W. A.

McCay
Chains of Command

While exploring a group of devastated class-M planets in a remote
sector of space, the crew of the U.S.S. "Enterprise (TM) " is shocked to
discover a group of human slaves on a forbidding, glacial world. When
the slaves revolt against their human overseers, Captain Picard, and
his crew sympathize with the slaves plight but cannot interfere in the
conflict. After the revolt is a success, Captain Picard learns that both
the slaves and the overseers were controlled by a mysterious bird-like
race called the Tseetsk, who are coming to reclaim their property.
With the time running out, the rebels kidnap Captain Picard and
Counsellor Troi -- drawing the U.S.S. "Enterprise" into the middle of
their deadly plan of vengeance.(


AS THE AWAY TEAM winked into existence on the planets surface, the
luxuriant undergrowth stirred, riffled by a gentle breeze. Commander William
Riker saw the leaves shiver in the gust, but he couldnt feel it through his
atmosphere suit. He glanced around. There was no sign of animal life in the
pristine landscape. No bugs, he muttered. Paradise for picnickers. A laugh
crackled in his ear. Riker turned and gestured impatiently at the other members
of the team. Lets get on with the readings and samples. He shifted
uncomfortably in the suit. Move, people, unless you want to spend your entire
time planetside in these blasted things. The young crew members burst into a
flurry of activity, none of them eager to appear slow in front of their commander.
Tricorders show sixty-five percent nitrogen, thirty percent oxygen, trace
amounts of other gasesnot too different from the air aboard the Enterprise.
Yeoman Janet Kinsolving, a trainee biologist, continued her enthusiastic
observations, which she must have known had already been determined by the
ships scanners. The air seems breathable, she said eagerly. I think it would
be all right to try it, sir.







W. Brad Johnson
WRITE TO THE TOP!

This concise guide to writing is designed to help any academic
become not only productive but also truly prolific. It is a pithy,
no-nonsense, no-excuses guide to maximizing the quality and
quantity of scholarly output. Johnson and Mullen offer an
accessible overview of the art of writing efficiently and
effectively, provide a one-stop source for the details of success
in getting things written and into print, and advice academics
on how to navigate the turbulent waters of professional
stress along the way. This is the first book that explicitly
summarizes the key elements of prolific productivity in
academic settings.





W. Bruce Cameron
A Dog's Purpose

Surprised to find himself reborn as a rambunctious golden-
haired puppy after a tragically short life as a stray mutt,
Baileys search for his new lifes meaning leads him into the
loving arms of 8-year-old Ethan. During their countless
adventures, Bailey joyously discovers how to be a good dog.
But this life as a beloved family pet is not the end of Baileys
journey. Reborn as a puppy yet again, Bailey wonderswill
he ever find his purpose? Heartwarming, insightful, and
often laugh-out-loud funny, A Dogs Purpose is not only the
story of a dogs many lives, but also a dogs-eye commentary
on human relationships and the unbreakable bonds between
man and mans best friend. This beautifully crafted novel
teaches us that love never dies, that our true friends are
always with us, and that every creature on Earth is born with
a purpose.(


One day it occurred to me that the warm, squeaky, smelly things squirming
around next to me were my brothers and sister. I was very disappointed. Though
my vision had resolved itself only to the point where I could distinguish fuzzy
forms in the light, I knew that the large and beautiful shape with the long
wonderful tongue was my mother. I had figured out that when the chill air
struck my skin it meant she had gone somewhere, but when the warmth returned
it would be time to feed. Often finding a place to suckle meant pushing aside
what I now knew was the snout of a sibling seeking to crowd me out of my share,
which was really irritating. I couldnt see that my brothers and sister had any
purpose whatsoever. When my mother licked my stomach to stimulate the flow
of fluids from under my tail, I blinked up at her, silently beseeching her to
please get rid of the other puppies for me. I wanted her all to myself.









Emory's Gift -

After thirteen-year-old Charlie Hall's mother dies and his
father retreats into the silence of grief, Charlie finds himself
drifting lost and alone through the brutal halls of junior high
school. But Charlie Hall is not friendless. In the woods behind
his house, Charlie is saved from a mountain lion by a grizzly
bear, a species thought to be extinct in northern Idaho. And
this very unusual bear will change Charlie's life forever.
Deeply moving, and interwoven with hope and joy, Emory's
Gift is not only a heartwarming and charming coming-of-age
story, but also a page-turning, insightful look at how faith,
trust, and unconditional love can heal a broken family and
can bridge the gaps that divide us.


I THOUGHT I saw Emory today. Hed be pretty old for a grizzly bear: I last
saw him when I was in the eighth grade, slightly more than twenty-five years
ago. Male grizzlies can certainly live into their late twenties, but its not typical,
and had I not been so excited I would have realized that the huge male I spotted
clambering out of the river was simply too spry to be who I thought he was.
Though I am a bear biologist by education and training, Ive spent most of the
past year examining dirt, of all things. Specifically, the dirt on the banks of
rivers where bears congregate. Ursus arctos horribilis, the great grizzly, is
normally reclusive and shy, but he abandons his antisocial ways to stand
virtually shoulder-to-shoulder with other bears during a salmon run. Bear
etiquette demands they keep their fishing grounds pristine, so when it comes
time to relieve themselves they wander up on shorehence my interest in dirt.










W. C. Sellar
1066 & all that -

From the Olden Days and dashing queen Woadicea to the
reigns of the Eggkings - Eggberd, Eggbreth and Eggforth - and
their mysterious Eggdeath; from the Dreadful Story of
Stephen and his aunt Matilda (or Maud) to the Magna Charter;
from the Six Burglars of Calais to the Disillusion of the
Monasteries and the life of Broody Mary; from Williamanmary,
when 'England was ruled by an orange' to the Boston Tea-
Party and the annoying confusion between Napoleon and
Nelson; and from Fresh Attempts to Amuse Queen Victoria to
the Peace to end Peace, here is the essential history of
England.











W. Cleon Skousen
The 5000-Year Leap

In The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed the
World, Discover the 28 Principles of Freedom our
Founding Fathers said must be understood and
perpetuated by every people who desire peace,
prosperity, and freedom. Learn how adherence to these
beliefs during the past 200 years has brought about
more progress than was made in the previous 5000
years. These 28 Principles include The Genius of Natural
Law, Virtuous and Moral Leaders, Equal Rights--Not
Equal Things, and Avoiding the Burden of Debt.


The publication of this book is the fulfillment of a dream gestated over forty
years ago at the George Washington University Law School in the nations
capital. As I studied Constitutional law, there was always a nagging curiosity
as to why someone had not taken the time and trouble to catalogue the
ingredients of the Founding Fathers phenomenal success formula so it would be
less complex and easier to digest. It seemed incredible that these gems of
political sagacity had to be dug out of obscurity by each individual doing it
piecemeal and never really knowing for certain that the whole puzzle had been
completely assembled. All of this introspective cogitation was taking place
during the Great Depression, while this writer was working full time at the FBI
and going to law school at night. A short time before, a brand new majority in
Congress had been swept into power, and our professor of Constitutional law
was constantly emphasizing the mistakes these newly elected representatives of
the people were making. He would demonstrate how they were continually
seeking answers to the nations ills through remedies which were not authorized
by the Constitution, and in most cases by methods which had been strictly
forbidden by historical experience and the teachings of the Founders.




The Naked Communist

In this hard-hitting book, an urgent need is finally fulfilled. In
one exciting, readable volume, the incredible story of
Communism is graphically told. We believe this to be the most
vivid and comprehensive book on the subject ever published. It
contains a distillation of more than a hundred books and
treatises on Communism, many written by Marxist authors.
We see the Communist the way he sees himself---stripped of
propaganda and pretense. Hence the title, The Naked
Communist. Here is explained Communisms amazing appeal,
its history, and its basic and unchanging concepts---even its
secret timetable of conquest! Vital questions are clearly
answered---Who gave Russia the A-bomb? How did the FBI
fight the battle of the underground? Why did the West lose
600 million allies after World War II? What really happened in
Korea? What is Communisms great secret weapon? Is there an
answer to Communism? What lies ahead?


One of the most fantastic phenomena of modern times has been the unbelievable
success of the Communist conspiracy to enslave mankind. Part of this has been
the result of two species of ignorance -- ignorance concerning the constitutional
requirements needed to perpetuate freedom, and secondly, ignorance concerning
the history, philosophy and strategy of World Communism. This study is
designed to bring the far-flung facts about Communism into a single volume. It
contains a distillation of more than one hundred books and treatises -- many of
them written by Communist authors. It attempts to present the Communist in
his true native elements, stripped of propaganda and pretense. Hence, the title,
"The Naked Communist." Students in the western part of the world have a
tendency to shy away from the obscure complexity of Communism because they
have a feeling they are groping about in a vacuum of un-known quantities. It
therefore became the author's objective many years ago to try and clarify these
concepts so that they could be more readily understood and thereby become less
frightening. The most terrifying of all human fears is "fear of the unknown" and
consequently it seemed highly desirable to disarm the Communist revolutionists
of any such supreme advantage by spreading before the student the whole
picture of Marxism which is simply "modern materialism in action."




W. Doyle Gentry
Happiness for Dummies

Now, you can find the happiness you want and live "the
good life" you deserve by applying the helpful
information in "Happiness for Dummies," the ultimate
guide to achieving bliss You'll discover proven
techniques for living a meaningful, healthy, and
productive life no matter what your life circumstances
happen to be. Positive concepts and techniques will
help you change key behaviors, foster good habits, and
be in harmony with your surroundings. This helpful
guide will give you the chance to assess your happiness
and understand what it means to be happy at each
stage of self-actualization. You'll learn why having
positive emotions can improve your health and well-
being. And, you will find out what happiness isn't and
how to avoid confusing happiness with culturally
valued outcomes like wealth, power, and success.
Pursue what you want, seize the day, find benefits in
life's challenges, and live a coherent lifestyle.








W. E. B. Du Bois
The Souls of Black Folk -

Du Bois' 1903 collection of essays is a thoughtful, articulate
exploration of the moral and intellectual issues surrounding
the perception of blacks within American society.


The task of introducing The Souls of Black Folk is an awesome one for at least
two reasons. First, there is the historical and literary significance of the text
itself. As the distinguished scholar Arnold Rampersad notes: If all of a nations
literature may stem from one book, as Hemingway implied about The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, then it can as accurately be said that all of
Afro-American literature of a creative nature has proceeded from Du Boiss
comprehensive statement on the nature of people in The Souls of Black Folk
(Rampersad, p. 89). Second, a number of brilliant minds have already written
about The Souls of Black Folk, among them Rampersad, Nathan Huggins,
Herbert Aptheker, Cornel West, Eric Sundquist, Hazel Carby, Manning
Marable, Houston Baker, Robert Stepto, and Henry Louis Gates. That so many
distinguished writers have focused attention on The Souls of Black Folk is only
one measure of the continuing importance of this collection of fourteen essays by
one of the major thinkers of the twentieth century. Clearly, a book of such
complexity and magnitude demands and can withstand a number of diverse
readings.





W. G. Sebald
Across the Land and the Water

German-born W. G. Sebald is best known as the innovative
author of Austerlitz, the prose classic of World War II
culpability and conscience that The Guardian called a new
literary form, part hybrid novel, part memoir, part travelogue.
Its publication put Sebald in the company of Nabokov, Calvino,
and Borges. Yet Sebalds brilliance as a poet has been largely
unacknowledgeduntil now.

Skillfully translated by Iain Galbraith, the nearly one hundred
poems inAcross the Land and the Water range from those
Sebald wrote as a student in the sixties to those completed right
before his premature death in 2001. Featuring eighty-eight
poems published in English for the first time and thirty-three
from unpublished manuscripts, this collection brings together
all the verse he placed in books and journals during his lifetime.



My medium is prose, W. G. Sebald once declared in an interview, a statement
that is easily misconstrued if a subtle distinction the German author added is
overlooked: not the novel. Far from disavowing his attraction to poetic
forms, Sebalds sworn allegiance to what he called prose deliberately placed
his work at arms length from the generic exactions (plot, character development,
dialogue) levied by the more conventional modes of writing fiction. Indeed, it is
perhaps only in reading Sebalds poetrywhose breathing and tone, especially
in the later poems, frequently recall the timbre of the narrative voices in Vertigo,
The Emigrants, and The Rings of Saturnthat we may begin to sense the poetic
consistency of his literary prose itself, and also that of his writing as a whole.
Reversing the focus, readers of Sebalds prose fiction who are coming to his
shorter poetry for the first time may be surprised to find that many of the
concerns of his acclaimed later prose works are prefigured in his earliest, most
lyrical poems: borders, journeys, archives, landscapes, reading, time, memory,
myth, legend, and the median state (Edward Said) of the exile, who is neither
fully integrated into the new system nor fully free of the old.





Rings of Saturn -

The Rings of Saturn - with its curious archive of photographs -
chronicles a tour across epochs as well as countryside. On his
way, the narrator meets lonely eccentrics inhabiting
tumbledown mansions and links them to Rembrandt's
"Anatomy Lesson," the natural history of the herring, a
matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, the travels of Sir
Thomas Browne's skull, and the massive bombings of WWII.
Cataloging change, oblivion, and memories, he connects sugar
fortunes, Joseph Conrad, and the horrors of colonizing the
Belgian Congo. The narrator finds threads that run from an
abandoned bridge over the River Blyth to the terrible dowager
Empress Tzu Hsi and the silk industry in Norwich.


In August 1992, when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the
county of Suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me
whenever I have completed a long stint of work. And in fact my hope was
realized, up to a point; for I have seldom felt so carefree as I did then, walking
for hours in the day through the thinly populated countryside, which stretches
inland from the coast. I wonder now, however, whether there might be something
in the old superstition that certain ailments of the spirit and of the body are
particularly likely to beset us under the sign of the Dog Star. At all events, in
retrospect I became preoccupied not only with the unaccustomed sense of
freedom but also with the paralysing horror that had come over me at various
times when confronted with the traces of destruction, reaching far back into the
past, that were evident even in that remote place. Perhaps it was because of this
that, a year to the day after I began my tour, I was taken into hospital in
Norwich in a state of almost total immobility. It was then that I began in my
thoughts to write these pages. I can remember precisely how, upon being
admitted to that room on the eighth floor, I became overwhelmed by the feeling
that Suffolk expanses I had walked the previous summer had now shrunk once
and for all to a single, blind, insensate spot. Indeed, all that could be seen of the
world from my bed was the colourless patch of sky framed in the window.



W. J. Calabrese
Tales from Somewhere Else

Welcome to the strange world of W. J. Calabrese,
populated by ghosts and monsters. Deal with
dreams and nightmares. Find out what happens
on the thirteenth floor of a building that does not
have a thirteenth floor. Enjoy, if you can, the 'gift
of seeing'. Meet a man who lives in a tree.
Wander the mysterious Gray Range. These are
truly tales, not from this world, but from
somewhere else.











W. J. May
Rae of Hope

Fifteen-year-old Rae Kerrigan has never questioned her
familys history. That is until she accepted a scholarship to
Guilder Boarding School in England. Guilder is a unique,
gifted school.

Rae has no idea what she is getting herself into or that her
familys past is going to come back and taunt her. She learns
she is part of an unparalleled group of individuals who
become marked with a unique tattoo (tat) on their sixteenth
birthday. The tat enables them to have supernatural powers
particular to the shape of their marking.

Both her parents were marked though Rae never knew, as
they passed away when she was young and never told her.
Learning about her familys past, her evil father and
sacrificial mother, Rae needs to decide if there is a ray of hope
for her own life.


You cant undo the past. The sins of the father are the sins of the son, or in this
case, daughter. Uncle Argyles ominous words had echoed in Raes head long
after he dropped her off at the airport. A proverb of truth he had called it.
Who spoke like that nowadays? Some good-bye. Tightening her ponytail and
futilely trying to tuck her forever-escaping dark curls behind her ears, she looked
at her watch, then out the bus window at the tree lined countryside. It seemed
strange to see the sun. All she remembered was rain when she had lived in
Britain nine years ago. Trying to get comfortable, Rae tucked her foot up on the
seat, and rested her head against her knee as she looked out at the scenery
flashing by. A sign outside the window showed the miles before the bus reached
Guilder. Itd be another twenty-five minutes. She popped her ear buds in, blew
the bangs away from her forehead and stared out the window across the rolling
farm fields, trying to let the music from her iPod distract her.








W. R. Thompson
Debtors' Planet

When a Vulcan space probe reports that the Ferengi are
advancing the people of the planet Megara from a primitive
agricultural state to a sophisticated technological society, Captain
Jean-Luc Picard and the "Starship Enterprise(TM) are ordered to
transport an unlikely passenger to the system, a ruthless
twentieth-century businessman who is now a Federation
ambassador. The Ferengi have been changing Megaran culture,
turning a hard working and horoable people into vicious
xenophobic killers. But the Ferengi are only hired hands. They
have hidden masters, with plans to use the Magaran people as a
powerful weapon against the Federation.

Now Picard must find a way to use the talents of this new
ambassador to free the Megarans. But the ambassador is hididng
a deadly secret of his own -- a secret that could unleash an
unstoppable destructive force on the Federation.


THE PROBE WENT sublight and scanned the space around it. The first
readings matched the data in its memory banks: one yellow dwarf star,
attended by a family of planets; nearest celestial landmark: Weber 512. The first
planet was class J, dead and airless, unchanged since the last probes visit. The
second planet was class M, Earthlike, inhabited by primitives Data
mismatch. High-intensity energy readings teased the drones sensor array.
Drawn by a curiosity as intense as that of its makers, the probe moved into the
system. The mystery deepened as the distance lessened. The robot noted intense
electromagnetic radiations, modulated into signals; neutrino sources pinpointed
fission reactors; low-frequency radiations resolved into an electric power grid.
Objects in low planetary orbits radiated more signals. The probe initiated a
subspace transmission to its makers. A spacewarp suddenly twisted in high orbit
around the second planet. The drone located the starship and identified it as a
Ferengi vessel. Logic dictated contact; the probe signaled the ship. Greetings
from the Vulcan Academy of Science. This craft is a robot probe on a routine
survey. To access a full data readout, respond on subspace frequency J. A
mutual exchange of data will prove beneficial. Secrecy was illogical;
cooperation was reasonable.



Infiltrator -

Centuries ago, followers of the tyrant Khan Noonien Singh left Earth
for the planet Hera to continue his experiment in selective breeding.
Now, they are finally ready to launch their plan of universal
domination -- with the "U.S.S. Enterprise TM as their weapon.
Captain Picard must enlist the help of Heran expatriate Astrid Kemal
to defeat her fellow superbeings. Unless the captain and crew of the
"Enterprise can stop them, the Heran infiltrators could alter the
genetic landscape of the galaxy for generations to come.


THATS THE SHIP, Maria Sukhoi told her husband. She pointed to the
white needle on the spaceports flight pad. The Temenus. It launches in eight
hours. Lee nodded. Eight hours. They changed their plan. Do you think they
suspect? Mafia shook her head. The midnight air had made her black hair
damp, and it clung to her forehead in loose strands. Centrals always
suspicious, but it doesnt have a reason to suspect us. Lee grinned crookedly,
white teeth in a dark broad face. Im just nervous. Youd damned well better
be, Marla said. Security around the spaceport was good, and Lee carried a
half-dozen thumbnail bombs in his pocket. Too many things can go wrong.
Cheerful tonight, arent you? He reached out and stroked her cheek. So
lovely fair, that what seemd fair in all the world seemd now mean. Ill be
back for you. I know. The quote from MiltonAdams descrip-tion of Eve,
another type of firstbornwarmed her as it always did. She kissed him. Now
get going. Right. Lee hurried down the slope. Despite his words Mafia did not
think she would see him again.









Wai Hon Chu
The Dumpling

Discovering that dumplingsas a category of food
have never been properly defined, Chu and Lovatt
developed a definition that takes into account the
ingredients, cooking methods, and shapes that most
commonly define dumplings, not just in a particular
region or culture, but around the world.
"A dumpling is a portion of dough, batter, or starchy
plant fare, solid or filled, that is cooked through wet
heat, and is not a strand or a ribbon"
This exciting collection shows us that not only are pot
stickers, pierogis, and shao mai dumplings but so too
are tamales, steamed cakes, and steamed breads. From
Chickpea Dumplings in a Tomato Sauce (India) to
Leaf-Wrapped Rice Packages Stuffed with Peanuts and
Sausage (China), from Chocolate Tamales (Mexico) to a
"Napkin" Bread Dumpling with Cherries (Austria),
from Cloud-Shaped Bread Buns (Tibet) to Potato
Dumplings with Cabbage Layers (Hungary), dumplings,
whether steamed or simmered, are as fun to make, as
they are to eat.


This book is about traditional dumplings and the simple pleasures they can
bring into your kitchen. Dumplings embody the foundations of good cooking:
ingredients that make the most of the seasons, time-honored techniques, and an
open mind. Because most dumplings are made by hand, they pull you deeper
into the craft of cooking by emphasizing the value of intuition and the benefits of
learning through trial and error. Much as with recipes for bread, pastry, pasta
and noodles, pancakes, biscuits, and cakes, traditional dumpling recipes create
delicious mainstays loaded with character and charm. What we hope to
demonstrate with this book is the reality that, despite their similarities to other
dough- or batter-based creations, dumplings are in a category all their own. So,
what makes a dumpling a dumpling? Is an empanada a dumpling? Is a fritter?
Every definition we have come across presents a slightly different view. After
exploring a thousand different dishes normally considered to be dumplings, it
became clear to us that their identities revolved around two key traits: They are
made out of some kind of dough, batter, or starchy plant foundation, and they
are either steamed, simmered, or boiled.




Walker Lamond
Rules for my unborn child -

RULES FOR MY UNBORN SON is a collection of traditional,
humorous, and urbane fatherly advice for boys. From the
sartorial ("If you are tempted to wear a cowboy hat, resist") to
the practical ("Keep a copy of your letters. It makes it easier for
your biographer") to even a couple of sure-fire hangover cures
("There is no better remedy than a dip in the ocean"), the book
of rules and accompanying quotations is quite simply an
instruction manual for becoming a Good Man - industrious,
thoughtful, charming, and of course, well-dressed.










Walker Percy
Lost in the Cosmos

Walker Percy's mordantly funny and wholly original
contribution to the self-help book craze deals with the
Western mind's tendency toward heavy abstraction. This
favorite of Percy fans continues to charm and beguile readers
of all tastes and backgrounds. Lost in the Cosmos invites us to
think about how we communicate with our world.


IN ALL SOAP OPERAS and in many films and novels, a leading character
will sooner or later develop amnesia. He will not necessarily develop pneumonia
or cancer or schizophrenia, but inevitably he will be overtaken by amnesia. He
(or she) finds himself in a strange place, having forgotten his old place, his
family, friends, business. He begins a new life in a new place with a new
girlfriend, new job. After a while in his new life he begins to receive clues about
his old life. A stranger stops him in the street and calls him by a strange name.
The best exploitation of the pleasures of amnesia occurred in Hitchcocks
Spellbound where Gregory Peck had amnesia and Ingrid Bergman was his
psychiatrist. For the moviegoer there occurred first the pleasure of the prospect of
a new life and the infinite possibilities of the self as represented by Gregory Peck.
The second pleasure is the accidental meeting with Ingrid Bergman, who is
sensitive to the clues that Gregory misses, and who is a reliable guide, his
Beatrice, who can help him recover his old lifefor even amnesia, if prolonged,
can become as dreary as ones old life.






The Moviegoer

The Moviegoer is Binx Bolling, a young New Orleans
stockbroker who surveys the world with the detached gaze of a
Bourbon Street dandy even as he yearns for a spiritual
redemption he cannot bring himself to believe in. On the eve of
his thirtieth birthday, he occupies himself dallying with his
secretaries and going to movies, which provide him with the
"treasurable moments" absent from his real life. But one fateful
Mardi Gras, Binx embarks on a hare-brained quest that
outrages his family, endangers his fragile cousin Kate, and sends
him reeling through the chaos of New Orleans' French Quarter.
Wry and wrenching, rich in irony and romance, The
Moviegoer is a genuine American classic.


THIS MORNING I GOT a note from my aunt asking me to come for lunch. I
know what this means. Since I go there every Sunday for dinner and today is
Wednesday, it can mean only one thing: she wants to have one of her serious
talks. It will be extremely grave, either a piece of bad news about her
stepdaughter Kate or else a serious talk about me, about the future and what I
ought to do. It is enough to scare the wits out of anyone, yet I confess I do not
find the prospect altogether unpleasant. I remember when my older brother Scott
died of pneumonia. I was eight years old. My aunt had charge of me and she
took me for a walk behind the hospital. It was an interesting street. On one side
were the power plant and blowers and incinerator of the hospital, all humming
and blowing out a hot meaty smell. On the other side was a row of Negro
houses. Children and old folks and dogs sat on the porches watching us. I
noticed with pleasure that Aunt Emily seemed to have all the time in the world
and was willing to talk about anything I wanted to talk about. Something
extraordinary had happened all right. We walked slowly in step.







The Thanatos Syndrome -

The 1990s. Euthanasia and quarantines for AIDS have
become the norm. But can even this world sanction a
substance that "improves" people's behavior and so reduces
crime, unemployment and teen pregnancy? A riveting
bestseller by the author of The Moviegoer.


THE PLACE WHERE the strange events related in this book occur, Feliciana,
is not imaginary. It was so named by the Spanish. It was and is part of
Louisiana, a strip of pleasant pineland running from the Mississippi River to the
Perdido, a curious region of a curious state. Never quite Creole or French or
Anglo-Saxon or Catholic or Baptist like other parishes of Louisiana, it has
served over the years as a refuge for all manner of malcontents. If America was
settled by dissenters from various European propositions, Feliciana was settled
by dissenters from the dissent, American Tories who had no use for the
Revolution, disgruntled Huguenots and Cavaliers from the Carolinas, New
Englanders fleeing from Puritanism, unionists who voted against secession,
Confederate refugees from occupied New Orleans, deserters from the
Confederate Army, smugglers from both sides, criminals holed up in the Honey
Island Swamp. Welcomed in the beginning by the hospitable and indolent
Spanish of a decrepit empire, some of these assorted malcontents united long
enough to throw out the Spanish and form an independent republic, complete
with its own Declaration of Independence, flag, army, navy, constitution, and
capital in St. Francisville. The new republic had no inclination to join French
Louisiana to the south or the United States to the north and would as soon have
been let alone. It lasted seventy-four days. Jefferson had bought Louisiana and
that was that.


Wallace Earle Stegner
Crossing to Safety

It's deceptively simple: two bright young couples meet during the
Depression and form an instant and lifelong friendship. "How do
you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as
these?" Larry Morgan, a successful novelist and the narrator of
the story, poses that question many years after he and his wife,
Sally, have befriended the vibrant, wealthy, and often troubled
Sid and Charity Lang. "Where is the high life, the conspicuous
waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish?" It's not here.
What is here is just as fascinating, just as compelling, as touching,
and as tragic.


When I think of Wallace Stegner, I think of a man who offers us his hunger for
justice and his love of possibility. He is a writer who acknowledges the human
desire to grow, to struggle, to make mistakes, to rise in small moments of
greatness and find personal redemption in being a sticker, the dignity found in
choosing to stay rather than following the impulse to leave. He has little
patience for the booster, whom he sees as someone who is simply moving
through, exploiting a person or a place for his own gain. Stegners overriding
ethos, on the page and in the world, is simple and straightforward: What does it
mean to love? It is exactly this question that brings me back to Wallace
Stegners work over and over again. Crossing to Safety is a love story, not in the
sense of titillating dialogue and actions, but in the sense that it explores private
lives. No outsider ever knows the interior landscape of a marriage. It is one of
the great secrets kept between couples. Whether the nature of physical and
emotional intimacy in marriage goes largely unspoken out of respect and loyalty,
a sense of propriety held between husbands and wives (not found between
lovers), or more out of the terror of unleashing a thousand barking hounds in
pursuit of a mythical fox is difficult to say. The hunt for love is always on, and
in some tragic, truthful, stunning way it forever eludes us. Our imaginations
pick up where our lives fall short. Stegner understands and invites us inside the
domain of partnership.


Wallace O. Chariton
That Cat Won't Flush -

That Cat Won't Flush is an entertaining country dictionary that
contains thousands of the sayings so popular in the South, West, and
anywhere people talk country. Included are short stories and
interesting quotations, which bring the humorous definitions to life.
Unlike other country language collections, this book is arranged in
convenient dictionary format according to the normal English
meaning so a special country saying can be found quickly for any
occasion or purpose. The accompanying cartoons make this
collection a dictionary that is every bit as entertaining as it is useful.


Some wise old sage once remarked that there never had been a movie sequel as
good as the original, which I suspect is correct. That same sage, however,
continued by suggesting that there never had been a book sequel that was as
good as the original. I certainly hope that isn't true because this book is a sequel
of sorts since it is my second entertaining dictionary dealing with country
language. The language used by country folks is actually a lot more than just
an accumulation of words. Country talk is pictures set to words. If I said it is
very cold outside, that would be a milk toast sort of language. But, if I said it
was so cold outside that my teeth were chattering and they were in a glass on
the dresser, then you would get a strange image of an impossible situation but
you would also know it was, indeed, very cold outside. I've been collecting the
colloquialisms and unique sayings that are so common to country people since I
was about ten years old, and that was more years ago than I care to remember.
Every time I heard a saying I dutifully wrote it down in a small notebook to
preserve it and save it for another day. Through the years my collection has
grown considerably, but there was also a problem growing right along with it.







Wallace Stegner
Angle of Repose

Wallace Stegner's Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of
discoverypersonal, historical, and geographical. Confined
to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to
write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their
days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's
western frontier. But his research reveals even more about
his own life than he's willing to admit. What emerges is an
enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an
American family.


Angle of Repose is Wallace Stegner's masterpiece, the crown jewel in a
multifaceted writing career. From the time he finished his Ph.D. in 1935 to his
death in 1993, he published some fifty-eight short stories, a dozen novels, two
histories, two biographies, a memoir-history, and five collections of essays. He
was given numerous awards for his writings, including the Pulitzer Prize for
Angle of Repose, the National Book Award for The Spectator Bird, and the
Lifetime Achievement Award by the Los Angeles Times. From the early 1950s,
he became as well known for his environmental activities and writings as for his
fiction. However, it was the writing of novels that was closest to his heart, and it
was as a novelist that he wanted to be remembered. In a recent poll of readers of
the San Francisco Chronicle voting on the best one hundred novels written about
the West, Angle of Repose was listed number one. Often mentioned by critics as
one of the most important American novels of the twentieth century, it alone
should ensure Stegner's reputation. (In a Chronicle poll of best nonfiction books,
his John Wesley Powell biography, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, was listed
number two.)





Beyond the Hundredth Meridian


John Wesley Powell fought in the Civil War and it cost him an arm.
But it didn't stop him from exploring the American West.
Here Wallace Stegner, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, gives us a thrilling
account of Powell's struggle against western geography and
Washington politics. We witness the successes and frustrations of
Powell's distinguished career, and appreciate his unparalleled
understanding of the West



A BOOK called The Growth of American Thought was awarded the Pulitzer
Prize for history in 1944. At the end of a chapter on The Nature of the New
Nationalism the central figure of Mr. Stegners book makes a momentary
appearance. A passage which all told is nearly two pages long is discussing the
discovery of the West by a group of scientists who revealed it to the rest of the
country. (They revealed it, we are to understand, primarily as interesting
scenery.) A paragraph pauses to remark that at the time these scientists made
their discovery, the frontier was vanishing but it had left distinctive traces on
the American mind through its cult of action, rough individualism, physical
freedom, and adventurous romance. Here are four fixed and indestructible
stereotypes about the West, all of them meaningless. No wonder that on the way
to them Mr. Stegners subject is dismissed with a sentence which records that
the ethnologist and geologist, John Powell, who explored the Colorado River,
the Grand Canyon, and the homeland of Indian tribes of the Southwest,
promoted extremely important geological surveys for the federal government. In
his bibliographical notes the historian of American thought adds, Major John
Powells Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries is a
classic.





Wally Lamb
I Know This Much Is True

On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother,
Thomas, entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut, public library,
retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God
the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed
acceptable. . . .

One of the most acclaimed novels of our time, Wally Lamb's I
Know This Much Is True is a story of alienation and
connection, devastation and renewal, at once joyous,
heartbreaking, poignant, mystical, and powerfully, profoundly
human.


On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother Thomas entered the
Three Rivers, Connecticut Public Library, retreated to one of the rear study
carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be
deemed acceptable. Mrs. Theresa Fenneck, the childrens librarian, was
officially in charge that day because the head librarian was at an all-day
meeting in Hartford. She approached my brother and told him hed have to keep
his voice down or else leave the library. She could hear him all the way up at
the front desk. There were other patrons to consider. If he wanted to pray, she
told him, he should go to a church, not the library. Thomas and I had spent
several hours together the day before. Our Sunday afternoon ritual dictated that
I sign him out of the state hospitals Settle Building, treat him to lunch, visit our
stepfather or take him for a drive, and then return him to the hospital before
suppertime.








I'll Fly Away

Lamb returns with I'll Fly Away, a new volume of intimate,
searching pieces from the York workshop. Here, twenty
womeneighteen inmates and two of Lamb's cofacilitators
share the experiences that shaped them from childhood and
that haunt and inspire them to this day. These portraits,
vignettes, and stories depict with soul-baring honesty how
and why women land in prisonand what happens once they
get there. The stories are as varied as the individuals who
wrote them, but each testifies to the same core truth: the
universal value of knowing oneself and changing one's life
through the power of the written word.


