The famous poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, had a wife, and their story is both strange and tumultuous. Consummate historical novelist and poet Robert Graves tells the story from the perspective of the wife, Marie Powell, a young woman who married the poet to escape a debt.From the start, the couple proves mismatched; Milton is a domineering and insensitive husband set on punishing Marie for not providing the promised dowry. John Milton and his young wife are both religiously and temperamentally incompatible, and this portrait of their relationship is spellbinding, if not distinctly unflattering to Milton. It also provides fascinating accounts of the political upheavals of the time, including the execution of Charles I. This book is an excellent read for fans of historical fiction. Views: 69
"Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave."These ominous words, slashed from the pages of a book of Psalms, are the last threat that the darling of London society, Sir Edward Grey, receives from his killer. Before he can show them to Nicholas Brisbane, the private inquiry agent he has retained for his protection, Sir Edward collapses and dies at his London home, in the presence of his wife, Julia, and a roomful of dinner guests. Prepared to accept that Edward's death was due to a longstanding physical infirmity, Julia is outraged when Brisbane visits and suggests that Sir Edward has been murdered. It is a reaction she comes to regret when she discovers the damning paper for herself, and realizes the truth. Determined to bring her husband's murderer to justice, Julia engages the enigmatic Brisbane to help her investigate Edward's demise. Dismissing his warnings that the investigation will be difficult, if not impossible, Julia presses forward,... Views: 69
"Have you seen my cousin...alive?"Rejected by the Navy SEALs, Mitchum is content to be his small town's unofficial private eye, until his beloved 14-year-old cousin is abducted. Now he'll call on every lethal skill to track her down-but nothing is what it seems....BookShotsLIGHTNING-FAST STORIES BY JAMES PATTERSON Novels you can devour in a few hours Impossible to stop reading All original content from James Patterson Views: 69
Dewey Andreas, former Delta and newly recruited intelligence agent, is sidelined after screwing up his last two operations. Still drowning in grief after the tragic murder of his fiancé, Dewey has seemingly lost his focus, his edge, and the confidence of his superiors. A high level Russian hacker, known only as Cloud, is believed to be routing large amounts of money to various Al Qaeda terror cells, and the mission is to capture and render harmless Cloud. At the same time, a back-up team is sent after the only known associate of Cloud, a ballerina believed to be his girlfriend. Unwilling to sit out the mission as ordered, Dewey defies his superiors, and goes rogue, surreptitiously following and tracking the two teams. What should be a pair of simple snatch and grab operations, goes horribly wrong--both teams are ambushed and wiped out. Only through the unexpected intervention of Dewey does the ballerina survive. On the run, with no back-up, Cloud's girlfriend reveals a shocking secret--a plot so audacious and deadly that their masterminds behind it would risk anything and kill anybody to prevent its exposure. It's a plot that, in less than three days, will completely remake the world's political landscape and put at risk every single person in the Western world. With only three days left, Dewey Andreas must unravel and stop this plot or see everything destroyed. A plot that goes live on July 4th--Independence Day.** Views: 69
From bestselling author Deb Caletti comes a beautiful and profound novel of three women coming to terms with love and marriage--sure to move and delight fans of Kristin Hannah, Liane Moriarty, and Anna Quindlen. "You don't grow up on a divorce ranch and not learn to take a vow seriously." When Callie McBride finds a woman's number written on a scrap of paper her husband has thrown away, she thinks that her marriage is over. She flees to Nevada and her Aunt Nash's Tamarosa Ranch, but is shocked to see that the place of so many happy childhood memories is in disrepair. Worse, Aunt Nash is acting bizarrely--hoarding stacks of old photographs, burying a book in the yard, and railing against Kit Covey, a handsome government park ranger who piques Callie's interest. But Aunt Nash may be saner than she seems once Callie pulls back the curtain on Tamarosa's heyday--the 1940s and '50s when high-society and Hollywood women ventured to the ranch for... Views: 69
Master storyteller Rudolfo Anaya explores the world of pain and recovery in this autobiographical novel about an injured teenage boy's journey to overcome suffering—both physical and spiritual When the story opens, the eponymous hero of Rudolfo Anaya's novel is in an ambulance en route to a hospital for crippled children in the New Mexican dessert. A poor boy from Albuquerque, sixteen-year-old Tortuga takes his name from the odd, turtle-shaped mountain that is rumored to possess miraculous curative powers. Tortuga is paralyzed, and not even his mother's fervent prayers can heal him. But under the mountain's watchful gaze, with the support of fellow patients, he begins the Herculean task of breaking out of his shell and becoming whole again. Drawn from personal experience and imbued with the magic realism and phantasmagorical vision quests that distinguish Anaya's work, Tortuga is a joyful, life-sustaining book about hope, faith,... Views: 69
In this thoughtful meditation on the future of humanity, colonists on Mars struggle to prevent their own extinction Doomed by overpopulation, irreversible environmental degradation, and never-ending war, Earth has become a fetid swamp. For many, Mars represents humankind's last hope. In six tightly clustered towers on the red planet's surface, the colonists who have escaped their dying home world are attempting to make a new life unencumbered by the corrupting influences of politics, art, and religion. Unable ever to return, these pioneers have chosen an unalterable path that winds through a landscape as terrible as it is beautiful, often forcing them to compromise their beliefs—and sometimes their humanity—in order to survive. But the gravest threat to the future is not the settlement's total dependence on foodstuffs sent from a distant and increasingly uncaring Earth, or the events that occur in the aftermath of the miraculous discovery... Views: 69
On the first day of her new life, Tawnia McKnight finds herself in Oregon, her fifth state in ten years. Another new job, new friends, a heartache left far behind. Maybe in Portland she can at last find what she is looking for. Maybe she can even forget Bret Winn.But when a tragic bridge collapse rocks the city, Tawnia is thrust back into the life of the man she thought she'd never see again. Then Bret introduces her to the eccentric Autumn Rain—a stranger with inexplicably familiar eyes—and Tawnia finds herself drawn into a web of confusion and deceit. Autumn's suffering over her missing father seems to be real, but there is much that cannot be explained.Will Tawnia find what she is looking for, or will everything she is beginning to care about slip once again from her grasp? Views: 69
There's only one gentleman to turn to when a lady is in desperate need of answers... With scandal descending on the Bennet family (again!), Elizabeth absolutely refuses to drag Mr. Darcy's name into this shocking situation. But how on earth is she going to get her family out of trouble this time without his involvement? Hiding things from Mr. Darcy is getting more and more impossible, especially since he's started letting his feelings show... Views: 69
In the summer of 1937, Thomas Wolfe was in the North Carolina mountains revising a piece about a party and subsequent fire at the Park Avenue penthouse apartment of the fictional Esther and Frederick Jack. He wrote to his agent, Elizabeth Nowell, 'I think it is now a single thing, as much a single thing as anything I've ever written.' Abridged and edited versions of the story were published twice, as a novella in Scribner's Monthly (May 1939) and as part of You Can't Go Home Again (1940). Now Suzanne Stutman and John Idol have worked from manuscript sources at Harvard University to reconstruct The Party at Jack's as outlined by Wolfe before his death. Here, in its untruncated state, Wolfe's novella affords a significant glimpse of a Depression-era New York inhabited by Wall Street wheelers and dealers and the theatrical and artistic elite. Wolfe describes the Jacks and their social circle with lavish attention to mannerisms and to clothing, furnishings, and... Views: 69
