Bookstore café owner Krissy Hancock would rather spend Halloween serving pumpkin goodies than wearing costumes with Pine Hills' wealthiest at Yarborough mansion, especially when the soiree shapes up to be more trick than treat . . . As if a run-in with an old flame and a failed marriage proposal weren't enough to horrify Krissy for one night, a woman is found strangled to death in a room filled with ominous jack-o'-lanterns. All signs suggest a crime of passion—but when the hostess's jewelry disappears, malevolent intentions seem way more likely . . . With the estate on lockdown and a killer roaming the halls, Krissy must help Officer Paul Dalton investigate each nook, cranny, and guest for answers—while also confronting a few demons of her own. Someone has lots of skeletons in the closet, and Krissy better tread lightly to expose them . . . Views: 62
From New York Times bestselling author Agnete Friis comes the chilling story of a young mother who will do whatever it takes to protect her son.Ella Nygaard, 27, has been a ward of the state since she was seven years old, the night her father murdered her mother. She doesn't remember anything about that night or her childhood before it—but her body remembers. The PTSD-induced panic attacks she now suffers incapacitate her for hours—sometimes days—at a time and leave her physically and psychically drained.After one particularly bad episode lands Ella in a psych ward, she discovers her son, Alex, has been taken from her by the state and placed with a foster family. Driven by desperation, Ella kidnaps Alex and flees to the seaside town in northern Denmark where she was born. Her grandmother's abandoned house is in grave disrepair, but she can live there for free until she can figure out how to convince social services that despite everything,... Views: 61
When the Duke of Lexington meets the mysterious Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg on a transatlantic liner, he is fascinated. She’s exactly what he’s been searching for—a beautiful woman who interests and entices him. He falls hard and fast—and soon proposes marriage. And then she disappears without a trace… For in reality, the “baroness” is Venetia Easterbrook—a proper young widow who had her own vengeful reasons for instigating an affair with the duke. But the plan has backfired. Venetia has fallen in love with the man she despised—and there’s no telling what might happen when she is finally unmasked… Views: 61
RetailEver wonder what is the true nature of the people closest to you?Under the shadow of what secret are they living and why are they ignoring the clear warning signs they're being sent? The clock is ticking. Time is running out. Things are not what they seem. Page after page you find yourself drawn deeper and deeper into this suspense and espionage thrilling adventure.In his attempts to understand what was unfolding, Ronnie Levin - the adolescent son of an Israeli diplomat and his wife living in New York, gets caught up in a race against time, the deceitfulness of those around him and the doubts gnawing away at him.Ronnie discovers much to his surprise that unfathomable events are taking place between his parents and around them. Circumstances become even stranger in light of his mother's evasive behavior and her disregard of a series of warnings regarding a fatal event that was soon to take place. "The Last of the Wise Lovers" is an espionage thriller that simply cannot be put down. It combines a fascinating and smooth-flowing story, with the story of a young man's journey into maturity and the loss of innocence.ReviewHa'ir, October 1991: "Jackont's psychological attention is precise and intelligent, never lapsing into pointless depths, and it doesn't impair the book's soft touch and easy flow - it only makes it more enjoyable". Hadashot, September 1991: "Suspense with added value - it is not clear if Hebrew literature needs another Amos Oz, or to what purpose, exactly. But readers are in great need of good readable books such as this one"."Tel Aviv" (Yediot Ahronot) September 1991: "The Last of the Wise Lovers is an enjoyable book to read on a September evening. I imagine during for other months as well".From the AuthorFrom the day I started writing, I knew that one day I would deal with the boy who discovers that his mother isn't faithful to her most important and significant relationship, to her marriage to his father. I took my inspiration for the characters and the story from an event that occurred in Brussels, Belgium, where I lived with my mother for a few months when I was seven.We were living next door to distant relatives of ours, Jean Paul and Adele. I loved them very much. Jean Paul was an engineer and built ship models for me that I would sail in the pool in the nearby park. But I was obsessed with the beautiful Adele, who sang chansons to me and told me about her adventures in the French Resistance during World War II. It was 1955, and Europe loved heroic stories like those of Adele, who had hidden British spies who'd parachuted into occupied Belgium, right under the noses of the German forces. I adored her. I spent many hours at her home, listening to her songs and her stories and helping her with all her housework. She was