Its Thursday morning at 6:00 A.M., and we two have just arrived at the open-
air flea market, the largest in south Florida. Im an apprentice shopper and my
teacher is my Aunt Mandy. Later this morning, the market will be hot and
crowdedalive with music, laughter, gossip, and bartering about the price of
everything from necklaces to nectarines. But at the moment, its cool and quiet.
Our focus is fish. Pay close attention to the eyes of the fish, Aunt Mandy
instructs as we walk from stall to stall. If the eyes are clear, not cloudy, and
the color of the skins not fading, then the fish is fresh. Aunties dressed for
shopping in a pink sleeveless blouse, burgundy pedal pushers, Italian sandals,
and a white sun visor. Im wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and rubber flip-flops. I am
tall for my age, and starting to get the kind of shape men take a second look at.
My glasses take up half my face. But you have to shop with your finger and
your nose, too, not just your eyes, Auntie instructs. Poke the fish gently near
its fin. If it leaves a dent, then you dont want it. If it doesnt, its probably part
of the mornings catch. And listen to me, Jeannie. Fresh fish never smells foul.







She's Come Undone

Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded,
having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her
bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself
with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother
supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257
pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this
time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself
one more chance before she really goes under.


IN ONE OF MY EARLIEST MEMORIES, MY MOTHER AND I ARE ON
the front porch of our rented Carter Avenue house watching two delivery men
carry our brand-new television set up the steps. I'm excited because I've heard
about but never seen television. The men are wearing work clothes the same
color as the box they're hefting between them. Like the crabs at Fisherman's
Cove, they ascend the cement stairs sideways. Here's the undependable part: my
visual memory stubbornly insists that these men are President Eisenhower and
Vice President Nixon. Inside the house, the glass-fronted cube is uncrated and
lifted high onto its pedestal. "Careful, now," my mother says, in spite of herself;
she is not the type to tell other people their business, men particularly. We stand
watching as the two delivery men do things to the set. Then President
Eisenhower says to me, "Okay, girlie, twist this button here." My mother nods
permission and I approach. "Like this," he says, and I feel, simultaneously, his
calloused hand on my hand and, between my fingers, the turning plastic knob,
like one of the checkers in my father's checker set.







The Hour I First Believed -

When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk
and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to
Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High
School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers,
Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But
Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine,
cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two
vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous
rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is
unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee
Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family
farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily
put right, and further tragedy ensues.


A SERIES OF DEBILITATING STROKES and the onset of dementia
necessitated the agonizing conversation I had with my mother in the winter of
1997. When I told her shed be moving to a nearby nursing home, she shook her
head and, atypically, began to cry. Tears were a rarity for my stoic Sicilian-
American mother. The next day, she offered me a deal. Okay, Ill go,
she said. But my refrigerator comes with me. I couldnt meet her demand,
but I understood it. Mas refrigerator defined her. The freezer was stockpiled
with half-gallons of ice cream for the grandkids, and I do mean stockpiled; you
opened that freezer compartment at your peril, hoping those dozen or so rock-
hard bricks, precariously stacked, wouldnt tumble forth and give you a
concussion. The bottom half of Mas icebox was a gleaming tribute to
aluminumenough foil-wrapped Italian food to feed, should we all show up
unexpectedly at once, her own family and the extended families of her ten
siblings. But it was the outside of Mas fridge that best spoke of who she was.
The front and sides were papered with greeting cards, holy pictures, and photos,
old and new, curling and faded, of all the people she knew and loved. Children
were disproportionately represented in her refrigerator photo gallery. She adored
kidsher own and everyone elses. My mother was a woman of strong faith,
quiet resolve, and easy and frequent laughter.


Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass -

A collection of quintessentially American poems, the
seminal work of one of the most influential writers of the
nineteenth century.
THIS ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES:
A concise introduction that gives readers important
background information
A chronology of the author's life and work
A timeline of significant events that provides the book's
historical context
An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers
form their own interpretations
Detailed explanatory notes
Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern
perspectives on the work
Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book
group interaction
A list of recommended related books and films to broaden
the reader's experience


Listener up there! the poet calls from the pages of Leaves of Grass. Walt
Whitman listensreally listensand respondsactually respondsto
America through his poetry. The page functions as a necessary film between
the reader and the elusive, contradictory I of the text, but Whitman himself
often longed to dispose of this medium and confront his audience face to face.
He was compelled by the powers of the human voice; Whitman might have
realized early dreams of becoming an orator had he possessed a stronger tonal
quality or more dramatic flair and talent. But even as a writer, he never stopped
measuring the worth of words by their sound and aural appeal. I like to read
them in a palpable voice: I try my poems that wayalways have: read them
aloud to myself, the aging poet told his friend Horace Traubel (With Walt
Whitman in Camden, vol. 3, p. 375; see For Further Reading). Getting his
listeners to listen to him, as he absorbed and translated them; sensing and
deriving energy from the presence and participation of an audience, as his own
physical self and voice inspired them: These were foremost concerns for the poet
now known as Americas greatest spokesperson, a man who still speaks to and
for the American people.




Walter Benjamin
Illuminations -

Studies on contemporary art and culture by one of the most
original, critical and analytical minds of this century.
Illuminations includes Benjamin's views on Kafka, with whom
he felt the closest personal affinity, his studies on Baudelaire
and Proust (both of whom he translated), his essays on Leskov
and on Brecht's Epic Theater.

Also included are his penetrating study on "The Work of Art in
the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," an illuminating
discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his thesis on
the philosophy of history. Hannah Arendt selected the essays
for this volume and prefaces them with a substantial,
admirably informed introduction that presents Benjamin's
personality and intellectual development, as well as his work
and his life in dark times. Reflections the companion volume
to this book, is also available in Schocken paperback.


Fame, that much-coveted goddess, has many faces, and fame comes in many
sorts and sizesfrom the one-week notoriety of the cover story to the splendor of
an everlasting name. Posthumous fame is one of Fama's rarer and least desired
articles, although it is less arbitrary and often more solid than the other sorts,
since it is only seldom bestowed upon mere merchandise. The one who stood
most to profit is dead and hence it is not for sale. Such posthumous fame,
uncommercial and unprofitable, has now come in Germany to the name and
work of Walter Benjamin, a German-Jewish writer who was known, but not
famous, as contributor to magazines and literary sections of newspapers for less
than ten years prior to Hitler's seizure of power and his own emigration. There
were few who still knew his name when he chose death in those early fall days
of 1940 which for many of his origin and generation marked the darkest moment
of the warthe fall of France, the threat to England, the still intact Hitler-
Stalin pact whose most feared consequence at that moment was the close co-
operation of the two most powerful secret police forces in Europe. Fifteen years
later a two-volume edition of his writings was published in Germany and
brought him almost immediately a succs d'estime that went far beyond the
recognition among the few which he had known in his life.



Walter Crane
The Frog Prince and Other Stories -

Walter Crane (1845-1915) was an English artist. Born in
Liverpool, he was part of the Arts and Crafts movement.
He produced paintings, illustrations, children's books,
ceramic tiles and other decorative arts. In 1862, his picture
The Lady of Shalott was exhibited at the Royal Academy,
but the Academy steadily refused his maturer work; and
after the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, he
ceased to send pictures to Burlington House. In 1864, he
began to illustrate a series of Sixpenny Toy-Books of
Nursery Rhymes in Three Colours for Edmund Evans. He
was allowed more freedom in a series beginning with The
Frog Prince (1874) which showed markedly the influence
of Japanese art, and of long visit to Italy following on his
marriage in 1871. From the early 1880s, Crane was closely
associated with the Socialist movement. He provided the
weekly cartoons for the Socialist Organs Justice, The
Commonweal, and The Clarion. One of his last major
works would be his Lunettes at the Royal West of England
Academy, which were painted in 1913.(


In the olden time, when wishing was having, there lived a King, whose
daughters were all beautiful; but the youngest was so exceedingly beautiful that
the Sun himself, although he saw her very often, was enchanted every time she
came out into the sunshine. Near the castle of this King was a large and gloomy
forest, and in the midst stood an old limetree, beneath whose branches
splashed a little fountain; so, whenever it was very hot, the Kings youngest
daughter ran off into this wood, and sat down by the side of this fountain; and,
when she felt dull, would often divert herself by throwing a golden ball up in the
air and catching it. And this was her favourite amusement. Now, one day it
happened, that this golden ball, when the Kings daughter threw it into the air,
did not fall down into her hand, but on the grass; and then it rolled past her
into the fountain. The Kings daughter followed the ball with her eyes, but it
disappeared beneath the water, which was so deep that no one could see to the
bottom. Then she began to lament, and to cry louder and louder; and, as she
cried, a voice called out, "Why weepest thou, O Kings daughter? thy tears
would melt even a stone to pity." And she looked around to the spot whence the
voice came, and saw a Frog stretching his thick ugly head out of the water. "Ah!
you old waterpaddler," said she, "was it you that spoke? I am weeping for my
golden ball, which has slipped away from me into the water."

Walter Greatshell
Mad Skills

Unconscious for fourteen months after a debilitating accident,
Maddy Grant awakens at the Braintree Institute, where
scientists have successfully implanted her with a radical
technology designed to correct her brain injury. But Maddy is
more than cured. Her intellect has been enhanced to process
information faster than a computeran ability thats sending
her emotions into overdrive.

To monitor her condition, the institute sends Maddy to the
nearby village of Harmony, where she will be free to interact
with the community. But Braintrees scientists are not only
monitoring her behavior, theyre modifying it, reprogramming
her personality to become someone else.

A killer.


HERE is what Maddy remembered of that night: It had been raining for days.
By Sunday night, the sky had finally cleared, and people had come out in
droves to salvage something of the weekend. There was a big concert early in the
evening, and the fairground was churned to mud. Everything had an ethereal
glowthe cheesy soft focus of television flashbacksand the carnival midway
smelled of popcorn and wet sawdust. Twiddling their plastic wristbands,
Maddy Grant and her almost stepbrother, Ben Blevin, raised their voices above
the hubbub. That was ridiculous, Ben said. He was taller and darker than
she was, with a seriousness that belied his sixteen years. I totally agree,
Maddy said. That was amazing. She was fifteen, buzzed from attending her
first concert and secretly basking in the bronze godhood of her stepsiblingto-be.
Thats not what I meant. Can we go now? In the few months since her mom
had started seeing Bens father, Maddy had scarcely been able to think straight,
jumping on every opportunity to hang out with her future relative. She knew it
was sick, but she couldnt help itshe was well aware of her physical
limitations. Pale, gangly-limbed, and freckle-faced, Maddy was not a troll; but
neither was she a fairy princess ... and she certainly had never been a magnet
for the opposite sex. Shed never so much as been asked out on a date.



Xombies_ Apocalypse Blues

When the Agent X plague struck, it infected women first,
turning them into mindless killers intent only on creating an
army of [ Xombies[? by spreading their disease. Running for
her life, seventeen-year-old Lulu is rescued by the father she
has never known and taken aboard a refitted nuclear
submarine that has one mission: to save a little bit of
humanity.


My mother and I missed the news about Agent X because we spent most of that
January cooped up in a beach bungalow outside Jerusalem, Rhode Island. Prior
to that we had been living in Providence, stalking an elderly man Mum had
tracked all the way from Anaheim, Californiaa man she contended was my
father. I found her crusade embarrassing and pointless: If she had been foolish
enough to get knocked up by an old goat who ran off the first chance he got, it
was more an expression of her character than his. Having lived with her for
seventeen years, I knew all too well what a pain in the ass she was. The guy
had my sympathy. When we began leafleting his Pawtucket neighborhood, the
codger spooked and fled to his summer cottage by the sea. You cant get away
from me that easily, Mum muttered nefariously, late into the night. Oh no,
buster. If thats what you think, you got another think coming. Yes indeedy.
We had to pack up and leave our little Gano Street apartment during the wee
hours of the morning, a drill I was quite familiar with after a lifetime of covert
maneuvers. Isnt this fun? Mum said breathlessly as we loaded the sputtering
Corolla. Her eyes were bright and wild. It was cold. Oh, sure, I said. What
am I supposed to do with my bike? I had just gotten it for Christmasa new
Huffy.



Xombies_ Apocalypso

A group of women have been discovered who are immune to the
Agent X plague. The secret of their immunity can provide a cure
for human and inhuman alike--unless the Xombies find them
first.


There was no boat. There was no crew. There was only a shared dream, fragile
as a bubble in an endless sea. And there was no sea, just ripples of time and
spacethe bottomless, shoreless reach of eternity. And Beatles music.
Suspended in the depths like a black thought, the USS No-Name echoed with
the murky strains of Eleanor Rigby. Within its vast hull, we all listened,
everyone equally intent, equally inert, whether whole or in pieces, all motionless
as corpses in the smothering dark, embedded like fossils amid the roots of a
treewhich was what the boat had become: a single organism of cold flesh and
metal, blue limbs intermingled with blue steel, organs with plumbing, sinew
with cable, bone with bracing. The flesh persisted, the flesh was permanent
the metal somewhat less so. Water trickled in, pooling blackly in the bilge. In
the airless environment, a creeping patina of blue rust became more evident by
the day . . . at least in the areas where lights still functioned. Nobody cared.
There was a short somewhere, many shorts, all neglected, life-support systems
ignored and faltering . . . for there was no life left to support.







Xombies_ Apocalypticon

Survivors of a cataclysmic zombie-making plague leave a
temporary safety of a refitted nuclear sub to scavenge for food
and supplies on land. But they soon find themselves facing new
terrors on the surface and mutiny below.


Marcus Washington, aka Voodooman, sat at the card table and tried to gauge
his opponents blank expressions. You werent allowed to turn or take your eyes
off the game; you werent allowed to show fear. It was a matter of honor that
you had to sit still and play for real in the shadow of death. Marcus knew these
men better than he knew his own family. They were the Dead Presidents Posse,
the four of them seated at the cardinal points of the compass: Righteous Weeks
faced north, with the best view; Little Rock faced west; 50 Cal east; and
Voodooman himself in the blind position, for which they drew straws before the
gameall very cool customers who were not easily spooked. But they were
nervous now, all right. The question was, were they nervous enough? Marcus
could hear the dancing clown at his shoulder and the expectant buzz from the
standshe sensed the bulls-eye on his back, knew he had better choose his next
move carefully, or it could be his last. Seeing Calvins frozen grin, he thought,
Boy looks like a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. Maybe this would
be a good time to bluff.






Walter Isaacson
Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin is the Founding Father who winks at us.
An ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social
ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with
kings, he seems made of flesh rather than of marble. In
bestselling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale
biography, we discover why Franklin seems to turn to us
from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his
new-fangled spectacles. By bringing Franklin to life, Isaacson
shows how he helped to define both his own time and ours.


His arrival in Philadelphia is one of the most famous scenes in autobiographical
literature: the bedraggled 17-year-old runaway, cheeky yet with a pretense of
humility, straggling off the boat and buying three puffy rolls as he wanders up
Market Street. But wait a minute. Theres something more. Peel back a layer
and we can see him as a 65-year-old wry observer, sitting in an English country
house, writing this scene, pretending its part of a letter to his son, an
illegitimate son who has become a royal governor with aristocratic pretensions
and needs to be reminded of his humble roots. A careful look at the manuscript
peels back yet another layer. Inserted into the sentence about his pilgrims
progress up Market Street is a phrase, written in the margin, in which he notes
that he passed by the house of his future wife, Deborah Read, and that she,
standing at the door, saw me and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most
awkward ridiculous appearance. So here we have, in a brief paragraph, the
multilayered character known so fondly to his author as Benjamin Franklin: as
a young man, then seen through the eyes of his older self, and then through the
memories later recounted by his wife. Its all topped off with the old mans deft
little affirmationas I certainly didin which his self-deprecation barely
cloaks the pride he felt regarding his remarkable rise in the world.1



Walter Kirn
Lost in the Meritocracy

Percentile is destiny in America.
So says Walter Kirn, a peerless observer and interpreter of
American life, in this whip-smart memoir of his own long
strange trip through American education. Working his way up
the ladder of standardized tests, extracurricular activities, and
class rankings, Kirn launched himself eastward from his rural
Minnesota hometown to the ivy-covered campus of Princeton
University. There he found himself not in a temple of higher
learning so much as an arena for gamesmanship, snobbery,
social climbing, ass kissing, and recreational drug use, where
the point of literature classes was to mirror the instructor's
critical theories, and actual reading of the books under
consideration was optional. Just on the other side of the bell
curve's leading edge loomed a complete psychic collapse.
LOST IN THE MERITOCRACY reckons up the costs of a
system where the point is simply to keep accumulating points
and never to look backor within.


ON THE BUS RIDE DOWN TO ST. PAUL TO TAKE THE TEST that will
help determine who will get ahead in life, who will stay put, and who will fall
behind, a few of my closest buddies seal their fates by opening pint bottles of
cherry schnapps the moment we leave the high-school parking lot. My pals hide
the liquor under their varsity jackets and monitor the drivers overhead mirror
for opportune moments to duck their heads and swig. A girl sees what theyre up
to, mutters Morons, and goes back to shading in the tiny ovals in her
Scholastic Aptitude Test review book. She dated one of the guys awhile back
and seemed amused by his clowning for a time, but lately shes grown serious,
ambitious; Ive heard shes decided to practice law someday and prosecute
companies that pollute the air. When she notices one of the bottles coming my
way, she shoots me a look of horror. No thanks, I say. My friends seem
wounded by thisarent we teammates? We play football and baseball together.
We hang out. In our high-school class there are only fifteen boys, and every
summer before the bugs get bad a bunch of us pitch tents beside the river and
cannonball from the cliffs into the current, sometimes splashing down in twos
and threes. In the winters some of us work at the same ski hill, selling lift tickets
and running chair-lifts, and during haying season we form crews to help out the
guys who live on farms. We talk as though well be together forever, but Ive
always known better: someday well be ranked.

Up in the Air -

Ryan Binghams job as a Career Transition Counselorhe
fires peoplehas kept him airborne for years. Although he has
come to despise his line of work, he has come to love the
culture of what he calls Airworld, finding contentment
within pressurized cabins, anonymous hotel rooms, and a
wardrobe of wrinkle-free slacks. With a letter of resignation
sitting on his bosss desk, and the hope of a job with a
mysterious consulting firm, Ryan Bingham is agonizingly
close to his ultimate goal, his Holy Grail: one million frequent
flier miles. But before he achieves this long-desired freedom,
conditions begin to deteriorate.


To know me you have to fly with me. Sit down. Im the aisle, youre the
windowtrapped. You crack your paperback, last springs big legal thriller,
convinced that what you want is solitude, though I know otherwise: you need to
talk. The jaunty male flight attendant brings our drinks: a two percent milk
with one ice cube for me, a Wild Turkey for you. Its wet outside, the runways
streaked and dark. Late afternoon. The first-class cabin fills with other
businessmen who switch on their laptops and call up lengthy spreadsheets or use
the last few moments before takeoff to punch in cell-phone calls to wives and
clients. Their voices are bright but shallow, no diaphragms, their sentences kept
short to save on tolls, and when they hang up they face the windows, sigh, and
reset their watches from Central time to Mountain. For some of them this means
a longer day, for others it means eating supper before theyre hungry. One fellow
lowers his plastic window shade and wedges his head between two skimpy
pillows, while another unlatches his briefcase, looks inside, then shuts his eyes
and rubs his jaw, exhausted.






Walter Moers
The Alchemaster's Apprentice

When Echo the Crat's mistress dies, he is compelled to sign a
contract with Ghoolion the Alchemaster. This fateful document
gives Ghoolion the right to kill Echo at the next full moon and
render his fat, which he hopes to brew into an immortality
potion. But Ghoolion has not reckoned with Echo's talent for
survival and his vast ability to make new friends.


Picture to yourself the sickest place in the whole of Zamonia! A little town with
winding streets and crooked houses, and looming over it a creepy-looking castle
perched on a black crag. A town afflicted by the rarest bacteria and the oddest
diseases: cerebral whooping cough, hepatic migraine, gastric mumps, intestinal
acne, digital tinnitus, renal measles, mini-influenza, to which only persons less
than one metre tall are susceptible, witchinghour headaches that develop on the
stroke of midnight and disappear at one a.m. precisely on the first Thursday of
every month, phantom toothaches experienced only by persons wearing a full set
of dentures. Picture a town where there are more apothecaries and herbalists,
quacks and tooth-pullers, crutch manufacturers and bandage weavers than
anywhere else on the Zamonian continent. Where Ouch! is the conventional
form of greeting and Get well soon! takes the place of Goodbye. Where the air
smells of ether and pus, cod-liver oil and emetics, iodine and putrefaction.
Where people vegetate and wheeze instead of living and breathing. Where
nobody laughs, just moans and groans.






The City of Dreaming Books -

Optimus Yarnspinner, a young writer, inherits from his beloved
godfather an unpublished short story by an unknown author.
His search for the author's identity takes him to Bookholm--the
so-called City of Dreaming Books. On entering its streets, our
hero feels as if he has opened the door of a gigantic second-hand
bookshop. His nostrils are assailed by clouds of book dust, the
stimulating scent of ancient leather, and the tang of printer's ink.

Soon, though, Yarnspinner falls into the clutches of the city's
evil genius, Pfistomel Smyke, who treacherously maroons him
in the labyrinthine catacombs underneath the city, where
reading books can be genuinely dangerous...


This is where my story begins. It tells how I came into possession of The Bloody
Book and acquired the Orm. Its not a story for people with thin skins and weak
nerves, whom I would advise to replace this book on the pile at once and slink
off to the childrens section. Shoo! Begone, you cry-babies and quaffers of
camomile tea, you wimps and softies! This book tells of a place where reading is
still a genuine adventure, and by adventure I mean the old-fashioned definition
of the word that appears in the Zamonian Dictionary: A daring enterprise
undertaken in a spirit of curiosity or temerity, it is potentially life-threatening,
harbours unforeseeable dangers and sometimes proves fatal. Yes, I speak of a
place where reading can drive people insane. Where books may injure and
poison them - indeed, even kill them. Only those who are thoroughly prepared to
take such risks in order to read this book - only those willing to hazard their
lives in so doing - should accompany me to the next paragraph. The remainder I
congratulate on their wise but yellow-bellied decision to stay behind. Farewell,
you cowards! I wish you a long and boring life, and, on that note, bid you
goodbye!







Walter Mosley
47

Number 47, a fourteen-year-old slave boy growing up under
the watchful eye of a brutal master in 1832, meets the
mysterious Tall John, who introduces him to a magical
science and teaches him the meaning of freedom.


The story you are about to read concerns certain events that occurred in the
early days of my life. It all happened over a hundred and seventy years ago. For
many of you it might sound like a tall tale because I am no older today than I
was back there in the year 1832. But this is no whopper I'm telling; it is a story
about my boyhood as a slave and my fated encounter with the amazing Tall
John from beyond Africa, who could read dreams, fly between galaxies, and
make friends with any animal no matter how wild. There are many things in
the world that most people don't know about. For instance, when I was young
nobody ever dreamed that there would be radios and televisions and powerful
jet planes that could fly across the ocean in only a few hours. But all of those
things were possible back then even though nobody knew it. My story is like that.
It's about science that seems like magic even today and about the barbaric
practice of slavery that so many of our ancestors had to endure. I'm putting
down these words because I'm the only one left alive who remembers what it
was like to be a slave in the land of the free, the United States, and I think that
it is important for other people to understand what this experience was like.





Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

In this cycle of 14 bittersweet stories, Walter Mosley breaks
out of the genre--if not the setting--of his bestselling Easy
Rawlins detective novels. Only eight years after serving out a
prison sentence for murder, Socrates Fortlow lives in a tiny,
two-room Watts apartment, where he cooks on a hot plate,
scavenges for bottles, drinks, and wrestles with his demons.
Struggling to control a seemingly boundless rage--as well as
the power of his massive "rock-breaking" hands, Socrates
must find a way to live an honorable life as a black man on the
margins of a white world, a task that takes every ounce of self-
control he has.


What you doin there, boy? It was six a.m. Socrates Fortlow had come out to
the alley to see what was wrong with Billy. He hadnt heard him crow that
morning and was worried about his old friend. The sun was just coming up. The
alley was almost pretty with the trash and broken asphalt covered in half-light.
Discarded wine bottles shone like murky emeralds in the sludge. In the dawn
shadows Socrates didnt even notice the boy until he moved. He was standing in
front of a small cardboard box, across the alleynext to Billys wire fence.
What bidness is it to you, old man? the boy answered. He couldnt have been
more than twelve but he had that hard convict stare. Socrates knew convicts,
knew them inside and out. I asked you a question, boy. Aint yo momma told
you tbe civil? Shit! The boy turned away, ready to leave. He wore baggy
jeans with a blooming blue T-shirt over his bony arms and chest. His hair was
cut close to the scalp. The boy bent down to pick up the box. What they call
you? Socrates asked the skinny butt stuck up in the air. Whats it to you?








Blonde Faith

Easy Rawlins, L.A.'s most reluctant detective, comes home one
day to find Easter, the daughter of his friend, Christmas Black
left on his doorstep. Easy knows that this could only mean that
the ex-marine Black is probably dead, or will be soon.

Easter's appearance is only the beginning, as Easy is immersed
in a sea of problems. The love of his life is marrying another man
and his friend Mouse is wanted for the murder of a father of 12.
As he's searching for a clue to Christmas Black's whereabouts,
two suspicious MPs hire him to find his friend Black on behalf of
the U.S. Army.

Easy's investigation brings him to a blonde woman, Faith Laneer,
whose past is as dark as her beauty is bright. As Easy begins to
put the pieces together, he realizes that Black's dissappearance
has its roots in Vietnam, and that Faith might be in a world of
danger.


Its hard to get lost when youre coming home from work. When you have a job,
and a paycheck, the road is set right out in front of you: a paved highway with
no exits except yours. Theres the parking lot, the grocery store, the kids school,
the cleaners, the gas station, and then your front door. But I hadnt had a
regular job in a year and here it was two in the afternoon and I was pulling into
my driveway wondering what I was doing there. I cut off the engine and then
shuddered, trying to fit inside the sudden stillness. All morning I had been
thinking about Bonnie and what Id lost when I sent her away. Shed saved my
adopted daughters life, and I had repaid her by making her leave our home. In
order to get little Feather into a Swiss clinic, Bonnie had reacquainted herself
with Joguye Cham, a West African prince she had met in her work as a flight
attendant for Air France. He made a temporary home for Feather, and Bonnie
stayed there with her and him. I threw open the car door but didnt get out.
Part of my lethargy was exhaustion from being up for the past twenty-four hours.
I didnt have a regular job, but I worked like a dog.








Cinnamon Kiss

It's 1966, and Easy Rawlins is desperate for cash to pay for his
daughter's much-needed medical treatment. Easy gets a gig working for
a legendary private eye on a missing person case. Soon, Easy's search
uncovers a shocking crime in Mosley's latest sizzling "New York Times"
bestseller.


So its real simple, Mouse was saying. When he grinned the diamond set in his
front tooth sparkled in the gloom. Cox Bar was always dark, even on a sunny
April afternoon. The dim light and empty chairs made it a perfect place for our
kind of business. . . . We just be there at about four-thirty in the mornin an
wait, Mouse continued. When the mothahfuckahs show up you put a pistol to
the back of the neck of the one come in last. He the one wit the shotgun.
Tell im to drop it What if he gets brave? I asked. He wont. What if
he flinches and the gun goes off? It wont. How the fuck you know that,
Raymond? I asked my lifelong friend. How do you know what a finger in
Palestine, Texas, gonna do three weeks from now? You boys need sumpin for
your tongues? Ginny Wright asked.















Devil in a Blue Dress

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just
fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a
friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a
white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy
will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known
to frequent black jazz clubs....


ETHELINE, SHE SAID, repeating the name Id asked for. Yeah, I said.
Etheline Teaman. I heard from my friend that she works here. Who is your
friend? the short, nearly bald black woman asked. She was wearing a stained,
pink satin robe that I barely glimpsed through the crack of the door. Jackson
Blue, I said. Jackson. She smiled, surprising me with a mouthful of healthy
teeth. You his friend? Whats your name? Easy. Easy Rawlins? she
exclaimed, throwing the door open wide and spreading her arms to embrace me.
Hey, baby. Its good to meet you. I put one hand on her shoulder and looked
around to the street, making sure that no one saw me hugging a woman, no
matter how short and bald, in the doorway of Pineys brothel. Come on in,
baby, the woman said. My name is Moms. I bet Jackson told you bout me.
She backed away from the entrance, offering me entre. I didnt want to be seen
entering that doorway either, but I had no choice. Etheline Teaman had a story
to tell and I needed to hear it.








Diablerie

Ben Dibbuk is an affable guy with a steady job. He has been
married to a beautiful woman for twenty years and has a lovely
young daughter in college. His life is routine and uneventful, and
he likes it that way. When a woman he doesn't recognize
approaches him with an off-putting mix of familiarity and hostility,
he is completely thrown. She claims he is stalking her, yet he
doesn't even know whom she is. Then he finds out his wife is
having him investigated, but he can't fathom why.

There is only one man he trusts - a security guard at the company
he works for - and he pledges to help untangle the web Ben's
caught in and protect him if necessary. The only problem is that
Ben has no idea why paranoia and suspicion surround him, but as
the pieces come together, he will have to face the most haunting
part of his own soul and make a difficult decision about whether
to fess up or cover up.


The apartment reeked from the acrid odor of roachesa whole colony, tens of
thousands of them, seething and unseen in the walls and under the dull,
splintery floorboards of the vacant tenement apartment. "Isn't it great, Daddy?"
Seela said. Her smile was exultant. She hugged my arm. I turned my head
toward the window looking out on the East Village street. There I saw a
Rastafarian wearing clothes that were once bright but now had faded into dull
tatters, two transvestite prostitutes, and a powerful-looking drunk who was
having a loud disagreement with a newspaper vending machine. "It's only
twenty-two hundred and Millie's going to split it with me," Seela was saying.
"We can move in tomorrow." "It looks like a dicey neighborhood, honey," I said,
unable to keep the whine out of my voice. "What if that guy down there goes
crazy and pushes his way in here?" "Oh, Dad. Lots of kids from NYU live
around here." "What's so bad about the dorms?" "I hate the dorms. There's
always noise and parties and drama like you wouldn't believe. Please."










Fear Itself

Paris Minton doesn't want any trouble. He minds his used
bookstore and his own business. But in 1950s Los Angeles,
sometimes trouble finds him, no matter how hard he tries to
avoid it. When the nephew of the wealthiest woman in L.A. is
missing and wanted for murder, she has to get involved--no
matter if she can't stand him. What will her church think? She
hires Jefferson T. Hill, a former sheriff of Dawson, Texas, and
a tough customer, to track him down and prove his innocence.
When Hill goes missing too, she tricks his friend Fearless
Jones and Paris Minton into picking up the case. Paris steps
inside the world of the black bourgeoisie, and it turns out to
be filled with deceit and corruption. It takes everything he has
just to stay alive through a case filled with twists and turns
and dead ends like he never imagined.


A SUDDEN BANGING ON THE FRONT DOOR sent a chill down my neck
and into my chest. It was two thirty-nine in the morning. I was up and out of
my bed immediately, though still more than half asleep. I had to go to the
bathroom but the knocking was insistent; seven quick raps, then a pause, and
then seven more. It reminded me of something but I was too confused to
remember what. All right, I called out. I considered staying quiet until the
unwanted visitor gave up and left. But what if it was a thief? Maybe he was
knocking to see if there was anybody home. If I stayed quiet he might just break
the two-dollar lock and come in on me. Im a small man, so even if he was just
your run-of-the-mill sneak thief he might have broken my neck before realizing
that Paris Mintons Florence Avenue Book Shop didnt have any money in the
cash box. I slept in an illegal loft space above the bookstore. It was the only way
my little business could stay in the black. Selling used books doesnt have a very
high profit margin, except for the reading pleasure. Some days the only
customers brought in books to sell or barter. Other days I was the only patron,
reading Don Quixote, Their Eyes Were Watching God, or some other great
novel from sunup to sundown.





Fear of the Dark

"I'm in trouble, Paris."Paris Minton has heard these words
before. They mean only one thing: that his neck is on the line too.
So when they are uttered by his lowlife cousin Ulysses S. Grant,
Paris keeps the door firmly closed. With family like Ulysses-
Useless to everyone except his mother-who needs enemies? But
trouble always finds an open window, and when Useless's
mother, Three Hearts, shows up from Louisiana to look for her
son, Paris has no choice but to track down his wayward cousin.
Finding a con artist like Useless is easier said than done. But
with the aid of his ear-to-the-ground friend Fearless Jones, Paris
gets a hint that Useless may have expanded his range of
enterprise to include blackmail. Now he has disappeared, and
Paris's mission is to discover whether he is hiding from his
vengeful victims-or already dead. Traversing the complicated
landscape of 1950s Los Angeles, where a wrong look can get a
black man killed, Paris and Fearless find desperate women,
secret lives, and more than one dead body along the way.


I WAS EXPECTING ONE KIND of trouble when another came knocking at
my door. A year or so after I opened my Florence Avenue Used Book Shop, I
installed four mirrors; one in the upper-right-hand corner of the door frame, one
just outside the lower-left-hand side of the window, and the third, and second-
largest, mirror was placed inside the window. So by daylight or lamplight at
night, all I had to do was pull back the bottom hem of the inside drape to see
who was knocking. I installed my little spying device because if a man wanted
to kill you and you asked Who is it? on the other side of a thin plank of wood,
all he would have to do is open fire and that would be it. You might as well just
throw the door open and say Here I am. Come shoot me. Someone might
wonder why the owner of a used-book store would even think about armed
assassins coming after him at any time, for any reason. After all, this is
America were talking about. And not only America but Los Angeles in the
midfifties1956 to be exact. We arent talking about the Wild West or a period
of social and political unrest. That was the most serene period of a democratic
and peaceful nation. Most Americans at that time only worried about the cost of
gas going above twenty-nine cents a gallon. But most Americans werent black
and they sure didnt live in South Central L.A. And even if they were my color
and they did live in my neighborhood, their lives would have been different.



