him since infancy have wearied of him. The boy wanders, barefoot and starving, through a snowstorm to reach a gibbet bearing the corpse of a hanged criminal. Beneath the gibbet is a ragged woman, frozen to death. The boy is about to move onward when he hears a sound within the woman's garments: He discovers an infant girl, barely alive, clutching the woman's breast. A single drop of frozen milk, resembling a pearl, is on the woman's lifeless breast... Views: 981
Drama, heartbreak, redemption – condensed into an unputdownable novella from the master storyteller.
On the surface, Claire Saunders has it all. She has a rewarding career in fashion and a talented concert pianist daughter. Her loving husband is one of the country’s most trusted diplomats.
She thinks she’s hidden her secret from her best friends, but they know her too well.
Can her friends get her out of harm’s way and protect her from a man who is as ruthless as he is charming and powerful? And along the way, can Claire learn to stop protecting the wrong people? Views: 980
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
WINNER OF THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In 1864, Union general William Tecumseh Sherman marched his sixty thousand troops through Georgia to the sea, and then up into the Carolinas. The army fought off Confederate forces, demolished cities, and accumulated a borne-along population of freed blacks and white refugees until all that remained was the dangerous transient life of the dispossessed and the triumphant. In E. L. Doctorow’s hands the great march becomes a floating world, a nomadic consciousness, and an unforgettable reading experience with awesome relevance to our own times. Views: 980
This is the classic fairy tale of what happened to two men who tried to get rich in evil ways and of how the fortune they sought came to their younger brother, whose kind and loving heart prompted him to right action. The King Of the Golden River is widely regarded as a masterpiece of 19th century stories for children. John Ruskin\'s The King of the Golden River exemplifies the literary fairy tale, a form which, like the literary ballad, imitates the anonymous products of popular or folk tradition. Ruskin\'s tale, which he wrote in 1841, two years before he began Modern Painters, tells of Hans and Shwartz, two selfish, evil brothers whose greed costs them their Edenic Treasure Valley and then their lives, and of the third brother, Gluck, whose generosity and self-sacrifice restore the valley\'s fertility. Views: 980
And Quiet Flows the Don or Quietly Flows the Don (Тихий Дон, lit. "The Quiet Don") is 4-volume epic novel by Russian writer Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov. The 1st three volumes were written from 1925 to '32 & published in the Soviet magazine October in 1928–32. The 4th volume was finished in 1940. The English translation of the 1st three volumes appeared under this title in 1934. The novel is considered one of the most significant works of Russian literature in the 20th century. It depicts the lives & struggles of Don Cossacks during WWI, the Russian Revolution & Russian Civil War. In 1965, Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for this novel. The authorship of the novel is contested by some literary critics & historians, who believe it wasn't entirely written by Sholokhov. Views: 980
Gather Yourselves Together is one of Philip K. Dick’s earliest novels, written when he was just twenty-four years old. It tells the story of three Americans left behind in China by their employer, biding their time as the Communists advance. As they while away the days, both the young and naïve Carl Fitter and the older and worldly Verne Tildon vie for the affections of Barbara Mahler, a woman who may not be so tough-as-nails as she acts. But Carl’s innocence and Verne’s boorishness could end up driving Barbara away from both. Views: 980
A dazzling story about marriage, forgiveness, and chances not taken, by the bestselling author of Body Surfing and A Wedding in December.
At a literary festival a poet named Linda Fallon meets for the first time in years a fellow poet, Thomas Janes, whose fame has grown during a decade of seclusion.
This is no chance meeting. Thomas saw that Linda was scheduled to appear, and chose this moment to re-establish contact with a woman he had passionately pursued years earlier. Their affair was disastrous for them both, a turning point in their lives, and the damage they did in those years still haunts them both.
THE LAST TIME THEY MET moves backward in time from Linda at age 52 to explore her life years earlier, at age 26, and still earlier, at 17. Anita Shreve examines the extraordinary resonance a single choice, even a single word, can have over the course of a lifetime. Views: 980
Abby Lovitt doesn't realize how unprepared she is when she takes her beloved horse, True Blue, to a clinic led by the most famous equestrian anyone knows. The biggest surprise, though, is that Sophia, the girl who never makes a mistake, suddenly makes so many that she stops riding. Who will ride her horse? Abby's dad seems to think it will be Abby. Pie in the Sky is the most expensive horse Abby has ever ridden. But he is proud and irritable, and he takes Abby's attention away from the continuing mystery that is True Blue.
And then there's high school—Abby finds new friends, but also new challenges, and a larger world that sometimes seems strange and intimidating. She begins to wonder if there is another way to look at horses, people, and life itself.
Accompanied by the beautiful imagery of 1960s Northern California, Abby's charming mix of innocence and wisdom guide us through Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley's latest middle-grade horse novel. Views: 980