my whole world in that strange city.Sometimes, when Jean Paul wasn't home, Adele would take a small travel bag from the cupboard, put her nightgown and a few cosmetics in it, and go out. She would return a few hours later, with her bag in hand and her face glowing.One day, while she was packing her bag, I quickly left the apartment, and waited on the other side of the street. I had no idea what she would do or what would happen. All I knew was that I had to understand where Adele disappeared to and why she took her nightgown and cosmetics with her, when she had no intention of being away from home for the night.And then she appeared and began to walk quickly, her thin heels clicking. She stopped a few streets away, at the entrance to a small park and waited, leaning on the stone gatepost. Suddenly, a tall man appeared at the street corner, wearing a long raincoat. He quickly approached her and their lips met in a long kiss. Then he took the bag from her, took her by the waist and they both walked into the park, away from me.Something inside me exploded. I suddenly found myself standing alone in a street with a name I didn't know, and I couldn't remember how to get home. "Adele!" I shouted tearfully, "Adele!"She stopped, turned to me and held her arms out. I ran to her as fast as I could and when she hugged me, she asked, "How did you get here?""I wanted to know where you were going with the bag and nightgown," I panted, and peaked at the man standing next to her.She giggled, then immediately turned serious. "This is Sheldon," she gestured to the man. "He's a British pilot that I have to transfer today to Antwerp."I examined the man. He was very good looking, black hair and olive skin. "He doesn't look British and the Germans have already been beaten.""Shhhh..." she whispered, "He doesn't look British so that he won't be discovered, silly, and other enemies have taken the place of the Germans. The Russians, for example...you mustn't tell anybody about what you saw. Sheldon's life is in your hands now..."They took me by taxi back to the top of the road we lived on, and I never told anybody. Five years later, after we returned to Israel, my mother told me that Adele and Jean Paul had separated. "She had lovers," she said, "but he managed to live with that somehow. But then the French Secret Service files were opened, and it turned out that she had collaborated with the Germans during the war. That he couldn't forgive. He was in the resistance, you know, and hid British spies that parachuted..." Views: 61
No more than a dark pencil line on a blank page. A horizon line, maybe. But also a slot for blackness to pour through...A terrible construction site accident takes Edgar Freemantle's right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. A marriage that produced two lovely daughters suddenly ends, and Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived the injuries that could have killed him. He wants out. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, suggests a "geographic cure," a new life distant from the Twin Cities and the building business Edgar grew from scratch. And Kamen suggests something else. "Edgar, does anything make you happy?" *"I used to sketch." **"Take it up again. You need hedges... hedges against the night."*Edgar leaves Minnesota for a rented house on Duma Key, a stunningly beautiful, eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico and the tidal rattling of shells on the beach call out to him, and Edgar draws. A visit from Ilse, the daughter he dotes on, starts his movement out of solitude. He meets a kindred spirit in Wireman, a man reluctant to reveal his own wounds, and then Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman whose roots are tangled deep in Duma Key. Now Edgar paints, sometimes feverishly, his exploding talent both a wonder and a weapon. Many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth's past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating. The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory and the nature of the supernatural -- Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.Amazon.com ReviewAmazon Significant Seven, January 2008: It would be impossible to convey the wonder and the horror of Stephen King's latest novel in just a few words. Suffice it to say that Duma Key, the story of Edgar Freemantle and his recovery from the terrible nightmare-inducing accident that stole his arm and ended his marriage, is Stephen King's most brilliant novel to date (outside of the Dark Tower novels, in which case each is arguably his best work). Duma Key is as rich and rewarding as Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (yes, that Shawshank Redemption), and as truly scary as anything King has written (and that's saying a lot). Readers who have "always wanted to try Stephen King" but never known where to start should try a few pages of Duma Key--the frankness with which Edgar reveals his desperate, sputtering rages and thoughts of suicide is King at the top of his game. And that's just the first thirty pages... --Daphne DurhamDuma Key: Where It All BeganA Note from Chuck Verrill, the Longtime Editor of Stephen KingIn the spring of 2006 Stephen King told me he was