Fearless Jones

Walter Mosley's Fearless Jones inaugurates a new crime series
set in 1950s Los Angeles. But can Jones match Mosley's
engaging long-term hero Easy Rawlins? On the evidence of this
first book, the answer is resoundingly in the affirmative, even if
the new series takes a little time to establish the new
protagonist. And this is probably because the central character
here is not so much the eponymous Fearless Jones as Paris
Minton, the owner of a small second-hand bookstore. Minton is
savagely beaten up and his store burned to the ground for
mysterious reasons. A beautiful woman is involved, and the
beleaguered Minton asks for the aid of his friend, the
resourceful Fearless Jones. As Jones painstakingly investigates
the woman's past, a very dark mystery begins to unravel. The
crime aspects here are delivered with total panache, but Mosley
would never be happy without adding that level of socio-
political commentary he is so adept at, and the place of black
men in 1950s LA (with few rights and little money) is a potent
theme.


MY USED-BOOK STORE had been open for just about a month when the
police showed up. I hadnt called them, of course; a black man has to think
twice before calling the cops in Watts. They came to see me late that afternoon.
Two well-built young men. One had dark hair and the other sported freckles.
The dark one wandered around the room, flipping through random books,
looking, it seemed, for some kind of contraband. Whered you get all these
books, son? the other cop asked, looking down on me. I was sitting in my
favorite swivel chair behind the makeshift table-desk that I used for book sales
and purchases. Libraries, I replied. Stole em? the dark-haired cop asked
from across the room. There was an eager grin on his face. Fronta each page
marked discarded, I said, editing out all unnecessary words as I spoke.
Library throws away thousands of books every year. I reached for a paper
folder at the far end of the table, and the cop standing over me let his right hand
drift toward his holster. I removed a sheet of paper and handed it over slowly.
This letter, I said, is from the office of the head librarian downtown. The
freckled and frowning cop used his left hand to take the letter from me.






Futureland

Projecting a near-future United States in which justice is blind
in at least one eye and the ranks of the disenchanted have
swollen to dangerous levels, Mosely offers nine interconnected
stories whose characters appear and reappear in each others
lives. For all its denizens, from technocrats to terrorists, celebs
to crooks, "Futureland" is an all-American nightmare just
waiting to happen.


"Yeth he did too. Popo called me on the vid hithelf an' he wath on'y two year
ole," Misty Bent said to her wide-eyed niece, Hazel Bernard. They were sitting
out on the screened porch above the Tickle River. Misty's drooping left eyelid
and gnarled, half-paralyzed hands did not mask her excitement. "You kiddin'?"
Hazel exclaimed. "Tole me hith mama wath thick on the flo', that he called the
hothpital but he wanted me to know too." Misty shook her head, remembering
Melba's death. "I beat the ambulanth but Death got there quicker thtill. Doctor
Maynard called it a acthidental overdoth tho we could put her in the ground
with a prietht and thome prayer beadth, but you know Melba had had all thee
could take. You know it hurt me tho bad that the blood vethel broke in my
head." "Her life wasn't no harder than what we all have to go through," Hazel
Bernard said. She shifted her girth looking for a comfortable perch in the cheap
plastic chair, but there was none. "But you cain't compare her an' uth, or you'n
me for that matter. Ith all diff'rent."








Gone Fishin

In the beginning...there was Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins and
Raymond "Mouse" Alexander -- two young men setting out in
life, hitting the road in a "borrowed" '36 Ford headed for
Pariah, Texas. The volatile Mouse wants to retrieve money
from his stepfather so he can marry his EttaMae. But on their
steamy bayou excursion, Mouse will choose murder as a way
out, while Easy's past liaison with EttaMae floats precariously
in his memory. Easy and Mouse are coming of age -- and
everything they ever knew about friendship and about
themselves is coming apart at the seams...


Mouse had changed Before he announced his engagement to EttaMae he was a
happy man, full of himself. Its true that he was especially pleased when
misfortune happened to someone else, but at least he kept us smiling. Life was
hard back then and a good laugh was worth a month of Sundays. But just when
he had a reason to be glad, Mouse turned sour and moody. He let his
appearance go to seed (he was usually a natty dresser) and nobody wanted to
be around him because when a small, rodent-faced man like Mouse got ugly he
was no company even for the harshest man. He stopped going to parties
altogether. If you happened to run into him on some corner, or back alley, and
asked how he was doing, hed say, What the hell you think? Here I am gonna
get married in two months an tween me an EttaMae we aint got enough
money for dip an crackers. Mouse didnt go out looking for work. All he did
was get mad whenever he had to let go of a few coins. So it was no surprise that
his crowd started to shun him.








Greatest, The

It was never proven that Fera Jones was the product of
SepFem-G, the outlawed genetics program that came out of
the feminist studies program at Smith College. But one thing
was certain: When it came to boxing, Fera Jones floated like a
butterfly and stung like a B-1 Bomber. . . .But would her
incomparable skills in the ring withstand an onslaught from
the outside world? Her father and trainer, Leon, is addicted
to Pulse--a gene drug that slowly kills its users. Her boyfriend,
Pell Lightner, is fresh from the streets. Lana Lordess,
governor of Massachusetts and head of the FemLeague,
wants Fera's political endorsement. The Randac Corporation
will pay her a billion dollars to plug an amusement park on
the Moon. Meanwhile, Travis Zeletski, the undefeated
heavyweight champion of the world, is waiting for Fera to
step into the ring and meet him in the ultimate battle of the
sexes: a twelve-round thrilla that will leave only one fighter
standing. . .


Ladies and gentlemen! veteran ring announcer L. Z. Scappelli proclaimed.
Now youre in for a treat. For the first time anywhere the Universal Boxing
Authority has sanctioned a pro heavyweight bout between the sexes. A whole
tier of seats taken up by women rose in loud acclaim in the vast underground
complex of Manhattans Madison Stadium. So boisterous was their cheering
that the boos and hisses from elsewhere around the arena were drowned out.
Women hooted and screamed; they rose to their feet and pounded the plastic
backs of their chairs. Its quite a scene tonight, isnt it, Billy? said
audiovid announcer Chet Atkinson. The fight was blacked out in the New York
City Zone because the main eventBrigham versus Zeletskihadnt sold out
the one hundred twenty thousand stadium seats by fight time. You better
believe it, Billy the Eclipse Bonner, one-time UBA lightweight champion,
replied. Each word seemed to roll around on a bed of marbles before leaving his
mouth. The ladies want to see blood.








Known to Evil

Leonid McGill-the protagonist introduced in The Long Fall,
the book that returned Walter Mosley to bestseller lists
nationwide -is still fighting to stick to his reformed ways while
the world around him pulls him in every other direction. He
has split up with his girlfriend, Aura, because his new self
won't let him leave his wife-but then Aura's new boyfriend
starts angling to get Leonid kicked out of his prime, top-of-the
skyscraper office space. Meanwhile, one of his sons seems to
have found true love-but the girl has a shady past that's all of
sudden threatening the whole McGill family-and his other son,
the charming rogue Twilliam, is doing nothing but enabling
the crisis.


Don't you like the food?" Katrina, my wife of twenty-three years, asked. "It's
delicious," I said. "Whatever you make is always great." In the corner there sat
a walnut cabinet that used to contain our first stereo record player. Now it held
Katrina's cherished Blue Danube china collection, which she inherited from her
favorite aunt, Bergit. On top of the chest was an old quart pickle jar--the
makeshift vase for an arrangement of tiny wildflowers of every color from scarlet
to cornflower blue to white. "But you're frowning," my beautiful Scandinavian
wife said. "What were you thinking about?" I looked up from the filet mignon
and Gorgonzola blue cheese salad to gaze at the flowers. My thoughts were not
the kind of dinner conversation one had with one's wife and family. I have a
boyfriend now, Aura Ullman had told me that morning. I wanted to tell you. I
didn't want to feel like I'm hiding anything from you. "Where'd you get those
flowers, Mom?" Shelly asked. His name is George, Aura told me, the sad
empathy in the words making its way to her face. I had no reason to be jealous.
Aura and I had been lovers over the eight months Katrina abandoned me for the
investment banker Andre Zool. I loved Aura but gave her up because when
Katrina came back, after Andre was indicted for fraud, I felt that she, Katrina,
was my sentence for the wrong I had done in a long life of crime.




Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

Ptolemy Grey is ninety-one years old and has been all but
forgotten-by his family, his friends, even himself-as he sinks
into a lonely dementia. His grandnephew, Ptolemy's only
connection to the outside world, was recently killed in a drive-
by shooting, and Ptolemy is too suspicious of anyone else to
allow them into his life. until he meets Robyn, his niece's
seventeen-year-old lodger and the only one willing to take
care of an old man at his grandnephew's funeral.
But Robyn will not tolerate Ptolemy's hermitlike existence.
She challenges him to interact more with the world around
him, and he grasps more firmly onto his disappearing
consciousness. However, this new activity pushes Ptolemy
into the fold of a doctor touting an experimental drug that
guarantees Ptolemy won't live to see age ninety- two but that
he'll spend his last days in feverish vigor and clarity. With his
mind clear, what Ptolemy finds-in his own past, in his own
apartment, and in the circumstances surrounding his grand-
nephew's death-is shocking enough to spur an old man to
action, and to ensure a legacy that no one will forget.


Dear Robyn,
You are away for two days with Beckford and Im sitting here in this apartment
waiting to finally be a man. I have the Devils medicine burning in my veins
and Coydog McCann whispering in my left ear. I have you in my life. That was
something I never suspected, expected, or even dreamed about. I love you and I
couldnt be here right now if it wasnt for you taking care of me. And if you were
twenty years older and I fifty years less Id ask you to be my wife and not a soul
on this earth would have ever had better. I want you to know that everybody in
my family is counting on you. They might not like you. They might be mad that
I made you my heir. But in the end they will all be better for your strength, my
guidance, and Coys righteous crime so many years ago. Im sitting here waiting
on the man with two names to come and tell me the truth. Thats all I ask for. I
need to know what happened and why. Because even though I can remember as
far back as I have years, ninety-one years, I still dont know what happened.
And a man has to know the truth and act accordinglythats only right.







Little Scarlet

Watts is smoldering in ruins-and the cops are on Easy
Rawlins's doorstep. Easy expects the worst, as usual. But,
incredibly, they're asking for his help. A redheaded woman
known as Little Scarlet had sheltered a man during the riots.
Witnesses later saw him fleeing her building; not long after,
Little Scarlet was found viciously murdered. Now, with his old
friend Mouse at his side, Easy follows the case's single clue
across Los Angeles. The missing man is the key, but he's only
the beginning. Hidden in the heart of the city is a killer whose
red-hot rage is as fierce as the fires that rocked L.A.


The morning air still smelled of smoke. Wood ash mainly but there was also the
acrid stench of burnt plastic and paint. And even though I knew it couldnt be
true, I thought I caught a whiff of putrid flesh from under the rubble across the
street. The hardware store and Bernards Stationery Store were both completely
gutted. The Gonzalez Market had been looted but only a part of its roof had
been scorched. The corner building, however, Lucky Dime Liquors, had been
burned to the ground. Manny Massman was down in the rubble with his two
sons, kicking the metal fixtures. At one point the middle-aged store owner
lowered his head and cried. His sons put their hands on his shoulders. I
understood how he felt. He had everything in that liquor store. His whole life.
And now, after a five-day eruption of rage that had been simmering for
centuries, he was penniless and destitute. In his mind he hadnt done a thing
wrong to anyone down in Watts. He had never even thought about calling
someone a nigger or boy. But the men and women down around Central and
Eighty-sixth Place took everything of Mannys that they could carry, then
smashed and burned the rest. Four young black men passed in front of the
liquor lot. One of them shouted something at the white men.





Little Yellow Dog

November 1963: Easy's settled into a steady gig as a school
custodian. It's a quiet, simple existence -- but a few moments
of ecstasy with a sexy teacher will change all that. When the
lady vanishes, Easy's stuck with a couple of corpses, the cops
on his back, and a little yellow dog who's nobody's best friend.
With his not-so-simple past snapping at his heels, and with
enemies old and new looking to get even, Easy must kiss his
careful little life good-bye -- and step closer to the edge....


A CAR DOOR SLAMMED on the street somewhere but it didnt mean
anything to me. I was at home drinking lemonade from the fruit of my own trees
on a Saturday in L.A. Nobody was after me. My slate was clean. Bonnie had
gone out with her friend Shirley, Jesus was taking sailing lessons near Redondo
Beach, and Feather had gone down the street to her little boyfriends house, a
shy red-headed child named Henry Hopkins. Just four weeks before I would
have spent my solitary time wondering if I should ask Bonnie to be my bride.
But she had spent a weekend on the island of Madagascar with a man named
Joguye Cham. He was the son of an African prince born in Senegal while I was
born a poor black orphan. Bonnie swore that the time they spent together was
platonic but that didnt mean much to me. A man who expected to be a king,
who was working to liberate and empower a whole continent, wanted Bonnie by
his side. How could I compete with that? How could she wake up next to me
year after year, getting older while I made sure the toilets at Sojourner Truth
Junior High School were disinfected? How could she be satisfied with a janitor
when a man who wanted to change the world was calling her name?






Long Fall

Ex-boxer, hard drinker, in a business that trades mostly in
cash and favors: McGills an old school P.I. working a city
thats gotten fancy all around him. Fancy or not, he has always
managed to get bykeep a roof over the head of his wife and
kids, and still manage a little fun on the sidemostly because
hes never been above taking a shady job for a quick buck. But
like the city itself, McGill is changing, decided to go from
crooked to slightly bent.

New York City in the twenty-first century is a city full of
secretsand still a place that reacts when you know where to
poke and which string to pull. Thats exactly the kind of thing
Leonid McGill knows how to do. As soon as The Long
Fall begins, with McGill calling in old markers and greasing
NYPD palms to unearth some seemingly harmless
information for a high-paying client, he learns that even in
this cleaned-up city, his commitment to the straight and
narrow is going to be constantly tested.


Im sorry, Mr. um? . . . the skinny receptionist said. Her baby-blue-on-white
nameplate merely read JULIET. She had short blond hair that was longer in the
front than in the back and wore a violet T-shirt that I was sure would expose a
pierced navel if she were to stand up. Behind her was a mostly open-air-
boutique-like office space with ten or twelve brightly colored plastic desks that
were interspersed by big, leafy, green plants. The eastern wall, to my right, was
a series of ceiling-to-floor segmented windowpanes that were not intended to
open. All the secretaries and gofers that worked for Berg, Lewis & Takayama
were young and pretty, regardless of their gender. All except one. There was a
chubby woman who sat in a far corner to the left, under an exit sign. She had
bad skin and a utilitarian fashion sense. She was looking down, working hard. I
immediately identified with her. I imagined sitting in that corner, hating
everyone else in the room. Mr. Brown isnt in? I asked, ignoring Juliets
request for a name. He cant be disturbed. Couldnt you just give him a note
from me? Juliet, who hadnt smiled once, not even when I first walked in,
actually sneered, looking at me as if I were a city trash collector walking right
from my garbage truck into the Whi"><te House and asking for an audience
with the president.




Man in My Basement

Hailed as a masterpiece-the finest work yet by an American
novelist of the first rank-The Man in My Basement tells the story
of Charles Blakey, a young black man who can't find a job, drinks
too much, and, worst of all, stands to lose the beautiful home that
has belonged to his family for generations. But Charles's fortunes
take an odd turn when a stranger offers nearly $50,000 to rent
out Charles's basement-and soon, as the boarder transforms the
basement into a prison cell, Charles finds himself drawn into
circumstances almost unimaginably bizarre and profoundly
unsettling.


Mr. Blakey? the small white man asked. I had answered the door expecting
big Clarance May-hew and his cousin Ricky. The three of us had a standing
date to play cards on Thursday nights. I was surprised even to hear the doorbell
because it was too early for my friends to have made it home from work and
neither one of them would have rung the bell anyway. Wed been friends since
childhood, since my grandparents owned the house. My house is your house, I
always said to Clarance and Ricky. I never locked the door because we lived in
a secluded colored neighborhood way back from the highway. Everybody knows
everybody in my neighborhood, so strangers dont go unnoticed. If somebody
stole something from me, Id have known who it was, what kind of car he drove,
and the numbers on his license plate before he was halfway to Southampton.
Yes, I said to the small, bald-headed white man in the dark-green suit. Im
Blakey. You have a stand-up basement, Mr. Blakey, the white man told me.
Say what?










Six Easy Pieces Easy Rawlins Stories

A bomb is set in the high school where Easy works. A man's
daughter runs off with his employee. A beautiful woman turns
up dead and the man who loved her is wrongly accused. Easy
is the man people turn to in search of justice and retribution.
He even becomes party to a killing that the police might call
murder.


EASY, SHE SAID, and then the phone rang. Or maybe it was the other way
around. Maybe the phone rang, and then Bonnie called my name. Bright sun
shone in the window, and the skies were clear as far as I could see. There was a
beautiful woman of the Caribbean lying next to me. From the living room, early
morning cartoons were squeaking softly while Feather giggled as quietly as she
could. Somewhere below the blue skies, Jesus was hammering away, building a
single mast sail that he intended to navigate toward some deep unknown dream.
It was one of the most perfect mornings of my life. I had a steady job, a nice
house with a garden in the backyard, and a loving family. But I was nowhere
near happy.












Walkin the Dog

Socrates Fortlow, an ex-convict forced to define his own
morality in a lawless world, confronts wrongs that most
people would rather ignore and comes face-to-face with the
most dangerous emotion: hope. It has been nine years since
his release from prison, and he still makes his home in a two-
room shack in a Watts alley. But he has a girlfriend now, a
steady job, and he is even caring for a pet, the two-legged dog
he calls Killer. These responsibilities make finding the right
path even harder - especially when the police make Socrates
their first suspect in every crime within six blocks.-


At first he thought the trill and bleating note was part of a dream. A sweet note
so high it had to be the angel that Aunt Bellandra said the blue god sent, to
save the black mens from fallin out the world complete. He got a real high voice
like a trumpet an he always come at the last second, after a fool done lost his
job, his money, his wife, his self-respect and just about everything else he got.
Just about dead, Bellandra proclaimed, clapping her hands together loudly,
an that's when the angel sing. Back when he was a little boy, Socrates feared
his tall and severe auntie. But he was also enthralled by her stories about the
black race in a white world under a blue god who barely noticed man. When
he almost gone that angel just might make his move, she'd say. And when a
black man hear that honied voice all the terrible loss an' pain fall right away
an' the man look up an' see that he always knew the right road but he never
made the move. Again the high note. This time strained a bit. This time a little
warble in Socrates' sleep.








Wave, The -

Errol is awakened by a strange prank caller claiming to be his
father, who has been dead for several years. Curious, and not
a little unnerved, Errol sneaks into the graveyard where his
father is buried. What he finds will change his life forever.


. . . naked, naked . . . I dont have any clothes . . . so so cold . . . Who is
this? I asked. So cold, the voice said again. Who is this? . . . cold and
naked. Sleeping in the trees. He hung up then. It was the fourth evening in a
week that hed called. The first night he only grunted and moaned. Two days
later, he spoke in single words. Those words were cold and naked. The voice
was definitely masculine but strained and frightened. The next night he used
the same two words, but he doubled up on them from time to time, saying,
naked, cold, cold, naked. He was pleading, but I didnt know what he wanted.
He didnt seem threatening, just desperate and crazed. When I told Nella about
it, she said that I should call the police. Theres no telling what psychotic
notions he might have in his head, the buttercream-colored, dreadlock-wearing
ceramicist warned. He might be working up to coming in there and
slaughtering you and everybody in your whole house. He doesnt even know
my name, I said. He knows your number, the lovely young Jamaican
reasoned. He probably dialed it once, and now its on his redial or something.
Better be safe, Nella said, than dead.






Walter Satterthwait
Wilde West

Though a world-renowned dandy, Oscar Wilde is not too
refined for Colorado. As he travels across America on the
lecture circuit, the famously witty playwright has found much
to love about the western states. Whiskey, saloons, and
friendly conversation with notables like John Doc Holliday
Wilde loves it all. There is even, in every town his entourage
visits, a sensational murder. In the nights after Wilde gives his
talks, a man with a knife goes lurking in the back alleys and
red-light districts of these dusty western towns. Each morning,
the police find the remains of a savagely murdered prostitute.
Booze-addled detective Earl Grigsby is tracking the killer, and
suspects Wilde may be the one with blood on his hands. If he
ever wants to leave America, Wilde will have to use his wit to
unmask the savage killer.


AS HE STALKED IN the darkness past the tiny scurrying forms of the Chinese,
through pockets of their mindless squealing chatter, he inhaled the stench of old
fish and of human excrement, the reek of rotting fruit, the stink of the
unnamable herbs and spices with which these people cooked their wretched food.
But he delighted in them, those smells; almost giddily he sucked them in and
played them along the back of his throat. They provided proof that tonight, once
again, his senses were preternaturally acute. Not that he needed proof; no. He
needed nothing, lacked nothing. On a night such as this he was complete, he
was whole. The boundaries of his interior self had expanded, miraculously, to
meet exactly the boundaries of his physical body; he could feel, all over, his
spirit pulsing just beneath the taut surface of his skin. He moved within the
center of a perfection. No, he needed nothing. Wanted, yes. There was
something, there was one small thing, one small tasty thing, he wanted. And
this, by right, he would soon have. This he would soon take. (Yes.)







Walter van Tilburg Clark
The Track of the Cat

Walter Van Tilburg Clark's classic novel -- a tale of four
men who fear a marauding mountain lion but swear to
conquer it -- is a gripping exploration of the conflict
between good and evil.


Arthur was the first in the Bridges ranch house to hear the far-away crying, like
muted horns a little out of tune. The wind turned and came down over the
shoulder of the Sierra against the house, shaking the log wall beside his bunk
and hurling the snow across the window above him. It let go and slid away
south, wailing under the eaves. The house relaxed and the snow whispered
twice by itself, and than the faint, melancholy blowing came from the north.
Arthur rolled over to lie with his back to the wall, and curled his arm up over
his head, as if to protect himself from an attack he couldnt fight against. The
sound like horns sank away; the gale surged back over it, roaring through the
pines on the mountain, and he didnt wake. In the shallower sleep that followed,
however, the sound became a human voice crying out in despair. It was the
voice of someone he knew and loved, but the cry had come so unexpectedly, and
he had been so deeply moved by the fear in it, that he couldn't remember who.
He stood there listening, trying to close his mind against the continuous thunder
of the wind, in order to hear that thin, plaintive cry if it came again. He had to
know who it was.





Wanda E. Brunstetter
Amish White Christmas Pie

Step into Amish country for this bittersweet holiday romance.
Here you'll meet Will Henderson, a young man tortured by his
past, and Karen Yoder, a young woman looking for answers.
Add a desperate father searching for his son, and you have all
the ingredients for a first-class romance that will inspire and
enthrall.


THREE-YEAR-OLD GIRL ABANDONED IN SMALL TOWN PARK. A
lump formed in Will Hendersons throat as he stared at the headline in the
morning newspaper. Not another abandoned child! The little girl had been left
alone on a picnic table in a small Michigan town. She had no identification
and couldnt tell the officials anything more than her first name and the fact
that her mommy and daddy were gone. While the police searched for the girls
parents, she would be put in a foster home. Wills fingers gripped the newspaper.
How could anyone abandon his own child? Didnt the little girls parents love
her? Didnt they care how their abandonment would affect the child? Didnt
they care about anyone but themselves? Will dropped the paper on the kitchen
table and let his head fall forward into his hands as a rush of memories pulled
him back in time. Back to when he was six years old. Back to a day he wished
he could forget








The Bishop's Daughter

Leona is Bishop Jacob Weaver's daughter and a dedicated
teacher in a one-room Amish schoolhouse. After her father's
tragic accident, Leona's faith wavers. How could God allow
something like this to happen to one of His servants?
Outlander Jimmy Scott comes to Pennsylvania in search of his
real family. When he is hired to paint an Amish schoolhouse,
Jimmy and Leona find themselves irresistibly drawn to each
other. Can anything good come from the love between an
Amish woman and an English man? What secrets will be
revealed and what miracles await God's people in Lancaster
County?


II want you to promise me something. Jim cringed when he thought of all the
times he had reneged on a promise hed made to his wife. What do you want
me to promise, Linda? Would you see that Her voice faltered. II want
to be sure Jimmy continues to go to churchafter Im gone. Will you take him?
A knot formed in the pit of Jims stomach, and he nodded. Im glad we adopted
Jimmy. Hes brought such joy into my life. Linda fingered the edge of the
Amish quilt tucked around her frail form. II know we agreed not to tell him
that hes adopted while hes too young to understand. She paused. But I want
you to tell him about the adoption when hes older. He needs to know the truth.
Itit wouldnt be right to keep it from him. Yeah, I know. And you wont
tell him until hes old enough to handle it? I promise I wont. Jim gritted his
teeth. Should I tell her the details of Jimmys adoption? Would it be wrong to let
Linda die without revealing the truth? He dropped his head forward into his
open palms. It would be cruel to tell her what I did when I know shes dying.
The news in itself might kill her, and it would certainly add to her agony. And
for what purpose? Just to ease my guilty conscience? I did what I did because I
loved her and wanted to give her a child, so I cant let her die with the truth of
my betrayal on her mind.




The Quilter's Daughter

Abby Miller leaves her successful quilt shop and patient fianc
in Ohio to help her newly remarried and now pregnant mother
in Lancaster County. While she's away, Abby's world is
shattered in one fell swoop. How can God make anything good
come out of this tragedy? With shaken faith, Abby is forced to
look for answers away from friends and family. Will she find
them in the ashes of the past, in her love of quilting, or in the
heart of an overlooked Amish man? Can her faith withstand
the flames of tragedy?


A mysterious dark cloud hovered over Abby Millers bed, pressing on her from
all sides. Blinking against stinging tears, she drew in a ragged breath. An
invisible hand pushed against her face, and she flung her covers aside. Ich
kann nimmi schnaufeI can no longer breathe! Meow. Meow. Somewhere in
the distance Abby heard the pathetic cry and knew she must save the poor
kitten. With a panicked sob, she rolled out of bed, but the minute her bare feet
touched the floor she shrank back from the intense heat. A paralyzing fear
wrapped its arms around Abby, threatening to strip away her sanity. She lifted
her hands to her face and rubbed her eyes, forcing them to focus. Where are
you, kitty? Im coming, kitty. Suddenly, she realized that her room was
engulfed in flameslapping at the curtains, snapping, crackling, consuming
everything in sight. As the smoky haze grew thicker and the fire became an
inferno, Abby grabbed the Lone Star quilt off her bed and covered her head.
Coughing, choking, gasping on the acrid smoke, she stumbled and staggered
toward the door. Feierfire! Somebody, please help me save the kitten!







The Struggle

Welcome back to Kentucky, where an Amish couple from
Lancaster County seeks a new future in the land of tomorrow.
When Timothy Fisher decides to move his wife, Hannah, and
daughter Mindy to Christian County, where two of his
brothers now reside, Hannah is very reluctant to go. Will the
new home Timothy builds for them there do anything to lift
her spirits? When a tragic accident occurs, Timothy and
Hannah are inconsolable. Is an abrupt separation the end of
their marriage, or will they rally to seize a God-given second
chance?


Timothy Fisher approached his parents home with a feeling of dread. Good-
byes never came easy, and knowing Mom disapproved of his decision to move to
Kentucky made this good-bye even harder. He stepped onto his parents porch
and turned, trying to memorize the scene before him. He liked the rolling hills
and rich, fertile land here in Pennsylvania. As much as he hated to admit it, he
did have a few misgivings about this move. He would miss working with Dad in
the fields. And just thinking about the aroma of Moms sticky buns made his
mouth water. But it was time for a change, and Christian County, Kentucky,
seemed like the place to go. After all, his twin brother, Titus, and half brother
Samuel were doing quite well in Kentucky. He just hoped things would work out
for him, too. Shrugging his thoughts aside, Timothy opened the back door and
stepped inside. Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee
and eating sticky buns. Guder Mariye, he said with a smile, trying to ignore
his throbbing headache. Mornin. Dad motioned to the coffeepot on the stove.
Help yourself to a cup of coffee. Oh, and dont forget some of these, he added,
pushing the plate of sticky buns to the end of the table. Ill get the coffee for
you. Mom started to rise from her seat, but Timothy shook his head.





Ward Larsen
The Perfect Assassin -

Christine Palmer, a young American doctor sailing solo across the
Atlantic, makes an incredible discovery - a man narrowly clinging
to his life in the frigid waters. But there is much more to this
desperate survivor than meets the eye. David Slaton is a Kidon - a
highly trained, highly precise, and highly dangerous assassin. The
Kidon is both the hunter and the hunted, and he and Christine are
in grave danger. Will they win in this race against time?


The longshoremen scrambled across the pier to finish their task. Lured to work
by an offer of triple-time wages, the few who had shown up were getting anxious.
The cargo had arrived late, and tonight everyone had more important things to
do. Tall floodlights presided over the operation, their sulfuric glow staining the
night sky an obscure yellowish hue, and calm winds were no help in flushing
away the noxious haze that had settled over the city. Mostly it came from the
fires outside town, but now mobs were adding to the conflagration, looting and
burning in the city itself as the last viable corner of the Republic of South Africa
slid to oblivion. At 2,000 tons, and 150 feet along the waterline, Polaris Venture
was not among the largest ships to have visited the Port of Cape Town in the
last week. She was, however, the only vessel berthed there now, and that
singular presence managed to enhance her stature. A converted trawler built by
Sterkoder of Norway, her lines were decidedly square, as if to attest to the solid
vessel she was. Polaris Venture had been in port for eight hours, which was
about as long as anyone had stayed lately, but having taken on her cargo it was
time to go. The loading crane and gangways backed away, and dockhands on
the pier tossed heavy mooring lines into the water. Polaris Ventures crew
scurried around deck to hoist up the lines, then her single screw was engaged
and she began to crawl up the channel.




Warren Adler
The War of the Roses -

Adler's iconic tale takes us from suburban bliss to an incessant
territorial battle. Jonathan and Barbara Rose are at first glance
the perfect couple. Jonathan has a stable law career; Barbara is
an aspiring gourmet entrepreneur with a promising pt
recipe. Their large home holds the rich antique collection that
originally brought them together, as well as the loving familial
bond that intertwines them with their children Eve and Josh.
When Jonathan finds himself suddenly gripped by what is
presumably a heart attack and Barbara confronts the loveless
spell
lingering between them, the sun-soaked sky that was once the
Rose family union drifts into a torrential downpour. Their
mutual hatred becomes ammunition in a domestic shootout
that escalates in the most unpredictable ways while they
helplessly eye their dwindling nuptial flame. In the chaos that
unfolds, Adler allows a moment of much needed
contemplation on the shape of today's matrimonial bonds.


A cold rain whipped across the clapboard facade of the old house, spattering
against the panes. Like everyone else in the bone-damp parlor set up theater
style with folding wooden-slat seats, the auctioneer raised his gloomy eyes
toward the windows, perhaps hoping the gusty rain would shoot out the glass
and abort the abysmal performance. Oliver Rose sat on an aisle seat, a few
rows back from the podium, his long legs stretched out on the battered wooden
floor. The room was less than half full, no more than thirty people. Behind the
auctioneer, strewn around like the aftermath of a bombing, lay the assorted
possessions of the family Barker, the last of whom had lived long enough to
make some of this junk valuable. '... it's a genuine Boston rocker,' the auctioneer
droned, his voice cracked and pleading as he pointed to a much abused
Windsor-style rocking chair. 'Made by Hitchcock, Alford and Company, one of
the finest names in chairs.' He looked lugubriously around the silent room, no
longer expectant. 'Damn,' he snapped. 'It's a genuine antique.' 'Ten bucks,' a
lady's voice crackled. She was sitting in the first row, bundled in a dirty Irish
sweater.





Warren Bourgeois
Persons

Prompted by tragedy -- a loved one's descent into dementia --
Warren Bourgeois explored Western philosophical ideas to
discover what constitutes a "person." The first edition of
"Persons -- What Philosophers Say about you "was the result
of his search. This new second edition focuses on making this
material easily available and accessible to students, and has
been redesigned as an introduction to the philosophy of mind
and its history, concentrating on the central concept of
"person" in contemporary controversies concerning abortion,
euthanasia, genetic engineering, and human rights.









Warren Ellis
Crooked Little Vein -

Burned-out private detective and self-styled shit magnet
Michael McGill needed a wake-up call to jump-start his
dead career. What he got was a virtual cattle prod to the
crotch, in the form of an impossible assignment delivered
directly from the president's heroin-addict chief of staff. It
seems the Constitution of the United States has some
skeletons in its closet: the Founding Fathers doubted that
the document would be able to stave off human nature
indefinitely, so they devised a backup Constitution to deploy
at the first sign of crisis. In the government's eyes, that time
is now, as America is overgrown with perverts who spend
more time surfing the Web for fetish porn than they do
reading a newspaper. They want to use this "Secret
Constitution" to drive the country back to a time when
civility, God, and mom's homemade apple pie were all that
mattered.


