It starts with a single bite, a morsel, a taste and then it builds to a dish, to a meal, to a banquet.Who is Spider Latham? Think John Wayne meets Miss Marple. When Spider is hired to do some private detective work for the Red Pueblo Museum, he doesn’t suspect it will cause a rift between his wife, Laurie, and himself. Museum Director Martin Taylor is desperate, and his son, Matt, is angry. Some wicked, faceless organization is bent on destroying the museum financially, and it’s about to succeed. After Spider arrives, the situation turns deadly when a killer uses an Anasazi ax from the museum’s tourist shop to bash in the skull of a charismatic playboy. Everyone has a motive for the murder, even Laurie’s handsome, rich relative who cozies up to her every chance he gets. The local Barney-Fife-type deputy arrests volatile Matt Taylor, whose only real crime is putting his trust in the wrong woman. Can Spider untangle the web of secrecy and lies surrounding the museum and save its Anasazi treasures before the Taylors lose it all? And in the process, can he save his own marriage? A cozy mystery with an edge, Trouble at the Red Pueblo is Book #1 in Liz Adair’s Spider Latham Red Rock Mystery Series set in Southern Utah’s spectacularly scenic canyon country. From InD’Tale Magazine (four-and-a-half star review): Spider Latham has a new fan! This scrumptious story by Liz Adair is a marvelously easy to read mystery, seasoned with rich descriptions of the red rock area of Arizona and Utah. The author draws in the reader with uniquely realistic story lines involving existing businesses and landmarks in the area. The characters are complex—so fleshed out and genuine, one would expect to see them firmly ensconced at the Museum, the local diner, or patrolling the area in an orange Yugo with flames painted on it. Readers will love the bantering dialogue between Spider and Laurie, and they’ll pull for the Stetson wearing cowboy deputy from Nevada. Well written, well researched, and well done, Ms. Adair! Views: 634
VOLUME 2The Singing Bone (1912) aka The Adventures of Dr ThorndykeIn the topsy turvy world of The Singing Bone, Richard Austin Freeman presents us with a solution. The reader is asked to deduce how different mysteries were solved rather than whodunit. Freeman introduces five distinct tales of intrigue, romance, mutiny and murder. The ingenuity of these detective stories lies in their fresh and original approach in what amounts to a tantalising read. The Case of Oscar Brodski A Case of Premeditation The Echo of a Mutiny A Wastrel's Romance The Old LagA Silent Witness (1914)On a wet and windy silent night in the sleeping city of London, the body of a man is found sprawled across Millfield Lane. So begins an ill wind and the puzzle of an intriguing stranger in this enchanting Dr Thorndyke mystery.The Great Portrait Mystery and Other Stories (1918)The National Portrait Gallery is the opening setting for this delightful mystery of theft and fraud. A painter copies diligently from a watercolour one morning when an enigmatic musician suddenly appears and causes mayhem with his musical interludes, hopping from one picture to another and giving a remarkable rendition of different songs. But while the curator follows him around trying to call a halt to the musical spectacle, the copyist replaces a watercolour masterpiece and makes an infamous escape. Who is the mysterious musician? Who is the mysterious copyist? And what has happened to the priceless watercolour? The Great Portrait Mystery The Bronze Parrot Powder Blue and Hawthorn The Attorney's Conscience The Luck of Barnabas Mudge The Missing Mortgagee Percival Bland's ProxyHelen Vardon's Confession (1922)Through the open door of a library, Helen Vardon hears an argument that changes her life forever. Helen's father and a man called Otway argue over missing funds in a trust one night. Otway proposes a marriage between him and Helen in exchange for his cooperation and silence. What transpires is a captivating tale of blackmail, fraud and death. Dr Thorndyke is left to piece together the clues in this enticing mystery. Views: 633
Although Durrell spent much of his life beside the Mediterranean, he wrote relatively little about Italy; it was always somewhere that he was passing through on the way to somewhere else. Sicilian Carousel is his only piece of extended writing on the country and, naturally enough for the islomaniac Durrell, it focuses on one of Italy's islands. Sicilian Carousel came relatively late in Durrell's career, and is based around a slightly fictionalized bus tour of the island. Views: 632
She's bad at love, but he's even worse...
Marina is hot, blonde, and wickedly smart, but when it comes to men? She's hopeless. Between her quirks and her lack of filter, there isn't a man in Los Angeles that will stick around after the third date.
Her handsome, charming friend Lazarus has the opposite problem. Everyone wants to be the sexy Brit's girlfriend, but he gets bored and moves on quickly.
There's only one way to figure out why neither of them has cracked this love thing-- they'll date each other. On paper, it's the perfect experiment. But in reality, things between Marina and Laz get complicated quickly.
They might be bad at love, but they are even worse at being friends.
Note: This full-length romance is a complete standalone with no relation to any other books and was inspired by the Halsey song "Bad at Love."
It does contain ample amounts of profanity, filthy language and graphic sex scenes.
Sensitive readers should be advised. Views: 631
Laura's Shorts is a random collection of unrelated short stories. Many were prepared in response to prompts or criteria of competitions, all were prepared for the sheer joy of storytelling.Sam wins the lottery and asks Natali to marry him and run away to see all the hidden beauty the world has to offer. He wants her by his side through all the great and secret adventures he can dream of with his new wealth. She denies his proposal so he goes it alone, only to return fifty years later. that's when the story truly begins. Views: 630
On a summer morning in Sarajevo almost a hundred years ago, a teenager took a pistol out of his pocket and fired not just the opening rounds of the First World War but the starting gun for modern history. By killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Gavrilo Princip, started a cycle of events that would leave 15 million dead from fighting between 1914 and 1918 and proved fatal for empires and a way of ruling that had held for centuries.
