The world's leading mystery writers have come together to champion the greatest mystery novels ever written. In a series of personal essays they often reveal as much about themselves and their work as they do about the books that they love. Views: 487
The planet Zarmina is an object of scientific research with its curious life forms and vast planetary ocean. But when amateurs from Earth arrive looking for fun and entertainment, the situation turns volatile.Contamination Event is the first in a collection of related hard science fiction short stories detailing the wonders and perils of the cosmos.The twenty-third century is a golden age for humanity. A period known as the Troubles - two hundred years of war, famine, and destructive climate change - are behind us. With enough food, energy, and medicine for everyone and robots performing most of the hard labor, individuals are free to pursue their own interests.Technology has advanced. Human beings, using a technique that allows us to fold space, have embarked on an exploration of the nearest star systems. It is an exciting and dangerous proposition, one that attracts the bravest and most curious minds.Two astronauts sent from Earth during the Troubles to scout out Proxima Centauri suddenly arrive to find that everyone has forgotten about them. One hundred years have passed since their departure. After a period of mental recovery, they, too, join in this remarkable endeavor.Contamination Event is a collection of related hard science fiction short stories detailing the wonders and perils of the cosmos. Views: 486
In Making History, Fry has bitten off a rather meaty chunk by tackling an at first deceptively simple premise: What if Hitler had never been born? An unquestionable improvement, one would reason--and so an earnest history grad student and an aging German physicist idealistically undertake to bring this about by preventing Adolf's conception. And with their success is launched a brave new world that is in some ways better than ours--but in most ways even worse. Fry's experiment in history makes for his most ambitious novel yet, and his most affecting. His first book to be set mostly in America, it is a thriller with a funny streak, a futuristic fantasy based on one of mankind's darkest realities. It is, in every sense, a story of our times. Views: 486
In a letter to her daughter back East, Martha Jane is not shy about her own importance: "Martha Jane -- better known as Calamity -- is just one of the handful of aging legends who travel to London as part of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show in Buffalo Girls. As he describes the insatiable curiosity of Calamity's Indian friend No Ears, Annie Oakley's shooting match with Lord Windhouveren, and other highlights of the tour, McMurtry turns the story of a band of hardy, irrepressible survivors into an unforgettable portrait of love, fellowship, dreams, and heartbreak. Views: 486
Four talented teenagers are traumatized-coping with grief, surviving date rape, facing the anxiety of standardized tests and the neglect of self-absorbed adults--and they'll do anything to escape the pressure. They'll even build an invisible helicopter, to fly far away to a place where everyone will understand them... until they learn the only way to escape reality is to face it head-on. Views: 486
Poet, novelist, painter and musician, Rabindranath Tagore (1861??"1941) is the grand master of Bengali culture. Written during the 189s, the stories in this selection brilliantly recreate vivid images of Bengali life and landscapes in their depiction of peasantry and gentry, casteism, corrupt officialdom and dehumanizing poverty. Yet Tagore is first and foremost India's supreme Romantic poet, and in these stories he can be seen reaching beyond mere documentary realism towards his own profoundly original vision. Views: 486
Just why do humpback whales sing? That\'s the question that has marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn and his crew poking, charting, recording, and photographing very big, wet, gray marine mammals. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite me.Trouble is, Nate\'s beginning to wonder if he hasn\'t spent just a little too much time in the sun. \'Cause no one else on his team saw a thing -- not his longtime partner, Clay Demodocus; not their saucy young research assistant; not even the spliff-puffing white-boy Rastaman Kona (né Preston Applebaum). But later, when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot -- and his research facility is trashed -- Nate realizes something very fishy indeed is going on.By turns witty, irreverent, fascinating, puzzling, and surprising, Fluke is Christopher Moore at his outrageous best. Views: 486
Take a wonderfully crazed excursion into the demented heart of a tropical paradise—a world of cargo cults, cannibals, mad scientists, ninjas, and talking fruit bats. Our bumbling hero is Tucker Case, a hopeless geek trapped in a cool guy\'s body, who makes a living as a pilot for the Mary Jean Cosmetics Corporation. But when he demolishes his boss\'s pink plane during a drunken airborne liaison, Tuck must run for his life from Mary Jean\'s goons. Now there\'s only one employment opportunity left for him: piloting shady secret missions for an unscrupulous medical missionary and a sexy blond high priestess on the remotest of Micronesian hells. Here is a brazen, ingenious, irreverent, and wickedly funny novel from a modern master of the outrageous. Views: 486