I opened my eyes to see the rat taking a piss in my coffee mug. It was a huge
brown bastard; had a body like a turd with legs and beady black eyes full of
secret rat knowledge. Making a smug huffing sound, it threw itself from the
table to the floor, and scuttled back into the hole in the wall where it had spent
the last three months planning new ways to screw me around. Id tried nailing
wood over the gap in the wainscot, but it gnawed through it and spat the wet
pieces into my shoes. After that, I spiked bait with warfarin, but the poison
seemed to somehow cause it to evolve and become a super-rat. I nailed it across
the eyes once with a lucky shot with the butt of my gun, but it got up again and
shat in my telephone. I dragged myself all the way awake, lurching forward in
my office chair. The stink of rat urine steaming and festering in my mug
stabbed me into unwelcome wakefulness, but Id rather have had coffee. I
unstuck my backside from the sweaty leatherette of the chair, fought my way
upright, and padded stiff-legged to the bathroom adjacent to my office. I knew
that one of these days someone was going to burst into the office unannounced to
find a naked private investigator taking a piss with the bathroom door open.





Gun Machine

After a shootout claims the life of his partner in a condemned
tenement building on Pearl Street, Detective John Tallow
unwittingly stumbles across an apartment stacked high with
guns. When examined, each weapon leads to a different,
previously unsolved murder. Someone has been killing people
for twenty years or more and storing the weapons together for
some inexplicable purpose.

Confronted with the sudden emergence of hundreds of
unsolved homicides, Tallow soon discovers that he's walked
into a veritable deal with the devil. An unholy bargain that has
made possible the rise of some of Manhattan's most
prominent captains of industry. A hunter who performs his
deadly acts as a sacrifice to the old gods of Manhattan, who
may, quite simply, be the most prolific murderer in New York
City's history.


ON PLAYING back the 911 recording, itd seem that Mrs. Stegman was more
concerned that the man outside her apartment door was naked than that he had
a big shotgun. A 911 call is the pain signal that takes a relative age to travel
from the dinosaurs tail to its brain. The lumbering thunder lizard of the NYPD
informational mesh doesnt even see the swift, highly evolved mammals of phone
data, wi-fi, and financial-sector communication that dart around the territory of
the 1st Precinct under its feet. It was a good seven minutes before someone
realized that 1st Precinct detectives John Tallow and James Rosato were within
eight hundred yards of naked shotgun man, and called upon them to attend the
scene. Tallow wound down the passenger-side window of their unit and spit
nicotine gum onto Pearl Street. You didnt want to do that, he said to Rosato,
watching without interest as a cycle courier in lime Lycra gave him the finger
and called him a criminal. Youve been bitching about your knees all week,
and you just responded to a call at the last walk-up apartment building on
Pearl.







Warren Fahy
Fragment -

The time is now. The place is the Trident, a long-range
research vessel hired by the reality TV show Sealife. Aboard is
a cast of ambitious young scientists. With a director dying for
drama, tiny Henders Island might be just what the show
needs. Until the first scientist sets foot on Hendersand the
ultimate test of survival begins . . .

For when they reach the islands shores, scientists are utterly
unprepared for what they findcreatures unlike any ever
recorded in natural history. This is not a lost world frozen in
time, an island of mutants, or a lab where science has gone
mad: this is the Earth as it might have looked after evolving
on a separate path for half a billion years.

Soon the scientists will stumble on something more shocking
than anything humanity has ever encountered: because
among the terrors of Henders Island, one life form defies any
scientific theoryand must be saved at any cost.


When the American Association for the Advancement of Science met in
Anaheim, California, in 1999 to discuss an urgent report on the impact of alien
species, the scientists gathered werent discussing species from another planet
their report referred to species imported to the United States from other parts of
this planet. Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel and graduate students
Lori Lach, Doug Morrison, and Rodolfo Zuniga estimated the cost to the United
States economy from alien species at approximately $123 billion annually
roughly the gross national product of Thailand. By 2005, a report called the
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment revealed that biological invasions had
reached epidemic proportions. At least 170 alien species inhabited the Great
Lakes, a single species of American jellyfish had wiped out twenty-six species of
commercial fish in the Black Sea, and the Baltic Sea now hosted over a hundred
alien invaders.








Warren Hammond
Ex-Kop

In this hardboiled science fiction thriller, Juno, having been
booted off the police force, is barely getting by as a low-level
bagman and photographer for the scandal rags. But it gets worse:
his wife is in critical condition at the hospital and Juno doesnt
have the money to pay her bills. Desperate for cash, Juno agrees
to help his ex-partner, Maggie Orzo, solve a difficult case. A
young girl sits on death row, accused of brutally murdering her
own parents. Shes confessed to the murders, but Maggie isnt
buying it, so she sends Juno out to get some answers.

Working with Maggie, Juno encounters her new partner, Ian. As
dirty as they come, Ian is eager to rise in the police force no
matter what the cost. Somehow Ian, a vicious serial killer, and
the girl on death row are all connected. It is up to Juno and
Maggie to find out how before more people die.


I RELISHED the brandy as it burned down my throat. The knot in my stomach
was acting especially hateful. I sucked down a few more gulps to dull the
cramping in my gut. I didn't feel sufficiently soothed, yet I capped and pocketed
the flask. My knees were hurting so I readjusted, trying to find a comfortable
position in the cramped closet. I bumped the door, knocking it slightly out of
position. I pulled it back in, just short of closed, perfectly slivered for my camera.
I reached for my flask, but stopped when I heard footsteps in the hall. My heart
began to race despite the alcohol's tranquilizing effect. I resisted the urge to hold
my breath; I just kept breathingnice and natural. I heard a key in the door. I
pushed my eye up to the crack and saw the two of them enter. Mildew tickled
my nose, and I had to hold my breath to keep from sneezing. Clothes fell to the
floorfirst a halter top, then a mini, and finally panties. She took a seat on the
bed, wearing nothing but a strained smile. She moved her hands up her stomach,
across her bare breasts, and up into her hair. She looked nervous; her movements
came off stilted. What was supposed to look erotic wound up looking clumsy
and silly. Her nervousness started to infect me. I was afraid that I'd misjudged
her, that she wasn't ready for this. My pits prickled with sweat.




KOP -

Juno is a dirty cop with a difficult past and an uncertain
future. When his family and thousands of others immigrated
to the colony world of Lagarto, they were promised a bright
future on a planet with a booming economy. But before the
colonists arrived, everything changed. An opportunistic
Earth-based company developed a way to produce a cheaper
version of Lagarto's main export, thus effectively paupering
the planet and all its inhabitants.

Growing up on post-boom Lagarto, Juno is but one of the
many who live in despair. Once he was a young cop in the
police department of the capital city of Koba. That was before
he started taking bribes from Koba's powerful organized
crime syndicate. Yet despite his past sins, some small part of
him has not given up hope. So he risks his life, his marriage,
and his job to expose a cabal that would enslave the planet for
its own profit.


THE place was almost empty. There were two boozers splitting a bottle at the
far end of the bar and a gray-haired woman with her head on a table, out cold
with an empty glass in her hand. The windows were closed up tight. The aircon
was blowing full. Bensaid and I were standing face to face, the bar standing
between us. Bensaid was the owner of this rat hole. He ripped off his patrons by
cutting his brandy with water. He kept a bottle capper in the back room that
hed use to seal the bottles back up so you couldnt tell. You better not be
holding out on me, I said as I pocketed the thin wad of bills, too thin. You
dont trust me? You know I wouldnt short you. Bensaid tried to look offended.
Bullshit. Where is the rest of my money? Son of a bitch! He slammed his
drink glass on the bar, splashing brandy up onto his bushy arm. Im sick of
your bitchin, comin in here every month cusin me of this shit. Its all there.
Count the fuckin money yourself you dont believe me! The pair at the far end
of the bar looked our way. Gray-hair didnt flinch.








Warren Williams
Fraidy Hole

County Sheriff Lester P. Morrison wasnt buying the popular
theory that a missing teenage girl was just another
runaway. When his investigation revealed Melissa Parker
was last seen in front of a roadside bar in the company of
drunken men, the Sheriffs suspicions soared to new heights.

In fact, Melissa couldnt run anywhere. Shed been assaulted,
locked in a tornado sheltera fraidy holewith no food, no
water, and left to die. Her struggles to escape took on a new
urgency as Melissa realized she was not alone in that
terrifying darkness. The survival clock was ticking.


Faint images, like an out of focus slide show, flickered across her minds eye; a
bar, drunken men, a night sky, wet grass, then fallingfalling. Suddenly, as if
the projector lamp had popped, the mental screen went dark, the dream giving
way to emerging consciousness. The girl lay in a fetal position, legs curled,
knees drawn high, her elbows and arms tight against her chest. She stirred,
shivered, and reached out for a blanket only to feel a sharp pain knife through
her shoulder and ribs. There was no blanket, no sheet, only small, strange
objects that felt light and crinkly, objects completely foreign to her normally safe
and warm bed at home. Her brain began to poll the other senses, to make some
sense of time and place. One eyelid, the left, twitched and opened, but the eye
saw nothing, no light, not even a shimmer, no shapes, no shadows, only
blackness. The girl sensed that there was something wrong with the right eye
and she slowly brought her hand up to touch it, to explore the problem, then
winced at the touch of swollen flesh. There was no sound, the silence absolute,
except for a faint and rhythmic thumping. It took a moment to realize she was
hearing the beat of her own heart.




Wayne Barlowe
God's Demon

The powerful Lord Sargatanas, Brigadier-general in Beelzebubs
host, is restless. For millennia, Sargatanas has ruled dutifully
over an infernal metropolis, but he has never forgotten what he
lost in the fall. He is sickened by what he has done and what he
has become. Now, with a small eventa confrontation with a
damned soulhe makes a decision that will reverberate through
every being in Hell. Sargatanas decides to attempt the
impossible, to rebel, to win his way Home and bring with
him anyone who chooses to follow...be they demon or soul.

He will stake everything on fighting all the abominable forces of
Hell arrayed against him, when the prize is nothing less than
redemption.


Ash fell from a sky of umber darkness, softening the jagged chaos of the world
below his open window. It obscured his vision so that he could barely discern the
distant, broken towers he knew to be there. Only the star Algol, ever burning,
ever watchful, managed to pierce the dark clouds and tint his room with a
subtle ruddy glow. Eligor sat motionless, as he could for hours, watching the
flakes drift down, and thought it fitting that they should come so heavily. He
watched the tiny laborers far below, as they tirelessly rebuilt the shattered city
of Adamantinarx. The ash fell peacefully; no burning wind played upon its
slow descent and so Eligor could write without having to clear his desk every
few minutes.











Wayne Grady
Breakfast at the Exit Cafe

Breakfast at the Exit Caf begins as a personal story-told in alternating
voices by two travelers and writers-of a journey by car from British
Columbia around the rim of the United States. It soon becomes a
journey of exploration. For Grady, whose forebears were slaves who
came to Canada in the 1880s; this is a journey through fear, racism, and
violence into his own family roots. For Simonds, who grew up a lonely
Canadian in the American School of Campinas, Brazil, it is a journey
into the heart of the ex-pat Promised Land, the nation of the American
Dream. As Grady and Simonds travel back through American history,
they encounter the splendors of the Mojave Desert, the Grand Canyon,
the Mississippi River, and the bayous of Louisiana and the Outer Banks,
and they experience the impact of geography on culture and of culture
on the landscape. Although they are observing America from the
outside, they also strangely feel at home. The Americans they meet
illuminate a country dissolving in the grip of the Bush administration's
final years and inspire them to reassess their-and our-assumptions about that powerful and
complex country.(


WE didnt set out to write a book. We were in Vancouver, intending to drive
back to Ontario in our green Toyota Echo, and we decided to take the long way
home, down along the Pacific coast, across the southern states, then up the
Atlantic seaboard. It was to be a holiday, an excursion. It was just before
Christmas 2006, and we were keen to avoid driving across the Prairies in winter.
We were naive. We were curious. We wanted to see the mountains of
Washington and the forests of Oregon, the deserts of California and Arizona
and New Mexico, the canyonlands of Utah, the arid farmlands of Texas, the
troubled cities of Mississippi and Alabama, the exhausted plantations of
Georgia and Virginia, the great, wind-beaten banks of the Carolinas. We
thought this would be relaxing, a break from our writing lives. We should have
known better. Put two writers together in a car and keep them there for a couple
of months, and its more than likely youll get a book. But what kind of book
would it be? Both of us grew up, for the most part, in southern Ontario, close to
the American border, although neither of us had travelled much in the United
States. What we knew of America had come from America, not from our own
experience of that country. We knew what Americans looked like and sounded
like; we knew how they acted and sang and wrote. What we didnt know was
what they were like at home.




Wayne Hixon
Vampires in Devil Town -

One evening Rachel Stokes is yanked from her bed and
dragged into a black van by two young abductors. They refer
to her as a chosen sacrifice and her mind races, wondering
where they might be taking her. She thinks she knows. There's
a house located in a hollow of rural Lynchville. It's called the
Sad House, a place of legend. Rumors say it appears and
disappears. Even worse than the house are the people who live
in it. They could be vampires. They could just be ghosts with
teeth. They've come after Rachel before and she narrowly
escaped. And now they've come back to finish what they
started in this horrifying and suspenseful novel by first time
author Wayne Hixon.


Rachel Stokes bed warmed her against the cool October air blowing in through
the half-open window to her left. The air brought with it the smell of dead leaves
and the grim promise of frost. Perfect sleeping weather, she thought. But why
wasnt she asleep? The house was quiet. Her parents had gone to bed hours ago.
The whole neighborhood had to be asleep. The only sounds coming through her
window were the occasional drearily slow hissing of a passing car and the
distant chirp of crickets. Maybe she just had a lot on her mind. This was the
last week she would spend in this house. Jacob had proposed to her last month
and they both felt like they should live together for at least a year before
marrying. Although, at this point, marriage seemed inevitable. She and Jacob
were perfectly compatible and they had been through just about everything two
people could go through save for those sometimes tedious and boring household
endeavors all couples are subjected to. It was a big jump, a huge change in her
lifestyle, and she didnt really know if she was ready for it. She was only
nineteen years old and there was still, probably always would be, a part of her
that wondered if she was just too young. But she would have plenty of time to
think about that after moving out. Thats what the year was for. Right now she
just wanted to lie in her bed, a bed she increasingly thought of as her childhood
bed, and feel the cool wind blow in through the window and listen to the
comforting sounds of quieted nightlife around her.

Wayne Johnston
A World Elsewhere

This sweeping tale immerses us in the life of St. John's,
Princeton University, and North Carolina at the close of the
nineteenth century. Young Landish Druken is a formidable
figure as he sets off from Newfoundland for the famed
American university. Quick-witted, broader than most
doorways, he is the only son of a notorious sealer who expects
Landish to continue his legacy. But at Princeton, Landish is
befriended, surprisingly, by "Van" Vanderluyden, son of the
wealthiest man in America, and caught up in a life he had
never imagined.
Expelled in disgrace, he returns to St. John's where, in an odd
twist of fate, he adopts an infant boy. Outcast, fighting off
destitution, he raises Deacon alone with no knowledge or
tools other than trust, humor and compassion. But when
poverty overwhelms them, they make the long journey to
North Carolina to seek help from Landish's one-time friend.
There, living in the greatest American castle of the Gilded Age,
they are swiftly pulled into a web of lies, deceit, and murder
that threatens the bond between them.


LANDISH DRUKEN LIVED in the two-room attic of a house near the end of
Dark Marsh Road that was in no way remindful of any other place hed ever
lived. A mile away, in a twelve-room house, his father lived alone. Under the
terms of what Landish called the Sartorial Charter, his father had let him keep
his clothes but had otherwise disowned him. When he was too hungry and sober
to sleep, he walked the edge of the marsh in the dark, smoking the last of his
cigars, following the road to where it narrowed to a path that led into the woods.
He had gone to Princeton, where father-made men spent father-made fortunes.
Now they were back home, learning the modern form of alchemy, the
transmutation of sums of money into greater sums of money. Hed told them that
this was, at best, all they would ever accomplish. Whereas, hed said, I will
write a book that will put in their places everyone who has ever lived. It may
take me as long as a month, but I will not falter. It was five years since hed
made the boast and hed yet to write a word that he could resist the urge to burn.
Hed had but one real friend at Princeton, Padgett Vanderluyden, who went by
Van. Theyd met while Landish was sitting on one of the benches that ran along
both sides of the path that led from the centre of the quad to the steps of Nassau
Hall, smoking a cigar under a gauntlet of oak trees from which a steady shower
of leaves fell despite the lack of wind. Van had sat down beside him.


The Navigator of New York -

The Navigator of New York is set against the background
of the tumultuous rivalry between Lieutenant Peary and Dr.
Cook to get to the North Pole at the beginning of the 20th
century. It is also the story of a young mans quest for his
origins, from St. Johns, Newfoundland, to the bustling streets
of New York, and the remotest regions of the Arctic.

Devlin Steads father, an Arctic explorer, stops returning home
at the end of his voyages and announces he is moving to New
York, as New York is to explorers what Paris is to artists;
eventually he is declared missing from an expedition. His
mother meets a sudden death by drowning shortly after.
Young Devlin, who barely remembers either of them, lives
contently in the care of his affectionate aunt and indifferent
uncle, until taunts from a bullying fellow schoolboy reveal dark
truths underlying the bare facts he knows about his family. A
rhyme circulated around St. Johns further isolates Devlin,
always seen as an odd child who had inherited his parents
madness and would likely meet a similar fate.


IN 1881, AUNT DAPHNE SAID, NOT LONG AFTER MY FIRST birthday,
my father told the family that he had signed on with the Hopedale Mission,
which was run by Moravians to improve the lives of Eskimos in Labrador. His
plan, for the next six months, was to travel the coast of Labrador as an outport
doctor. He said that no matter what, he would always be an Anglican. But it
was his becoming a fool, not a Moravian, that most concerned his family. In
what little time they had before he was due to leave, they, my mother and the
Steads, including Edward, tried to talk him out of it. They could not counter his
reasons for going, for he gave none. He would not counter the reasons they gave
for why he should stay, instead meeting their every argument with silence. It
would be disgraceful, Mother Stead told him; him off most of the time like the
men who worked the boats, except that they at least sent home for the upkeep of
their families what little money they didnt spend on booze. This was not how a
man born into a family of standing, and married into one, should conduct
himself. Sometimes, on the invitation of Mother Stead, a minister would come by
and join them in dressing down my father. He endured it all in silence for a
while, then excused himself and went upstairs to his study. It was as though he
was already gone, already remote from us.




Wayne Josephson
Emma and the Vampires -

In this hilarious retelling of Jane Austen's "Emma,"
screenwriter Wayne Josephson casts Mr. Knightley as one of
the most handsome and noble of the gentlemen village
vampires. Blithely unaware of their presence, Emma, who
imagines she has a special gift for matchmaking, attempts to
arrange the affairs of her social circle with delightfully
disastrous results. But when her dear friend Harriet Smith
declares her love for Mr. Knightley, Emma realizes she's the
one who wants to stay up all night with him. Fortunately, Mr.
Knightley has been hiding a secret deep within his unbeating
heart-his (literal) undying love for her... A brilliant mash-up of
Jane Austen and the undead.(









Wayne Mee
Ever Onward -

Sergeant 'Deadly Dave' Henderson is one very
unstable soldier. Has been for years now. Ever since,
he got back from 'over there'. When finally served his
divorce papers, good old 'Deadly Dave' seeks revenge
on his wife by shooting her. He does this, not as
might be expected, in their home or in the bed of his
wife's lover, but at her place of work --- a top-secret
chemical warfare lab in the California desert.
As the bullets from Dave's M-16 spill blood and
shatter bone, they shatter too the vials of a highly
toxic secret nerve gas --- a gas cunningly designed to
kill only humans, chimpanzees and the greater apes.
So deadly is this 'man-made plague', that once
released into the atmosphere and carried by the
winds, eighty percent of the world's population is
dead within a week.
'Ever Onward' is the story of the twenty percent of
humans who somehow survive the global plague---
at least for a while.


Sergeant David Henderson felt like shit. Gulping a ragged breath, he leaned
against the wall of the underground complex and squinted up at the bright
lights, the M-16 clutched tightly to his chest. Hed had one bitch of a night and
the day didnt look to be any better. To add insult to injury, the booze was
wearing off and the fucking pills hed taken hadnt kicked in yet! The M-16
trembled in his hands. Caressing it lovingly, he thought of his soon to be his EX
wife, thought how hed love to shove the barrel down her big mouth and empty
the clip. THAT would shut her the fuck up once and for all! Always nagging
him about his drinking, his gambling and his other women. That last part
struck him as funny. Booze and cards thered been aplenty; but no other women.
As far as Sergeant David Henderson was concerned, one nagging female was
one fucking too many!









Wayne Simmons
Flu -

There's a nasty flu going round. An epidemic, they call it. The
posters say to cover your mouth when you sneeze, and throw
away the tissue.

But such simple measures won't help.

Because when you catch this flu, armed police come and lock
you in your house to die alone.

When you catch this flu, it kills you in days.

And two hours after it's killed you, your eyelids snap open
again...


There was a woman screaming in his face. She was one of many crowding
around him. But he couldn't hear her. With the headgear he was wearing,
Sergeant George Kelly couldn't hear what any of them were saying. Just muffled
words. Muted. Censored. Like sounds you would hear under water. But he
could see her talking, see her screaming. And he knew she was swearing. It
was something about the way her lips were moving. Shaping the words as if they
were heavy. Teeth showing. Almost growling rather than speaking. Or maybe
laughing. Because, with every fuck-shaped word she mouthed, there was at least
the hint of a smile. It didn't matter, of course. None of their words mattered to
George when all he could hear was the rhythmic sound of his own breathing. A
mechanical mish-mash of pumps and compression as sanitised air flowed,
noisily, through rubber tubing into his facemask and lungs. Steady and
dependable. Pure and uninfected.








Wayne V. Miller
The Bog Monster of Booker Creek -

What do a college town, a middle-school biology project,
Sasquatch, psychics, missing persons, alien abduction, and a
billion year-old human have in common? Meet John Densch. In
an extended letter to his son ten years in the future, John
Densch chronicles how in the midst of a media circus a middle-
school science project became a national joke.


Just to be clear -- the bog monster was always me, never anything or anyone else.
I wish I could have explained this to you in a way that made sense to you. I'm
starting a record of what happened, but I won't share it with you until you're
older, maybe when you're twenty-five, old enough to chuckle at your off-kilter
old man but young enough to remember how we survived the frenzy together.
You were tough, tougher than I could have imagined, but I wish I could have
done more to protect you. Maybe you'll understand when you read this. I am
going to lay everything out from the beginning, in February 2005. You were an
eighth grader at Phillips Middle School, a tall, lanky, skinny- armed boy, with
pale skin and an assortment of blackheads and zits, a sometimes goofy smile
that I saw you cultivate in front of the mirror -- which fit perfectly with the
oversized cat-in-the-hat headwear you wore sometimes to parties -- and yet there
was a penchant for the pained look of the only child. Your mother and I were
worried about you because you seemed to have bottled up, withdrawn from the
kids you had played with just a few years before. Nothing seemed to interest
you much; you watched too much TV, played too many video games, and lay
around the house like an unacknowledged secret. Then the assignment came.




Wayson Choy
The Jade Peony -

Chinatown, Vancouver, in the late 1930s and '40s provides the
backdrop for this poignant first novel, told through the vivid
reminiscences of the three younger children of an immigrant Chinese
family. The siblings grapple with their individual identities in a
changing world, wresting autonomy from the strictures of history,
family, and poverty. Sister Jook-Liang dreams of becoming Shirley
Temple and escaping the rigid, old ways of China. Adopted Second
Brother Jung-Sum, struggling with his sexuality and the trauma of his
childhood in China, finds his way through boxing. Third Brother Sekky,
who never feels comfortable with the multitude of Chinese dialects
swirling around him, becomes obsessed with war games, and learns a
devastating lesson about what war really means when his 17-year-old
babysitter dates a Japanese man.
Mingling with life in Canada and the horror of war are the magic, ghosts,
and family secrets of Poh-Poh, or Grandmother, who is the heart and pillar of the family. Side by
side, her three grandchildren survive hardships and heartbreaks with grit and humor. Like the
jade peony of the title, Choy's storytelling is at once delicate, powerful, and lovely.


THE OLD MAN FIRST VISITED our house when I was five, in 1933. At that
time, I had only two brothers to worry about. Kiam and Jung were then ten and
seven years old. Sekky was not yet born, though he was on his way.
Grandmother, or Poh-Poh, was going regularly to our family Tong Association
Temple on Pender Street to pray for a boy. Decades later, our neighbour Mrs.
Lim said that I kept insisting on another girl to balance things, but Stepmother
told me that these things were in the hands of the gods. Stepmother was a young
woman when she came to Canada, barely twenty and a dozen years younger
than Father. She came with no education, with a village dialect as poor as she
was. Girls were often left to fend for themselves in the streets, so she was lucky
to have any family interested in her fate. Though my face was round like
Fathers, I had her eyes and delicate mouth, her high forehead but not her high
cheekbones. This slim woman, with her fine features and genteel posture, was a
seven-year-old girl in war-torn China when bandits killed most of her family.
Found hiding between two trunks of clothes, she was taken to a Mission House,
then taken away again, reclaimed by the village clan, and eventually sold into
Fathers Canton merchant family. For years they fed her, taught her house
duties, and finally put her on a steamship to Canada. She was brought over to
help take care of Poh-Poh and to keep Father appropriate wifely company;




Wen Spencer
A Brother's Price

In a world where males are rarely born, they've become a
commodity--traded and sold like property. Jerin Whistler has
come of age for marriage and his handsome features have come to
the attention of the royal princesses. But such attentions can be
dangerous--especially as Jerin uncovers the dark mysteries, the
royal family is hiding.


There were a few advantages to being a boy in a society dominated by women.
One. Jerin Whistler thought, was that you could throttle your older sister, and
everyone would say, She was one of twenty-eight girlsa middle sisterand a
troublemaker too, and hehe's a boy, and that would be the end of it.
Certainly if a sister deserved to be strangled, it was Corelle. She was idly
flipping through a magazine showing the latest in men's fashions while he tried
to stuff a thirty-pound goose, comfort a youngest sister with a boo-boo knee, and
feed their baby brother. Since their mothers and elder sisters had left the middle
sisters in charge of the farm, Corelle strutted about, with her six-guns tied low
and the brim of her Stetson pulled down so far it was amazing she could see.
Worse, she started to criticize everything he did, with an eye toward his coming
of agewhen he would be sold into a marriage of his sisters' choosing. She had
previously complained that he chapped his hands in hot wash water, that trying
to read at night would give him a squint, and that he should add scents to his
bathwater. This morning it was his clothes.







Elfhome

Pittsburgh, PA has been magically transported to a world of
elves and magic in order to stave off a monstrous invasion of
Earth. Now Tinker, once a downtrodden waif from that city,
but now a full-blooded elf ruler, must root out and destroy an
evil plot that involves the kidnapping and breeding of elf
children.

Tinker uncovers ancient secrets and a web of betrayal as she
searches for the lost elflings. Meanwhile, the orc-like oni
gangster kidnappers will stop at nothing to win, so neither can
she. At five foot nothing, Tinkers greatest weapon has always
been her intelligence. Politics, she discovers, is a battle of wits,
and Tinker comes heavily armed.


Life was so much simpler when Tinker didnt have a horde of heavily armed
elves following her everywhere; all ready to kill anyone that triggered their
paranoia. It didnt help that she was still recovering from hairline fractures to
her right ulna and radius. Her shiny-new status as a domana-caste elf princess
meant she was expected to cast spells triggered by complex finger positions and
vocal commands. So, yes, breaking her arm was a very bad thing. It didnt
mean she was helpless. With an I.Q. over one-eighty and only five foot tall, she
always considered her wits to be her greatest weapon. Her Hand (the military
unit of five sekasha-caste bodyguards, not the appendage attached to her arm)
had spent the week acting like there were evil ninjas hiding in every shadow.
With her Hand in protective overdrive, the last thing Tinker needed was a
pushy stranger trying to talk to her. Not that Chloe Polanski technically was a
stranger; the woman was one of Pittsburghs most popular television reporters.
Elves, though, dont watch TV. The tall sekasha towered between Tinker and
Chloe like trees. Dangerous trees with magically sharp wooden swords that
could cut through solid steel. Good morning, Vicereine. Chloe greeted Tinker
from the other side of the forest of warriors. Youre lookingwell protected.
How are you today?




Endless Blue

The appearance of the warp drive from the long lost Fenrir
spaceship triggers an epic quest for Captain Mikhail Volkov;
According to the drive's computers, Fenrir had been lost to
hypothetical nowhere of subspace, but with the drive's housing
covered with coral and sea life, obviously Fenrir has
gone somewhere. Faced with genocide at the hands of the alien
Nefrim, humans need a miracle to survive. On the chance, that
Fenrir's mysterious location holds such a miracle, Mikhail jumps
into the unknown and crashes into the endless blue of the
Sargasso Sea.
Every ship that misjumped from any race that discovered travel
through subspace has crashed into its waters, creating a
graveyard of rusting spaceships. On the Sargasso's great oceans,
humans live alongside aliens in uneasy peace.
His ship damaged, his younger foster brother lost, and his sanity
rattled, Mikhail discovers a secret that might save the human
racebut only if he can repair his ship and return home.


At first Captain Mikhail Ivanovich Volkov couldn't comprehend what he was
looking at in the cavernous drydock of Plymouth Space Station. From the
observation window where Mikhail stood, the thing tethered in the zero gravity
looked like a rough pebble, or, considering the vastness of the dry dock, a
boulder. The rock's bottom was bulbous and rough, as if it had been scooped out
of bedrock, but halfway up the edges smoothed to gently curved walls. Only
when he forced himself to look at the upper section by itself, did he realize what
the boulder truly was: a ship's warp drive imbedded in rock. Judging by the
housing protruding out of twenty meters of stone, the drive was from a very large
ship, most likely a carrier. Its manifolds were buried somewhere in the stone
which didn't make sense. An impact hard enough bury the drive that far into
rock should have shattered it. The walls of the housing, however, seemed intact,
although coated with a white material. One thing was surethe misshapen
rock was why his ship, the Svoboda, had been yanked off the front lines and
ordered by the United Colonies to jump halfway across human space. A New
Washington lieutenant, sergeant, and two Reds had escorted him through
Plymouth Station security.






Tinker

Inventor, girl genius Tinker lives in a near-future Pittsburgh
which now exists mostly in the land of the elves. She runs her
salvage business, pays her taxes, and tries to keep the local
ambient level of magic down with gadgets of her own design.
When a pack of wargs chase an Elven noble into her scrap
yard, life as she knows it takes a serious detour. Tinker finds
herself taking on the Elven court, the NSA, the Elven
Interdimensional Agency, technology smugglers and a
college-minded Xenobiologist as she tries to stay focused on
what's really important her first date. Armed with an
intelligence the size of a planet, steel-toed boots, and a
junkyard dog attitude, Tinker is ready to kick butt to get her
first kiss.


The wargs chased the elf over Pittsburgh Scrap and Salvage's tall chain-link
fence shortly after the hyperphase gate powered down. Tinker had been high up
in the crane tower, shuffling cars around the dark sprawling maze of her scrap
yard, trying to make room for the influx of wrecks Shutdown Day always
brought in. Her cousin, Oilcan, was out with the flatbed wrecker, clearing their
third call of the night, and it wasn't Shutdown proper yet. Normally, clearing
space was an interesting puzzle game, played on a gigantic scale. Move this
stripped car to the crusher. Consolidate two piles of engine blocks. Lightly place
a new acquisition onto the tower of to-be-stripped vehicles. She had waited until
too late, though, tinkering in her workshop with her newest invention. Shuffling
the scrap around at night was proving nearly impossible. Starting with the
crane's usual clumsy handlingits ancient fishing pole design and manual
controls often translated the lightest tap into a several-foot movement of the
large electromagnet strung off the boomshe also had to factor in the distorted
shadows thrown by the crane's twin floodlights, the deep pools of darkness, and
the urge to rush, since Shutdown was quickly approaching.






Wolf Who Rules -

In this sequel, Wolf Who Rules, the elven noble whose
destiny is intertwined with Tinker, finds himself besieged
from all sides. Viceroy and head of the Wind Clan, he had
been able to guarantee the safety of everyone in his realm,
but faced with an oni invasion, he has had to call in royal
troops and relinquish his monopoly of Pittsburgh, which is
now entirely stranded on Elfhome. He now struggles to keep
the peace between the humans, the newly arrived Stone Clan,
the royal forces, a set of oni dragons, the half-oni children
who see themselves as human, and the tengu trying to
escape their oni enslavement.

Meanwhile, Tinker strives to solve the mystery of a growing
discontinuity in Turtle Creek. She's plagued with
inexplicable nightmares that may hold the keys to
Pittsburgh's future. The only clue from the Queen's oracle to
help Tinker is a note with five English words on it: Follow
the Yellow Brick Road. Oni, and dragons and tengu? Oh my!


Elves may live forever, but their memories did not. Every elfin child is taught
that any special memory has to be polished bright and carefully stored away at
the end of a day, else it will slip away and soon be forgotten. Wolf Who Rules
Wind, Viceroy of the Westernlands and the human city of Pittsburgh, thought
about this as he settled before the altar of Nheoya, god of longevity. It was one
more thing he would have to teach his new domi, Tinker. While clever beyond
measure, she had spent her childhood as a human. He had only transformed
her genetically into an elf; she lacked the hundred years of experience that all
other adult elves lived through. Wolf lit the candle of memory, clapped to call
the god's attention to him and bestowed his gift of silver on the altar. Normally
he would wait to reach perfect calmness before starting the ceremony, but he
didn't have time. He'd spent most of the last two days rescuing his domi,
fighting her oni captors and discovering how and why they had kidnapped her
away. In truth, he should be focusing on his many responsibilities, but the fact
that his domi had been restored to him on the eve of Memory made him feel as
it was important to observe the ritual.





