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The Second-Worst Restaurant in France

In this delightful sequel to the best-selling comedic novel My Italian Bulldozer, Paul Stuart's travels taie him to a French village, where the local restaurant's haute cuisine leaves a lot to be desired.Renowned Scottish cookbook writer Paul Stuart is hard at work on his new book, The Philosophy of Food, but complicated domestic circumstances, and two clingy cats, are making that difficult.So when Paul's cousin Chloe suggests that he join her at the house she's rented in the French countryside, he jumps at the chance. The two quickly befriend the locals, including their twin-sister landladies, who also own the infamous local restaurant known to be the second-worst eatery in all of France. During their stay, the restaurant's sole waitress gives birth mid-dinner service and the maitre d' storms off after fighting with the head chef. Paul is soon drafted to improve the gastronomy of the village, which Chloe, ever on the hunt for her next romance,...
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Anything But a Gentleman

Marianne finds her new neighbour, Lord Ravensford, is anything but a gentleman! And yet with his dark hair and his dangerous air, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to him, despite the rumours that he has ruined her missing brother. When the secret of Kit's disappearance is revealed, Luke and Marianne plunge into a desperate adventure which will test them to the limits and change their lives forever. Regency Romance by Amanda Grange; originally published by Robert Hale [UK]
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Worstward Ho

Beckett's second last prose text, Worstward Ho, is a novella written in 1983, shortly after the largely autobiographical Company and an ironic theological speculation, both previously published as the first two parts of a late trilogy of short novels. The concentration of language and precision of description in the current work is revolutionary, even for Beckett, the great reshaper of literary expression, and its theme is the creation of life, as if by a malignant God or Demiurge. Life, against all possibility, finally exists, and man becomes a painful presence. It is one of the supreme poetic texts of the 20th century.
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Legacy of Lies

Something is haunting Megan... She had seen Scarborough House only in her dreams. Now Megan was here, visiting the grandmother she'd never met, and her newfound cousin Matt, too handsome by far, who wanted her to disappear. Grandmother was so cold, so distant. Why did she finally reach out to Megan after all these years? And why was Matt so determined to call her his "almost" cousin? For all her prophetic dreams, nothing could have prepared Megan for Matt's astonishment when he first saw her...or the reaction of perfect strangers who looked at her with fascination -- and fear... Megan thought she knew who she was. Until she came to Grandmother's house. Until she met Matt, who angered and attracted her as no boy had ever done before. Then she began having dreams again, of a life she never lived, a love she never knew...a secret that threatened to drive her to the grave.
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Kindness of Your Nature

Set on the desolate, moody coastline near Kawhia, this beautifully written and insightful novel paints a warm and sensitive portrait of the many forms love takes - the destructive, the forbidden and, ultimately, the healing. Marion Flint lives alone on the wild west coast of New Zealand's North Island. One day she meets a small boy, Ika, on the empty, rugged beach, and an unlikely friendship begins between the Swedish doctor and the solemn child with webbed feet and a fear of being touched. As Marion's involvement with Ika deepens she is forced to revisit her own lonely childhood in Sweden, where neglect and a destructive home environment had deadly consequences. But Marion's most deeply buried hurt is that she had to lose the love of her life twice over. As Marion and Ika grow closer, both begin to learn that human closeness can heal as well as destroy, and when it looks like Ika might have to return to his dysfunctional family, Marion must fight for him to stay with her -...
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The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps

The Suicide Run collects five of William Styron’s meticulously rendered narratives based on his real-life experiences as a U.S. Marine. In “Blankenship,” Styron draws on his stint as a guard at a stateside military prison at the end of World War II. “Marriott, the Marine” and “The Suicide Run”—which Styron composed as part of an intended novel that he set aside to write Sophie’s Choice—depict the surreal experience of being conscripted a second time, after World War II, to serve in the Korean War. “My Father’s House” captures the frustration of a soldier trying to become a civilian again. In “Elobey, Annobón, and Corisco,” a soldier attempts to exorcise the dread of an approaching battle by daydreaming about far-off islands, visited vicariously through his childhood stamp collection.   Perhaps the last volume from one of literature’s greatest voices, The Suicide Run brings to life the drama, absurdity, and heroism that forever changed the men who served in the Marine Corps.
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When We Were Young & Brave