The New York Times bestselling sensation that's "Steel Magnolias set in Manhattan" (USA Today)-now in paperback.Juggling the demands of her yarn shop and single-handedly raising a teenage daughter has made Georgia Walker grateful for her Friday Night Knitting Club. Her friends are happy to escape their lives too, even for just a few hours. But when Georgia's ex suddenly reappears, demanding a role in their daughter's life, her whole world is shattered.Luckily, Georgia's friends are there, sharing their own tales of intimacy, heartbreak, and miracle making. And when the unthinkable happens, these women will discover that what they've created isn't just a knitting club: it's a sisterhood.From Publishers WeeklyBetween running her Manhattan yarn shop, Walker & Daughter, and raising her 12-year-old biracial daughter, Dakota, Georgia Walker has plenty on her plate in Jacobs's debut novel. But when Dakota's father reappears and a former friend contacts Georgia, Georgia's orderly existence begins to unravel. Her support system is her staff and the knitting club that meets at her store every Friday night, though each person has dramas of her own brewing. Jacobs surveys the knitters' histories, and the novel's pace crawls as the novel lurches between past and present, the latter largely occupied by munching on baked goods, sipping coffee and watching the knitters size each other up. Club members' troubles don't intersect so much as build on common themes of domestic woes and betrayal. It takes a while, but when Jacobs, who worked at Redbook and Working Woman, hits her storytelling stride, poignant twists propel the plot and help the pacing find a pleasant rhythm. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistGeorgia Walker's entire life is wrapped up in running her knitting store, Walker and Daughter, and caring for her 12-year-old daughter, Dakota. With the help of Anita, a lively widow in her seventies, Georgia starts the Friday Night Knitting Club, which draws loyal customers and a few oddballs. Darwin Chiu, a feminist grad student, believes knitting is downright old-fashioned, but she's drawn to the club as her young marriage threatens to unravel. Lucie, 42, a television producer, is about to become a mother for the first time--without a man in her life. Brash book editor KC finds her career has stalled unexpectedly, while brilliant Peri works at Walker and Daughter by day and designs handbags at night. Georgia gets her own taste of upheaval when Dakota's father reappears, hoping for a second chance. The yarn picks up steam as it draws to a conclusion, and an unexpected tragedy makes it impossible to put down. Jacobs' winning first novel is bound to have appeal among book clubs. Kristine HuntleyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 485
Greetings, citizen, and welcome to the Bunker! An underground, egalitarian dreamland, its people work diligently, eat slop, and watch the tube.Traitors are bent on destroying this heavenly utopia. Fortunately, Control has instituted a regime of security clearances to promote the most trustworthy and enlist their aid against the rising terrorist threat.There's absolutely nothing to worry about.Greetings, citizen. Your interest in Today's Edition has been noted by the authorities. By electing to access illegal, detrimental and highly subversive material, you have identified yourself as a traitor. Please turn yourself in to your Homeland Security neighborhood substation. Alternately, you may choose to stay where you are, and someone will be by to detain you shortly.Today's Edition does not exist. It has never existed. Rumors of a popular e-zine created by the Human Resources conglomerate and then spun off to the private sector for an outrageous amount of money are entirely false and should not be trusted. Likewise, no weekly publication in the Bunker was ever hijacked by traitors - repeatedly - as an instrument to achieve their own nefarious ends. Lastly, slander perpetrated against our most trusted and highly regarded citizens - those with an Alpha clearance - will not be tolerated.How exactly you came to possess knowledge of Today's Edition and where it might once have allegedly been published is surely one of the topics your interrogator will be fond of discussing with you. Why you would wish to spend your time passing on dangerous rumors and gossip is another.On that note, please be prepared to draw up a list of your fellow conspirators and which recent acts of sabotage, subterfuge, and calumny can be attributed to them.Thank you for your cooperation. Views: 485
For 4,000 years, the lavish crypt of the Pharaoh Mamose has never been found...until the Seventh Scroll, a cryptic message written by he slave Taita, gives beautiful Egyptologist Royan Al Simma a tantalizing clue to its location.