Wendell Berry
Nathan Coulter

Nathan Coulter begins Wendell Berry's sequence of novels
about the citizens of Port William, Kentucky- a setting that is
taking its place alongside Yoknapatawpha County,
Mississippi, and Winesburg, Ohio, as one of our most
distinctive and recognizable literary locales.


Dark. The light went out the door when she pulled it to. And then everything
came in close around me, the way it was in the daylight, only all close. Because
in the dark I could remember and not see. The sun was first, going over the hill
behind our barn. Then the river was covered with the shadows of the hills. Then
the hills went behind their shadows, and just the house and the barn and the
other buildings were left, standing black against the sky where it was still white
in the west. After supper it was only the inside of the house, lighted where we
moved from the kitchen to the living room and upstairs to bed. Until the last of
the light went out the door; and it was all there in the room, close enough to
touch if I didnt reach out my hand. The dark broke them loose and let them in.
The memory was closer than the sight of them. What was left outside was the
way it had been before anybody had come there to see anything. I lay awake
listening to the wind blow. It was the beginning of the dream, I knew, even if I
was still awake listening. The wind came hard against the back of the house
and rattled the weatherboarding and whooped around the corners; and went on
through the woods on the hillside, bending the trees and cracking the limbs
together; and on with a lonely, hollow sound into the river bottoms; and on over
the country, over the farms and roads and towns and cities. It seemed that I
could hear the sounds the wind made in all the places it was, all at the same
time.

Wendy Burden
Dead End Gene Pool -

For generations the Burdens were one of the wealthiest
families in New York, thanks to the inherited fortune of
Cornelius "The Commodore" Vanderbilt. By 1955, the year of
Wendy's birth, the Burden's had become a clan of overfunded,
quirky and brainy, steadfastly chauvinistic, and ultimately
doomed bluebloods on the verge of financial and moral
decline-and were rarely seen not holding a drink. In Dead
End Gene Pool, Wendy invites readers to meet her tragically
flawed family, including an uncle with a fondness for Hitler, a
grandfather who believes you can never have enough
household staff, and a remarkably flatulent grandmother.
At the heart of the story is Wendy's glamorous and aloof
mother who, after her husband's suicide, travels the world in
search of the perfect sea and ski tan, leaving her three
children in the care of a chain- smoking Scottish nanny, Fifth
Avenue grandparents, and an assorted cast of long-suffering
household servants (who Wendy and her brothers love to
terrorize). Rife with humor, heartbreak, family intrigue, and
booze, Dead End Gene Pool offers a glimpse into the fascinating world of old money and gives
truth to an old maxim: The rich are different.


YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASEwhoops! The head stewardess, a beehived
blonde, dropped her microphone. While she grappled for it on the floor of the
DC-4s galley, the resultant screech and the disclosure of her pneumatic bust
ensured all eyes were directed her way. Ladies and Gentlemen, she began
again, we have a little problem. In a short while, the captain will ask all of
you to . . . ah . . . to assume the crash position as illustrated in the safety
information located in the seat pocket in front of youexcuse me . . . ah please,
your attention againPLEASE! The words crash position had thrown a switch.
People began twisting in their seats, trying to figure out why such a measure was
deemed necessary when the plane had not changed altitude for the last half
hour and was, in fact, chugging nicely along. Huh? became Whats
happening? which then turned to Just what the HELL is going on? Finally the
stewardess lost it and yelled, QUIET! which was the cue for the captain to
assume control from the flight deck. Now, ladies and gents, he began, theres
nothing for yall to get worked up about. This is a standard safety procedure we
instigate whenever there is the little ol bittiest chance of an incident acurrin.
His voice was creamy, with just the right amount of manly authority. But no one
was buying that sky commander crap if the plane was going down.


Wendy Corsi Staub
Awakening

Calla thought that her boyfriend breaking up with her in a
text message was the worst thing that could ever happen to
her. But just two weeks later, her mother died in a freak
accident, and life, as she knew it was completely over. With
her father heading to California for a new job, they decide
that Calla should spend a few weeks with the grandmother
she barely knows while he gets them set up.
To Calla's shock, her mother's hometown of Lily Dale is a
town full of psychics--including her grandmother. Suddenly,
the fact that her mother never talked about her past takes on
more mysterious overtones. The longer she stays in town, the
stranger things become, as Calla starts to experience unusual
and unsettling events that lead her to wonder whether she
has inherited her grandmother's unique gift. Is it this gift that
is making her suspect that her mother's death was more than
an accident, or is it just an overactive imagination? Staying in
Lily Dale is the only way to uncover the truth. But will Calla
be able to deal with what she learns about her mother's past
and her own future?


Breathe, Stephanie. And focus on the lilacs, like they taught you in class.
Come on . . . Theyre . . . not . . . freaking . . . lilacs . . . Jeff, Stephanie pants
to her husband, straining forward with the exertion. Theyre . . . lilies. Calla
lilies, to be precise, but shes in too much pain to utter an extra word. And if she
had enough energy to get one more out, it sure wouldnt be calla. No, it
wouldnt be pretty. Are you sure? Jeff is asking above her. If she had the
strength, she would probably reach out and jab him. Hard. This whole baby
thing is his fault. If it werent for him Stephanie, sweetheart, dont forget to
breathe. It takes a moment for Stephanie to recognize the new voice, coming
from somewhere near the bed. Odelia Lauder isnt prone to quiet, soothing
inflection. Stephanies mother is more likely to jabber on and on in her usual
excitable, opinionated way . . . unless shes giving a reading. Shes always quiet
and soothing toward the strangers who come to her door day after day.






Believing -

After her tumultuous summer in Lily Dale, Calla has decided
to stay, hoping to unearth more about her mothers sudden
death. As she starts school at Lily Dale High and begins to
explore her relationships with Jacy and Blue, her visions
begin to occur with greater urgency. There may be a killer on
the loose, and he may be after Calla for her role in solving his
first victims disappearance. Now that Calla believes in her
ability, can she learn to use it properly before it leads her into
more danger?


She realizes, the moment she reaches the dark street and pats the back pocket of
her jeans, that she doesnt have her cell phone. Great. Whats she supposed to
do now? Go back and look for it? She turns and looks back at the house.
Towering, with turrets, the three-story brick mansion might once have been
beautiful. Now occupied by students at nearby Gannon University, the old
homes doors and windows gape wide open, spilling stray people and loud music
into the crisp September night. With a new semester just under wayand a
party in full swingthere are cars on the lawn and bikes on the porch. No way
am I going back in there. Not after someone figured out shes just a high school
student and informed the hosts, who quicklyand loudly kicked her out.
Talk about humiliating. Why am I even here? She usually doesnt go sneaking
around behind her parents backs, crashing college parties, but her friend
Maria whos still somewhere inside, flirting with some guytalked her into it.
Now shes going to wonder where I am. Well, too bad. Shes not about to go
back in to look for Maria. Or the phone, which she probably didnt even have
with her in the first place. Or even her jacket, which she definitely did have
with her and left draped over a chair inside.





Connecting

Now that Calla has accepted her ability to communicate with the
Other Side, shes desperate to connect with the one spirit whose
energy she cant seem to feel anywhere: her late mother. As
ominous supernatural signs imply that the devastating loss
might not have been an accident, Calla sets out to uncover the
truth, convinced that a shadowy stranger may hold the key. But
she gets more than she bargained for when she stumbles across
a shocking secret about her moms pastone that will change
Callas own future forever.


So, wait, let me get this straightyouve been dreaming about your mother,
and now youre convinced she was murdered? Is this what youre trying to tell
me? On the other end of the phone line, Lisa Wilsons heavy southern accent is
laced with disbelief. Not exactly. Calla Delaney paces across the creaky
floorboards of her grandmothers northern living room, stepping around the
sleeping pile of gray fur that is Gert, her new pet kitten. Ive been dreaming
that I am my mother, and now Im convinced she was murdered. Huh? You
are her? Hearing a rumble of thunder in the distance, Calla notices that the
room has grown dim. Another autumn storm, rolling in from the west. Fine with
her. The gloomy weather suits her mood. I know it sounds crazy, she tells Lisa,
but in my dreams the past few nights, Ive been reliving my mothers last
momentsgetting dressed for work, taking this manila envelope out from under
the mattress, walking down the hall with it . . . then someone sneaks up and
pushes meher down the









Dead before Dark -

When The Sun goes down...The Night Watchman is ready to kill
- again. After thirty-five years in prison, he is free to commit the
same twisted atrocities that once made him as notorious as the
Zodiac Killer and Jack the Ripper. Now, at last, his moment has
come...The Nightmare Begins...For renowned psychic Lucinda
Sloan, fame is a double-edged sword. Through her television
appearances, she helps police capture America's most elusive
serial killers. Unfortunately, she also catches the eye of the Night
Watchman. Once this madman learns that Lucinda 'sees'
murders after they're committed, it's time to play...And the Fear
Never Ends. The first victim is someone she knows - a personal
shock that brings Lucinda closer to her ex-lover, Detective
Randall Barakat. Then a second murder in Chicago, and a third
in Denver, makes her realize that the Night Watchman is toying
with her. Each victim wears a wristwatch...each watch bears a
message...and each message is a warning for Lucinda that her
time is up - and soon she'll be next to die...


When its over, he stands back to survey his handiwork. Almost. He reaches out
with a gloved hand to adjust the sleeve of her pajama top, pulling it lower on
her wrist. Better. He pushes back a few strands of her hair, the better to assess
the frozen grimace on her mouth. Ah. Very nice, indeed. He pries open the
corpses clenched right fingers. First, he slides the silver signet ring from the
pinkie and puts it aside. Then he unzips the pocket of his down jacket and pulls
out a plastic Ziploc bag. Painstakingly, he deposits the contents of the bag in the
palm of her hand. Then he closes her fingers again to form a fist. Good. This
was a last minute ideaa nice little twist to keep them all guessing. To let the
almighty Lucinda Sloan know that she no longer has control over her own life.
That he controls her now. He controls everything. And now, the grand finale.











Discovering -

After finally learning who was behind her mothers death, Calla
still doesnt understand why it happened. Somewhere out there,
someone seems to share the powerful psychic abilities that allow
Calla to see not only into the past, but also to the Other Side
someone who apparently doesnt want to be found. Will Callas
journey lead to the closure she's been searching for, or will it force
her to accept yet another loss and forever wonder what might have
been?


If you look hard enough, you can always find it. The wise man who once said
that to Laura wasnt talking about the Internet, but the phrase has become her
mantra for all things. He was right, of course. There it is. Shes been looking,
and shes found it. Her hand trembling on the mouse, she leans closer to the
monitor and clicks to enlarge the window. LOCAL WOMAN ARRESTED IN
FLORIDA Local woman. Sharon Logan. Whenever Laura has a chance to get
to a computer, she enters the name in a search engine and prays nothing will
come up. Today, her prayers went unanswered. According to the online news
account from her hometown paper, Sharon Logan is being held without bail in
Tampa for attacking a girl named Calla Delaney and trying to drown her in
her familys swimming pool. Shes also being questioned about the murder last
summer of the girls mother, Stephanie Delaney, originally ruled an accidental
fall down the stairs. Those poor people. Jaw set grimly, hand unsteady on the
mouse button, Laura closes out the screen. Thats all she needs to know.









Don't Scream -

In a remote, heavily wooded area near the Berkshires of
Massachusetts, Rachel Lorant died on her birthday. But she didn't
die alone. That night, her four-sorority sisters make a solemn,
trembling pledge. They will never reveal what has just happened in
those woods--ever. Instead, they will take their terrible secret to
their graves. . .
Now, ten years later, their secret is coming back to haunt them as
each receives a card in the mail from Rachel: "Happy Birthday to
Me. xoxo R." It's clear that someone knows what happened that
night. Someone is stalking them and sending mysterious, chilling
gifts that only they can understand--deadly warnings of what is to
come. For the sins of the past have come back with a vengeance,
and a killer will see that they all pay in blood. . .
Brynn Costello has never felt such pure fear. She didn't want any
part in what happened so long ago, but now, the mother of two will
do anything to stay alive and protect her family--even if it means
matching wits with a killer she can't see . . . a twisted psychopath
who is closer than she thinks and who is saving her death for
last. . .


and I do solemnly swear that I will never ever tell another living soul what
happened here tonight And I do solemnly swear that I will never ever tell
another living soul what happened here tonight, the female voices echo
dutifully, none without a quaver. Brynns is the most tremulous of all, barely
audible even to her own ears. She prays Tildy wont notice and single her out to
repeat the pledge solo. If that happens What will I do? WhatcanI do? Shell
just have to go along with it, the way shes gone along with all of this, right from
the start. Against her better judgment, against her conscience, and, ultimately
Against the law? Tildy says no. Adamantly. She insists that they havent
broken any laws. Its not like weve murdered someone, she hissed when
Brynn balked at the proposed plan. Anyone in our situation would do the exact
same thing. Brynn highly doubts that, but she cant bring herself to say it.










Dying Breath -

It's summer on the Jersey Shore. Children play on the beach.
Husbands are off working in the city. And the surf echoes in the
night. Here, in this perfect place, a serial killer has no worries in
the world--except choosing the next victim. . .
Cam Hastings has come to Long Beach Island with her teenage
daughter and the hope that maybe she can save her failed
marriage. Cam has never stopped loving her husband Mike nor
has she been able to outrun her flaws and demons--a vanished
mother, a lost sister, and the ugly visions she has of missing
children. . .
Now, Cam is about to step over the edge. For once, she will act
on one of her visions--and then face the consequences. For a
killer has just struck again. And for Cam, and the people she
loves most, fear has come home for good. . .


It always begins with the dizziness. In her office high above East 46th Street,
Camden Hastings is editing yet another inane fashion article, Not Your
Grandmothers Belts and Brooches, when the words begin to swim on the page.
Light-headed, she looks up warily. The desk lamp is glaring, the small room
distorted and tilting at an impossible angle. Oh, no. She braces herself. Here it
comes. Its been awhilea month, maybe moresince the last episode.
Sometimes after that much time has passed, she actually allows herself to relax
a little. Shell lower her guard, wanting to believe shes free and clear, that
shell never have to deal with the unsettling visions again. But they always
come back.












Fade to Black

I know who you are. When Elizabeth Baxter reads these words, her
world crashes. Five years ago, she was Hollywood superstar
Mallory Edenuntil a mysterious stalker turned her life into a
nightmare. Now she hides in the small town of Windmere Cove,
Rhode Island, living in fear, constantly looking over her
shoulder . . .

Then her house is ransacked. The phone rings, and no one is on the
other end And very soon, Elizabeth realizes she's being hunted
again. Her only peace is the solace she's found in the arms of
Harper Smith. She longs to tell him the truthand then she learns
of his own secret past a past that connects to Mallory Eden's.


Its raining. Of course it is. Mallory Eden tears her concentration from the dark,
slick highway to smile grimly at the irony. A stormy summer night, a deserted
mountain road, a frightened blonde driving alone Its like a scene from a
movienot, of course, one of hers. Mallory Eden does romantic comedy. Period.
The new Meg Ryan theyd called her when shed burst into mainstream
America a few years back. Just as Meg had once been called the new Goldie.
Mallory swerves slightly to avoid a water-filled rut. She peers ahead through the
windshield, looking for the bridge. Not yet. A few more miles to go. In a few
weeksno, daystheyll be calling some perky blond actress the new Mallory
Eden. And as for the old Mallory Eden She clenches the wheel more tightly.
The old Mallory Eden will be dead. Not Hollywood dead, as in washed up.
Dead as in











Final Victim, The

Everyone in Savannah, Georgia, knows the Remington Estate. The
rambling old house hears blatant testimony not just to the
esteemed family's vast wealth, but also to unbearable tragedy and
whispered secrets. Soon, the Remingtons will all come home to
this secluded plantation nestled deep in the shadow of moss-
covered trees. Then they will have to die...one by one. For
Charlotte Remington Maitland, the past live years have been a
haze of pain and loss. Now, with her new husband and teenaged
daughter, she's found a second chance at happiness--until the
moment her grandfather's will is read. As the sole beneficiary of
the vast Remington estate, Charlotte will get everything that's
coming to her. A killer will make sure of that--no matter who has
to die. Trapped in a house of lies, searching for answers to deadly
questions, Charlotte has never been more afraid. Someone knows
her family's deepest secrets. Someone who will take Charlotte to
the edge of sanity and the dark heart of her greatest tear in order
to make her the final victim.


It took two years for her to come back to the beach. Two years, the divorce,
and the realization that life must go on. Charlotte Remington, who took back
her maiden name after her husband left, has no choice but to keep getting up in
the morning, keep moving, keep breathing if only for her remaining child's
sake. Breathe. How many times during the initial shock did she have to
remind herself to do just that? Breathe, Charlotte. In and out. Just breathe. Keep
breathing, even though your chest is constricted and your heart is breaking; even
though you want to stop breathing Even though you want to
die. Charlotte Remington thought she had everything: loyal husband, loving
son, happy-go-lucky daughter, loyal friends. Now they're all gone. Now
there is only Charlotte, haunted and bereft; and a sad-eyed little girl who
watched her big brother drown on a beautiful July day, just yards from the
shoreline. This shoreline. But it happened a long time ago; a lifetime ago. The
first time, afterward, that Charlotte returned to the southeastern shore of Achoco
Island to inhale brackish air, feel sand beneath her feet, and gaze again over
the sea, she wanted to flee. But she forced herself to stay.







Last to Know

Townsend Heights is the perfect small town. The sort of
peaceful, suburban existence Tasha Banks dreamed of living
when she left her fast-paced career for full-time motherhood.
But now, Tasha's perfect dream is turning into a terrifying
nightmare. Someone is targeting women in Townsend Heights -
- and not just any women. A serial killer is looking for a
particular kind of prey...young, stay-at-home mothers...exactly
like Tasha. One by one, Tasha's friends are disappearing, only to
die in horrific ways. Suddenly, terror is transforming Townsend
Heights into a sinister place of fear and foreboding -- a place
where evil lurks behind every corner, hiding behind the mask of
a familiar face -- a face that may be the last one Tasha ever sees.


Come on, now, dont look so upset. Youre lucky, you know, Janey. Lucky . . .
Jane comprehends the word through the fog of mind-numbing dread. Lucky? Yes,
she thinks, dazed, she has always been lucky. How many times has she heard
that over the years, from wistful classmates and envious friends, even her own
sister? Youre so lucky, Jane, that you were born with those blond curls and big
blue eyes . . . so lucky you can eat anything you want and look like that. . . .
Youre so lucky, Jane, that your family is rolling in money and youll never
have to work. . . . Youre so lucky, Jane, to have Owen. Hes crazy about you
and your future is set. . . . Owen. What will he do when he comes home from
work and finds that she still hasnt returned from her afternoon run? Probably
assume that she and Schuyler are at Starbucks with some of their Gymboree
friends again, that shes lost track of time, as she often does these days. . . . But
not after dark. She never stays out past dark. When Owen comes home, shes
usually giving Schuyler her bath in the big marble tub in the master bathroom,
which is more fun than the other tubs in the house, because Schuyler likes to see
herself reflected in the mirrored walls. Or, if Owen misses the six forty-four out
of Grand Central and takes a later train, he finds Jane in the nursery, singing
softly and rocking the baby to sleep. Oh, Christ. Owen. Schuyler. Please . . .
Jane begs. Begs for her life.



Live to Tell -

In a lovely suburban town just north of New York City, the
gossip mill runs more efficiently than the commuter-train
line. And in every impeccably decorated house, they're talking
about Lauren Walsh. They say that nothing could be worse
than being abandoned by your husband for another woman.
They're wrong . . .
All Lauren wants is to protect her children from the pain of
her messy divorce. But when their father goes missing, a case
of mistaken identity puts all their lives in danger, and a
stealthy predator lurks in the shadows, watching . . .
waiting . . .
Lauren is about to uncover an unfathomable trutha truth
this cold-blooded mastermind would never let her live to
tell . . .


He lunges across Sixth Avenue mid-block and against the light, leaving in his
wake squealing brakes, honking horns, angry curses through car windows. No
need to look over his shoulder; he knows theyre back there, closing in on him.
Darting up the east side of Sixth, he blows through an obstacle course of office
workers on smoke breaks, tourists walking four abreast, businessmen lined up at
street food carts. Ignoring the indignant shouts of jostled pedestrians, he searches
the urban landscape as he runs. July heat radiates in waves from concrete and
asphalt. Sweat soaks his T-shirt. Just ahead, across Fortieth Street, he spots the
subway entrance. For a split second, he considers diving down the stairs. If a
train happens to be just pulling in, he can hop on and lose themat least for
the time being. If theres no train, hell be trapped like a rat in a holeunless
he hoofs it through the dark tunnel and risks being electrocuted by the third rail
or flattened by an oncoming express. No thanks. Nothing can happen to him.
Not now. Not when the plan is about to come to fruition. Not when sweet victory
is so close he can taste it like sugar. He races past the subway, his thoughts
careening through various scenarios of how the next few minutes of his life might
play out. They all end the same way: hes apprehended. Incarcerated.




Lullaby and Goodnight

At thirty-nine, Peyton Somerset has an enviable life, with a thriving
advertising career and a beautiful Manhattan apartment. And now
she's going to have the one thing she wants most-a baby. Peyton's
biological clock went off just as her fianc took off, leaving her at
the altar. So Peyton's going it alone. Already, she's making plans for
the little one inside her...buying the layette, daydreaming, and
worrying over the littlest things. That's only natural. All mothers do.
But Peyton has reason to worry. In fact, she has every reason to be
terrified...
As the months pass, Peyton can't help feeling that something is
terribly wrong. She's certain that someone has been in her
apartment, that she's being followed, that someone is watching her.
Maybe just hormonal paranoia makes her distrust everyone around
her. Or maybe her maternal instincts are dead on. Maybe someone
close doesn't think she should give birth at all. Someone who would
do anything to have a baby. Anything...


Please. Please dont hurt me. I just want to have my baby. . . . Oh, you
will. The strangers lips curve upward to reveal chalk-white, even teeth. Youll
have your baby. Far from reassuring Heather, the wordsand the smile
strike her as sinister, sending a new wave of dread shuddering through her. She
struggles to keep full-blown panic at bay, her pregnancy-swollen body tethered to
the four posts of the bed. She cant possibly escape. Even if she were left alone
long enough to work the ropes free, even if she were in prime condition to run,
she wouldnt get far. She has no idea what lies beyond the door of this room. She
was brought here blindfolded, at gunpoint. The blindfold is off and the weapon
now concealed, but she senses its deadly presence nearby. She cant take a
chance. And so, physically helpless, she can only search wildly for a mental
way out, for some logical explanation to grasp. The only rationale Heathers
fear-muddled brain can conjure is that she isnt really here; this simply cannot
be happening. She must be home in bed. This has to be another one of those
crazy nightmares shes been having these last few weeks, between bouts of
heartburn and frequent nocturnal trips to the bathroom.







Nightwatcher

As the city sleeps in the early hours of September 10, 2001, the
killer waits and watches, unaware of the cataclysm to come.
Even the nightmare of 9/11 will not postpone his private reign
of terror.
Allison Taylor adores her adopted city, New York, loving every
minute of the invigorating urban hustle. But on a bright and
clear September morning, the familiar landscape around her is
savagely alteredand in the midst of widespread chaos and fear,
a woman living upstairs from her is found, brutally slaughtered,
and mutilated.
For Allison . . . for her neighbor, James "Mack" MacKenna,
desperately searching for news of his missing wife . . . for
homicide detective Rocky Manzillo, hunting for a monster
called "The Nightwatcher" amid the smoking ruins of a
devastated city, this tragic day will hold a special horror.
Because a different kind of terror has entered their lives . . . and
it's coming to claim Allison Taylor as its next victim.


Case closed. Vic Shattuck clicks the mouse, and the Southside Strangler file
the one that forced him to spend the better part of August in the rainy Midwest,
tracking a serial killerdisappears from the screen. If only it were that easy to
make it all go away in real life. If you let it, this stuff will eat you up inside
like cancer, Vics FBI colleague Dave Gudlaug told him early in his career,
and he was right. Now Dave, who a few years ago reached the bureaus
mandatory retirement age, spends his time traveling with his wife. He claims he
doesnt miss the work. Believe me, youll be ready to put it all behind you, too,
when the time comes, he promised Vic. Maybe, but with his own retirement
seven years away, Vic is in no hurry to move on. Sure, it might be nice to spend
uninterrupted days and nights with Kitty, but somehow, he suspects that hell
never be truly free of the cases hes handlednot even those that are solved. For
now, as a profiler with the Behavioral Science Unit, he can at least do his part
to rid the world of violent offenders. Youre still here, Shattuck? He looks up to
see Special Agent Annabelle Wyatt. With her long legs, almond-shaped dark
eyes, and flawless ebony skin, she looks like a supermodeland acts like one of
the guys. Not in a lets-hang-out-and-have-a-few-laughs way; in a lets-cut-the-
bullshit-and-get-down-to-business way.




Scared to Death -


Elsa Cavalonpetrified that the nightmare from fifteen years
earlier is beginning all over again . . .
Marin Quinnhiding with her daughters in their concrete
fortress, her storybook marriage over . . .
Perfect strangers whose once perfect lives were cruelly shattered,
they're bound by a long-lost child, a fragile strand of newfound
maternal hopeand mutual loneliness. Yet Elsa and Marin are
never truly alone. Someone is always nearby, watching them
and their children. Someone driven by vengeance and the
simple poetry of nursery rhymes . . . Someone who must satisfy
a dark need with innocent blood. And now time is running out
for two mothers stalked by a cunning mastermind who wants to
leave them . . .
Scared to death


Mind if I turn on the TV? Hell, yes, Jeremy minds. Minds the disruption of
television, and suddenly having a roommate. Until an hour ago, when an
orderly pushed a wheelchair through the doorway, Jeremy had the double
hospital room all to himself. He should have known it was too good to be true.
Most good things are. An image flashes into his head, and he winces. Funny
how even after all these years, that same facea beautiful female facepops
in and out of his consciousness. He doesnt know whose face it is, or whether she
even exists. Hey, are you in pain? the stranger in the next bed asks,
interrupting Jeremys speculation about the face: Is she a figment of my
imaginationor an actual memory? He almost welcomes the question whose
answer is readily at hand. Am I in pain? He feels as though every bone in his
face has been broken. Thats pretty damned near the truthand not for the first
time. I can ring the nurse for you, the man offers, waving his good hand. The
other handlike Jeremys faceis swathed in gauze. Some kind of finger
surgery, he mentioned when he first rolled into the room, as if Jeremy might care.
Reaching for the bed rail buzzer, he adds, in his lazy twang, That Demerols
good stuff, aint it?





Shadowkiller

Allison Taylor MacKenna feels as though shes awakened at last
from a ten-year-long nightmare. But her darkest hour has yet to
come . . .

Nestled in the warm, domestic cocoon of loving husband and
family, Allison finally feels safe--unaware that a strangers
brutal murder on a Caribbean island is the first step in an
intricate plan to destroy everything in her life.

For seasoned NYPD Detective Rocky Manzillo, the signs are
clear that something terrible has emerged from the shadows: a
murder victim left without a face and a faded photograph that
yields a startling connection.

Now, as Allison's murky memories of a troubled childhood
creep back to light, a cunning predator who shares her history
prepares to enact a horrifying retribution--and won't stop
killing until Allison faces a shocking truth . . .and pays the
ultimate price.


Its been a while since Carries spotted someone with enough potential, but . . .
here she is. The woman in the orange and pink paisley sundress is about
Carries ageforty, give or takeand has the right features, the right build.
Shes a few inches taller than Carrie; her hair is much darker, and shes
wearing glasses. But really, those things dont matter. Those things can be easily
faked: a wig, some heels . . . What matters far more is that the woman is alone.
Not just alone in this particular moment, but alone as in socially isolated,
giving off an indefinable vibe that any opportunistic predator would easily
recognize. Carries natural instincts tell her that this is it; this woman is her
ticket off this Caribbean island at last. Always listen to your gut, Daddy used
to tell her. If you tune in to your intuition, youll find that you know much more
than you think you do. A part of her wanted to mock that advice later, when
hed failed her. The words didnt even make sense. How can you know more
than you think you do? Whatever you think is what you know. Knowing . . .
thinking . . . it was all the same thing. Anyway, if she really did know more
than she thought, she wouldnt have been so shocked by his betrayal. That was
what she told herself afterward. Even then, though, she heard his voice inside
her head, chiding her, telling her that shed ignored the signs; ignored her gut.
Well, shed done her best never to make that mistake again.



Sleepwalker

The nightmare of 9/11 is a distant but still painful memory for
Allison Taylor MacKennanow married to Mack and living in a
quiet Westchester suburb. She has moved on with her life ten
years after barely escaping death at the hands of New Yorks
Nightwatcher serial killer. The monster is dead, having recently
committed suicide in his prison cell, but something is terribly
wrong. Mack has started sleepwalking, with no recollection of
where his nighttime excursions are taking him.And here, north
of the city, more women are being savagely murdered, their
bodies bearing the Nightwatchers unmistakable signature.

Suddenly Allison must confront a devastating truth: her life is
in jeopardy once again . . . and quite possibly, from the man she
trusts and loves.


Her husband has suffered from insomnia all his life, but tonight, Allison
MacKenna is the one who cant sleep. Lying on her side of the king-sized bed in
their master bedroom, she listens to the quiet rhythm of her own breathing, the
summery chatter of crickets and night birds beyond the window screen, and the
faint hum of the television in the living room downstairs. Mack is down there,
stretched out on the couch. When she stuck her head in about an hour ago to tell
him she was going to bed, he was watching Animal House on cable. What
happened to the Jets game? she asked. They were down fourteen at the half so
I turned the channel. Want to watch the movie? Its just starting. Seen it, she
said dryly. As in, Who hasnt? Yeah? Is it any good? he returned, just as
dryly. As a former fraternity boy, youll love it, Im sure. She hesitated,
wondering if she should tell him. Might as well: And you might want to revisit
that Jets game. Really? Whys that? Theyre in the middle of a historic
comeback. I just read about it online. You should watch. Im not in the mood.
The Giants are my team, not the Jets.







Wendy Delsol
Stork -

Sixteen-year-old Katla LeBlanc has just moved from Los
Angeles to Minnesota. As if it werent enough that her trendy
fashion sense draws stares, Katla soon finds out that shes a
Stork, a member of a mysterious order of women tasked with
a unique duty. But Katlas biggest challenge may be finding
her flock at a new school. Between being ignored by Wade, the
arrogant jock she stupidly fooled around with, and constantly
arguing with gorgeous farm boy and Editor-in-chief Jack,
Katla is relieved when her assignment as the school papers
fashion columnist brings with it some much-needed
friendship. But as Homecoming approaches, Katla uncovers a
shocking secret about her past a secret that binds her fate
to Jacks in a way neither could have ever anticipated.


One moment I was fine, and the next it felt like an army of fire ants was
marching across my head. Seriously. Fire ants wearing combat boots heavy,
cleated combat boots. Id never experienced anything like it. I scratched at my
scalp until my hand cramped. It didnt help. I turned, and the mirror behind the
cash register confirmed my suspicions: along with the crazy rash creeping from
under my hairline, I also had claw marks. Any other head of hair would
conceal such blemishes. Not mine. My towheaded, sun-fearing ancestors had
seen to that. I opened the cupboard under the register. Where was that woolen
beret Id seen? Crimson red with a small loop on top. A bit of a fashion stretch,
even for me. Oh, well. This town already thought I was odd, the suspicious
package dropped at their door. I shrugged the hat over my head. It provided no
relief, but at least it covered the damage. Where the heck was that delivery? My
afi my grandfather had told me I could close as soon as Snjosson Farms
delivered the apples. I looked at the old clock above the candy counter. Nine
oclock. Afi had said the bushels would arrive at seven.






Wendy Harmer
Friends Like These

Greed, fraud, betrayal, and resurrection - this is a search for
something to believe in. A search that takes us to a baby-naming,
a same-sex wedding and a funeral all performed by Jo
Blanchard, newly trained civil celebrant.
Jo - recently single, 45-year-old mother of two - is the former
deputy headmistress of Sydney's most exclusive private girls'
school - Darling Point Ladies College. A year ago she was forced
to abandon her post in a scandal that had all the social set
talking. In fact, they're still talking.
Jo is moving on - but with friends like hers, maybe leaving them
behind is her only option.


The disgraced deputy headmistress of Sydneys most exclusive private girls
school. That was the caption under Josephine Margaret Blanchards photograph
every time it appeared in the newspaper. No wonder the stories about her made
compelling reading. The word disgraced usually carried the appellation
footballer, wealthy businessman or politician. (And sometimes, oddly
enough, celebrity. As if being disgraceful wasnt part of their job description.)
The deputy headmistress of the Darling Point Ladies College was a refreshing
change from the usual suspects. If Jo Blanchards reputation had been worth
anything to anyone she might have been given a media adviser to help restore
her tarnished public image. A televised trip to a refugee camp, a charity fun run,
even a teary mea culpa may have been prescribed. As it was, Jo had just gone
home to her cat. She got on with her life as best she could and was resigned to
the fact that every time a columnist wrote a gossipy snippet about the goings-on
beyond the gates of Sydneys elite schools, her photograph would appear. And it
was always the same snap of her looking down her nose and grimacing as if she
had caught the whiff of someone rather common.





I Lost My Mobile at the Mall

I lost my mobile at the mall and am now facing certain
death.
My mother will accuse me of being lazy, ungrateful, and
plain old stupid. The first death I suffer will be from an
utter lack of natural justice. My father will sentence me to
die by disappointment. His shoulders will sag and there
will be a long escape of air from his chest, as if I've crept
up behind him and pulled out his plug.

