When Jack Merrill becomes Earl Haddington inheriting not only a title but the devastating debt that came with it, his friends convince him that there is nothing for it but to gain quick wealth the really old fashioned way–marry into it!On the hunt for a wealthy bride, Jack stumbles upon Kitty Hayes, the sister of his former target Evelyn. To him, Kitty is everything Eve was not to him–full of a fire and spirit that challenges him but also everything Eve was as well–a wealthy heiress. But Kitty is a married woman! Can he wait it out until she finds her freedom while reeling her in with friendship and seduction so that he might cast his net about the wealthy heiress the moment her divorce is final?After years of marriage with an abusive husband, Kitty Hayes flees Boston hoping to find protection and anonymity with her sister, Eve MacKintosh, now countess Glenrothes in Scotland, while she petitions for a divorce from the man who has made her life a living hell. Mistaken for her sister, Kitty encounters Jack Merrill who seeks friendship, he claims, but Kitty knows what he is hoping for!Certain that she will never marry again and certainly not expecting such a thing from an inveterate womanizer like Jack Merrill, Kitty negotiates a deal with Jack that if he can wait until her divorce is complete, she will give him the money he desires if in return he becomes her lover! Seeing everything he desires falling into place, Jack agrees to a bargain that is to him a complete win/win scenario that leaves him free of dreaded matrimony.But when Kitty’s life is threatened by her former husband and their 'bargain' suddenly becomes much more complicated, can Jack just stand aside and let this woman walk out of his life forever? Views: 633
The latest masterpiece*—perceptive, funny, insightful, affecting*—from the Nobel Prize–winning author
Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa’s newest novel, The Discreet Hero, follows two fascinating characters whose lives are destined to intersect: neat, endearing Felícito Yanaqué, a small businessman in Piura, Peru, who finds himself the victim of blackmail; and Ismael Carrera, a successful owner of an insurance company in Lima, who cooks up a plan to avenge himself against the two lazy sons who want him dead.
Felícito and Ismael are, each in his own way, quiet, discreet rebels: honorable men trying to seize control of their destinies in a social and political climate where all can seem set in stone, predetermined. They are hardly vigilantes, but each is determined to live according to his own personal ideals and desires—which means forcibly rising above the pettiness of their surroundings. The Discreet Hero is also a chance to revisit some of our favorite players from previous Vargas Llosa novels: Sergeant Lituma, Don Rigoberto, Doña Lucrecia, and Fonchito are all here in a prosperous Peru. Vargas Llosa sketches Piura and Lima vividly—and the cities become not merely physical spaces but realms of the imagination populated by his vivid characters.
A novel whose humor and pathos shine through in Edith Grossman’s masterly translation, The Discreet Hero is another remarkable achievement from the finest Latin American novelist at work today. Views: 633
Britton Rainstar never knew he could love a woman as deeply as he does Manuela Aloe and be so terrified of her at the same time. It's not just that he thinks she's out of his league. It's more that the longer he stays with her, the closer to death he seems to come. A vicious dog is somehow let loose in his hotel room. He's threatened at gunpoint by a man in a skeleton costume. And when he finally ends up in the hospital, someone pushes his wheelchair down the stairs.
Nothing anything like this has ever happened to Britt before--and while Manuela's never around when the so-called "accidents" happen, neither can Britt prove she's behind the many threats on his life. Is a rival for Manuela's affections trying to chase him away? Is there more to Manuela herself than meets the eye? Whatever it is, Britt better find out fast--before whoever's after him hits their mark, and the man who never thought he'd land the ultimate girl ends up paying the ultimate price. Views: 633
From the author of the best-selling and beloved The End of Your Life Book Club - a wonderfully engaging new book: both a celebration of reading in general and an impassioned recommendation of specific books that can help guide us through our daily lives.
"I've always believed that everything you need to know you can find in a book," writes Will Schwalbe in his introduction to this thought-provoking, heartfelt, and inspiring new book about books.
In each chapter he makes clear the ways in which a particular book has helped to shape how he leads his own life and the ways in which it might help to shape ours. He talks about what brought him to each book - or vice versa; the people in his life he associates each book with; how each has led him to other books; how each is part of his understanding of himself in the world. And he relates each book to a question of our daily lives, for example: Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener speaks to quitting; 1984 to disconnecting from our electronics; James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room to the power of finding ourselves and connecting with one another; Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea to taking time to recharge; Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird to being sensitive to the surrounding world; The Little Prince to making friends; Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train to trusting.
Here, too, are books by Dickens, Daphne du Maurier, Haruki Murakami, Edna Lewis, E. B. White, and Hanya Yanagihara, among many others. A treasure of a book for everyone who loves books, loves reading, and loves to hear the answer to the question: "What are you reading?" Views: 633
Darkness at Noon (from the German: Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best-known work tells the tale of Rubashov, a Bolshevik 1917 revolutionary who is cast out, imprisoned and tried for treason by the Soviet government he'd helped create.
Darkness at Noon stands as an unequaled fictional portrayal of the nightmare politics of our time. Its hero is an aging revolutionary, imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the Party to which he has dedicated his life. As the pressure to confess preposterous crimes increases, he relives a career that embodies the terrible ironies and human betrayals of a totalitarian movement masking itself as an instrument of deliverance. Almost unbearably vivid in its depiction of one man's solitary agony, it asks questions about ends and means that have relevance not only for the past but for the perilous present. It is —- as the Times Literary Supplement has declared —- "A remarkable book, a grimly fascinating interpretation of the logic of the Russian Revolution, indeed of all revolutionary dictatorships, and at the same time a tense and subtly intellectualized drama." Views: 633
"Sometimes when I'm at work and waiting for customers I think about the two of us living like kings and not bothering about the future. Because there may not be any future to bother about, you know. Not for anybody, one of these days. And it's a wicked world."
