Marla’s best friend, Elly, left England two years ago on a soul-searching trip through South America. Except for receiving a few postcards, Marla has not heard from her since. Then, Marla receives a strange letter from Elly begging her to fly to New York. But the person Marla meets at the airport is a very different woman from the strong, carefree friend she remembers. Elly, now well-dressed and thin, has acquired a park-view apartment, a house in the Hamptons, and a charismatic, manipulative, cocaine-smuggling boyfriend named Lenny.
As Marla tries to free her friend from the dual addictions of love and cocaine, she unravels a story of seduction and power in Columbia and of desire and betrayal in California. Caught in a web of deceptions, the threat of violence mounting around them, Marla decides to take on Lenny and his empire. But Lenny–like the drug he peddles–has no intention of letting Elly go. Views: 523
The year is 2002 and the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars are in their infancy. The military favors policies that keep the truth under wraps. In such an atmosphere, thirty-seven year old Lieutenant Tom Hubbard is killed in action, his remains are returned to the small New England town he turned his back on years earlier. Iraq War hero, dutiful son, dedicated brother, faithful partner ... or was he?Tom Hubbard is dead. Iraq war hero, dutiful son and brother, faithful husband. Or was he? The year is 2002, and the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars are in their infancy. The military favors policies that keep the truth under wraps: The dead return to the US in secret, while gay soldiers abide by the confines of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In such a milieu, thirty-seven-year-old Lieutenant Tom Hubbard is killed in action and his remains are returned to the small New England town he turned his back on years earlier. Along with a flood of curious townspeople, Tom Hubbard’s extended family, boyhood friends and distant lovers gather for a memorial reception hosted by Tom’s emotionally unbalanced mother and prickly sister. Set at the Hubbard’s 200-year-old farmhouse in Newbury, Massachusetts, the drama unfolds in a single afternoon directly following Tom Hubbard’s military burial. In one day, this small town family falls apart and comes back together again in unexpected ways. Long-hidden relationships surface, family secrets are uncovered and the real Tom Hubbard is revealed. New relationships are built—relationships that could not have existed before Tom Hubbard had died and his tumultuous memorial reception had shaken his family to its core. Views: 523
Life manifests as an ovegrown, petulant baby, whilst melancholy flirts dangerously with an identity crisis.Michael Tomatoes, artist, sculptor and manic-depressive, is a man at pains to discover the nature of self, even if that means being someone else. A tool of fate, he sticks his fingers in the electric socket of life and wonders about suffering and loss. Is his obsession with numbers the result of a robotic condition, metal under the skin, or a paranoic attempt to decipher the intricacies of a more mundane and human predicament? That is: breathing, sucking in and blowing out all those other selves that compose a reality at once familiar and strange. Views: 523
On assignment in the Philippines, archaeologist Annja Creed meets with a contact to verify some information. Easy enough. But when the man doesn't turn out to be whom he said he was, Annja finds herself handcuffed, blindfolded and kidnapped. And to make matters worse, she's a prisoner of the dreaded Abu Sayyaf, a notorious terrorist group. Desperate to escape, Annja is able to flee after slaying one of her captors. But she soon gets lost in the hostile jungle, which is rumored to be haunted by the spirits of Moro warriors who fought off conquistadors with their blades. As she tries to stay a step ahead of the terrorists and not-so-dead spirits with a taste for human flesh, Annja's not sure she'll leave the jungle alive.... Views: 522
One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year—a masterful and engrossing novel about a single mother’s collapse and the fate of her family after she enters a California state hospital in the 1970s.“A sweeping family epic that took me from one American coast to another…Simpson is so attuned to the family heart.” —Weike Wang, author of Joan Is OkayWhen Diane Aziz drives her oldest son, Walter, from Los Angeles to college at UC Berkeley, it will be her last parental act before falling into a deep depression. A single mother who maintains a wishful belief that her children can attain all the things she hasn’t, she’s worked hard to secure their future in caste-driven 1980s Los Angeles, gaining them illegal entry to an affluent public school. When she enters a state hospital, her closest friend tries to keep the children safe and their mother’s dreams for them alive.At Berkeley, Walter discovers a... Views: 522
A cold case adds an extra chill to the holiday season as bestselling author Anne Perry whisks readers to an English country house for a Christmas of secrets, soul-searching, and forgiveness.As beautiful as it may be, their friends' country home is not where Lady Vespasia wishes to spend Christmas with her new husband, Victor Narraway. She'd rather pass a relaxing holiday at home with him—especially because Victor, former head of the London Special Branch, seems to be hiding some undercover dealings with the other guests who have gathered in the spacious home.As tensions grow among the couples, the young and beautiful Iris Watson-Watt becomes the center of several men's focus. Unbeknownst to Vespasia, Iris carries a message for Victor that may help unmask a British traitor. As Victor plots his moves, he is reminded of a similar case from twenty years before, when a young Frenchwoman also carried a clandestine message—one that resulted in her murder, still... Views: 522