As if I deliberately lost my mobile phone to prove to him
that there is no God. My best friend will kill me, all
because there's a photo in my mobile of her standing next
to Hugh Jackman. I am not an overly dramatic person,
but a year's worth of numbers, texts and photos were in
my phone, and if I don't get them back my life is not worth
living.


My name is Elly Pickering. I've lost my mobile phone at the mall and am now
facing certain death. There are many ways a healthy fifteen-year-old girl can
die. I'll list a few of them here. I have lost my mobile phone so . . . 1. My mother
will kill me. OK, she won't try to actually, physically, murder me she's shorter
than me, can't run as fast as me, and won't be able to find an axe until she
finds her reading glasses. But in some ways, a sharp, fatal blow to the head
would be better than the excruciating long-term abuse that will follow when I
break the news. She will accuse me of being lazy, ungrateful, negligent and
plain old stupid. The idea that reading glasses can disappear in exactly the
same circumstances will not occur to my mother. The first death I suffer will be
from an utter lack of natural justice.











Roadside Sisters -

Nina, Meredith, and Annie have decided to hit the road one
more time. Its twenty years since they toured together as
members of the gospel choir Sanctified Soul. How far have
they all come since then? Do they still have anything in
common?
Elegant Meredith, motherly Nina, and the determinedly single
Annie are as unlikely companions as you could find. But like a
matched set of 1950's kitchen canisters of Flour, Sugar, and
Tea, they always seem to end up together.
When a tropical wedding beckons in Byron Bay, 2000
kilometers from their homes in suburban Melbourne, they
make the alcohol-fuelled decision to drive a monster mobile
home up the coast for the trip of a lifetime.
Squabbles and secrets, tears and laughter - not to mention the
possibility of finding Mr. Right along the way - this trip might
tear them apart or it might just save their lives.


This is your half-hour call. Technical crew, performers, front of housetheatre
doors are now open. This is your half-hour call. The announcement from the
tinny speakers on the walls of the dressing rooms at the Athenaeum Theatre
stirred everyone into frenzied activity. Meredith leaned towards the make-up
mirror and attacked her black spikes of gelled hair. Has anyone seen Corinne
yet? Where the hell is she? Ill check the other dressing rooms, Nina
volunteered. Oh God! I feel sick. Ive been to the loo five times already! And
wearing this thing . . . she flapped the purple batwings of her gospel robe, it
takes twice as long. You want anything from the Green Room? Im getting
something. White wine. Thanks. Annie, sitting on the threadbare carpet, held
up her plastic cup for another refill. Nina took it and hoisted her hem. She
stepped over Annies splayed legs. Havent you had enough already? Meredith
gave Annie an evil-eyed reverse squint through the illuminated mirror.
Tonights not a rehearsal! Every one of us has to be on-song, note-perfect.








Wendy Lyn Watson
A Parfait Murder

When Tally's cousin Bree spots her deadbeat ex-husband
strolling the Lantana County Fair with a fat wallet and a vixen
on his arm, she immediately files for back child support. But
when his lawyer is found dead, things get a little sticky. Did Bree
serve up a dish of cold, sweet revenge? Or is she another hapless
victim of a parfait crime?


Eloise Carberry folded her arms across her pinkaproned bosom, tsked softly, and
shook her head as she threw down the figurative gauntlet. They sure look alike
to me. Tucker Gentry drew himself up straight and tight as a banjo string.
Criminy, Eloise. Its ice cream. It all pretty much looks the same. She tsked
again. Tucker and Eloise squared off over a stainless steel table, bare save for
two white paper cups, each holding a single melting scoop of ice cream. One of
those cups contained Tuckers entry in the hand-churned ice cream category of
the Lantana County Fair, a flavor he called pepper praline. The other cup
held a scoop of Texas Twister from Remember the A-la-mode, a smooth vanilla
with a swirl of dulce de leche and a kick of ancho chilies. They dont just look
the same. They taste the same, Eloise insisted. Her claim drew gasps from the
crowd behind her. Word of the scandal must have spread through the
fairgrounds, as the gathering in the creative arts exhibit pole barn was growing
by the minute.







Scoop to Kill

During the local college's annual Honor's Day festivities, a
graduate student is killed. When the English professor
suspected of his murder also meets an untimely end, Tallulah
Jones steps out from behind the counter of Remember the a-la-
Mode to clear the professor's name-before anyone else gets put
on ice...


I cant even believe that womanis related to me. Alice, honey, I hate to tell
you, but you and your mama are like two kits in a litter. Hardheaded,
tenderhearted, and too smart for your own good. I ran a hand through my hair
and sighed. Too smart for my own good. Alice folded her arms across her
chest and cocked a skinny hip. She still looked more like a child than a woman,
and I had a tough time remembering that she was finishing up her first year at
Dickerson University. That is so not true, Aunt Tally. I would never in a
million years show up at a formal event looking like a hoochie. I studied my
cousin, Alices mama, trying to see her through her precocious teenage
daughters eyes. Bree Michaels wore a vibrant pink tank dress that clung to
every luscious curve of her statuesque form. A beam of late-afternoon sunlight
filtered through the atrium windows of Sinclair Hall, brightening her bouffant
updo to a glossy maraschino cherry red. And when she threw her head back and
laughed at one of her admirers quips, her abundant dcolletage frothed like
freshly whipped cream until I thought she might overflow her D cups. She looked
like a sexy strawberry sundae, and the men surrounding herfrom adolescents
to octogenarianspractically drooled on her three-inch spike heels.





Wendy Mass
A Mango-Shaped Space

Mia Winchell appears to be a typical kid, but she's keeping a
big secretsounds, numbers, and words have color for her.
No one knows, and Mia wants to keep it that way. But when
trouble at school finally forces Mia to reveal her secret, she
must learn to accept herself and embrace her ability, called
synesthesia, a mingling of the senses.


Freak. FREEEEEEK. Ill never forget the first time I heard the word, that day at
the blackboard. It was five years ago, when I was eight. (For those who are
mathematically challenged, like me, that means Im thirteen now.) So there I
was, dressed in my shepherd-girl costume for the Christmas play after school,
struggling to complete the math problem on the board while my fellow third-
graders watched. The one-size-fits-all costume didnt fit me, the shortest
shepherd in the class, so I had to keep pushing up the sleeves. The chalk dust
tickled my nose. My feet were freezing in the sandals that in my humble opinion
no one should have to wear in northern Illinois in the middle of December. My
mission was to multiply twenty-four times nine. I remember thinking that if I
wrote slowly enough, the bell might ring before I could finish. Just five more
minutes. Then no one would know that I couldnt solve the problem. I rolled the
smooth piece of chalk around my fingers and tried not to think about the whole
class staring at my back. Glancing around in what I hoped looked like intense
concentration, I noticed a few fragments of colored chalk on the ledge of the
board. To use up some time, I put down the white piece and began rewriting
each number on the board in its correct color.




Every Soul a Star

At Moon Shadow, an isolated campground, thousands have
gathered to catch a glimpse of a rare and extraordinary total
eclipse of the sun. It's also were three lives are about to be
changed forever:
Ally likes the simple things in life--labyrinths, star-gazing,
and comet-hunting. Her home, the Moon Shadow
campground, is a part of who she is, and she refuses to
imagine it any other way.
Popular and gorgeous (everybody says so), Bree is a future
homecoming queen for sure. Bree wears her beauty like a
suit of armor. But what is she trying to hide?
Overweight and awkward, jack is used to spending a lot of
time alone. But when opportunity knocks, he finds himself
in situations he never would have imagined and making
friends in the most unexpected situations.
Told from three distinct voices and perspectives, Wendy
Mass weaves an intricate and compelling story about
strangers coming together, unlikely friendships, and finding
one's place in the universe.


In Iceland, fairies live inside of rocks. Seriously. They have houses in there and
schools and amusement parks and everything. Besides me, not many people
outside of Iceland know this. But you just have to read the right books and its
all there. When youre homeschooled, you have a lot of books. I also know how
to find every constellation in the sky, and that the brightest star in any
constellation is called the Alpha. I know all the constellations because my
father taught them to me, and I know about the Alpha because it is also my
name. But my family and friends call me Ally. Okay, thats not entirely true. I
dont really have any friends. Not within hundreds of miles, anyway. And its
not because I am unlikable or smell bad or anything like that. In fact, I take a
bath every single day in the hot spring outside our house, and everyone knows
that the minerals in hot springs make you smell like fresh air all day long. The
fact that we live somewhere with a hot spring outside our house pretty much
explains why I dont have friends nearby. Basically, my house is as close to the
middle of nowhere as a person can get and still be somewhere. Our town is not
even on the map. Its not even a town. Its more of an area.






Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall -

When 16-year-old Tessa suffers a shocking accident in gym
class, she finds herself in heaven (or what she thinks is
heaven), which happens to bear a striking resemblance to her
hometown mall. In the tradition of It's a Wonderful
Life and The Christmas Carol, Tessa starts reliving her life up
until that moment. She sees some things she'd rather forget,
learns some things about herself she'd rather not know, and
ultimately must find the answer to one burning question--if
only she knew what the question was.























Wendy McClure
The Wilder Life

Wendy McClure is on a quest to find the world of
beloved Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls
Wilder-a fantastic realm of fiction, history, and places she's
never been to, yet somehow knows by heart. She retraces the
pioneer journey of the Ingalls family- looking for the Big
Woods among the medium trees in Wisconsin, wading in
Plum Creek, and enduring a prairie hailstorm in South
Dakota. She immerses herself in all things Little House, and
explores the story from fact to fiction and from the TV shows
to the annual summer pageants in Laura's hometowns.
Whether she's churning butter in her apartment or sitting in a
replica log cabin, McClure is always in pursuit of "the Laura
experience." Along the way she comes to understand how
Wilder's life and work have shaped our ideas about girlhood
and the American West.


I WAS BORN in 1867 in a log cabin in Wisconsin and maybe you were, too.
We lived with our family in the Big Woods, and then we all traveled in a
covered wagon to Indian Territory, where Pa built us another house, out on high
land where the prairie grasses swayed. Right? We remember the strangest things:
the way rabbits and wild hens and snakes raced past the cabin to escape a
prairie fire, or else how it felt when the head of a needle slipped through a hole
in the thimble and stuck us hard, and we wanted to yell, but we didnt. We
moved on to Minnesota, then South Dakota. I swear to God its true: we were a
girl named Laura, who lived and grew up and grew old and passed on, and
then she became a part of us somehow. She existed fully formed in our heads,
her memories swimming around in our brains with our own. Or thats how it felt
to me at least. Thats how it still feels sometimes, if I really think about it. I
mean I dont believe in reincarnation, and obviously Laura Ingalls Wilder
didnt either, not with her respectable Protestant singing-off-key-in-wooden-
churches upbringing. Its just how reading the Little House books was for me as
a kid. They gave me the uncanny sense that Id experienced everything she had,
that I had nearly drowned in the same flooded creek, endured the grasshopper
plague of 1875, and lived through the Hard Winter.



Wendy Moore
Wedlock -

When Mary Eleanor Bowes, the Countess of Strathmore, was
abducted in Oxford Street in broad daylight in 1786, the whole
country was riveted to news of the pursuit. The only daughter
of a wealthy coal magnate, Mary Eleanor had led a charmed
youth. Precocious and intelligent, she enjoyed a level of
education usually reserved for the sons of the aristocracy.
Mary was only eleven when her beloved father died, making
her the richest heiress in Britain, and she was soon beset by
eager suitors. Her marriage, at eighteen, to the beautiful but
aloof Earl of Strathmore, was one of the society weddings of
the year. With the death of the earl some eight years later,
Mary re-entered society with relish, and her salons became
magnets for leading Enlightenment thinkers - as well as a host
of new suitors. Mary soon fell under the spell of a handsome
Irish soldier, Andrew Robinson Stoney, but scandalous
rumours were quick to spread. Swearing to defend her honor,
Mary's gallant hero was mortally wounded in a duel - his
dying wish that he might marry Mary. Within hours of the
ceremony, he seemed to be in the grip of a miraculous
recovery. Wedlock tells the story of one eighteenth-century
woman's experience of a brutal marriage, and her fight to regain her liberty and justice. Subjected
to appalling violence, deception, kidnap, and betrayal, the life of Mary Eleanor Bowes is a
remarkable tale of triumph in the face of overwhelming odds.


Settling down to read his newspaper by the candlelight illuminating the dining
room of the Adelphi Tavern, John Hull anticipated a quiet evening. Having
opened five years earlier, as an integral part of the vast riverside development
designed by the Adam brothers, the Adelphi Tavern and Coffee House had
established a reputation for its fine dinners and genteel company. Many an
office worker like Hull, a clerk at the Governments Salt Office, sought refuge
from the clamour of the nearby Strand in the taverns first-floor dining room
with its elegant ceiling panels depicting Pan and Bacchus in pastel shades. On
a Monday evening in January, with the days work behind him, Hull could
expect to read his journal undisturbed. At first, when he heard the two loud
bangs, at about 7 p.m., Hull assumed they were caused by a door slamming
downstairs. A few minutes later, there was no mistaking the sound of clashing
swords.1 Throwing aside his newspaper, Hull ran down the stairs and tried to
open the door to the ground-floor parlour. Finding it locked, and growing
increasingly alarmed at the violent clatter from within, he shouted for waiters to
help him force the door.


Wendy Northcutt
Darwin Awards II

The Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection brings
together a fresh collection of the hapless, the heedless, and
the just plain foolhardy among us. Salute the owner of an
equipment training school who demonstrates the dangers
of driving a forklift by failing to survive the filming of his
own safety video. Gawk at the couple who go to sleep on a
sloping roof. Witness the shepherd who leaves his rifle
unsecuredonly to be accidentally shot by one of his own
flock.

With over one hundred Darwin Award Winners,
Honorable Mentions, and debunked Urban Legends, plus
science and safety tips for avoiding the scythe of natural
selection, The Darwin Awards II proves once again how
uncommon common sense can be.










The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction

Fully illustrated and featuring all-new tales of the
marvelously macabre, "The Darwin Awards Countdown to
Extinction" chronicles the astonishing acts of individuals
who have taken a swan dive into the shallow end of the
gene pool. From attaching a five-horsepower engine to a
barstool, to hammering a metal hook into an explosive
device, to using a taser to treat a snake bite, these
gloriously gruesome incidents prove that the countdown
(to human extinction) is well under way. And we won't
exit this mortal coil without one last laugh.


The Darwin Awards, named in honor of Charles Darwin, salute the
improvement of the human genome by commemorating those who accidentally
remove themselves from itthereby ensuring that the next generation is
descended from one less idiot. Of necessity, this honor is usually bestowed
posthumously. To win a Darwin Award, an adult must eliminate himself from
the gene pool in an astonishingly stupid way that is verifiably true. Most stories
are verified by news reports or by reliable eyewitnesses such as emergency
responders. Past winners include a thief who thought it was wise to steal copper
wire without shutting off the electric current, and a farmer who avoided bee
stings by sealing his head in a plastic bag. We have also honored individuals
who offered a bear a beer, jumped a draw-bridge gap on a motorbike, or peered
into a gas tanker with a lighter. This book is packed with a pirates booty of
new winners and at-risk survivors. We begin with the following surprise
nominee . . .








The Darwin Awards III -

From a sheriff who inadvertently shot himself twice, to the
insurance defrauder who amputated his leg with a chainsaw;
from a farmer who avoided bee stings by sealing his head in a
plastic bag to the man crushed by the branch he just
trimmed, The Darwin Awards III proves again that when
it comes to stupidity, no species does it like we do.

Featuring scientific and safety discussions and filled with
illustrations depicting inspiring examples of evolution in
action, The Darwin Awards III shows once more how
uncommon common sense still is.











The Darwin Awards

One of the most popular Internet humor sites today -- with
350,000 visitors a month and growing --
DarwinAwards.com has dedicated itself to commemorating
those who ensure the long-term survival of our species by
eliminating themselves in a sublimely idiotic fashion from
our gene pool. Winners of the Darwin Award are self-
selecting; their single-minded determination to snuff
themselves by spectacular means make them candidates.
With stories verified by the author and voted on by the site's
readers -- from the surfers who celebrate a hurricane by
throwing a beachfront party and getting washed out to sea,
to the hunter who throws a lit stick of dynamite for his
faithful golden retriever to fetch and return to him -- and
filled with the winners, honorable mentions, and urban
legends from Darwin Awards of years past, as well as new,
never before seen material, "The Darwin Awards" has the
pedigree to become the gift book of choice for the holidays
and the first must-have humor title of the 21st century.(









Wendy Orr
Spook's Shack

When Finn is sent to live with his great-aunt for the summer,
he's thrilled by the possibility of adventure offered by the
wilderness surrounding the house. But when he stumbles
across an old shack inhabited by a glowing green ghost and
his specter of a dog, things quickly take a turn for the weird.
The ghost, Jack Henry, has a special connection with the land
and its creatures. He rescues an orphaned wallaby and helps
Finn learn to understand the cry of the kookaburra. When a
greedy businessman wants to bulldoze the trees in order to
mine for gold, Finn and Jack combine their practical and
spooky powers to save the land and the animals that live there.
Themes of environmentalism and altruism make this chapter
book much more than just a ghost story.










Wendy Perriman
Fire on Dark Water


Born a despised gypsy and tricked into a life of brutal
debauchery, Lola Blaise quickly learns the harsh ways of the
world, and of the men who inhabit it. But in the New World
waits a different sort of life, full of danger and passion, where
one false move could mean death: a life of piracy.

On the island of Nassau, Lola earns her keep as a prostitute
until she lands a place on the Revenge, a ship captained by the
infamous Blackbeard, the greatest buccaneer who ever lived.
To survive the lethal treachery of a pirate's life Lola must use
every hard-earned skill in her arsenal-and become the woman
she was always meant to be.



There is something about me, aint there? You noticed the moment your eyes
grew used to the dingy light of the tavern. And you came here, like everyone
who struts these worn boards, for tattle of Anne Bonny and pirates. Buy me a
dram, tread closer, and my tale will make your eyeballs roll. Do you remember
that scoundrel Calico Jack? Well it all started way way way before his day.
But what may surprise you is that I myself roved among themthe unsung
miscreantthe one that slipped through their net. I see you are tongue-tied and
burning to ask how we lived like sows? Rutted like pigs? Killed like boars? Ill
explain, good as I can, but you wont like my answers, Im telling you now,
mister. Theres no glamour . . . no quest . . . no founding of colonies . . . just the
tugging of the moon against fate. Who am I, you finally think to ask. You may
as well knowI was Blackbeards thirteenth wifeand very unlucky for him.
Folks call me Lola . . . London Lola . . . The Gypsy . . . or just plain Doxy. It
depends on who they are and what theyre after. I once claimed to be Cockney
but that was to clothe my Romany rootsI wasnt born nowhere near Bow Bells.
So, aye, Im a gypsy and come from a long strand of travelers. Our lives were
spent in tents or on carts, roaming round England from crop to new harvest. The
men reaped grain when autumn permitted while youngsters picked fruit in the
orchards and fields.


Wendy R. Williams
The Big Apple Posse

Twelve-year-old Amanda was dreading a boring afternoon
at a Broadway theater, babysitting her ten-year-old
brother Peter and watching her obnoxious cousin Cindy
perform the lead role in an Off-Broadway production of
"Annie." After the show, as they wait to be picked up in
Cindys basement dressing room, something
unimanageable happensthe theater, and perhaps the
entire city, explodes above them! Armed with a laptop and
backpacks, the terrified but determined tweens manage to
escape through an old door in the men's room and climb
down a Prohibition-era stairway to the subway.
When they emerge, they are stunned to find an empty city
where the streets are choked with abandoned cars and
plagued by looters running wild. With Amanda leading
the pack, the group dodges thieves and thugs, making
their way to Grand Central Station, where there has been
an explosion of white powder. What really happened? Is it
a terrorist attack?
Determined to solve the mystery and reunite with their
families, the teen posse quickly expands, adding some
quirky characters they meet along their way.


It was bright and beautiful that October day; the sky was clear, the air was
brisk but cold for a late October day in New York City. Later, when people
spoke about what happened, they always began by saying what a beautiful day
it was. But the atmosphere was barely tolerable inside the Range Rover that was
speeding down the FDR highway on its way from Connecticut to Manhattan.
Melanie Wolinski was driving as fast as she could, hoping not to get a traffic
ticket, counting the minutes until she could stop in front of the theater and drop
off her children, Amanda and Peter, who were trying to kill each other in the
backseat. Yes, I know you hate each other, but you are making me hate you
too, she screamed over her shoulder to the backseat. Would you please be
quiet so I can concentrate on driving and not kill us all? It did no good. Even
bad parenting didnt work. Amanda pushed Peter. Dont you sit next to me in
the theater. If I have to listen to that brat Cindy sing Tomorrow you are not
going to touch me.





Wendy Roberts
Dead and Kicking

Sadie Novak cleans up crime scenes for a living and is also
blessed-or cursed- with the gift of second sight. This time she's
digging out the home of a compulsive hoarder. She discovers
unexpected things, including an angry ghost who wants her to
go away. And there are even more secrets beneath the surface
that someone will kill to keep buried...


The cemetery smelled of freshly mowed grass. Today Sadie wouldve preferred
the pungent stench of body decomposition. She shifted uneasily from one foot to
the other and skipped her gaze over the cluster of family and friends to glance
upward at the gunmetal sky. She looked anywhere but just ahead of her, at the
casket that rested on straps, waiting to be lowered into the gaping hole beneath.
The priests voice droned on about how the human body was merely a shell.
Tell me about it, Sadie thought, swallowing a thick lump of emotion. If anyone
knew souls werent attached to their bodies, it was Sadie. She lived that truth
nearly every day. While Scene- 2-Clean, her trauma clean company, mopped up
the physical mess of death, Sadie dealt with the spirits that needed help to move
on to the next dimension. In the back of her mind Sadie thought her firsthand
knowledge of spirits and the ethereal dimension should give her comfort at the
funeral of a loved one. It didnt. Tears threatened but she bit them back. Sadie
let out a small, sorrowful sigh, and Zacks hand found hers. She tensed at first,
then relaxed and linked her fingers with his, offering him a grateful smile before
turning her gaze to the crowd. Her sister, Dawn, balanced her one-year-old son
on her hip and leaned into the embrace of her husband, John. When Dawns
eyes met Sadies, the pain there was so raw that Sadie had to look away.



Devil May Ride

When Sadie and her sexy partner Zack stumble on evidence of a
chilling cult ritual in an abandoned meth lab, Sadie comes face
to face with an evil spirit unlike any shes ever seen before. And
its no coincidence that a bundle of stolen cash turns up at her
next crime scene just in time to convince a biker gang that Sadie
made off with their money. She knows the threads are
connectedbut how?


When she walked in, Sadie expected the sickening stench of ammonia that
proclaimed the outwardly tidy bungalow a clandestine meth lab. She did not
expect to be confronted by a vicious Rottweiler preparing to rip her to shreds. A
step backward and Sadie found herself pinned against the screen door that had
snapped shut behind her. Easy, boy, Sadie said, although it was doubtful the
dog could hear her muffled voice behind her respirator. The dog snarled,
snapped, and inched forward. Thick ropes of saliva dangled from his yellow
teeth. Sadies knees shook as she grappled behind her back for the door handle,
but the sleeve of her disposable hazmat suit snagged and caught on the
splintered doorframe. Damn! She tugged hard and stumbled when her arm came
free. The dog lunged. Sadie shielded her face with her arms and braced for the
pain of teeth sinking into her flesh but felt only a mild shudder of revulsion. She
looked around and realized the dog had sailed right through her and dropped to
the ground outside the door. With a hand to her pounding heart, Sadie blew out
a relieved breath and stepped outside. She pulled off her respirator and watched
the confused mutt as he attempted to right himself. Sadie now noticed the other
side of his body. A large strip of flesh hung from his rear flank. Through the
fatal wound, she could see the knee-high grass and weeds that covered the
acreage behind the house.



Grounds to Kill

Barista Jen Hanby's coworkers give her a hard time for bringing
coffee and pastries to a homeless man who sits outside her caf
but she has a secret. The scruffy man is her father.
She's also hiding the little matter of why her palm itches. But
how can she explain that her hand has a mind of its own and
writes messages from the beyond? Right. That'll get her
Employee of the Month.
When she finds herself scrawling your boyfriend is cheating on
you! to herself on the bathroom mirror, she immediately dumps
the guy. But then his little flingwho just happens to be her half
sisterturns up dead, and suddenly Jen's homeless father is the
prime suspect.
Jen knows he is being framed and must take matters into her
own hands to protect him. But will anyone believe that the crazy
old man is innocent? Or that his spirit-writing daughter holds
the truth?


Theres a superstition that says if the palm of your hand is itchy youll soon be
receiving money. If that were true, Id be a gazillionaire instead of an underpaid
barista. Instinctively, I felt my itchy hand might one day bring me luck. So far,
nada. I rubbed my burning palm on the countertop while I concentrated on
whipping up a large caf mocha, no sugar, no whip, extra-dry, half-skim, half-
whole milk, with chocolate syrup. Watch your back, Jen. My co-worker, Mitch,
squeezed behind me to get to the cooler for more milk. Mitch was tall and
muscular with golden hair and eyes like hot espresso. When Mitch worked,
Merlots Caf saw a fifty percent increase in female clientele. The estrogen
enriched customers flocked to flirt with him. They tended to hang around too
long and talk too much, but I didnt mind. Mitchs hundred watt smiles had a
direct correlation to how the tip jar overflowed, and we shared gratuities. I
reaped the benefits without having to sell my own soul with plunging necklines
and pushup bras. My palm was itching even more, so I snagged a wooden stir
stick and scraped it roughly against my hand. Eczema acting up? Mitch asked,
raising his eyebrows. I merely shrugged. No sense in complicating our working
relationship by telling him I was crazy.






The Remains of the Dead -

Sadie Novak's got the kind of job that kills cocktail chatter dead:
she owns Scene-2-Clean a crime scene cleanup company. And if
wiping up after murders weren't spooky enough, she can see and
talk to the ghosts of the victims...

When grieving relatives hire Sadie and her employee, ex-cop
Zack Bowman, to clean up after the murder-suicide of Trudy
and Grant Toth, Sadie figures she's bound to meet at least one
chatty ghost. But Kent, the man Sadie first encounters at the
scene, is very much alive--so much so, that Sadie soon finds
herself agreeing to a date with him.

Then a real ghost shows up--the oddly silent spirit of Trudy,
who seems determined to prove that her husband's innocence,
and inspires Sadie to track down the real killer. But as she
scours the crime scene, Sadie quickly realizes she's in way over
her head, that Kent has a strange connection to the dead couple,
and that someone wants her to give up the ghost...for good.


She dipped a scrub brush into the cleaning fluid and stroked the bedroom wall
in wide, arched swipes. Although concentrating on the task at hand, Sadie tried
not to ignore the person behind her. Its just not fair, he whined. Jacob, weve
been over this a dozen times since yesterday, Sadie stated evenly as she brought
the dripping brush up once more. Talking about it wont change what
happened. What you created. You made your bed and now you must lie in it, so
to speak. Thats not funny. Sorry. But Sadie laughed just the same, then
took a step back to examine her work. Sometimes a little distance was necessary
to see if you got it all. There should be another way, he griped. Jacob, Ill be
blunt. Youre dead. You sat on your bed and blew your brains out all over this
wall. She strode toward him with a look of determination. Im sorry, but
theres just no coming back from that kind of decision.










Wendy Wax
Leave it to the Cleavage

Miranda Smith isn't surprised to discover a cache of racy
photographs in her husband's desk--after all, he is the president
of Ballantyne Bras. But she's more than shocked to realize it's his
buff, burly body encased in the red satin bustier and matching
bikini panties...and he's nowhere to be found. Neither is their life
savings nor the company coffers. Thus begins Miranda's
hilarious, frantic scramble to unravel the mystery behind her
husband's disappearance, illegal accounting practices, and
penchant for wearing silky teddies and kitten heels.


M iranda Smith was looking for a stamp when she discovered just how good her
husband looked in ladies lingerie. It was 5:30 P.M. on the coldest January 8 on
record, and the Truro Post Office was already closed. But for Mirandawho
was now conducting a room-by-room searchthe stamp was no longer postage,
but a symbol of every New Years resolution shed ever made. And failed to
keep. One week into the new year shed already given up on becoming a better
daughter and reading her way through the classics. She wasnt going to wimp
out on the only resolution she still had a chance of keeping. Somewhere in this
five-bedroom, four-bath, six-thousand-square-foot homewhich shed just tossed
like a petty thief looking for lootthere had to be enough postage to get her
credit card payment in on time. Miranda stood in the foyer outside Toms study,
debating her next move.









Magnolia Wednesdays

At forty-one, Vivian Armstrong Gray's life as an investigative
journalist is crumbling. Humiliated after taking a bullet in her
backside during an expos, Vivi learns that she's pregnant,
jobless, and very hormonal. This explains why she says 'yes' to
a dreadful job covering suburban living back home in Georgia,
a column she must write incognito.
Down South, it's her sister's ballroom dance studio that
becomes her undercover spot where she learns about the local
life-and where unexpected friendships develop. As she digs up
her long buried roots, she starts to wonder if life inside the
picket fence is really so bad after all.


WELL-BRED GIRLS FROM good southern families are not supposed to get shot.
Vivien Armstrong Grays mother had never come out and actually told her this,
but Vivi had no doubt it belonged on the long list of unwritten, yet critically
important, rules of conduct on which shed been raised. Dictates like Always
address older women and men as maam and sir and Never ask directly for
what you want if you can get it with charm, manners, or your family name.
And one of Viviens personal favorites, Although its perfectly fine to visit New
York City on occasion in order to shop, see shows and ballets, or visit a museum,
theres really no good reason to live there. Vivien had managed to break all of
those rules and quite a few others over the last forty-one years, the last fifteen of
which shed spent as an investigative reporter in that most Yankee of cities. The
night her life fell apart Vivi wasnt thinking about rules or decorum or anything
much but getting the footage she needed to break a story on oil speculation and
price manipulation that shed been working on for months. It was ten P.M. on a
muggy September night when Vivien pressed herself into a doorway in a
darkened corner of a Wall Street parking garage a few feet away from where a
source had told her an FBI financial agent posing as a large institutional
investor was going to pay off a debt-ridden commodities trader.




Ten Beach Road


Madeline, Avery, and Nikki are strangers to each other, but
they have one thing in common. They each wake up one
morning to discover their life savings have vanished, along
with their trusted financial manager- leaving them with
nothing but co-ownership of a ramshackle beachfront house.

Throwing their lots in together, they take on the challenge of
restoring the historic property. But just as they begin to
reinvent themselves and discover the power of friendship,
secrets threaten to tear down their trust-and destroy their
lives a second time.


Though she was careful not to show it, Madeline Singer did not fall apart when
her youngest child left for college. In the Atlanta suburb where she lived, women
wilted all around her. Tears fell. Antidepressants were prescribed. Her friends,
lost and adrift, no longer recognized themselves without children to care for. A
collective amnesia descended, wiping out all the memories of teenaged angst
and acts of hostility that had preceded their childrens departures, much as the
remembered pain of childbirth had been washed away once the newborn was
placed in their arms. Madeline kept waiting for the emptiness of her nest to
smite her. She loved her children and had loved being a stay-at-home mother,
but while she waited for the crushing blow, she took care of all the things that
shed never found time for while Kyra and Andrew were still at home.
Throughout that fall while her friends went for therapy, shared long liquid
lunches, and did furtive drive-bys and drop-ins to the high school where theyd
logged so many volunteer hours, Madeline happily responded to her childrens
phone calls and texts, but she also put twenty years worth of pictures into photo
albums. Then she cleaned out the basement storage unit and each successive
floor of their house, purging and sorting until the clutter that had always
threatened to consume them was finally and completely vanquished.




The Accidental Bestseller -

Once upon a time, four aspiring authors met at their very first writers'
conference. Ten years later, they're still friends, survivors of the ultra-
competitive New York publishing world. Mallory St. James is a
workaholic whose bestsellers support a lavish lifestyle. Tanya Mason
is a single mother juggling two jobs, two kids, and too many deadlines.
Faye Truett is the wife of a famous televangelist and the author of
inspirational romances: no one would ever guess her explosive secret.
Kendall Aims's once-promising career is on the skids-and so is her
marriage. Her sales are dismal, her new editor detests her work-and
her husband is cheating. Barely able to think, let alone meet her final
deadline, Kendall holes up in a mountain cabin to confront a blank
page and a blanker future. But her friends won't let her face this trial
alone. They collaborate on a novel using their own lives as fodder,
assuming no one will ever discover the truth behind their words.


Kendall Aimss writing career was about to go down for the count on that
Friday night in July as she hurried down Sixth Avenue toward the New York
Hilton. It had taken many blows over the last year and a halfthe first when
her editor left Scarsdale Publishing to have a baby, leaving Kendall orphaned
and unloved; another when her new editor, a plain, humorless woman named
Jane Jensen, informed her that her sales numbers were slipping. And still
another when they showed her the cover for the book shed just turned in, a
cover so bland and uninteresting that even Kendall didnt want to open it. And
on which her name had shrunk to a size that required a magnifying glass to
read it. She landed on the ropes when the print run for this new book was
announced. Kendalls first thought was that someone had forgotten to type in
the rest of the zeros. Because even she, who had given up on math long ago,
could see at a glance that even if they sold every one of these books, which now
seemed unlikely, shed never earn out the advance shed been paid.