"Gaynor's story of courage and strength will make you believe in the heroic spirit in each of us." —Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were YoursTheir motto was to be prepared, but nothing could prepare them for war. . .The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home sets her unforgettable new novel in China during WWII, inspired by true events surrounding the Japanese Army's internment of teachers and children from a British-run missionary school.China, December 1941. Having left an unhappy life in England for a teaching post at a missionary school in northern China, Elspeth Kent is now anxious to return home to help the war effort. But as she prepares to leave China, a terrible twist of fate determines a different path for Elspeth, and those in her charge. Ten-year-old Nancy Plummer has always...
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A Tale of Two Vikings

Two different cover designs highlight that this installment of Hill's humorous Viking series is two love stories in one book.
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Autumn Street

Elizabeth is forced to grow up when her father goes to fight in World War II. Her family moves in with her grandfather, and a special friend is struck by tragedy. An ALA Notable Children's Book.
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Hunt the Darkness

The vampire, Roke, is raw, sensual, always in control. Yet somehow he's allowed the unthinkable to happen: a nymph-like witch named Sally has used her magic to trick Roke into mating with her. The pair will remain bound for eternity unless Sally breaks the spell. The trouble is, she has no idea how. . . Mating with Roke was an accident; at least that's what Sally keeps telling herself. She's on the hunt for her demon father, whose identity holds the key to releasing the spell. The search won't be easy with Roke shadowing Sally's every move. As they mate with a ferocity that leaves them both aching for more, Sally isn't sure if her world is more dangerous without Roke—or with him. . .
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The Cold Millions

A Most Anticipated Book by: The New York Times Book Review * Wall Street Journal * Time * Esquire * The Millions * Vogue * People * New York Post * USA Today * Medium * The Philadelphia Inquirer * NewsdayFrom the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins comes another "literary miracle" (NPR)—a propulsive, richly entertaining novel about two brothers swept up in the turbulent class warfare of the early twentieth century.An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice, and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams. The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home,...
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Poseidon's Arrow

“Dirk Pitt is oceanography’s answer to Indiana Jones,” praises the Associated Press. “Exotic locations, ruthless villains and many narrow escapes—Cussler’s fans come for swashbuckling [and] he delivers.” And now the Cusslers bring us Pitt’s most dangerous adventure of all... It is the greatest advance in American defense technology in decades — an attack submarine capable of incredible underwater speeds. Nothing else in any other nation’s naval arsenal even comes close. There is only one problem: A key element of the prototype is missing — and the man who developed it is dead. At the same time, ships have started vanishing mid-ocean, usually never to be found again, but when they are, sometimes bodies are found aboard . . . burned to a crisp.What is going on? And what does it have to do with an Italian submarine that itself disappeared in 1943, lost at sea? Or was she? It is up to NUMA director Dirk Pitt and his team, aided by a beautiful NCIS agent and by Pitt’s children, marine engineer Dirk and oceanographer Summer, to go on a desperate international chase to find the truth, from Washington to Mexico, Idaho to Panama. What they discover at the end of it is a much, much greater threat than even they imagined. If they don’t succeed in their mission, the world as they know it might end up a very different place — and not a pleasant one. Filled with breathtaking suspense and extraordinary imagination, Poseidon’s Arrow is further proof that when it comes to adventure writing, nobody beats Clive Cussler.
Views: 586

Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?

