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Corn Field Surveillance: A Short Story

When Private Investigator Frankie Douglas agreed to shadow Anne Mason to protect her from a serial killer, she had no idea both her life and heart would be in danger. Fast paced and humorous short story from the ebook DEADLY OFFERINGS by Alexa Grace.The revised edition of Hacker School, now a trilogy with the addition of two new stories. In a dystopian world, who will decide the future of mankind?After the Great Chaos, Jake's tribe decides it's time to expand from their hidden valley and once more deal with other societies.David's tribe is trying to gather technology and reconstruct some of the technical marvels that once existed. They are violently opposed by anti-scavengers that wait for promised help from now vanished bureaucracies.Charlene is mostly healed from her many battles. She's surprised by what may be a way to survive. Does this hacker really offer a small chance of escape? Maybe human rights hacktivism is in her future. Probably not. Is it foolish to trust someone just because he remembers how to laugh?Hacker School is a three act prelude to the cyberhug.me series. "Your life is a burning match. Ignite a bonfire." - Allan R. Wallace
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A Warning to the Curious and other Ghost Stories

A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories is the title of M. R. James' fourth and final collection of ghost stories, published in 1925. Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936) was a medievalist scholar; Provost of King's College, Cambridge. He wrote many of his ghost stories to be read aloud in the long tradition of spooky Christmas Eve tales. His stories often use rural settings, with a quiet, scholarly protagonist getting caught up in the activities of supernatural forces. The details of horror are almost never explicit, the stories relying on a gentle, bucolic background to emphasise the awfulness of the otherworldly intrusions. 
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Martians Abroad

A great new stand-alone science fiction novel from the author of the Kitty Norville series. Polly Newton has one single-minded dream, to be a starship pilot and travel the galaxy. Her mother, the director of the Mars Colony, derails Polly's plans when she sends Polly and her genius twin brother, Charles, to Galileo Academy on Earth—the one planet Polly has no desire to visit. Ever. Homesick and cut off from her desired future, Polly cannot seem to fit into the constraints of life on Earth, unlike Charles, who deftly maneuvers around people and sees through their behavior to their true motives. Strange, unexplained, dangerous coincidences centered on their high-profile classmates begin piling up. Charles may be right—there's more going on than would appear, and the stakes are high. With the help of Charles, Polly is determined to find the truth, no matter the cost.
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The Privateer

A historical novel about a Welsh buccaneer, Henry Morgan, who wins a series of battles against the Spaniards in the Caribbean and eventually becomes Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica
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The Riddle of the Wooden Parrakeet

The condemned man asked for three things before he climbed the thirteen steps to the gallows: a glass eye, a champagne cork and a wooden parrakeet. Can any mystery writer—other than Chicago paper blackener Harry Stephen Keeler—have proposed such a scenario? And then written a huge meganovel filled with celestials and tong lore to explain why the condemned man should make such a request?
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Hitman

THE OFFICIAL, ALL-ORIGINAL, ALL-OUT THRILLING PREQUEL TO THE MUCH-ANTICIPATED NEW GAME HITMAN: ABSOLUTION Since the devastating conclusion of Hitman: Blood Money, Agent 47 has been MIA. Now fans awaiting the return of the blockbuster videogame and film phenomenon can pinpoint the location of the world's most brutal and effective killer-for-hire before he reemerges in Hitman: Absolution. When the Agency lures him back with a mission that will require every last ounce of his stealth, strength, and undercover tactics, they grossly underestimate the silent assassin's own agenda. Because this time, Agent 47 isn't just going to bite the hand that feeds him. He's going tear it off and annihilate anyone who stands in his way.From the Paperback edition.
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Stoneywish and other chilling stories

A brilliant collection of spine-chilling tales by Joan Aiken, author of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. From a mysterious traveller who leaves an injured horse with a stranger, to a garden plant that slowly creeps into a house during a thunderstorm and a man who comes across two angry forces in the middle of a forest, this chilling collection of stories will have readers jumping at bumps in the night.Much-loved author Joan Aiken is best known for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and the Arabel and Mortimer books. This brilliant collection has spooky black-and-white illustrations by TBC and is perfect for children who are developing as readers. The Bloomsbury Readers series is packed with brilliant books to get children reading independently in Key Stage 2, with book-banded stories by award-winning authors like double Carnegie Medal winner Geraldine McCaughrean and Waterstones Prize winner Patrice Lawrence, covering a wide range of...
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The Watchers: A Novel

A.E.W. Mason was a 20th century British politician, but today he\'s best known for the classic The Four Feathers, a story about the virtues and vices of wartime.
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Tess Mercury and the Wanton Wife

Tess Mercury and her posse are the best damn bounty hunters in the west. This is the story of how Lightning Hazel Harley with her arsenal of death rays, stun guns, incendiary devices, explosives and irradiated lizard spit joined the gang and helped them capture the infamous Chicago loan shark, Rudy the Roll Ricone.Jackson never thought buying a yacht could be so dangerous. A deadly attack at sea leaves Jackson wet and bewildered, fighting for his life.
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Crashing Heat

New York Police Captain Nikki Heat is accustomed to dealing with murders, even those with no leads and no motives. But having her husband as a suspect makes her newest case the most personal one yet. [end of box] Nikki Heat does not like to be away from her husband, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jameson Rook. But when Rook is given the honor to be a visiting professor at his alma mater, he can't pass up the opportunity to mentor bourgeoning journalists at his former award-winning college newspaper. Then one of Jameson's students is discovered, naked, in his bed. Now all eyes are on Jameson. Dealing with betrayal from any man is not Nikki's style. Against her better judgment, Nikki gives Jameson the benefit of the doubt and digs into Jameson's theory of an undergrad secret society.
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A Conspiracy of Paper: A Novel