Wes Craven
Fountain Society -

The brilliant Dr. Peter Jance, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist,
is only weeks away from succumbing to cancer. But a top-
secret government organization known as the Fountain
Society gives Peter a new lease on life by transplanting his
brain into the body of his much younger clone. When the
brand-new Peter becomes disgusted with the immorality of
the project and wants out, he finds himself on the run for his
very life.(


The cell held fifteen men. It was ten by twelve and stank of sweat, filth and fear.
The only amenity offered was a hole in the center of the concrete floor which
served as a toilet. The cell contained, so far as Rashid al-Assad had been able
to gather, three Lebanese commandos who kept to themselves and were dreaded
even more than their jailers. One of their number had been beaten badly during
capture and was raving with fever and gangrene. This kept the others in a
murderous mood. There were also six nondescript Palestinians, none known to
Rashid. From what he surmised they were nothing more than workmen, drivers
or ex-army thieves, the usual Shiite dregs. They gave true Palestinian fighters a
bad name, screaming under torture, wetting themselves and having nothing of
importance to disclose when they quickly broke. He despised them. The four
Syrians were probably spies of one sort or another, more than likely industrial.
He ignored them. There was Rashid himself proud to be a Shi'ite Muslim and a
Hezbollah guerrilla. Not once had he uttered a sound, although they had
removed everything on him that could be pulled off with a pair of pliers.






Wes Moore
The Other Wes Moore

In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a
small piece about Wes Moore, a local
student who had just received a Rhodes
Scholarship. The same paper also ran a
series of articles about four young men who
had allegedly killed a police officer in a
spectacularly botched armed robbery. The
police were still hunting for two of the
suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of
brothers. One was named Wes Moore.
Wes just couldnt shake off the unsettling
coincidence, or the inkling that the two
shared much more than space in the same
newspaper. After following the story of the
robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to its
conclusion, he wrote a letter to the other
Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life
sentence without the possibility of parole.
His letter tentatively asked the questions
that had been haunting him: Who are you?
How did this happen?


This is the story of two boys living in Baltimore with similar histories and an
identical name: Wes Moore. One of us is free and has experienced things that
he never even knew to dream about as a kid. The other will spend every day
until his death behind bars for an armed robbery that left a police officer and
father of five dead. The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine.
The tragedy is that my story could have been his. Our stories are obviously
specific to our two lives, but I hope they will illuminate the crucial inflection
points in every life, the sudden moments of decision where our paths diverge and
our fates are sealed. Its unsettling to know how little separates each of us from
another life alogether. In late 2000, the Baltimore Sun published a short article
with the headline Local Graduate Named Rhodes Scholar. It was about me.
As a senior at Johns Hopkins University, I received one of the most prestigious
academic awards for students in the world. That fall I was moving to England
to attend Oxford University on a full scholarship.






Wesley King
The Vindico

The Vindico are a group of supervillains who have been
fighting the League of Heroes for as long as anyone can
remember. Realizing theyre not as young as they used to be,
they devise a plan to kidnap a group of teenagers to take over
for them when they retireafter all, how hard can it be to
teach a bunch of angsty teens to be evil?

Held captive in a remote mansion, five teens train with their
mentors and receive superpowers beyond their wildest
dreams. Struggling to uncover the motives of the Vindico, the
teens have to trust each other to plot their escape. But they
quickly learn that the differences between good and evil are
not as black and white as they seem, and they are left
wondering whose side they should be fighting on after all . . .


JAMES TIREDLY SLID HIS LEGS OFF THE BED AND LOOKED
AROUND in disgust. His room was a mess. Half-finished glasses and plates
covered his desk and dresser, while clothes were scattered in a tangled layer
across the carpet. Crumpled and ripped photographs had been haphazardly
thrown on top of the clothing, along with their now-empty frames. Only the
walls had escaped the chaos, and they were almost entirely taken up by posters
of his favorite League members. Thunderbolt had his arms crossed on the far
wall by the closet, looking down on the room in disapproval. James wasnt
usually so messy; hed accumulated all this in the last thirty-two hours. Hed
spent thirty-one-and-a-half of those in his bedroom. After digging around for
some passably clean clothes, James shuffled into the bathroom. Catching a
glimpse of himself in the mirror, he frowned. He focused on his nose in
particular, which was small, a bit pointy, and covered with faint freckles.
Growing up, his pet name from his mother had been my little weasel. Hed
never found it quite as endearing as she had. James walked into the kitchen
and found his two younger sisters sitting at the table. They both looked up,
wearing the same patronizing smile. Still moping about Sara? Ally asked. Its
only been two days, James said defensively. He went to get himself a piece of
plain bread. It was the only thing hed been able to keep down.


Weston Ochse
Appalachian Galapagos

APPALACHIAN GALAPAGOS follows the smash success of
Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors with authors
Weston Ochse and David Whitman returning us to the world
of rednecks, human-skin beer cozies, urban legends come to
life, southern mythology, drunkards flying in lawn chairs,
contemplations on the nature of god, and the monsters
within us all. Galapagos cements its ownership of the genre
opening with a grand opus of a novella co-written by both
authors, featuring backwoods churches, boat rides, and
bigfoots. Fourteen additional stories provide us glorious
glances into a world of bug zappers, cheetos, and beer-fueled
madness.


Frank stared out upon the green, easy river, wondering why he had ever
returned. Many years had passed since he'd even thought of the Hiawasee much
less rafted upon it. Yet now, confronted with the perfect mnemonic of the real
thing, a memory that he had successfully forgotten resurfaced like a rotting
catfish. Memories of a Dandelion Wine summer, a boy scout canoe trip,
marshmallow roasting and ghost stories around a campfire, the frivolity of
adolescence and his best friend dead...half-eaten. Bloody lacerations mixed
with the unmistakable reality of teeth-marks. Ragged spaces where organs and
limbs had once called home. Strips of flesh and ligaments that looked too much
like red yarn dangling from a body which had been wedged in the crux of an
oak. And within the congealing mess beneath it all, within a pool of green, gray
and red body fluids, was a lone handprint. Unmistakable. Out of place. And
impossibly huge. "Hey Frank! Stop your dreamin' and give me a hand!" Frank
spun just in time to get a twelve pack in the chest, the impact sending him
teetering along the edge of the crumbly clay shore. Fighting to maintain his
balance, he glanced fearfully at the muddy, rushing water below.





Blood Ocean

Survivors of the Cull, a Plague that wiped out people with the
blood type O-neg, struggle in the floating Sargasso
City jigsawed together with ships, submarines, barges and oil
tankers off the coast of what was once known as California.

Separated by demarcations of turf, ethnicity, and fear, its not
so much living as existing. High above it all swing the Pali
Boys: descendants of Hawaiian warriors, they desire to lift
themselves and the spirits of the residents below by
performing an increasingly impossible series of extreme stunts,
designed to test their manhood, and demonstrate the vibrancy
humanity once had.

But as a conspiracy of murder unfolds and blood
attacks increase, Kavika a single under-sized Pali Boy must
strive to overcome his lowly status and the condemnation of
his peers in order to save them all from an enemy living
within.


PALI BOY AKAMU hid in the shadows beneath the piping on the main deck of
the old fishing boat. Hed been waiting until the fire guard passed before moving
on. Nothing worse than fire aboard a ship, especially a floating city made of
ships. In reality, the chances of a fire were so slim as to be non-existent, but the
possible consequences of such a conflagration were so terrible that the tradition
was maintained. So a fire guard dressed in all white and carrying a Cousteau
tube to light his way made his rounds, then moved onto the next ship. Probably
earning an extra ration of fish cakes for his family. The Pali Boy could just
make out the red-painted, flaking letters of the words All Day Rental.
According to old Donnie Wu, who was a walking, talking encyclopedia of the
time before, the boat had once taken tourists into the ocean to catch fish as a
form of entertainment. When Akamu had asked what a tourist was, Wu had
explained, Its like a refugee who only wants to have fun. The concept was
beyond Akamus understanding, but he acknowledged that there had been such
a thing when the world was different, before the plague, before everything
changed and their life was lived on the water.






Scary Rednecks & Other Inbred Horrors -

SCARY REDNECKS written with David Whitman: 23 stories
of horror, madness, and humor set in America's heartland.
The stories run the gauntlet from terror to outrage, with
everything from abusive parents, cannibals, deer hunters,
demonic catfish, UFO abductions, voodoo priestesses,
vampire moonshiners, and Appalachian monstrosities; it
will amuse you, disturb you, & leave you hungry for more.(


Trey sat on the community dock, staring out across the green August water of
Chicamauga Reservoir, his tanned legs swinging gently, fingers gripping the
rough gray wood as thoughts of pleasure and mortality mingled within his
thirteen year old mind. His grandfather had died six months ago and there
were times when the heat and the bickering of his family and the memory of the
loss became so much, he needed to be alone. He would sit and remember every
word the old man had spoken; every action and every smile. He basked in the
memories. All grandfathers are special, but Trey felt his was even more so. It
was as if, the mans mere presence could calm the world. It was as if he was a
God and when Gods die, one never forgets. The dock was where Trey went
when he needed to think; to remember. Other than his bed, it was the one place
he spent most of his time. His first fight, his first bass, the first time he slid his
trembling fingers along the curve of a breast as he massaged oil into the soft skin
of an older high school girl, had all taken place on the dock. It was called the
community dock, but had been abandoned by the city years before he moved
into the neighborhood. Although access to the dock had grown over with tall
weeds, a path had been pounded into the red Tennessee dirt by a faithful herd
of eager children who now called it their own. It was a sacred place, one where
parents never tread.



Whitley Strieber
Cat Magic

The arrival of Amanda Walker, a talented young artist, in the
seemingly peaceful town of Maywell, New Jersey, triggers a
bizarre and horrific series of events in a terrifying tale of
modern witchcraft.


Stone Mountainis the only truly rough peak in the Peconics. Its gray, cracked
ridges stretch for about three miles in that otherwise benign chain. They are so
loose and treacherous that even the most obsessive rock climbers avoid them as
offering too unsubtle a doom. The Appalachian Trail, deferring to the fact that
old Stone has been known to slice a good pair of Beans to shreds, skirts the
mountain and passes through the orchard-choked exurbia of the little town of
Maywell, which huddles beneath the mountain like an Israelite at the feet of
Pharaoh. From the grand and crumbling Collier estate at one end of town to the
dark Victorian buildings of Maywell College at the other, the ridges look down
on the whole of Maywell. This is not an area of superhighways and roaring
commuter buses; Maywell has been bypassed by the roads and the developers.
Once again, old Stone is to blame. No highway construction company would
bid on a road to cross that miserable expanse of cracked granite, so Mayweli
remains much as it was a century ago, a town as pretty as it can be, alone, and
largely content with its own gentle self.







Communion

On December 26, 1985, at a secluded cabin in upstate New York,
Whitley Strieber went siding with his wife and son, ate Christmas
dinner leftovers, and went to bed early.

Six hours later, he found himself suddenly awake...and forever
changed.

Thus begins the most astonishing true-life odyssey ever recorded
-- one man's riveting account of his extraordinary experiences
with visitors from elsewhere"... how they found him, where they
took him, what they did to him and why...

Believe it. Or don't believe it. But read it -- for this gripping story
will move you like no other... will fascinate you, terrify you, and
alter the way you experience your world.


This is the story of one man's attempt to deal with a shattering assault from the
unknown. It is a true story, as true as I know how to describe it. To all
appearances I have had an elaborate personal encounter with intelligent
nonhuman beings. But who could they be, and where have they come from? Are
unidentified flying objects real? Are there goblins or demons . . . or visitors? At
first, I thought I was losing my mind. But I was interviewed by three
psychologists and three psychiatrists, given a battery of psychological tests and-
a neurological examination, and found to fall within the normal range in all
respects. I was also given a polygraph by an operator with thirty years'
experience and I passed without qualification. I had been indifferent to the
whole issue of unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrials; I had viewed
them as a false unknown, easily explainable as misperceptions or hallucinations.
Now what was I to think? The visitors marched right into the middle of the . life
of an indifferent skeptic without a moment's hesitation.








Critical Mass

What would we do if a nuclear weapon was detonated in
Washington, and the US government suddenly disappeared?
What would we do if a terrorist organization announced that it
had concealed nuclear weapons in ever major western city and
then demanded that the entire planet embrace its twisted brand
of Muslin fundamentalism? In Critical Mass, nuclear
interdiction expert James Deutsh and his tormented Muslim
wife, Nabila, struggle to stop an impending nuclear attack on an
American city. Along the way, they delve deep into the hidden
world of nuclear terrorism and the experts who strive to contain
it, and get a compelling look at the titanic battle within Islam
over its own future--fundamentalist and rejecting, or
compassionate and life embracing?


Jim Deutsch was driving much too fast, but it was urgent that he interview the
children before they died. He was not close to the end of this investigation, and
they almost certainly possessed crucial information. If he did not get it, he had
not the slightest doubt that more people were going to be joining them in death
many more, and soon. What he had to find out was something he was very
much afraid he already knew: why these little children, just smuggled in from
Mexico, were radioactive. He had spent his career in counterproliferation, and
the sudden appearance of radiation-sick kids in a border town was a definite
worry. Of course, they could have been brought over in a truck full of smuggled
X-ray isotopes, or gotten into some other innocuous material. But he doubted
that. He had to get solid evidence and work it up convincingly, in order to get
the massive search going that he feared was needed. When the speedometer
moved through a hundred, he forced himself to let the car slow down. He took a
deep breath, held it, then let it out. He loosened his hands, and felt blood rush
back into his fingers.







Grays

A triumvirate of Grays, known as the Three Thieves, has
occupied a small Kentucky town for decades--abducting its
residents and manipulating fates and bloodlines in hopes of
creating an ultra-intelligent human being. Nine-year-old
Conner Callahan will face the ultimate terror as he struggles to
understand who he has been bred to be and what he must do to
save humanity.
Though the Grays have slowly begun to make themselves known,
Colonel Michael Wilkes, the head of a select group of
government and military officials that have been monitoring the
aliens, will do anything in his power to keep them a secret.
Wilkes will set in motion a sinister plan to ensure the survival of
humanity, but at what cost?
The fate of the human race lies with one woman, Lauren Glass.
Her uncanny ability to communicate with the aliens and her
relationship with the last remaining captive gray may be the
only way to save humankind.


BECAUSE WE KNOW IT IS there, danger in an obvious placeon a
battlefield, sayis often far less of a threat than it is on a quiet street in a
small town. For example, on a street deep in America where three little boys
rode interlocking figure eights on their bicycles, and on a sweet May evening, too,
any danger would be a surprise. And a great and terrible dangerimpossible.
Not all of the boys were in danger. In fact, two of them were as profoundly safe
as anybody else in Madison, Wisconsin, on the scented evening of May 21, 1977.
The third boy, however, was not so lucky. Not nearly. Because of something
buried deeply in his genes, he was of more than normal interest to someone that
is supposed not to exist, but does existin fact, is master of this earth. It was
too bad for this childin fact, tragicbecause these creaturesif they could
even be called thatcaused phenomenal trauma, scarring trauma . . . to those
of their victims who lived. Play ended with the last of the sun, and lights glowed
on the porches of Woody Lane, as one by one the boys of the lane retired. Danny
rode a little longer, and was watched by Burly, the dog of Mr. Ehmer. Soon Mr.
Ehmer himself came across his lawn. His pipe glowed as he drew on it, and he
said, Say there, Danny, you want to come night fishin with me and your
Uncle Frank? Weve been getting some gooduns all this week.




Hunger

Eternal youth is a wonderful thing for the few who have it, but
for Miriam Blaylock, it is a curse -- an existence marred by
death and sorrow. Because for the everlasting Miriam, everyone
she loves withers and dies. Now, haunted by signs of her
adoring husband's imminent demise, Miriam sets out in search
of a new partner, one who can quench her thirst for love and
withstand the test of time. She finds it in the beautiful Sarah
Roberts, a brilliant young scientist who may hold the secret to
immortality. But one thing stands between the intoxicating
Miriam Blaylock and the object of her desire: Dr. Tom
Haver...and he's about to realize that love and death to hand in
hand.(


JOHN BLAYLOCK CHECKED his watch again. It was exactly three A.M.
time to move. The small Long Island town was so quiet he could hear the light
change at the end of the tree-lined street. John put his watch back in his pocket
and stepped softly from his place of concealment in the shrubs. He paused a
moment in the cool, private air of the empty street. His target lived in the middle
of the block. Johns well-trained senses fixed on the black bulk of the house,
testing for any flicker of life. As far as the Wagners were concerned, Kaye would
just disappear. Within a month she would become another statistic, one of
thousands of teenagers who walk out on their families every year. Kaye had
good reason to run away. She was being expelled from Emerson High, and she
and her boyfriend, Tommy, were facing a cocaine charge in JD court in a few
days. Both would disappear tonight. Miriam was taking care of the boyfriend.
As he walked, silent and invisible in his black jogging outfit, he thought briefly
about his partner. He wanted her as he always did at moments of tension.
Theirs was an old love, familiar and comfortable.







Key

At two-thirty in the morning of June 6, 1998, Whitley
Streiber was awakened by somebody knocking on his hotel
room door. A man came in, and everything he said was life
altering.

This is the unsettling and ultimately enlightening narrative
of what happened that night. Strieber was never really sure
who this strange and knowing visitor was--a "Master of
Wisdom"? A figure from a different realm of consciousness?
A preternaturally intelligent being? He called him the
Master of the Key. The one thing of which Strieber was
certain is that both the man and the encounter were real.


I did not know it at the time, but on the night of June 6, 1998, one phase of my
life was going to end and another begin. At around two thirty in the morning, I
had a most extraordinary conversation, indeed a life-changing conversation,
with a man I have come to call the Master of the Key. It has now been more
than a decade since the half hour or so I spent with him, and I can say that his
words, if embraced with care and decision, are profoundly transformative. He
made no call for devotees, but rather gently suggested that it would be of value
to make use of his ideas. Some are new. Those that have roots in what has come
before shed new light on the ancient human journey toward meaning. I was in a
hotel room in Toronto, having just spent a day touring for my book
Confirmation. It was my last day of a month-long tour and I was exhausted. Id
eaten a room service dinner and gone to bed, and when there came a knock at
the door, I assumed that it was the waiter, returned to get my tray. Not realizing
that it was already long after midnight, I opened the door and let him in. He
ignored the tray sitting on the desk and began talking. For a moment, I was
confused, then I understood that this was not, in fact, the waiter. My next
thought was that somebody who wanted to engage with me because of my book
had found my hotel room. A reliable rule of thumb is that no stranger who calls
or arrives after midnight is going to be somebody you want to talk to, so I
immediately began to try to get him to leave.


Last Vampire

Vampire hunter Paul Ward is closing in on the long-standing object of
his pursuit: Miriam Blaylock, the eternal predator whose beauty and
guile are surpassed only by her thirst for blood. Yet, Miriam has her
own plans for Paul -- a diabolical plot using him as the means for
birthing a new race of vampires. As the chase moves from Thailand to
Paris to New York, the line between predator and prey blurs, and the
hunt for the last vampire ensues.


Everyone knew the sins of Miriam Blaylock. Her crime, and it was an
unforgivable one, was to enjoy human beings as friends and lovers, rather than
to simply exploit them. She could kiss them and find it sweet, have sex with
them and afterward sleep like a contented tiger. To her own kind, this was
perversion, like a man with a sheep. The fact that this prejudice was nonsense
did not make what she was doing now any easier. She pressed herself back
against the seat of the pedicab, instinctively keeping her face hidden, not only
from man, but from her own kind. The samlor moved swiftly down the wet street,
spattering through puddles left by the last storm. From the shadows of the
passenger compartment, she watched a concealing fog rising from the moat that
surrounded the ancient Thai city of Chiang Mai. How could she ever do this
impossible thing? How could she ever face her own kind?














Lilith's Dream

Lilith, the ages-old mother of the dying race of vampires,
has been forced to come out of her cave deep in the
Egyptian desert in search of food -- human blood. But she
knows nothing about the modern world. She can't drive a
car, rent a room, turn on a TV. She struggles to New York,
penniless, vulnerable, and starving, protected only by her
beauty and her power to capture men with
desire...especially certain very special men.
The instant she sees young Ian Ward, she knows that he
is part vampire himself. She knows that Ian, if he ever
tastes human blood, will belong to her forever. And she
needs him desperately, to help her survive and live in this
harsh new world of jets and credit cards and guns. She
sets out on a campaign of seduction -- as sensuous as it is
terrifying -- to touch human blood to Ian's lips, which
will then become for him a drug a thousand times more
addictive than heroin.
Ian's father, Paul Ward, part vampire turned expert and
obsessive hunter of vampires, knows that if the blood
transforms Ian, Paul will have to kill his own son. The
titanic conflict between father and son and seductress, hunter and hunted and huntress, comes to
its surprise conclusion in the secret chambers beneath the great pyramids, where the hidden
truths of all human history are stored.


It was silver and very high, the thing that Lilith was watching. She wondered
what it might be. Really, she couldnt remember ever seeing anything quite like
it. Of course, she hadnt been here in some time, not out here. She focused on the
gleam in the sky. It implied things, things that disturbed her almost as much as
the reason she had come out to the surface. Last night, she had slept as she
always slept, for a few deep, echoing hours. She had awakened at the far edge of
a heartbreaking dreamone shed had far too many timesand known
immediately that she had been left alone too long. She directed her attention to
the lilies that crowded the entrance to her cave, listening to the whisper of the
lives that transpired among themthe drone of the bee, the shuffle of the beetles,
the snickering movement of the little shrews that hunted the beetles.









Majestic


On July 2, 1947 something crashed in the desert outside of
Roswell, New Mexico. An explosion of light and sound made the
sheep wail, the chickens squawk, and the children scream. And
then the ranchers heard a noise they thought could only have
come from the devil himself.
For forty years, Majestic Agency director Wilfred Stone helped
the CIA pretend the landing never happened. Then his
conscience got the better of him.
This is the real story, told to reporter Nicholas A. Duke by the
guilt-racked shell of the man who once worked tirelessly to
cover it all up. It is a truth so terrifying that Whitley Strieber
had to call it fiction.


It was my misfortune to have some really good luck. If I'd had the good sense to
go along with it, I would have left this story alone. It's the scoop of the century,
but it has almost certainly ruined my career. And I was about to escape my job
with a dreary suburban weekly and go to work for a semiofficial urban daily.
Now I'll never report for the Washington Post. I'll never enter the fabled halls of
the New York Times, unless it is with somebody else's sandwiches in my hands.
So what is this thing that has ruined me? I won't hide the fact that I was
researching an April Fool's piece for my paperor rather, my former paperthe
Bethesda Express. We were going to get a good laugh out of an obvious
absurdity that is believed by at least half the population. I wasn't fired because
I failed to turn in this story. That wasn't exactly it. What got me canned was
that I found out it was all true. What I wrote struck my editor as being a joke
on him. He did not think this was funny. Like the whole community of
journalists, he was convinced that the subject is nonsense. I have met the man
who did this to us. Insofar as it is about any one person, this book is about that
man.






Night Church

Two congregations worship at the Holy Spirit Church. By day
Catholics kneel at the altar of the tiny chapel in Kew Gardens,
Queens. But at night, the rafters echo with Satan's music.
Feared by the Vatican and as old as Christianity itself, a
terrifying alternate religion has flourished in the darkness for
two millennia, keeping alive the blood rituals of the Middle
Ages while embracing the gods of high technology. Preparing
the way for the evil product of thousands of years of genetic
engineering--the birth of the Monstrum--the anti-man and the
death of humanity.


IT WAS A WET NIGHT in Queens. Kew Gardens was quiet, the only sounds
along Beverly Road the slow-dripping rain, the occasional hiss of tires on the
slick asphalt, or the hurrying splash of feet on the sidewalk. A man came swiftly
along, huddling in his raincoat, his eyes hooded by a hat. When he stopped and
raised his head to read a street sign his face was revealed to be as pale and
creased as a worn-out mask. The wrinkles framed a tight mouth and green eyes,
ironic and cold. He consulted an address book, then walked up to the front door
of a particu-lar house. It had been carefully selected; the tenants had moved
here only a few weeks ago from another state. Their little boy had not yet begun
attending Holy Spirit Parochial School, had not yet registered. The Cochrans
were a demographic oddity of very special interest to certain people, for the
Cochrans had no relatives but one another, and the Cochrans had just come
here. They were utterly alone. The old man did not ring their bell; he did not
even pause on the porch. Instead he glanced over his shoulder, then slipped
around the side of the house and disappeared at once Into the shadows there.
He moved quickly; his activities here were carefully planned. They were
dangerous. Occasionally people such as these had guns; occasionally they
called the police.




Omega Point

But by 2020, energy from a supernova is disrupting the sun.
Solar storms ravage the globe with unprecedented ferocity, and
debris in the form of comets and asteroids threaten to end life
on earth. The wealthy of the world hide in vast underground
bunkers, but even they know that they cannot survive without
a miracle.

It all comes down to one mana young psychiatrist named
David Fordwho may hold the power to save the
world. Newly employed at the extravagant Acton Clinic, Ford
encounters people who seem to understand what's
happening some may even possess an extraordinary
knowledge of whats to come. One of them is the beautiful and
enigmatic Caroline Light, who demands more from Ford than
he could possibly give another is cunning ex-CIA operative
Mack Graham, a skilled killer with questionable loyalties


Marty Breslin sat at the desk watching the cameras watch him, waiting for his
nightly few minutes of local fame. Hows the remote? he asked Ginger Harper.
They had dropped a number of feeds lately, although not on him, because
weathermen normally dont do feeds. But he was horrified at the idea of being
left under the lights with nothing to say. Even when he had something to say, he
had nothing to say, so a dead teleprompter was a terrifying thought. Ginger,
come back, please. We do have that feed ready to go? Were good down the
line. Anything unusual actually happening? Anywhere? There were New
Agers out in force around the world, on hilltops, crowding places like Sedona,
and swarming by the thousands in Yucatan and Guatemala. Fourteen of them
had been iced during a blizzard yesterday on Mount Everest. Even the stock
market had gotten quiet today, waiting to see if anything might happen over the
weekend. Hello? Ginger? I was just looking. CNN, quiet. BBC, theyre still
on the Himalayas story, nothing fresh on the AP. Joke stories. Across on the
news desk, Callie and Fred tossed real stories back and forth. They hit the
Himalayas, but the big one tonight was a gang riding the highways disguised as
state police officers, soliciting bribes in lieu of tickets. Sounds like a good
business, he said into his mike.




War for Souls

Whitley Strieber explores 2012 in a towering work of fiction
that will astound readers with its truly new insights and a
riveting roller-coaster ride of a story. A mysterious alien
presence unexpectedly bursts out of sacred sites all over the
world and begins to rip human souls from their bodies,
plunging the world into chaos it has never before known.

Courage meets cowardice; loyalty meets betrayal as an entire
world struggles to survive this incredible end-all war. Heroes
emerge, villains reveal themselves, and in the end something
completely new and unexpected happens that at once lifts the
fictional characters into a new life, and sounds a haunting
real-world warning for the future.


MARTIN WINTERS HAD BEEN IN the Pyramid of Khufu a number of times,
and he'd always felt the same wonder and the same claustrophobia. The work
he was doing here was revolutionizing archaeology, and that was exciting, but
this particular journey into the tiny pit beneath the structure was one he had
been dreading. His mission was to collect stone facing from the interior of joins,
so that the new technique of mass-average decay dating could be applied and a
final mystery solved. Over the past three years, his lab at Kansas State
University at Uriah had dated a dozen sites in South America using the
technique. For the past nine months, they had been working on the Great
Pyramid, and the results were so inconsistent that archaeologists worldwide,
eager to dismiss findings that had devastated their theories about the past, were
howling that the technique was defective. What they had found was that the
pyramid had not been built in just a few years, but that the work had been done
in at least four stages over thousands of years, beginning at least six thousand
years ago. The Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khufu had indeed built the section
where his glyph had been found, but the pyramid rested on a base that had
been laid three thousand years before Khufu's reign.





Wild

When Bob Duke turns into a wolf and begins to roam the streets
of Manhattan, his wife and son vow to find him and restore his
humanity.


Cindy and Robert Duke were in the fifteenth year of a good marriage when
something unusual happened. They had a twelve-year-old boy named Kevin
Thomas for his paternal grandfather; they had an apartment inNew York City ;
Bob had sold stock, brokered insurance, sold bonds, was now a computer
consultant. He had never been much good at making money, but until now he
had managed. Argument was past, anger was past, the sweated skin of Cindy's
girlhood was past, and they were really learning one another, growing close in
ways so deep that they spent a lot of time infected with secret laughter. Cindy
was heavier than she had been when they used to traverseManhattan on roller
skates, two cheerful Village types, a young poet and his wife. The need for
money had ended those days; Bob was a poet now at night only. Recently Cindy
had made a private decision that she would allow herself to widen out a little,
to find in the long curves of a bigger body a comfort she had suspected but never
dared try.








Wolfen

The Wolfen (1978), the debut novel by Whitley Strieber, tells
the story of two police detectives in New York City who, while
investigating the violent deaths of two policemen in a junk yard,
discover that a pack of intelligent and savage wolf-like creatures
is stalking the city. These predators are not traditional
werewolves, as they are a separate race of intelligent beings
descended from wolves that live secretly alongside mankind in
our cities and quickly killing anyone who learns about their
existence.


In Brooklyn they take abandoned cars to the Fountain Avenue Automobile
Pound adjacent to the Fountain Avenue Dump. The pound and the dump
occupy land shown on maps as Spring Creek Park (Proposed). There is no
spring, no creek, and no park. Normally the pound is silent, its peace disturbed
only by an occasional fight among the packs of wild dogs that roam there, or
perhaps the cries of the sea gulls that hover over the stinking, smoldering dump
nearby. The members of the Police Auto Squad who visit the pound to mark
derelicts for the crusher do not consider the place dangerous. Once in a while
the foot-long rats will get aggressive and become the victims of target practice.
The scruffy little wild dogs will also attack every so often, but they can usually
be dealt with by a shot into the ground. Auto-pound duty consists of marking
big white Xs on the worst of the derelicts and taking Polaroids of them to prove
that they were beyond salvage in case any owners turn up. It isnt the kind of
job that the men associate with danger, much less getting killed, so Hugo
DiFalco and Dennis Houlihan would have laughed in your face if you told
them they had only three minutes to live when they heard the first sound behind
them. What was that? Houlihan asked. He was bored and wouldnt have
minded getting a couple of shots off at a rat.




Whitney Gaskell
She, Myself & I -

The Cassel sisters have little in common besides a pair of wacky
parents and a maddening knack for eluding happily-ever-after
endings. But when their lives require damage control, only a
dose of sisterhood will do.
Paige, the oldest, is a go-getter divorce attorney whos reeling
from her own disastrously failed marriageand the fact that her
ex has suddenly come roaring out of the closet with a cute
boyfriend in tow. Middle sister Sophie is having trouble
adjusting to life as a wife and expectant mom. With her doubts
on the rise along with her weight, shes ogling every available
baked goodand every available manthat crosses her path.
And up-and-coming medical student Mickey has a racy new
plan for her future thats sure to shock her entire family. It
includes a dangerously handsome, decidedly married
chefprivate cooking lessonsand spicy lingerie.
To top it all off, the parents who dragged them through the
Divorce from Hell years ago are acting like teenagers in
lovewith each other! One by one, Paige, Sophie, and Mickey
are about to learn just how good it is to have a sisterly
shoulderor twoto lean on.


I dont know why I got that squirmy-stomach feeling when Scott knocked on the
door. It was just Scott after allthe one person who couldnt possibly surprise
me any more than he already had. I took a few deep breaths to center myself,
and, once I felt sufficiently calm, opened the door. Hi, Paige, he said. I stared
at him. Since wed divorced, Scott had apparently stumbled onto someone elses
fashion taste. Gone were the plain-front khakis, the slightly too-long floppy
brown hair, the preppy tortoiseshell glasses, the quintessential boy-next-door
whom most womenlike medont notice until they hit their late twenties and
start looking around for husband-type material. Now his clothes looked
expensively hip, and his hair was cropped short. The tortoiseshell glasses had
been replaced with sleek silver metal frames. The once soft body was now lean
and muscular. He looked amazing, far better than he ever had when we were
together . . . but his new look was also unmistakably gay. Okay, I was wrong.
He was still capable of surprising me. Hey. Come on in, I said, stepping out of
his way.





Whitney Lyles
Always the Bridesmaid

What do you do after you walk down the aisle in four weddings
in a few months-none of them your own? What's left after
you've donned the must-have-not dresses of the season, forked
over your cash, and fake-smiled your way through countless
photos? After you've dealt with the smashed guest, the
smooshed cake, the dashed hopes, and the missed bouquets?
That's what Cate Padgett is starting to wonder, as she embarks
on stint after stint on the sidelines, watching friends swap
barhopping for baby naming...while her own love life goes
nowhere fast. But is Cate unwilling to settle down-or just
unwilling to settle? And can anyone really judge her if they
haven't walked in her dyed-to-match shoes?











Whoopi Goldberg
Is It Just Me__ or is it Nuts out There_

In her new book, Whoopi shares stories from her own life when
she's been forced to deal with tough situations in family,
marriage, friendship, and business. She relates how she
navigated through them with healthy honesty, which has all but
vanished in the era of the volatile pundit. Naturally, she tells
these stories with the humor, irreverence, and joy for which she's
known, and she speaks up about the challenges dealing with one
another here and now, especially with the growing disrespect
and rudeness in this country. Cheeky, a bit naughty, occasionally
in your face, this humorous book will bring readers into her
world.


