• Home
  • Literature & Fiction

Morality for Beautiful Girls

THE NO. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY - Book 3 Fans around the world adore the best-selling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma  Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea. In Morality for Beautiful Girls, Precious Ramotswe, founder and owner of the only detective agency for the concerns of both ladies and others, investigates the alleged poisoning of the brother of an important “Government Man,” and the moral character of the four finalists of the Miss Beauty and Integrity Contest, the winner of which will almost certainly be a contestant for the title of Miss Botswana. Yet her business is having money problems, and when other difficulties arise at her fiancé’s Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, she discovers the reliable Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is more complicated then he seems. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Views: 555

The Colossus

With this startling, exhilarating book of poems, which was first published in 1960, Sylvia Plath burst into literature with spectacular force. In such classics as "The Beekeeper's Daughter," "The Disquieting Muses," "I Want, I Want," and "Full Fathom Five," she writes about sows and skeletons, fathers and suicides, about the noisy imperatives of life and the chilly hunger for death. Graceful in their craftsmanship, wonderfully original in their imagery, and presenting layer after layer of meaning, the forty poems in The Colossus are early artifacts of genius that still possess the power to move, delight, and shock. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Views: 555

Unexpected Love

Nurse Lorenna Fields always took her job at Chicago's Lakeview Hospital seriously, determining never to become personally involved with her patients. Then a mysterious man with eyes like onyx is admitted after a shipwreck on Lake Michigan. He has lost his memory and sight. Renna feels a special kinship with this man and dubs him Mr. Blackeyes. Soon the two build a strong trusting friendship, and Renna shares her faith in the Lord. But she dreads the day her patient will recover. His memory will take him away from her to family and friends now forgotten, and his regained sight will reveal a secret about herself that Renna has been trying hard to hide. But someone else besides Renna doesn't want "Mr. Blackeyes"to remember the past...and may not allow him to live to see the future.
Views: 555

The Eagles Gather

This is an unforgettable novel of a titanic family, of the greed that nourished them and of the strange, haunted love that even their immense power could not crush.
Views: 555

Nobody's Fool

Richard Russo's slyly funny and moving novel follows the unexpected operation of grace in a deadbeat town in upstate New York—and in the life of one of its unluckiest citizens, Sully, who has been doing the wrong thing triumphantly for fifty years. Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its sly and uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool is storytelling at its most generous.
Views: 555

The Book of Images

Now substantially revised by Edward Snow, whom Denise Levertov once called "far and away Rilke's best translator," this bilingual edition of The Book of Images contains a number of the great poet's previously untranslated pieces. Also included are several of Rilke's best-loved lyrics, such as "Autumn," "Childhood," "Lament," "Evening," and "Entrance."
Views: 555

The Wide Game

On the advice of his wife, Paul Rice is making plans to attend his 10th year High School reunion. Returning to his boyhood home of Harmony, Indiana, he finds that he is still haunted by memories of that time-memories of Deidra, his first love, and memories of the Wide Game. It was ten years ago that Paul and his friends watched their day of fun become a race for their lives, a fight for their very souls. Now, as he meets the survivors of that day once more, Paul makes a chilling discovery: the incomprehensible forces that toyed with them have yet to finish playing their own game.
Views: 554

Killer's Cousin

After being accused and acquitted in the death of his girlfriend, seventeen-year-old David is sent to live with his aunt, uncle, and young cousin to avoid the media frenzy. But all is not well at his relatives? house. His aunt and uncle are not speaking, and twelve-year-old Lily seems intent on making David's life a torment. And then there's the issue of his older cousin Kathy's mysterious death some years back. As things grow more and more tense, David starts to wonder?is there something else that his family is trying to hide from?
Views: 554