"A wild ride of a book . . . A story in which anything and everything can happen, and mostly does. This is a book of many trips—across oceans, back to the past, and, most profoundly, into the infinite deep space of the human heart. Brock Clarke has given us a wonderful novel that bursts with all the meaty stuff of real life." —Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk With the comic unpredictability of a Wes Anderson movie and the inventive sharpness of a John Irving novel, author Brock Clarke introduces readers to an ordinary man who is about to embark on an absurdly extraordinary adventure. After his mother, a theologian and bestselling author, dies in a fiery explosion, forty-nine-year-old Calvin Bledsoe's heretofore uninspired life is upended. A stranger shows up at the funeral, claiming to be Calvin's aunt Beatrice, and insists that Calvin accompany her on a trip to Europe, immediately. As he and Beatrice...
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City Boy

'City Boy' spins a hilarious and often touching tale of an urban kid's adventures and misadventures on the street, in school, in the countryside, always in pursuit of Lucille, a heartless redhead personifying all the girls who torment and fascinate pubescent lads of eleven.
Views: 585

Riders of the Purple Sage

Riders of the Purple Sage is a Western novel by Zane Grey, first published by Harper & Brothers in 1912. Considered by many critics[who?] to have played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre, the novel has been called "the most popular western novel of all time." Riders of the Purple Sage tells the story of Jane Withersteen and her battle to overcome persecution by members of her polygamous Mormon fundamentalist church. A leader of the church, Elder Tull, wants to marry her. Withersteen gets help from a number of friends, including Bern Venters and Lassiter, a famous gunman and killer of Mormons. Throughout most of the novel she struggles with her "blindness" to the evil nature of her church and its leaders, and tries to keep Venters and Lassiter from killing the adversaries who are slowly ruining her. When she adopts a child, Fay, she abandons her beliefs and discovers her true love. A second plot strand tells of Venters and his escape to the wilderness with a girl named Bess, "the rustler\'s girl," whom he has accidentally shot. Venters falls in love with the girl while caring for her. Together they escape to the East, while Lassiter, Fay, and Jane, pursued by both Mormons and rustlers, escape into a paradise-like valley and topple a giant rock to forever close off the only way in or out. The events depicted in Riders of the Purple Sage occur in mid-spring and late summer 1871. Early in Riders of the Purple Sage, Jane Withersteen\'s main conflict is her right to befriend a Gentile. (The word Gentile means "non-Mormon" and is used a lot in the book). Jane Withersteen’s father wished Jane to marry Elder Tull, but Jane refused saying she did not love him, causing controversy and leading to persecution by the local Mormons. Jane’s friend, (cowboy) Bern Venters is "arrested" by Tull and his men, but is not clear under what authority. Jane defends Venters, declaring him her best rider. Her churchmen refuse to value the opinion of a woman: "Tull lifted a shaking finger toward her. \'That\'ll do from you. Understand, you\'ll not be allowed to hold this boy [Venters] to a friendship that\'s offensive to your bishop. Jane Withersteen, your father left you wealth and power. It has turned your head. You haven\'t yet come to see the place of Mormon women ...\'" It is here we first hear of Lassiter. Ironically, at the moment when Venters mentions Lassiter’s name, the actual Lassiter is seen approaching in the distance by Tull’s men. Upon his arrival, Lassiter expresses his trust in the word of women, at which Tull rebukes him, telling him not to meddle in Mormon affairs. Tull’s men begin to take Venters away, and Venters realizes who he is and screams "Lassiter!" Tull understands that this is the infamous Lassiter and flees. Lassiter inquires as to the location of Millie Erne\'s grave, to which a transfixed Jane agrees to take him. Venters later tells Jane he must leave her. When she protests, Venters delivers this statement: " ... Tull is implacable. You ought to see from his intention today that ... but you can\'t see. Your blindness ... your damned religion! Jane, forgive me ... I\'m sore within and something rankles. Well, I fear that invisible hand [of Mormon power in the region] will turn its hidden work to your ruin.", showing that Venters could see far into the future, and although Jane rebukes his statement, he is indeed correct. Jane’s red herd is rustled shortly afterward and Venters tracks it and returns it to Jane. Bern finds the herd, but, in his travels, wages a gun battle with two of Oldring’s rustlers, killing one and managing to wound Oldring’s notorious Masked Rider. Upon further examination, he removes the mask and shirt of the wounded rider and learns that the Masked Rider is a young woman named Bess whom he believes had been abused by Oldring. Venters experiences a large amount of guilt about shooting a girl and decides that it is his duty to save her.
Views: 585