Amazon.com ReviewA fool and his money are soon parted--and nowhere so quickly as in the stock market, it would seem. In David Liss's ambitious first novel, A Conspiracy of Paper, the year is 1719 and the place London, where human greed, apparently, operated then in much the same manner as it does today. Liss focuses his intricate tale of murder, money, and conspiracy on Benjamin Weaver, ex-boxer, self-described "protector, guardian, bailiff, constable-for-hire, and thief-taker," and son of a Portuguese Jewish "stock-jobber." Weaver's father, from whom he has been estranged, has recently died, the victim of a horse-drawn carriage hit and run. Though his uncle has suggested that the accident wasn't quite so accidental, Benjamin doesn't give the idea much credence: I blush to own I rewarded his efforts to seek my opinion with only a formal reply in which I dismissed his ideas as nonsensical. I did so in part because I did not wish to involve myself with my family and in part because I knew that my uncle, for reasons that eluded me, had loved my father and could not accept the senselessness of so random a death. But then Benjamin is hired by two different men to solve two seemingly unrelated cases. One client, Mr. Balfour, claims his own father's unexpected death "was made to look like self-murder so that a villain or villains could take his money with impunity," and even suggests there might be a link between Balfour senior's death and that of Weaver's father. His next customer is Sir Owen Nettleton, an aristocrat who is keen to recover some highly confidential papers that were stolen from him while he cavorted with a prostitute. Weaver takes on the first case with some reluctance, the second with more enthusiasm. In the end, both converge, leading him back to his family even as they take him deep into the underbelly of London's financial markets. Liss seems right at home in the world he's created, whether describing the company manners of wealthy Jewish merchants at home or the inner workings of Exchange Alley--the 18th-century version of Wall Street. His London is a dank and filthy place, almost lawless but for the scant protection offered by such rogues as Jonathan Wilde, the sinister head of a gang of thieves who profits by selling back to their owners items stolen by his own men. Though better connected socially, the investors involved with the shady South Sea Company have equally larcenous hearts, and Liss does an admirable job of leading the reader through the intricacies of stock trading, bond selling, and insider trading with as little fuss, muss, and confusion as possible. What really makes the book come alive, however, are the details of 18th-century life--from the boxing matches our hero once participated in to the coffee houses, gin joints, and brothels where he trolls for clues. And then there is the matter of Weaver's Jewishness, the prejudices of the society he lives in, and his struggle to come to terms with his own ethnicity. A Conspiracy of Paper weaves all these themes together in a manner reminiscent of the long, gossipy novels of Henry Fielding and Laurence Stern. Indeed, Liss manages to suggest the prose style of those authors while keeping his own, less convoluted style. This is one conspiracy guaranteed to succeed. --Alix WilberFrom Publishers WeeklyThis remarkably accomplished first novel, by a young man still completing his doctoral dissertation at Columbia, has a great deal going on. It is at once a penetrating study of the beginnings of stock speculation and the retreat from a mineral-based currency in early 18th-century London, a sympathetic look at the life of a Jew in that time and place and a vision of the struggle between the Bank of England and the upstart South Sea Company to become the repository of the nation's fiscal faith. If all that sounds daunting, it is above all a headlong adventure yarn full of dastardly villains, brawls, wenches and as commanding a hero as has graced a novel in some time. He is Benjamin Weaver, a Jewish former boxer who had once abandoned his family, and virtually his faith, too, for a life on the fringes of criminal society as a kind of freelance bailiff who brings debtors to book for their creditors. When his uncherished father dies suddenly, however, and he has reason to suspect the apparent accident was actually murder, he plunges himself into a hunt for those responsible, and in the process changes his life. With his native cunning and his brawling skills, he soon finds himself deeply embroiled with the villainous Jonathan Wild, thief-taker par excellence, who has institutionalized criminal mayhem. He also becomes the pawn of some powerful financial giants lurking in the shadows (much like the corporate villains in contemporary thrillers), comes to suspect his glamorous cousin Miriam of actions unbecoming a lady and employs the wiles of his philosophical Scottish friend Elias to decode the mysterious ways of finance and the laws of probability. The period detail is authentic but never obtrusive; the dialogue is a marvel of courtly locution masking murderous bluntness; and the plot, though devious in the extreme, never becomes opaque. It seems clear that Weaver is being set up as a series hero, which can only be good news for lovers of the best in dashing historical fiction. Agent, Liz Darhansoff. (Feb.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Flash Fire

Will the California wildfires bring Danna the summer excitement she craves? In the Southern California suburb of Pinch Canyon, among the swimming pools and tennis courts, fifteen-year-old Danna Press finds her summer life so dull she longs for some cinematic excitement. A kidnapping? An earthquake? A presidential assassination attempt? Even the scary wildfires she watches on TV, raging in nearby Los Angeles, seem like they would liven things up. Though the wildfires are miles away with little to no chance of coming near her home, Danna has a contingency evacuation plan in place—her kittens and the neighbor’s horses first, her brother Hall, second. Her parents are safely at work. But in an instant the fire expands and threatens everything Danna and the other Pinch Canyon residents hold dear.  In an action-packed hour and a half, minute by minute, the wildfires will alter the lives of everyone who lives and works in Pinch Canyon—including seventeen-year-old Elony, a recent immigrant, and her young charge, Geoffrey; handsome teenager Beau Severyn and his awkward little sister, Elisabeth; and the firefighters themselves. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Caroline B. Cooney including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.
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The Fall of Lucas Kendrick

Kyle Griffon has done more than flirt with danger over the past ten years - she's embraced it with careless abandon. Now the guy who jilted her is back & he needs Kyle's help to catch an art thief. Will Kyle fall for Lucas Kendrick all over again?
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