The Way Life Was Forever

Sun-dwellers are foul monsters that eat a human’s flesh from their bones…or so sixteen-year-old Lyra has always been taught. Moonwalkers are horrible beasts that feed on the blood of men…at least, that is what Perseus was told. Can overcome their own prejudices and discover the truth about one another before time runs out? *This is a YA short story from award-winning author, Carey Corp.*Sun-dwellers are fowl monsters that eat a human’s flesh from their bones…or so sixteen-year-old Lyra has always been taught. To keep their citizens safe, her colony seals itself into the vaults by day. Moonwalkers are horrible beasts that feed on the blood of men…at least, that is what Perseus was told. The only sure survival for his people is to lock themselves into their repositories each night. Both labeled as undesirable by their respective kinds, a fated meeting in the forbidden forest offers Lyra and Perseus an unexpected chance at happiness. If they can overcome their own prejudices and discover the truth about one another before time runs out. Can the sun-dweller and the moonwalker learn that when reality is distorted by hate and terror sometimes the only thing to truly fear is fear itself? THE WAY LIFE WAS FOREVER – a YA short story from award-winning author, Carey Corp.
Views: 554

The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation

The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation by J. S. Fletcher
Views: 554

Ragtime: A Novel

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century and the First World War. The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.
Views: 554

Holy Fools

In the year 1605 a young woman, hiding from her past, takes up the veil becoming Soeur Auguste. Five years later the past has found her and to protect herself and her beloved child she'll have to perform one last act of dazzling daring more audacious than any she has previously attempted. With her internationally bestselling novels Chocolat, Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange, and Coastliners, Joanne Harris has woven intoxicating spells that celebrate the sensuous while exposing the passion, secrets and folly beneath the surface of rustic village life. In Holy Fools, her most ambitious and accomplished novel to date, she transports us back to a time of intrigue and turmoil, of deception and masquerade. In the year 1605, a young widow, pregnant and alone, seeks sanctuary at the small Abbey of Sainte Marie-de-la-mer on the island of Noirs Moustiers off the Brittany coast. After the birth of her daughter, she takes up the veil, and a new name, Soeur Auguste. But the peace she has found in remote isolation is shattered five years later by the events that follow the death of her kind benefactress, the Reverend Mother. When a new abbess -- the daughter of a corrupt noble family elevated by the murder of King Henri IV -- arrives at Sainte Marie-de-la-mer, she does not arrive alone. With her is her personal confessor and spiritual guide, Père Colombin, a man Soeur Auguste knows all too well. For the newcomer is Guy LeMerle, a charlatan and seducer now masquerading as a priest, and the one man she fears more than any other. Soeur Auguste has a secret. Once she was l'Ailée, "The Winged One," star performer of a troupe led by LeMerle, before betrayal forced her to change her identity. But now the past has found her. Before long, thanks to LeMerle, suspicion and debauchery are breeding like a plague within the convent's walls -- fueled by dark rumors of witchcraft, part of the false priest's brilliantly orchestrated scheme of revenge. To protect herself and her beloved child, l'Ailée will have to perform one last act of dazzling daring more audacious than any she has previously attempted.
Views: 554

Singer in the Snow

“Remember the first time you read Le Guin’s Earthsea novels or Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings? All that timeless magic and wisdom is just as powerful in Marley’s latest—an instant classic.”—Paul Goat Allen, Explorations On Nevya, summer comes once every five years, and to be outside after nightfall is fatal. Its people rely on their Cantors and Cantrixes, men and women with the ability to channel psi energy through music, creating heat and light. Mreen is possibly the most talented Cantrix on Nevya—but she is unable to make a sound. When she travels to her first posting at the house of Tarud, she is accompanied by a younger Singer, Emle, who will help the Cantrix, teach Tarus’s Housemembers the Cantrix’s finger-symbol alphabet, and try to come to terms with her own flawed Gift, her inability to channel her psi. The two young women then find out about Gwin, a young girl whose abusive stepfather...
Views: 554

Jeb's Wife

Patricia Johns' sensitive storytelling brings depth and heart to this tender story of second chances, as an Amish woman embarks on marriage with the gruff farmer next door . . . Once, Leah Riehl prayed for a husband. The man she loved chose another, wanting the children that Leah can't provide. But she's found a measure of peace, keeping house for her brother, Simon, and teaching in a nearby town. Now though, Simon's debts to an Englisher gambling ring have left Leah with a desperate dilemma—and a surprising offer from her scarred, reclusive neighbor. Jebadiah King needs to marry in order to claim his family farm. A union, for appearances only, will help them both. Jeb knows his scars make him a less than ideal husband, but he can be a useful one. It's the least that Leah deserves. But despite the promises he made to himself, Jeb can't help longing for his lovely, warmhearted new wife. His first marriage brought...
Views: 554