“As a little boy, I had a dream that my father had taken me to the woods where there was a dead body. He buried it and told me I must never tell. It was the only thing we’d ever done together as father and son, and I promised not to tell. But unlike most dreams, the memory of this one never left me. And sometimes…I wasn’t altogether sure about one thing: was it just a dream?”**
When Augusten Burroughs was small, his father was a shadowy presence in his life: a form on the stairs, a cough from the basement, a silent figure smoking a cigarette in the dark. As Augusten grew older, something sinister within his father began to unfurl. Something dark and secretive that could not be named.
Betrayal after shocking betrayal ensued, and Augusten’s childhood was over. The kind of father he wanted didn’t exist for him. This father was distant, aloof, uninterested…
And then the “games” began.
With "A Wolf at the Table", Augusten Burroughs makes a quantum leap into untapped emotional terrain: the radical pendulum swing between love and hate, the unspeakably terrifying relationship between father and son. Told with scorching honesty and penetrating insight, it is a story for anyone who has ever longed for unconditional love from a parent. Though harrowing and brutal, "A Wolf at the Table" will ultimately leave you buoyed with the profound joy of simply being alive. It’s a memoir of stunning psychological cruelty and the redemptive power of hope. Views: 940
A passionate and powerful novel based on the scandalous life of the French novelist George Sand, her famous lovers, untraditional Parisian lifestyle, and bestselling novels in Paris during the 1830s and 40s. This major departure for bestseller Berg is for readers of Nancy Horan and Elizabeth Gilbert.
George Sand was a 19th century French novelist known not only for her novels but even more for her scandalous behavior. After leaving her estranged husband, Sand moved to Paris where she wrote, wore men’s clothing, smoked cigars, and had love affairs with famous men and an actress named Marie. In an era of incredible artistic talent, Sand was the most famous female writer of her time. Her lovers and friends included Frederic Chopin, Gustave Flaubert, Franz Liszt, Eugene Delacroix, Victor Hugo, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and more. In a major departure, Elizabeth Berg has created a gorgeous novel about the life of George Sand, written in luminous prose, with exquisite insight into the heart and mind of a woman who was considered the most passionate and gifted genius of her time. Views: 940
Francis Joseph Cassavant is 18. He has just returned home from the Second World War, and he has no face. He does have a gun and a mission: to murder his childhood hero.
Francis lost most of his face when he fell on a grenade in France. He received the Silver Star for bravery, but was it really an act of heroism? Now, having survived, he is looking for a man he once admired and respected, a man adored my many people, a man who also received a Silver Star for bravery. A man who destroyed Francis’s life. Views: 940
Having a roommate at elite Waverly Academy means nightly sleepovers and double the designer wardrobe. But Callie Vernon never really liked late-night girl talk or swapping cashmere sweaters with her younger, rosy-cheeked roomie, Jenny Humphrey. So when Jenny stole her longtime boyfriend, Easy Walsh, Callie didn't feel that guilty about turning right around and kissing him behind Jenny's back. Okay, maybe a little guilty, but it certainly didn't stop her from enjoying it. Now, if only Easy would stop being so irritatingly indecisive and dump Jenny already
While the two roommates are sharing a boyfriend, the rest of Dumbarton's residents are sharing their feelings at the newly founded Women of Waverly club--aka, WOW Everyone is totally bonding, revealing their most personal secrets, and hugging out their past rivalries. But despite the sharing-is-caring vibe, there are some things these girls aren't spilling--like who's making special late-night trips to the crater . . . and with whom.
Now it's only a matter of time before all the newfound girl power explodes into a massive girl fight. But this battle goes well beyond the ivy colored brick walls of Dumberton--it's about who will be Waverly's next It Girl. Views: 940
The sixth book in the legendary Poldark saga. Cornwall, 1795: Although Ross Poldark - now something of a war hero - seems secure in his hard-won prosperity, a new dilemma faces him in the sudden infatuation of a young naval officer for his wife Demelza. All four women - the four swans - whose lives touch Ross' face a crisis in these years. For his wide Demelza, his old love Elizabeth, for his friend's new wife Caroline and for the unhappy Morwenna Chynoweth, these are times of stress and conflict. Views: 940
11 July 1784
Why should I be beneath Fitzwilliam? I am just as handsome as he is; I am just as intelligent, even though he works harder at his books; and I am just as amusing; in fact I dare say I am a great deal more amusing, for Fitzwilliam is so proud he will not take the trouble to entertain other people. Yet although he is no better than me, when he grows up he will inherit Pemberley, and I will inherit nothing...
He wasn't always this cold-hearted...
George Wickham had everything going for him. He's handsome, charming and sincere. Old Mr. Darcy loves him like a son. Fitzwilliam Darcy, the companion of his youth, is powerful and moral. What are the forces then that would turn this young man's destiny from one of promise to one of treachery and villainy? And could it happen again?
Praise for Mr. Darcy's Diary:
"Absolutely fascinating. Amanda Grange seems to have really got under Darcy's skin and retells the story, in diary form, with great feeling and sensitivity."