working on a Florida story that was beginning to grow on him. "I'm thinking of calling it Duma Key," he offered. I liked the sound of that--the title was like a drumbeat of dread. "You know how Lisey's Story is a story about marriage?" he said. "Sure," I answered. The novel hadn't yet been published, but I knew its story well: Lisey and Scott Landon--what a marriage that was. Then he dropped the other shoe: "I think Duma Key might be my story of divorce."Pretty soon I received a slim package from a familiar address in Maine. Inside was a short story titled "Memory"--a story of divorce, all right, but set in Minnesota. By the end of the summer, when Tin House published "Memory," Stephen had completed a draft of Duma Key, and it became clear to me how "Memory" and its narrator, Edgar Freemantle, had moved from Minnesota to Florida, and how a story of divorce had turned into something more complex, more strange, and much more terrifying.If you read the following two texts side by side--"Memory" as it was published by Tin House and the opening chapter of Duma Key in final form--you'll see a writer at work, and how stories can both contract and expand. Whether Duma Key is an expansion of "Memory" or "Memory" a contraction of Duma Key, I can't really say. Can you?--Chuck Verrill"Memory"Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own. That's what Kamen says. I tell him I never chased the memory of my accident. Some things, I say, are better forgotten. Maybe, but that doesn’t matter, either. That's what Kamen says.My name is Edgar Freemantle. I used to be a big deal in building and construction. This was in Minnesota, in my other life. I was a genuine American-boy success in that life, worked my way up like a motherf---er, and for me, everything worked out. When Minneapolis–St. Paul boomed, The Freemantle Company boomed. When things tightened up, I never tried to force things. But I played my hunches, and most of them played out well. By the time I was fifty, Pam and I were worth about forty million dollars. And what we had together still worked. I looked at other women from time to time but never strayed. At the end of our particular Golden Age, one of our girls was at Brown and the other was teaching in a foreign exchange program. Just before things went wrong, my wife and I were planning to go and visit her.I had an accident at a job site. That's what happened. I was in my pickup truck. The right side of my skull was crushed. My ribs were broken. My right hip was shattered. And although I retained sixty percent of the sight in my right eye (more, on a good day), I lost almost all of my right arm.I was supposed to lose my life, but I didn’t. Then I was supposed to become one of the Vegetable Simpsons, a Coma Homer, but that didn't happen, either. I was one confused American when I came around, but the worst of that passed. By the time it did, my wife had passed, too. She's remarried to a fellow who owns bowling alleys. My older daughter likes him. My younger daughter thinks he’s a yank-off. My wife says she’ll come around.Maybe sí, maybe no. That's what Kamen says.When I say I was confused, I mean that at first I didn’t know who people were, or what had happened, or why I was in such awful pain. I can't remember the quality and pitch of that pain now. I know it was excruciating, but it's all pretty academic. Like a picture of a mountain in National Geographic magazine. It wasn’t academic at the time. At the time it was more like climbing a mountain.Continue Reading "Memory"Duma KeyHow to Draw a PictureStart with a blank surface. It doesn't have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can't remember.How do we remember to remember? That's a question I've asked myself often since my time on Duma Key, often in the small hours of the morning, looking up into the absence of light, remembering absent friends. Sometimes in those little hours I think about the horizon. You have to establish the horizon. You have to mark the white. A simple enough act, you might say, but any act that re-makes the world is heroic. Or so I’ve come to believe.Imagine a little girl, hardly more than a baby. She fell from a carriage almost ninety years ago, struck her head on a stone, and forgot everything. Not just her name; everything! And then one day she recalled just enough to pick up a pencil and make that first hesitant mark across the white. A horizon-line, sure. But also a slot for blackness to pour through.Still, imagine that small hand lifting the pencil... hesitating... and then marking the white. Imagine the courage of that first effort to re-establish the world by picturing it. I will always love that little girl, in spite of all she has cost me. I must. I have no choice. Pictures are magic, as you know.My Other LifeMy name is Edgar Freemantle. I used to be a big deal in the building and contracting business. This was in Minnesota, in my other life. I learned that my-other-life thing from Wireman. I want to tell you about Wireman, but first let's get through the Minnesota part.Gotta say it: I was a genuine American-boy success there. Worked my way up in the company where I started, and when I couldn’t work my way any higher there, I went out and started my own. The