It's late one night at the Spanish port of Algeciras and two fading Irish gangsters are waiting on the boat from Tangier. A lover has been lost, a daughter has gone missing, their world has come asunder - can it be put together again? Night Boat to Tangier is a novel drenched in sex and death and narcotics, in sudden violence and old magic, but it is obsessed, above all, with the mysteries of love. A tragicomic masterwork from a multi-award-winning writer, Night Boat to Tangier is both mordant and hilarious, lyrical yet laden with menace. Views: 522
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres and the New York Times best-selling Last Hundred Years Trilogy, a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals—and a young boy—whose lives intersect in ParisParas is a spirited racehorse at a racetrack west of Paris. At dusk, one afternoon she pushes open the door of her stall—she's a curious filly—and, after traveling through the night, arrives by chance in the City of Light. She's dazzled, and often mystified, by the sights, sounds and smells around her, but she isn't afraid. Soon she meets an elegant dog, a German shorthair pointer named Frida, who knows how to get by without attracting the attention of suspicious Parisians. Paras and Frida coexist for a time in the city's lush green spaces, nourished by Frida's strategic trips to the bakery and the butchershop. They keep company with two irrepressible ducks, and an opinionated raven. But then... Views: 522
Flooded by memories, poisoned by Agent Orange, Dan Lambert kills a man in a moment of fear and fury -- and changes his life forever. Pursued by police and bounty hunters, Dan flees south toward the Louisiana bayous. In the swamplands he meets Arden Halliday, a young woman who bears the vivid burdens of her own past, and who is searching for a legendary faith healer called the Bright Girl. Looking for simple kindness in a world that rarely shows it, bound by a loyalty stronger than love, Dan and Arden set off on a journey of relentless suspense and impassioned discovery. . . over dark, twisting waterways into the mysterious depths of the human heart. Views: 522
Ten young Florentines take refuge in the countryside from the Black Death and tell stories to pass the time. From the unfaithful wife who unwittingly eats her lover's heart to the sly peasant plotting to seduce a whole nunnery, these are tales of lust, adventure and unexpected twists of fate.United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love's endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love.... Views: 522
Love is the only thing not even Death can kill...Rowan Harper knows her life is forever changed the moment her schizophrenic mother commits suicide. What she doesn't know is how much her mother's choice altered her own fate. She soon finds herself drawn to a mysterious guy she feels an undeniable attraction to while learning of the new destiny her mother's actions carved out for her.One that requires she become her mother's replacement for something she never knew existed—a grim reaper.Tossed into the mystifying world of Reapers, Rowan struggles to keep hold of her sanity. She finds herself falling hard for the mysterious guy she met, even though she knows he's not among the living, and worrying she may have no other choice than to accept her mother's legacy—even if it means dying.Novella one in a hauntingly gothic tale of love, death, and hope fans of Young Adult Paranormal Romance and Fantasy are sure to enjoy. Views: 522
One dark and stormy night in 1956, a stranger named Fludd mysteriously turns up in the dismal village of Fetherhoughton. He is the curate sent by the bishop to assist Father Angwin-or is he?
In the most unlikely of places, a superstitious town that understands little of romance or sentimentality, where bad blood between neighbors is ancient and impenetrable, miracles begin to bloom.
No matter how copiously Father Angwin drinks while he confesses his broken faith, the level of the bottle does not drop.
Although Fludd does not appear to be eating, the food on his plate disappears.
Fludd becomes lover, gravedigger, and savior, transforming his dull office into a golden regency of decision, unashamed sensation, and unprecedented action.
Knitting together the miraculous and the mundane, the dreadful and the ludicrous, Fludd is a tale of alchemy and transformation told with astonishing art, insight, humor, and wit. Views: 522
I wrote this account one year after I'd found Hannah dead.
I thought I'd managed to erase all traces of that night within myself.
But I was wrong.
Every night when I tried to sleep, I'd close my eyes and see her again, exactly as I found her, hanging from a pine tree by an orange elctrical cord, her neck twisted like a tulip stem, her eyes seeing nothing.
Or else that was the problem. They'd seen everything.
This mesmerizing debut, uncannily uniting the trials of a postmodern upbringing with a murder mystery, heralds the arrival of a vibrant new voice in literary fiction. Views: 522