But this is a treasure cache others would kill to possess. Only one step ahead of assassins, Royan runs for her life and into the arms of the only man she can trust, Sir Nicholas Quenton-Harper--a daring man who will stake his fortune and his life to join her hunt for the king's tomb. Together, they will embark on a breathtaking journey to the most exotic locale on earth, where the greatest mystery of ancient Egypt, a chilling danger and an explosive passion are waiting.
Steeped in ancient mystery, drama and action, The Seventh Scroll is a masterpiece from Wilbur Smith, a storyteller at the height of his powers. Views: 485
In this full-length novel from Chris Crutcher, his first since the best-selling Deadline, the ultimate bully and the ultimate good guy tangle during Period 8.
Paul "the Bomb" Baum tells the truth. No matter what. It was something he learned at Sunday School. But telling the truth can cause problems, and not minor ones. And as Paulie discovers, finding the truth can be even more problematic. Period 8 is supposed to be that one period in high school where the truth can shine, a safe haven. Only what Paulie and Hannah (his ex-girlfriend, unfortunately) and his other classmates don't know is that the ultimate bully, the ultimate liar, is in their midst.
Terrifying, thought-provoking, and original, this novel combines all the qualities of a great thriller with the controversy, ethics, and raw emotion of a classic Crutcher story. Views: 485
Award-winning author Francisco X. Stork revisits some of the themes and ideas that made Marcelo in the Real World such an unforgettable novel.Alberto's life isn't easy: He's an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who lives with his sister's abusive boyfriend-but he'd always accepted his place in the world. Until he starts hearing the voice of a man called Captain America, a voice that wants him to achieve more, no matter the cost.Grace has it all: She has a supportive boyfriend, she's on track to be valedictorian, and she's sure to go to the college of her dreams. Still, nothing feels right to her any more after the divorce of her parents, and feels she needs something more.When Alberto and Grace meet, they have an immediate and electric connection. But when Alberto is present at the scene of a terrible crime, he becomes a suspect. And with his developing schizophrenia, he's not even sure he believes in his own innocence.Can Grace... Views: 485
From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Isaac Bashevis Singer, comes a fictional exploration of primitive history. Singer's novel portrays an era of superstition and violence in a country emerging from the darkness of savagery. Set in Poland in the dark ages, it describes the brutality, prejudice and subjugation that occur when hunter-gatherers and farmers struggle for supremacy over the land. Part parable of modern civilization, part fascinating historical novel, this modern myth is a philosophical examination of man and his beliefs, and reaffirms the author's reputation as a master of narrative invention. Views: 485
Dan Tompkins, dead of supernatural causes at age 22, washes up on Lethe, where souls go to forget life and strive for Elysium. Pining for Gina, the love he left behind, Dan wants out. He teams with rogue soul Marco Sabonis to find a way back to the land of life. The Elysial powers are not amused. There may be Hell to pay.Logan Tanner shook the red dust of West Texas off his boots at the age of eighteen and hasn't looked back. When his father has a stroke, Logan is temporarily forced to return home and take over the family ranch. He still feels responsible for his mother's death when he was twelve, and has never gotten over the guilt. Now he's faced with having to protect his twelve year old daughter Katie and his sister and her friend Megan Flynn. It's nearly more than one man can handle. He can't wait to get back to Dallas.Megan Flynn immediately falls in love with Morris Springs, Texas, population 976, when she delivers Logan's runaway daughter to his doorstep. Raised as a city girl, Megan has a dream of a few acres, a few champion Blue Heelers, and a small-town veterinary practice. The only thing standing between her and her dream is one stubborn, reluctant cowboy with an overprotective streak as wide as the West Texas prairie. But her stubborn streak is a match for his any day. And she's determined to prove it.Blame it on Texas is a story of the power of love to overcome any adversity, the strength of family and friendship, and the joy that comes with being part of something bigger than yourself. Views: 485