boss of the company I left laughed at me, said I'd be broke in a year. I think that's what most bosses say when some hot young pocket-rocket goes off on his own.For me, everything worked out. When Minneapolis–St. Paul boomed, The Freemantle Company boomed. When things tightened up, I never tried to play big. But I did play my hunches, and most played out well. By the time I was fifty, Pam and I were worth forty million dollars. And we were still tight. We had two girls, and at the end of our particular Golden Age, Ilse was at Brown and Melinda was teaching in France, as part of a foreign exchange program. At the time things went wrong, my wife and I were planning to go and visit her.Continue Reading Duma KeyFrom Publishers WeeklyIn bestseller King's well-crafted tale of possession and redemption, Edgar Freemantle, a successful Minnesota contractor, barely survives after the Dodge Ram he's driving collides with a 12-story crane on a job site. While Freemantle suffers the loss of an arm and a fractured skull, among other serious injuries, he makes impressive gains in rehabilitation. Personality changes that include uncontrollable rages, however, hasten the end of his 20-year-plus marriage. On his psychiatrist's advice, Freemantle decides to start anew on a remote island in the Florida Keys. To his astonishment, he becomes consumed with making art—first pencil sketches, then paintings—that soon earns him a devoted following. Freemantle's artwork has the power both to destroy life and to cure ailments, but soon the Lovecraftian menace that haunts Duma Key begins to assert itself and torment those dear to him. The transition from the initial psychological suspense to the supernatural may disappoint some, but even those few who haven't read King (Lisey's Story) should appreciate his ability to create fully realized characters and conjure horrors that are purely manmade. (Jan. 22) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Views: 61
In the course of their developing friendship, Samuel Craddock has learned to accept that his neighbor Jenny Sandstone's personal life is strictly secret. But when her dying mother tells Craddock that Jenny is in danger, he is confronted with a dilemma. He wants to respect Jenny's privacy, but he is haunted by the urgency in the dying woman's voice. When Jenny is the victim of a suspicious car accident, Craddock has no choice but to get involved. He demands that she tell him what he needs to know to protect her and to solve the mysteries surrounding the strange events that began taking place as soon as Jenny's mother passed away. Forced to confront the past, Jenny plunges into a downward spiral of rage and despair. She is drinking heavily and seems bent on self-destruction. Craddock must tread lightly as he tries to find out who is behind the threats to her. But only by getting to the bottom of the secrets buried in Jenny's past can he hope to save her both from... Views: 61
They're battle-hardened, sinfully wealthy, completely unstoppable --- and all male: Four officers of the Crown, fighting against a deadly foe known only as the Black Cobra.
He is a man who has faced peril without flinching, determined to fight for king and country.
She is a bold, beautiful woman with a scandalous past, destined to become an untamed bride.
Together they must vanquish the ruthless enemy, while confronting the dangers of the heart ... Views: 61
An extraordinary woman living in extraordinary times, Lady Frances Ffolkes is an Edwardian-era suffragette who has an uncanny ability to attract danger and romance.When Major Colcombe, a family friend and war veteran, dies under mysterious circumstances, the good Lady Frances discovers that he was working on a manuscript about South Africa's bloody Boer War, which reportedly revealed a scandalous mistake that cost many innocent lives. Now, it's up to Frances and her loyal lady's maid, June Mallow, to track down the missing manuscript and bring the killer to justice. Despite clashes with Scotland Yard and the British Secret Service, Frances never backs down and finds herself in several very unfortunate positions—and one very fortunate love triangle.Death on the Sapphire, R. J. Koreto's witty and winsome series debut, is sure to delight fans of historical mysteries for years to come. Views: 61
From USA Today bestselling author Leslie Langtry comes the latest laugh-out-loud Merry Wrath mystery...Merry Wrath has been out of the spy biz so long that she's sure the CIA has forgotten all about her. Life in suburban Who's There, Iowa is pretty quiet in comparison to the Company, and as long as her Girl Scout Troop isn't inadvertently burning down her garage (again), Merry is thinking it's time to clean out all the plastique and booby traps she's been hiding in the basement, once and for all. That is, until assassin Hilly Vinton (who isn't an assassin because the CIA doesn't have assassins...but totally is) shows up with an agency-ordered Termination Contract on Merry.This has to be an elaborate prank. Or so Merry thinks, until she learns that the contract also went out to the Russians, Chechens, and Colombian cartels. It isn't long before Merry's small hometown is flooded with interested bad guys. When these... Views: 61