-Historical Novel Society
(20110404) Views: 939
Growing up in 1930s America, the young Sidney knew what it was to struggle to get by. Millions were out of work and the Sheldon family was forced to journey around America in search of employment. Grabbing every chance he could, Sidney worked nights as a bus-boy, a clerk, an usher - anything - but he dreamt of becoming something more. His dream was to become a writer and to break into Hollywood. By a stroke of luck, he found work as a reader for David Selznick, a top Hollywood producer, and the dream began to materialise. Views: 939
At last! The news you've been waiting for! Success, fulfillment, and satisfaction are finally within your reach. In How to Succeed at Being Yourself, Joyce Meyer will help you discover that emotional, spiritual, and social transformation are possible as you begin to see yourself in a whole new way. Through understanding who you are, you will find the confidence to take hold of lasting, fulfilling success. Experience today the joy of becoming the unique person God intended you to be! Views: 939
The steady tick of an aged Regulator wall clock and the squeak of an overhead fan turning slowly are soft but insistent, counting down the night, while the high desert thrums like a half-remembered Victrola song. The sounds are below the consciousness of Winchell Dear, an old-time gambler, a Texas poker player on the southern circuit, as he waits for something . . . something vague that his life of chance tells him is evil and moving his way. He has gassed and oiled the Cadillac and adjusts the pistol in his right boot, then plays one of the six fiddle tunes he knows, thinking back to his good days with Lucinda Miller. Alone, he waits in his remote ranch house, while, just outside, an acquaintance named Luther hunts, unblinking and of nervous temperament and moving through yellow primrose bending in the night wind.
In Diablo Canyon, a distant part of Winchell Dear's ranch, Peter Long Grass squats by a campfire, contemplating the profile he saw moving along the ridge of Guapa Mountain an hour ago, thinking about the gambler’s housekeeper, Sonia Dominguez, about the small, quiet world he has fashioned far from civilization and what undefined presence might now be threatening it. He gathers his tools and begins to run across the desert floor.
And boring toward all of them is a cream-colored Lincoln Continental with two men aboard. Traveling from Los Angeles on a mission they've been given, they are professionals, cool and implacable at the start, but becoming steadily more confused by the strange landscape they are passing through. Forty minutes from their task, they ready themselves, while a kitchen wall clock ticks its way through the long night of Winchell Dear.
The Long Night of Winchell Dear finds master storyteller Robert James Waller at his best as he takes us through the wind and dust of the high desert mountains, into the shadowy world of high-stakes poker fought in the back rooms of Amarillo and Little Rock, and headlong toward the book's stunning finale of chaotic terror, where an unexpected hero emerges. "From the Hardcover edition." Views: 939
Brooklyn's toughest female detective takes on Dallas-and neither is ready for the fight.
Dallas, Texas is not for the faint of heart. Good thing for Betty Rhyzyk she's from a family of take-no-prisoners Brooklyn police detectives. But her Big Apple wisdom will only get her so far when she relocates to The Big D, where Mexican drug cartels and cult leaders, deadbeat skells and society wives all battle for sunbaked turf.
Betty is as tough as the best of them, but she's deeply shaken when her first investigation goes sideways. Battling a group of unruly subordinates, a persistent stalker, a formidable criminal organization, and an unsupportive girlfriend, the unbreakable Detective Betty Rhyzyk may be reaching her limit. Views: 939
In his introduction to this one hundredth volume of the beloved Best American Short Stories, guest editor T. C. Boyle writes, "The Model T gave way to the Model A and to the Ferrari and the Prius . . . modernism to postmodernism and post-postmodernism. We advance. We progress. We move on. But we are part of a tradition." Boyle's choices of stories reflect a vibrant range of characters, from a numb wife who feels alive only in the presence of violence to a new widower coming to terms with his sudden freedom, from a missing child to a champion speedboat racer. These stories will grab hold and surprise, which according to Boyle is "what the best fiction offers, and there was no shortage of such in this year's selections." Mulling over the question of character likability, series editor Heidi Pitlor asks, "Did I like these characters? I very much liked reading their stories, as did T. C. Boyle." Here are characters who "are living, breathing people who screw up... Views: 938
The Carlyle triplets have made a lot of new friends in Manhattan-and more than a few enemies. O stole his best friend's girlfriend, and A dethroned the queen bee. Now a line has been drawn down Fifth Avenue, and it's all-out war. Only here, the battles are fought with icy glares and vicious rumors. It's the Upper East Side, and all's fair in love and scandal...
You know you love me,
Gossip Girl Views: 938
Hero, adulterer, bon vivant, murderer and rogue, Dan Sickles led the kind of existence that was indeed stranger than fiction. Throughout his life he exhibited the kind of exuberant charm and lack of scruple thatwins friends, seduces women, and gets people killed. In American Scoundrel Thomas Keneally, the acclaimed author of Schindler's List," "creates a biographythat is as lively and engrossing as its subject.
Dan Sickles was a member of Congress, led a controversial charge at Gettysburg, and had an affair with the deposed Queen of Spain-among manyother women. But the most startling of his many exploits was his murder of Philip Barton Key (son of Francis Scott Key), the lover of his long-suffering and neglected wife, Teresa. The affair, the crime, and the trialcontained all the ingredients of melodrama needed to ensure that it was the scandal of the age. At the trial's end, Sickles was acquitted and hardly chastened. His life, in which outrage and accomplishment hadequal force, is a compelling American tale, told with the skill of a master narrative. "From the Trade Paperback edition." Views: 938
Ivy should be ecstatic that her formerly-dead boyfriend Tristan is back on earth with her, but the life of a fallen angel is never easy. Tristan has been cast down in the body of a murderer, and the police are after him. Now, there's only one way that he and Ivy can be together: they must clear him of the murder.
But when it becomes clear that there are darker forces at work, and Tristan and Ivy are still paying the price for Ivy's miraculous survival of the car crash, these starcrossed lovers have more at stake than ever before. And one of them may not be alive much longer.... Views: 938
"This was no suicide," says Detective Michael Bennett.
A man plunges to his death from the roof of a Manhattan hotel. It looks like a suicide--except the victim has someone else's fingerprints and $10,000 in cash. Enter Detective Michael Bennett. Views: 938