Average couple Janet and Howard's lives begin to unravel when Howard's photographic memory helps win him a gameshow fortune.
Janet doesn't want their lives to change that much. She's quite happy working at the supermarket, cooking for her husband three times a day and watching quiz shows in the evening.
But once Howard unleashes his photographic brain on the world, the once modest used-car salesman can't seem to stop.
And what he sees as the logical conclusion to his success isn't something Janet can agree to. Views: 633
Set in San Francisco in the late 1950s, Humpty Dumpty in Oakland is a tragicomedy of misunderstandings among used car dealers and real-estate salesmen: the small-time, struggling individuals for whom Philip K.Dick always reserved his greatest sympathy.
Jim Fergesson is an elderly garage owner with a heart condition, who is about to retire; Al Miller is a somewhat feckless mechanic who sublets part of Jim's lot and finds his livelihood threatened by the decision to sell; Chris Harman is a record-company owner who for years has relied on Fergesson to maintain his cars. When Harman hears of Fergesson's impending retirement he tips him off to what he says is a cast-iron business proposition: a development in nearby Marin County with an opening for a garage. Al Miller is convinced that Harman is a crook, out to fleece Fergesson of his life's savings. As much as he resents Fergesson he can't bear to see it happen and--denying to himself all the time what he is doing--he sets out to thwart Harman. Views: 633
The author has discovered for us in this volume the present stopping place of that famous raconteur of dear comic memory, the late Hieronymous Carl Friederich, sometime Baron Munchausen, and he transmits to us some further adventures of this traveler and veracious relator of merry tales. There are about a dozen of these tales, and, judging by Mr. Bangs' recital of them, the Baron's adventures on this mundane sphere were no more exciting than those he has encountered since taking the ferry across the Styx. Mr. Bangs proves himself well worthy of the task of reintroducing this merry old wag to modern fun-lovers, and in selecting from the tales the Baron has related to him he has chosen with an eye to the humorous which is unfailing in its clearness and keenness of perception. (Review from Book News, V. 20, 1902) Views: 633
Lacey Adams lives in the small town of Magic, New Mexico, where she devotes herself to the animals at her Touch of Magic Animal Shelter. The strange assortment of animals helps heal the pain and loneliness inside her since the death of her husband three years before.
Frost is a Star Ranger. He travels the star systems, bringing intergalactic fugitives to justice. When a maximum-security fugitive escapes from the mining prison, he is sent after him. Only this time, the fugitive has violated a major law… he has traveled to a distant forbidden planet inhabited by a race that has not mastered space travel yet.
Now, he is in a race to find the fugitive before those on the planet known as Earth discover there are not one, but two aliens on their world. Things become complicated when Frost discovers his heart is not as frozen as he thought when a young human female is taken hostage by the fugitive. What he doesn’t anticipate is her unexpected resistance – both to the fugitive and to him.
Frost is forced to make a decision that is guaranteed to put him on the most wanted list when he follows his heart and kidnaps Lacey. He knows that some things are worth the risk. What he doesn’t know is that Lacey has a few secrets of her own.
* First published in the anthology, Feel the Heat. Views: 633
Discover the origins of Durzo Blint in this original novella set in the world of Brent Weeks' New York Times bestselling Night Angel trilogy.
"I got a bit of prophecy," the old assassin said. "Not enough to be useful, you know. Just glimpses. My wife dead, things like that to keep me up late at night. I had this vision that I was going to be killed by forty men, all at once. But now that you're here, I see they're all you. Durzo Blint."
Durzo Blint? Gaelan had never even heard the name.
Gaelan Starfire is a farmer, happy to be a husband and a father; a careful, quiet, simple man. He's also an immortal, peerless in the arts of war. Over the centuries, he's worn many faces to hide his gift, but he is a man ill-fit for obscurity, and all too often he's become a hero, his very names passing into legend: Acaelus Thorne, Yric the Black, Hrothan Steelbender, Tal Drakkan, Rebus Nimble.
But when Gaelan must take a job hunting down the world's finest assassins for the beautiful courtesan-and-crimelord Gwinvere Kirena, what he finds may destroy everything he's ever believed in.
Word count: ~17,000 Views: 632
Subject: Delete this message after you read it ...Dear Hayley,I'm assuming you're still hungover, so I'll make this brief.Last night, you slipped under my sheets (without my permission), and we almost had sex. I got the hell out of the bed once I realized it was you, and I took you home.That's the story.The end.Period.Just in case you've forgotten, you're my best friend's little sister. We will never be anything more. (We can't be anything more.) Our previous friendship is still unresolved—or "over" in your terms, so I'd prefer if we worked on becoming 'just friends' again since you're in town.Nonetheless, I'm not a man who leaves questions unanswered—even the drunken ones, so to properly close our inappropriate conversation:1) Yes, I liked the way your lips felt against mine when you were on top of me.
2) Yes, I do "prefer" rough sex, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't rough with you.
3) No, I had no idea you were still a virgin ...This message never happened,Corey Views: 632
30 CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES GOOD TO THE LAST LINEThe McGuffin has long been a staple tool in any crime and mystery writer's arsenal. A perfectly placed last line of a short story can pull together subtle plot threads into a devastating dénouement or give everything that came before it a brand-new meaning, sometimes even reshaping the story entirely for the reader. Joe Gores and Bill Pronzini, two of the most talented mystery writers of the 20th century, joined forces to assemble the very best McGuffin stories by such celebrated authors as Anthony Boucher, Harlan Ellison, Joe L. Hensley, Edward D. Hoch, John Lutz, John D. MacDonald, and Donald E. Westlake. They, along with 24 more authors, have created some of the very best mystery stories that often save their best twists for the very last line... Views: 632
