A Mafia don builds a savage empire of murder and vice Millions of acres of forest separate Edward Courance West from the outside world. In his remote Adirondack retreat, he is tended by servants dressed in black and green, the color of West's empire—and of money. The son of an Irish powerbroker of the rough-and-tumble Lower East Side, West has been forging his kingdom since the day his father died, leaving him with a small fortune, a few bordellos, and a burning hunger to escape New York and make his mark upon the world—a mark he will leave in blood. The moment Congress passes Prohibition, West sets about building a one-man monopoly of bootlegging, smuggling, and murder. Clawing ruthlessly to the top in hopes of forgetting his father, West won't stop until he becomes the greatest criminal the world has ever seen. Views: 106
It's not just the house that's keeping secrets.Pretending everything's all right is harder than it sounds. But the Kings know that even if they told the truth about the bizarre things happening in their house, no one would believe them. They're hyper-focused on rescuing their lost family member before anyone finds out what's going on. But when a stranger shows up to take their house, their options start dwindling fast. Why would he be so interested in a run-down old place? And what secret is he hiding--just as he hides the scars that crisscross his body?The mystery gets stranger with each passing day. Will the Kings be able to find a way to harness the house's secrets and discover who is watching their every move before another gets snatched into an unknown world?ReviewPraise for Robert Liparulo's 'Dreamhouse Kings' series:''If you like creepy and mysterious, this is the house for you! Every room opens a door to magic, true horror, and amazing surprises. I loved wandering around in these books. With a house of so many great, haunting stories, why would you ever want to go outside?'' --R.L. Stine author of Goosebumps''A powerhouse storyteller delivers his most fantastic ride yet!'' --Ted Dekker, bestselling author of Chosen and Infidel''Dreamhouse Kings is a non-stop action ride into history's wildest adventures. It's my new favorite series!'' --Slade Pearce, teen actor (October Road, Air Buddies, Yours, Mine & Ours) Review"A powerhouse storyteller delivers his most fantastic ride yet!" Views: 106
An enchanting new collection of twenty-nine short stories from Nobel Prize–winning author Gabriel García Márquez, a master storyteller who "forces upon us at every page the wonder and extravagance of life." (New York Review of Books)Spanning more than two decades, this collection combines humor, history, and mysticism to tell stories about the frightfully poor and outrageously rich, lost opportunities and present joys, memories, illusions, death, and other themes that resound throughout García Márquez's fiction.Stories include:"The Third Resignation""Eva Is Inside Her Cat""Tubal-Cain Forges a Star""The Other Side of Death""Dialogue with the Mirror""Bitterness for Three Sleepwalkers""How Nathanael Makes a Visit""Eyes of a Blue Dog""The Woman Who Came at Six O'clock""The Night of the Curlews""Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses""Nabo: The Black Man Who Made the Angels Wait""A Man Arrives in the... Views: 106
Dirty Work is the story of two men, strangers—one white, the other black. Both were born and raised in Mississippi. Both fought in Vietnam. Both were gravely wounded. Now, twenty-two years later, the two men lie in adjacent beds in a VA hospital.Over the course of a day and a night, Walter James and Braiden Chaney talk of memories, of passions, of fate.With great vision, humor, and courage, Brown writes mostly about love in a story about the waste of war.From Publishers WeeklyTwo devastatingly wounded Vietnam vets, Chaney, who is black, and James, white, both sons of the South, lie in a veteran's hospital and talk freely about combat, movies, sex, old loves, their boyhoods, how it feels to kill a man and why God allows wars to happen. PW described this novel as "wrenching" and "memorable." Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review"There has been no anti-war novel . . . quite like Dirty Work."—The New York Times (The New York Times )"A novel of the first order. . . . A gem."—The Washington Post (The Washington Post )"Explodes like a land mine. . . . A marvelous book."—The Kansas City Star (The Kansas City Star )"A real knockout."—New York Newsday (Newsday ) Views: 106
Did you know there was a time when bears spoke, the moon laughed and babies were found inside fish?Have you heard of the two-horned sage who had never seen a woman in his life?Did you know Ravana's half-brother was the god of wealth?Have you ever seen a man with a thousand arms? The tales in this collection surround the two most popular avatars of Lord Vishnu-Rama and Krishna-and their lineage. Countless stories about the two abound, yet most are simply disappearing from the hearts and minds of the present generation.Bestselling author Sudha Murty takes you on an arresting tour, all the while telling you of the days when demons and gods walked alongside humans, animals could talk and gods granted the most glorious boons to common people. Views: 106
Jennie Pickett is a natural healer, but her dreams to become a doctor in 1870s Oregon put her at odds with the world around her. As she struggles to keep her dream alive, she finds that the road to fulfillment winds past love, heartache, and plenty of surprises along the way. Views: 106
Dino's girlfriend won't give him what he wants. Jonathon is afraid of what his mates will think of the girl he likes. And Ben is having extra lessons from his sexy teacher. Three seventeen-year-old boys discover sex for the first time: but do they really know what they're doing? Views: 106