The Trigger tells the story of a young man who changed the world forever. It focuses on the drama of the incident itself by following Prinip’s journey. By retracing his steps from the feudal frontier village of his birth, through the mountains of the northern Balkans to the great plain city of Belgrade and ultimately Sarajevo, Tim Butcher illuminates our understanding of Princip— the person and the place that shaped him—and makes discoveries about him that have eluded historians for a hundred years. Traveling through the Balkans on Princip’s trail, and drawing on his own experiences there as a war reporter during the 1990s, Butcher unravels this complex part of the world and its conflicts, and shows how the events that were sparked that day in June 1914 still have influence today. Published for the centenary of the assassination, The Trigger is a rich and timely work, part travelogue, part reportage, and part history. Views: 630
A tone deaf deep space astronomer discovers a catchy tune from beyond our galaxy and destroys the world.Sarah Jane had been so excited to be accepted on the team of doctors at the prestigious clinic, The Center. It was exciting and exhilarating work. It did not hurt that she got to work with brilliant people all day, everyday. Until disaster struck and suddenly everything she had was in danger of being lost.Would she turn the hands of time if she could? Would she choose differently if she did? Would she choose her old life over the new one that was unfolding?Sometimes, life forces us to grow way bigger than our shells. Sarah Jane had to.(This is a stand-alone novel but readers will understand the story a lot better if they read my book, 'Transgender J' first. Transgender J is free on Smashwords.)This book was formerly titled, Undead - Sarah Jane. Views: 624
R. Austin Freeman was a 20th century fiction author best known for detective mysteries. He went so far as to claim he invented the "inverted detective" genre, but regardless of what credit he deserves, his work continues to be read today. Views: 623
An astonishingly candid book from the Nobel Laureate about what has shaped his interpretation of literature and the world. Views: 617
With more lives at stake and games in motion, Ellie, Camden and Javier form an uneasy alliance that will take them from the treacherous streets of inner-city Mexico to the wilds of the Honduran jungles in order to find their freedom. But with liberty just on the horizon, the cost might come at their own redemption. Views: 615
From a rat’s eye view of the London blitz to a cadaver with a complaint about the size of her coffin, this collection of short stories brings us into a comically surreal world that will leave you questioning your ability to tell up from down.From a rat’s eye view of the London blitz to a cadaver with a complaint about the size of her coffin, this collection of short stories brings us into a comically surreal world that will leave you questioning your ability to tell up from down.What the characters in these stories have in common is their passage through a moment of crisis: the teacher who must face down an aggressive student in the award winning Interactive Classroom; Shep, the sheep-turned sheep dog, who wants to turn back the clock and become a sheep again; or the paranoid David Vincent, who is convinced the office he works in is being infiltrated by alien imposters who are now coming for him. In terms of genre, the stories range from the post-modernist science fiction of 6 Hits from the Safe Zone, The Mission and Debt, Death and Deletion to the more macabre dark humour of Guest in the Attic and The Undertaker’s Complaint. Historical fiction is also included, with an alcoholic Churchill burping his way to greatness. Some works place comedy to the fore, such as The Interactive Sexual Attraction Device.If we tire of fiction, travel writing brings us back to the real world, in which the author offers his unique perspective on China, India and Lebanon. The Boots anthology finishes with samples from the author’s novels, converted into short stories.All the pieces in this collection have been published in various locations and are now brought together in one collection. Take your psyche for a walk with Boots. Views: 614
In a time of chaos, the #1 New York Times-bestselling political humorist asks his fellow Americans to take it down a notch. Is there an upside to being woke (and unable to get back to sleep)? If we license dentists, why don't we license politicians? Is your juicer sending fake news to your FitBit about what's in your refrigerator? The legendary P.J. O'Rourke addresses these questions and more in this hilarious new collection of essays about our nation's propensity for anger and perplexity, which includes such gems as "An Inaugural Address I'd Like to Hear" (Ask not what your country can do for you, ask how I can get the hell out of here) and "Sympathy vs. Empathy," which contemplates whether it's better to hold people's hands or bust into their heads. Also included is a handy quiz to find out where you stand on the Coastals-vs.-Heartlanders spectrum. From the author of Parliament of Whores, None of My Business, and other modern... Views: 612
How is this book unique? Font adjustments & biography included Unabridged (100% Original content) Illustrated About The Rules of the Game by Stewart Edward White The romance of the son of "The Riverman." The young college hero goes into the lumber camp, is antagonized by "graft" and comes into the romance of his life. This is a story of the Californian Sierras and the great duel between the financial trusts and the Government for the preservation of the forests. Like all Mr. White\'s books it is full of swift incident and the magic of the wilds. Views: 612
For the first time: the Nobel Prize winner’s stunning short fiction collected in one volume, with an introduction by the author.
Over the course of his distinguished career, V. S. Naipaul has written a remarkable array of short fiction that moves from Trinidad to London to Africa. Here are the stories from his Somerset Maugham Award–winning Miguel Street (1959), in which he takes us into a derelict corner of Trinidad’s capital to meet, among others, Man-Man, who goes from running for public office to staging his own crucifixion. The tales in A Flag on the Island (1967), meanwhile, roam from a Chinese bakery in Trinidad to a rooming house in London. And in the celebrated title story from the Booker Prize– winning In a Free State (1971), an English couple traveling in an unnamed African country discover, under a veneer of civilization, a landscape of squalor and ethnic bloodletting.
No writer has rendered our postcolonial world more acutely or prophetically than V. S. Naipaul, or given its upheavals such a hauntingly human face. Views: 611