From acclaimed author Ellen Marie Wiseman comes a vivid, daring novel about the devastating power of family secrets—beginning in the poignant, lurid world of a Depression-era traveling circus and coming full circle in the transformative 1950s.On a summer evening in 1931, Lilly Blackwood glimpses circus lights from the grimy window of her attic bedroom. Lilly isn't allowed to explore the meadows around Blackwood Manor. She's never even ventured beyond her narrow room. Momma insists it's for Lilly's own protection, that people would be afraid if they saw her. But on this unforgettable night, Lilly is taken outside for the first time—and sold to the circus sideshow.More than two decades later, nineteen-year-old Julia Blackwood has inherited her parents' estate and horse farm. For Julia, home was an unhappy place full of strict rules and forbidden rooms, and she hopes that returning might erase those painful memories. Instead, she becomes immersed in a... Views: 106
Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of the great modern writers presented in attractive, accessible paperback editions. "One of the country's best writers. . . . No one looks harder at contemporary American life, sees more, or expresses it with such hushed, deliberate care." --San Francisco ChronicleAn accomplished practitioner of the short story and the "Babe Ruth of novelists," (Washington Post Book World) Richard Ford is the first writer to receive both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for a single book, his 1995 novel Independence Day.Vintage Ford includes an excerpt from that novel, along with the stories "Communist," and "Rock Springs" from his collection Rock Springs; "Reunion," and "Calling," from A Multitude of Sins, which won him the 2001 PEN/Malamud Award; "The Womanizer," from Women with Men. Also included, for the first time in book form, the... Views: 106
Eudora Welty was one of the twentieth century's greatest literary figures. For as long as students have been studying her fiction as literature, writers have been looking to her to answer the profound questions of what makes a story good, a novel successful, a writer an artist. On Writing presents the answers in seven concise chapters discussing the subjects most important to the narrative craft, and which every fiction writer should know, such as place, voice, memory, and language. But even more important is what Welty calls "the mystery" of fiction writing--how the writer assembles language and ideas to create a work of art.Originally part of her larger work The Eye of the Story but never before published in a stand-alone volume, On Writing is a handbook every fiction writer, whether novice or master, should keep within arm's reach. Like The Elements of Style, On Writing is concise and fundamental, authoritative and... Views: 105
From Publishers WeeklyOn the extravagant, shallow promises of his brother, Bob Dubois, 30, a burnt-out New Hampshire oil burner repairman, takes his family to Florida. There the Duboises meet their destiny in the form of a counterpoint familythat of Vanise Dorsinville, a woman who has fled Haiti with her infant and nephew for a better life in the U.S. PW praised Continental Drift as a "vital, compelling novel." Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review"An excellent novel...An important novel because of the precise manner in which it reflects the spiritual yearning and materialistic frenzy of our contemporary life. It is also an extremely skillful book, both in its writing, which is impeccable, and in the way it unfolds...Always, Banks writes with tremendous knowledge, convictions, and authenticity." -- Chicago Tribune"At its deepest level, Continental Drift is about a culture imagining itself. Black, white, New World, Old World, living and dead, animal and mineral, a startling array of voices perform this act of creation. Banks has captured the din, clamor, and chaos of these voices clearly and convincingly." -- John Edgar Wideman"Grandeur...Tremendously ambitious...A powerful, disturbing study in moral 'drift,' confusion, and uncertainty." -- San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle"Russell Banks is a writer of extraordinary power." -- Gail Caldwell,Boston Globe"Russell Banks...explores the themes of good and evil, fate and freedom, success and failure, love and sex, and racism and poverty through alternating chapters focusing of dual protagonists: Bob Dubois, 30, who forsakes his dead-end job as an oil burner repairman in New Hampshire to begin a new life in Florida, and Vanise Dorsinville, a young, illiterate Haitian mother who seeks refuge from poverty by fleeing to America...Original in conception, gripping in execution." -- Newsday"Unrelenting...A vigorous and original novel." -- New York Review of BooksEarly in Continental Drift, Russell Banks compares the migrations of humanity to those of the elements: tides, winds, whole landmasses making their well-mapped, decorous circuit of the planet. One of the marvels of this book is the way it combines such an aerial perspective with particular, earthbound lives. Seen from ground level--the vantage point of most lives--this perpetual exodus has little of the bland and unimpeachable brutality of natural disaster. Instead, it can look heroic--a dogged determination to cheat entropy and death for as long as possible. This persistence, "an old-fashioned, biblical kind of heroism," powers the migratory lives in Continental Drift and makes even their eventual wreckage a source of celebration. -- The Nation, James Marcus Views: 105