First of all, thanks for picking up this book. Im sure the cover got your attention
too. That was the point. Now that youve done so, you may be wondering,
What the hell?which is one of the names I had for this. Some of the others
were Uncivil Liberties (which no one got), or If Youre in Confession, You Cant
Have an Autograph, which everyone said sounded like a prissy book by a
celebrity. And then Is It Just Me? came into being because it really does say it
all. As it turns out, it isnt just me. When I asked different people what was
bugging them, it turned out that it was the same stuff bugging me!and I knew
what I wanted to write. Somehow so many little pieces of courtesy have gone by
the wayside. People in your face, in your business, not caring if they are
invading your space, being disrespectfully loud. Thoughtlessness is the new
manners, and Ive got to say I dont like it. Now, Im guilty of some of those
things, but Im aware of it, so I try not to share my cell phone conversations with
everyone. I try to remember to say please and thank youall the things my
mom taught me to do . . . that I dont do anymore. But if Im slacking on it, and
if youre slacking on it, and everyone else is slacking on it, well, you can see just
how we may have gotten ourselves to the point of Im Annoyed/Youre
Annoyed.




Wil Wheaton
Just a Geek -

In this bestselling book, Wil shares his deeply personal and
difficult journey to find himself. You'll understand the rigors,
and joys, of Wil's rediscovering of himself, as he comes to
terms with what it means to be famous, or, ironically, famous
for once having been famous. Writing with honesty and
disarming humanity, Wil touches on the frustrations
associated with his acting career, his inability to distance
himself from Ensign Crusher in the public's eyes, the launch of
his incredibly successful web site, wilwheaton.net, and the joy
he's found in writing. Through all of this, Wil shares the
difficulties he encountered along the journey, along with the
support and love he discovered from his friends and family.


IN JULY OF 2003, I was invited to Portland, Oregon, by my friend and fellow
O'Reilly Author, Randal Schwartz, to attend the release party for his newest
book, Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules.[1] While I was there, I also
attended O'Reilly's Open Source Convention and did a signing of my own, at
Powell's Technical Books in downtown Portland. That's right. The artist
formerly known as Wesley Crusher had written a book and published it himself.
The book is called Dancing Barefoot, and it's five short-but-true essays about
my life as a husband, stepfather, and former Star Trek actor. I was about six
steps through the door at Powell's when the store manager, Amber, approached
me. "We have completely sold out of your book!" She looked concerned. I took a
moment to digest this exceedingly good news. I'd just walked into my very first
in-store book signing. I didn't know what would happen . . . but a sellout never
entered my mind. "That's the greatest thing I've ever heard," I said, as I took my
iBook bag off my shoulder. Pasadena, 30 hours earlier I'm packing my bags for
the trip to OSCon. My dog, Ferris, lays on the bed, looking at me with her "I see
the suitcase, so I know you're going to be gone" look. I fold some pants and a few
shirts. My wife, Anne, walks into our room. "Are you taking any extra books?"
she asks.



Wilbert Rideau
In the Place of Justice

After killing a woman in a moment of panic following a botched
bank robbery, Rideau, denied a fair trial, was improperly
sentenced to death at the age of nineteen. After more than a
decade on death row, his sentence was amended to life
imprisonment, and he joined the inmate population of the
infamous Angola penitentiary. Soon Rideau became editor of
the prison newsmagazine The Angolite, which under his
leadership became an uncensored, daring, and crusading
journal instrumental in reforming the violent prison and the
corrupt Louisiana justice system.
With the same incisive feel for detail that brought Rideau great
critical acclaim, here he brings to vivid life the world of the
prison through the power of his pen. We see Angolas unique
culture, encompassing not only rivalries, sexual slavery,
ingrained racism, and daily, soul-killing injustices but also acts
of courage and decency by keeper and kept alike. As we relive
Rideaus remarkable rehabilitationhe lived a more productive
life in prison than do most outsidewe also witness his long
struggle for justice.


Kill that nigger! a voice barked into the winter night. The headlights of the
state troopers car blinded me. I was handcuffed and in my stocking feet on the
shoulder of a two-lane road, standing between the headlights of their car and
the taillights of the one I had been driving before they pulled me over. Murmurs
ran like the scent of prey through the small crowd of shadowy figures that
rustled on the roadway beyond the lights. I wondered how they had gathered so
quickly. An arm punctured the pool of light as a man lunged toward me,
intercepted by the young trooper who, responding to a police radio bulletin, had
captured me. I didnt need to see the faces to know that they were white. Give
him to us, one man shouted. Just give us the boy, and go on your way,
another said, more kindly. A second, older trooper looked indecisive as the
crowd grew more restless. I felt only fear. The younger trooper cautiously
interceded. Look, weve already called this in to headquarters. They know we
have him, and theyre on the way. We cant give him up. Well never be able to
explain it. The older cop fingered his holstered revolver and told the men he
couldnt do what they wanted but assured them that I would be dealt with.





Wilbur Smith
Angels Weep

On a continent of breathtaking beauty and bitter suffering, two
vastly different cultures clashed, mingled, and recoiled. Here,
amidst mist-shrouded mountains and gold-studded plateaus,
ancient tribesmen lived close to the earth, as white men dug
fortunes out from beneath them and laid plans for a new
civilization.

Out of Southern Africa, the enigmatic Cecil Rhodes built an
empire in the late 1800s and attracted the brightest and bravest
of a generation--including a remarkable far-flung family named
Ballantyne. But for the natives, another day was dawning: a day
of retribution...

From a courageous woman doctor to a fierce, one-eyed slave
trader turned soldier, the whites of Africa were buffeted by two
horrific waves of war. And just when a bloody peace seemed
possible, the seeds of future turmoil were sown


Three horsemen rode out from the edge of the forest with a restrained eagerness
that not even weary weeks of constant searching could dull. They reined in,
stirrup to stirrup, and looked down into another shallow valley. Each stalk of
the dry winter grass bore a fluffy seed-head of a lovely pale rose colour, and the
light breeze stirred them and made them dance, so that the herd of sable
antelope in the gut of the valley seemed to float belly-deep in a bank of swirling
pink mist. There was a single herd bull. He stood almost fourteen hands tall at
the withers. His satiny back and shoulders were black as a panther's, but his
belly and the intricate designs of his face-mask were the startling iridescent
white of mother-of-pearl. His great ridged horns, curved like Saladin's scimitar,
swept baIck to touch his croup, and his neck was proudly arched as that of a
blood Arabian stallion. Long ago hunted to extinction in his former southern
ranges, this noblest of all the antelopes of Africa had come to symbolize for
Ralph Ballantyne this wild and beautiful new land between the Limpopo and
the wide green Zambezi rivers.






Assegai

It is 1913 and Leon Courtney, an ex-soldier turned professional
hunter in British East Africa, guides the rich and powerful from
America and Europe on big-game safaris. Leon had never sought
fame, but an expedition alongside U.S. President Theodore
Roosevelt has made him one of the most sought-after hunters on
the continent. Soon, he finds that with celebrity comes not just
wealthbut also danger.
Leon is recruited by his uncle Penrod Ballantyne,
commander of the British forces in East Africa, to gather
information on one of his clients: Count Otto von Meerbach, a
German industrialist whose company builds aircraft and vehicles
for the Kaisers burgeoning army. While spying, Leon falls
desperately in love with von Meerbachs beautiful and enigmatic
mistress, Eva von Wellberg.
On the eve of the World War, Leon stumbles on a plot by
Count von Meerbach that could wipe out the British forces in
Africa. He finds himself left alone to frustrate von Meerbachs plan,
and in grave peril as he learns more about the enigmatic Eva.


AUGUST 9, 1906, was the fourth anniversary of the coronation of Edward VII,
King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India.
Coincidentally it was also the nineteenth birthday of one of His Majesty's loyal
subjects, Second Lieutenant Leon Courtney of C Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st
Regiment, The King's African Rifles, or the KAR, as it was more familiarly
known. Leon was spending his birthday hunting Nandi rebels along the
escarpment of the Great Rift Valley in the far interior of that jewel of the Empire,
British East Africa. The Nandi were a belligerent people much given to
insurrection against authority. They had been in sporadic rebellion for the last
ten years, ever since their paramount witch doctor and diviner had prophesied
that a great black snake would wind through their tribal lands belching fire and
smoke and bringing death and disaster to the tribe. When the British colonial
administration began laying the tracks for the railway, which was planned to
reach from the port of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean to the shores of Lake
Victoria almost six hundred miles inland, the Nandi saw the dread prophecy
being fulfilled and the coals of smouldering insurrection flared up again. They
burned brighter as the head of the railway reached Nairobi, then started
westwards through the Rift Valley and the Nandi tribal lands down towards
Lake Victoria.



Birds of Prey

The year is 1667. Sir Francis Courtney and his son Hal are on
patrol in their fighting caravel off the Agulhas Cape of South
Africa. They are lying in wait for one of the treasure-laden
galleons of the Dutch East India Company returning from the
Orient. So begins a quest for adventure and the spoils of war that
sweeps them from the settlement of Good Hope at the southern
tip of Africa to the Great Horn of Ethiopia far to the north - at a
time when international maritime law permitted acts of piracy,
rape, and murder otherwise punishable by death. Wilbur Smith
introduces a generation of the indomitable Courtneys and
thrillingly re-creates their part in the struggle for supremacy and
riches on the high seas.


The boy clutched at the rim of the canvas bucket in which he crouched sixty feet
AT above the deck as the ship went about. The mast canted over sharply as she
thrust her head through the wind. The ship was a caravel named the Lady
Edwina, after the mother whom the boy could barely remember. Far below in
the pre-dawn darkness he heard the great bronze culver ins slat against their
blocks and come up with a thump against their straining tackle. The hull
throbbed and resonated to a different impulse as she swung round and went
plunging away back into the west. With the south-east wind now astern she was
transformed, lighter and more limber, even with sails reefed and with three feet
of water in her bilges. It was all so familiar to Hal Courtney. He had greeted
the last five and sixty dawns from the masthead in this manner. His young eyes,
the keenest in the ship, had been posted there to catch the first gleam of distant
sail in the rose of the new day. Even the cold was familiar. He pulled the thick
woollen Monmouth cap down over his ears. The wind sliced through his leather
jerkin but he was inured to such mild discomfort. He gave it no heed and
strained his eyes out into the darkness. "Today the Dutchmen will come," he
said aloud, and felt the excitement and dread throb beneath his ribs.






Wilkie Collins
Antonina

Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an early master of mystery
and suspense, writing such classics as The Moonstone, The
Woman in White, and Basil. Antonina, or, The Fall of Rome
was his first published novel, a colorful tale of ancient Rome.
Of this work, Collins wrote: "To the fictitious characters alone
is committed the task of representing the spirit of the age. The
Roman emperor, Honorius, and the Gothic king, Alaric, mix
but little personally in the business of the story-only
appearing in such events, and acting under such
circumstances, as the records of history strictly authorize-but
exact truth in respect to time, place, and circumstance is
observed in every historical event introduced in the plot, from
the period of the march of the Gothic invaders over the Alps
to the close of the first barbarian blockade of Rome."


In preparing to compose a fiction founded on history, the writer of these pages
thought it no necessary requisite of such a work that the principal characters
appearing in it should be drawn from the historical personages of the period. On
the contrary, he felt that some very weighty objections attached to this plan of
composition. He knew well that it obliged a writer to add largely from invention
to what was actually known--to fill in with the colouring of romantic fancy the
bare outline of historic fact--and thus to place the novelist's fiction in what he
could not but consider most unfavourable contrast to the historian's truth. He
was further by no means convinced that any story in which historical characters
supplied the main agents, could be preserved in its fit unity of design and
restrained within its due limits of development, without some falsification or
confusion of historical dates--a species of poetical licence of which he felt no
disposition to avail himself, as it was his main anxiety to make his plot
invariably arise and proceed out of the great events of the era exactly in the
order in which they occurred.






The Moonstone

"The Moonstone" (1868) by Wilkie Collins follows the
story of Rachel Verinder who inherits a large diamond
(which is the moonstone) from her corrupt uncle and
wears it to her birthday party. The moonstone is extremely
valuable and religious figures have searched for it their
entire lives. On the night of the party, the moonstone goes
missing and the search begins in solving the mystery as to
what had happened to it. "The Moonstone" story was
believed to have been one of the first English detective
stories.


Extracted from a Family Paper I address these lineswritten in Indiato my
relatives in England. My object is to explain the motive which has induced me
to refuse the right hand of friendship to my cousin, John Herncastle. The reserve
which I have hitherto maintained in this matter has been misinterpreted by
members of my family whose good opinion I cannot consent to forfeit. I request
them to suspend their decision until they have read my narrative. And I declare,
on my word of honour, that what I am now about to write is, strictly and
literally, the truth. The private difference between my cousin and me took its
rise in a great public event in which we were both concernedthe storming of
Seringapatam, under General Baird, on the 4th of May, 1799. In order that the
circumstances may be clearly understood, I must revert for a moment to the
period before the assault, and to the stories current in our camp of the treasure
in jewels and gold stored up in the Palace of Seringapatam.









The Woman in White -

The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's
eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a
drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes
embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his
'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice,
vanilla bonbons, and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and
insanity along the paths and corridors of English country
houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and
most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic
horror with psychological realism.


AN EXPERIMENT IS ATTEMPTED in this novel, which has not (so far as I
know) been hitherto tried in fiction. The story of the book is told throughout by
the characters of the book. They are all placed in different positions along the
chain of events; and they all take the chain up in turn, and carry it on to the
end. If the execution of this idea had led to nothing more than the attainment of
mere novelty of form, I should not have claimed a moments attention for it in
this place. But the substance of the book, as well as the form, has profited by it.
It has forced me to keep the story constantly moving forward; and it has
afforded my characters a new opportunity of expressing themselves, through the
medium of the written contributions which they are supposed to make to the
progress of the narrative. In writing these prefatory lines, I cannot prevail on
myself to pass over in silence the warm welcome which my story has met with,
in its periodical form, among English and American readers. In the first place,
that welcome has, I hope, justified me for having accepted the serious literary
responsibility of appearing in the columns of All The Year Round, immediately
after Mr. Charles Dickens had occupied them with the most perfect work of
constructive art that has ever proceeded from his pen.2





Will Adams
Alexander Cipher, The

It's 318 BC in the deserts of Libya, and Alexander the Great is
buried as only a God should be, placed in a Crystal
Sarcophagus in a catacomb of chambers, each packed with
diamonds, rubies and gold. This was how he should have
remained, but time waits for no one. 2007 and underwater
archaeologist Daniel Knox has been on the trail of Alexander's
Gold ever since he can remember. When a tomb is uncovered
on the construction site of a new hotel, Daniel believes he has
found the clue to what he has been working towards for years.
But the discovery has alerted two of the most dangerous men
in the world, and Daniel is now a marked man.


THERE WAS A FRESHWATER SPRING at the lowest point of the cave, like a
single black nail at the tip of a twisted, charred, and mutilated leg. A thick
layer of lichen and other scum clotted its surface, barely disturbed in centuries
except to ripple and shiver at the touch of one of the insects that lived upon it, or
to dimple with bubbles of gas belched from deep beneath the floor of the
surrounding desert. Suddenly, the skin burst and the head and shoulders of a
man erupted from the water. His face was turned upward, and instantly he
gasped huge heaves of air through his flared nostrils and gaping mouth, as
though hed been underwater beyond the limit of his endurance. There was no
light at all in the cave, not even a phosphorescence of water, and the mans
relief at surviving his underwater flight quickly turned to distress. Had he
merely exchanged one mode of death for another? He felt around the edge of the
pool until he found a low ledge. He heaved himself up, twisted around to sit on
it. Almost as an afterthought, he reached beneath his soaking tunic for his
dagger, but in truth, there was little danger of pursuit. Hed had to fight and
kick his way through every inch of that watery escape. Hed like to see that fat,
sword-wielding Libyan try to follow; for sure, hed cork in the passage, and it
wouldnt spit him out till hed lost some flesh.



Exodus Quest, The

On the trail of a Dead Sea Scroll, Daniel Knox finds himself at
an excavation just outside Alexandria, where an evangelical
Christian archaeologist has just discovered an undeclared
Jewish Temple. Knox takes photographs and sends them to
his partner Gaille. Moments later Knox's jeep is forced of the
road killing his friend and head of the SCA - Omar.
Meanwhile in Egypt, Gaille is baby-sitting a television
documentary crew. When she receives Dan's pictures, she
quickly realizes that one of them has a link to the Copper
Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But more importantly, the
link is also attached to the one time Pharaoh Akheneaten in
Amarana -- the very place the crew are filming. Whilst
following up the connections Gaille unwittingly draws the
attention of Khaled a tomb robber and army officer. Khaled
soon realizes that Gaille has what he wants and suddenly she
and the television crew are in mortal danger from a greedy
and deranged individual. Back in Alexandria Knox is under
investigation for the murder of his colleague and then sees a
broadcast showing a kidnapped Gaille.
It's obvious only to him that Gaille is trying to send him a
coded message but Knox is now imprisoned and Gaille's time is running out. What's worse, a new
and even more dangerous foe is about to make its mark!


The plaster had dried at last. Marcus scooped up handfuls of dirt and sand
from the floor, smeared them across the fresh white surface until it was dulled
and dark and virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the wall. He held his
oil lamp close to examine it, added more dirt where needed until satisfied,
though in truth it needed the eyes of a younger man. A last walk through the old,
familiar passages and chambers, bidding farewell to his comrades and ancestors
in the catacombs, to a lifetime of memories, then up the steps and out. Late
afternoon already. No time to waste. He closed the wooden hatch, shovelled
sand and stone down on it. The crash and scatter as it landed, the swish of
robes, the crunch of his iron-shod spade. He began to hear in these noises the
distant chanting of a mob. It grew so strong, so convincing, he paused to listen.
But now there was only silence, save for his heavy breathing, the hammer of his
heart, the trickle of settling sand. Nothing but the fears of a solitary old man.
The sun was low in the west, tinting orange. They usually came by night, as
evildoers will, though they were growing bolder all the time. Hed seen strange
faces in the harbour that morning. One-time friends muttering amongst
themselves. People whose diseases hed treated without thought for his own
safety looking at him like contagion. He began to shovel again, faster and faster,
to quell the panic before it could overwhelm him.


Lost Labyrinth, The

Twenty years after vanishing without a trace, French
archaeologist Roland Petitier makes a dramatic reappearance at
a major Athens conference, promising an astonishing find - the
legendary Golden Fleece. But before he can give his talk, he's
found dead in a hotel room; and an out-of-control policeman
puts Petitier's onetime protg Augustin Pascal into intensive
care, and then later accuses him of Petitier's murder. Only
Augustin's two closest friends, Daniel Knox and Gaille Bonnard
can prove his innocence. However, rumors of the fleece's
rediscovery have spread, and. ambitious Georgian oligarch
Nergadze is determined to get it first. He sends his psychopathic
grandson Mikhail to Athens with orders to bring it back. Mikhail
quickly becomes convinced that Dan Knox has it, and slowly
moves in for the kill!


The food hadnt quite run out yet, but it would soon. And last night the snows
had arrived, laying a white blanket over the plain, cutting off the pass. No relief
would be coming now. Not for a month at least. More likely not until spring. It
was over. The fire had gone out days before. There was no more wood. Not that
Pijaseme needed a brand to navigate these caves. They were a natural
labyrinth, yet he knew them better than any man whod ever lived. Hed spent
fifty-two summers in the service of the gods here, presiding for the last ten over
the temple outside, during which time hed led the discovery and consecration of
three new galleries. But he kept his hand to the wall all the same. So much had
changed these past years that it was reassuring to know that some things were
immutable. He could remember the moment still. It had emblazed upon his
mind. For years, the goddess had been angry. For years, he and his fellow high
priests had sought to understand their offence, the better to make reparation. But
each of them had offered different solutions, and the goddess had grown
unhappier. Hed been on the final descent to Knossos for the great harvest
gathering when a light like sunrise had burst upon the northern horizon. For a
moment hed been euphoric: hed prayed all his life that the goddess herself
would come while he yet lived. But then hed realised shed come in anger.




Eden Legacy, The

After she finds out her estranged father and sister are missing
from their coastal nature reserve in Madagascar, TV zoologist
Rebecca Kirkpatrick is on the first flight home.

Underwater archaeologist Daniel Knox is searching for a sunken
Chinese treasure ship when he hears of the disappearances and
ventures to The Eden Reserve to investigate.

Still with a vendetta to settle, Georgian gangster dynasty the
Nergadzes sends a hitman to hunt down Knox and avenge them.
As Knox chases answers, he realizes that the idyllic coral reef of
Eden hides an ugly truth someone is willing to kill and exploit
people for a secret that will rewrite the history of the New
World


Mei Hua was with the admiral in his private quarters when the great ship
struck the reef. It started with a low scraping noise that made them glance a
little anxiously at each other; but a storm was blowing outside, and you were
forever hearing new noises on board, even after three years. The scraping died
away and they smiled at each other, amused by their own nerves, and carried
on with their separate tasks: she making tea; he writing instructions for his
beloved globe so that the enamellers could finish it before they reached home.
But suddenly there was a thunderous crash and the bow rode upwards and they
came to such a shuddering halt that it sent them both tumbling in a tangle
across the floor. A moment of silence, as though the ship itself, and all on board,
couldnt take in what had just happened. But then the noises started, timbers
groaning like a dying giant, men yelling and a terrible splintering noise right
above their heads as one of their masts toppled and crashed upon the deck. Mei
Hua looked around, in shock as much as fear. The porcelain tea service and the
oil lamps had all broken, but their spilled oil had formed islands of blue flame
upon the floor that were already catching on the scattered silk bedclothes and
hangings.






Will Elliott
Book of Shadows

The Wall at World's End has been destroyed and Levaal stands
naked again before its twin world. The Arch Mage seeks to
unseat Vous before he joins the gods, but loyalties are fractured,
within the Castle and among the Free Cities, as war and chaos
looms. And a dragon may have escaped its sky prison, while a
new alien force is rising by the name of Shadow.
When Eric Albright opened a door and entered Levaal he was
truly a stranger in a strange land. Now the Pilgrim seeks
answers, on the dragons, the gods, the demon being called
Tormentors, and on the disturbing link between himself and the
being known as Shadow ... between our world and Levaal ...


There are horse hooves thudding on the Great Dividing Road. Their beat is fast,
urgent. The world has the soft blurred edges of a dream, the deep purple twilight
seeming to filter through water. Fragments of memory like broken possessions
float in a dark pool but do not break through to its surface. There is just the
beating of hooves: closer, closer it comes. The mans heart, recently still, now
beats in time with that sound. He groans. Warmth flushes through his cold flesh,
beat by beat, until it reaches his stiff cold fingers. He cannot remember a thing,
not a cursed thing: not his name, not how he came to be here in a pool of dried
blood. His hand goes to his belly, his hand remembering something his mind
does not. Then to his neck. A light approaches from the south, comes close,
swallows him, then heat is washing over him in pulsing waves. Above him is a
rider on horseback, who pulls his steed to a halt. It hurts to look at the rider
directly. The steed has silver barding which glows jewel-bright. Halted or not,
the man can still hear the hoofbeats thudding down. Who are you? he says
hoarsely. A voice, quietly commanding, answers, I am Valour. You are
reprieved.





The Pilgrims

Eric Albright is leading a normal life until a small red door
appears under a train bridge near his home. Then a ghostly
being wakes him in the dead of night, with a message from
another world: You are Shadow. In Levaal, the world between
worlds, the dragon-gods grow restless in their sky prisons, and
the Great Spirits struggle to contain them. Vous, the worlds
Friend and Lord, simmers in madness as he schemes to join the
ranks of gods. He and the Arch Mage have almost won their final
victory over the Free Cities. A Dark Age dawns. But Eric and his
friend Case are now Pilgrims, called to Levaal for a battle more
ancient than the petty squabbles of men. And they will learn why
some doors should not be opened...


The Arch Mage and four Strategists stand grim-faced and silent in the dark hall,
watching. The most powerful men in the world, they are here, in the vast castles
innermost chambers, reduced to spectators. It is an ugly feeling. Vous, their
Friend and Lord, stands on a small balcony with his back to them. Light shines
from his rigid body in thin, shifting beams, which run over the walls like small
searchlights, and over the watchers skin with a touch that is icy cold. The
balcony is carved from blood-red stone and Vouss hands, tensely gripping its
rail, look white as bone. Below him is a deep square room once used for
lecturing apprentice magicians, though it is now for all intents and purposes a
pit. In it a few hundred people crowd and jostle, peering up, trying to stay on
their feet in the press of bodies. They are packed in tight. The stuffy ozone-
scented air here is rife with strange magic, so most of them hardly remember
being marched in by guards from the castle gates, where theyd trekked from
starving cities to seek work. They were fed, ordered to bathe, then brought naked
to this room where it was too dark to see the person next to them. The lights
playing about the rooms walls did nothing to relieve the darkness, and looked
as though they shimmered on the surface of water, rather than on slabs of
polished tile.




World's End -

Vous has ascended to godhood and Eric and
Aziel return to the castle to defeat the Arch
Mage. The sky dragons offer Eric a throne, and
objects of great power - but what do they want
in return?

Meanwhile, at World's End, the new people
have made contact. The haiyens say they have
come to help, but is it possible they have
another agenda?


In the doorway of Vouss throne room the Arch Mage leaned upon the forked
point of his staff. The odd flash of lightning from outside sent his shadow madly
dancing on the floor behind him. His thick curled horns dragged his head down.
Vous was a long way from the young aristocrat of centuries past, lusting madly
and without understanding for the very power enveloping him now. A long way
even from the tyrant who, with his own hands, throttled out lives rather than
share that power. Losing Aziel may have been what burned out the last old
shreds of himself; but he had no thought for his daughter now, no memory of
both the grief and pleasure with which her sad song had filled him, as it drifted
faintly up through his high window each day. Still the Vous-things scuttled over
the lawns far beneath, bloodsmeared and mindless. Vous had no thought for
these creations either; nor any for the drake in the sky ahead battling the winds
with Aziel and the Pilgrim on its back. When she and Eric fell into the sky,
when they were drawn by his power through the air towards his balcony even
then, Vous did not see them. The human part of his mind was gone, subsumed
by something larger.






Will Ferguson
419

A car tumbles down a snowy ravine. Accident or suicide?

On the other side of the world, a young woman walks out of a
sandstorm in sub-Saharan Africa. In the labyrinth of the
Niger Delta, a young boy learns to survive by navigating
through the gas flares and oil spills of a ruined landscape. In
the seething heat of Lagos City, a criminal cartel scours the
internet looking for victims.

Lives intersect, worlds collide, a family falls apart. And it all
begins with a single email: Dear Sir, I am the son of an
exiled Nigerian diplomat, and I need your help ...

419 takes readers behind the scene of the worlds most
insidious internet scam. When Lauras father gets caught up
in one such swindle and pays with his life, she is forced to
leave the comfort of North America to make a journey deep
into the dangerous back streets and alleyways of the Lagos
underworld to confront her fathers killer. What she finds
there will change her life forever...


A car, falling through darkness. End over end, one shuddering thud following
another. Fountains of glass showering outward and thena vacuum of silence
collapsing back in. The vehicle came to rest on its back, at the bottom of an
embankment below the bridge and propped up against a splintered stand of
poplar trees. You could see the path it had taken through the snow, leaving a
churned trail of mulch and wet leaves in its wake. Into the scentless winter air:
the seeping odour of radiator fluid, of gasoline. They climbed down on grappling
lines, leaning into their descent, the lights of the fire trucks and ambulances
washing the scene in alternating reds and blues, throwing shadows first one way
and then the next. Countless constellations in the snow. Glass, catching the
light. When the emergency team finally arrived at the bottom of the
embankment, they were out of breath. Within the folded metal of the vehicle: a
buckled dashboard, bent steering wheel, more glass andin the middle
something that had once been a man. White hair, wet against the skull, matted
now in a thick red mud. "Sir! Can you hear me?" His lips were moving as the
life poured out of him to wherever it is life goes. "Sir!"




Hitching Rides with Buddha

Take a humorist from the Great White North one part Bob
and Doug McKenzie, the other Bill Bryson feed him lots of
sake, and set him loose hitchhiking his way through polite
Japanese society. The result is one of the warmest and
funniest travelogues you've read. It had never been done
before. Not in four thousand years of Japanese recorded
history had anyone followed the Cherry Blossom Front from
one end of the country to the other. Nor had anyone
hitchhiked the length of Japan. And, as Ferguson learns, it
illustrates that to travel is better than to arrive.


CAPE SATA is the end of Japan. When you turn your back to the sea and look
northward, all of mainland Japan is balanced, sword-like, above you. It is a
long, thin, volcanic country: a nation of islands that approachesbut never
quite touchesits neighbours. It is a land that engenders metaphors. It has been
likened to an onion: layers and layers surrounding nothing. It has been
described as a maze, a fortress, a garden. A prison. A paradise. But for some,
Japan is none of these. For some, Japan is a highway. And Cape Sata is where
it ends. A road winds its way in descending squiggles toward the sea. Tattered
palm trees and overgrowths of vine crowd the roadside. Villages flit past. The
road twists up into the mountains, turns a corner, and endsabruptlyin a
forest of cedar and pine. A tunnel disappears into the mountainside. From here
you proceed on foot, through the unexpected cool damp of the tunnel, past the
obligatory souvenir stands, onto a path cut through the trees. Along the way,
you come upon a hidden shrine. You ring the bell and rouse the gods and
continue deeper into the forest green.







Will Greenway
Reality's Plaything

When you fall in love with royalty, you might as well stick
your head in a noose. So Bannor Starfist learns, at the end of
a rope. Then things get worse. Now a target for an insane
moon goddess Hecate, Bannor must learn to control his
enormous but newly recognized power, or he will be
consumed by it. Time is against him, Hecate's minions are
closing in on him, devastating the land and world that he
loves. In this clash with evil, he is joined by Elves, Savants,
Humans, and Dwarves in their efforts to resist Hecate's
assault. Outnumbered and out maneuvered at every turn, it is
a losing battle that drives Bannor closer and closer to capture
and confrontation with the goddess herself. How does one
man fight a god? Armed with little more than an axe and a
love for his Elven wife Sarai, Bannor must find out or lose his
soul to darkness.


The historians called it the millennium of the immortal storm. One thousand
years had passed since the Silissian holocaust swept the globe of Titaan. The
Saughuin invaders had been driven back into the murky depths of the sea, and
the dwarven halls at Blackstar rang with the sounds of victory over the orc
hordes. It was an age of gods and those who would challenge them, when demi-
gods and goddesses walked the land in the guise of mortals and took lovers and
begot children. Magic was strong and plentiful, and varied were the strains of
man that came after the first dilutions of immort blood. It was the rise of the
Ivaneth Empire over a declining Corwin, when the greatest mages and warriors
ever to walk the face of Titaan were born and grew strong. Thence came the
Krillar, and the Shael Dal, and the organized bands of adventurers whose
strength was the equal of any kingdom's army. This time also marked the rise of
savants, known to the immortals as the Ka'amok. For eons, once every few
decades men and women were chance gifted with the persistent life sparks of
Alpha and Gaea that made them the spiritual brothers and sisters to the
pantheon lords.





'Neath Odin's Eye

Surviving a battle to the death with a god would tax the
greatest of heroes, but for Bannor Starfist it is only the
beginning of something much worse--a war with a whole
pantheon of gods. The death of Hecate has triggered a rumble
in the Vanir pantheon. All Father Odin is not happy, Bannor
and all his friends must be brought to justice for the crime of
murder. For the already battered Bannor, the ordeal is only
beginning. Sarai's mother and sister, and all the rest of his
friends have been captured and imprisoned in Niflheim, the
land of the dead. Somehow, he must find a way to get them
out without Odin catching him as well. To add to the
challenge, the battle with Hecate has a taken away his
powers...


What man knows of the immortals is more conjecture than fact. Those that
know truck little with common men. Some days one might chance near a tavern
corner and hear the hushed converse of those who have braced those who are
more than mortal. Many are the creatures of the Ring Realms that be not of
ordinary flesh. There are the elders, men and women with knowledge and magic
who cheat the finite span of life. There are the sentinels who transcend
humanity to serve in the hosts of the pantheons. Above those are the immorts,
dilutions and direvations of the pantheon lords and the elder races. Higher still
are the true immortals and the progenitor races, gods that shake the heavens
with their footsteps and bend the lives of lesser creatures. Lastly, there are the
incarnations of eternity, beings of trascendant power to whom a century is like
the passing of day and the power even of gods is of no consequence. Of these,
words are only spoken of in whispers, for who dares to belittle a god?









Eternal's Agenda

Fresh off a duel with allfather Odin, Bannor tries to start a
new life in Malan with his cherished betrothed, Sarai. He
hopes the worst of his troubles will be preparing for the
elaborate royal marriage ceremonies. As usual, things
don't go according to plan...
Creation, annihilation, perpetuity... the words boom in
Bannor's mind through his magical nola powers. The
message is just a pre-cursor to another big mess done
Garmtur style. Daena, the savant of attractions turned
immortal goddess, is up to something and Advocate
Eternal Koass is anything but happy.
Bannor goes to Eternity's Heart to speak on Daena's behalf
and ends up the Shael Dal's latest draftee. The
Protectorate has a problem. A million bloodthirsty war-
mages are running rampant through the Ring Realms
destroying everything they meet. The difficulty is, nobody
can find them... except maybe someone with the reality
bending power of the Garmtur Shak'Nola.
Bannor decides to help but learns the hard way. No good
deed goes unpunished...


Bannor Starfist crept up and hid in the shadow of a tree, watching for any
members of the royal guard who might be patrolling southern perimeter of Green
Run. He swallowed, looking up into the shifting foliage, watching the leaves of
the giant scalebark shimmering and rustling in the breeze. Running a hand
through his dark hair, he glanced back to the rosewood walls of the outbuilding
that formed the first of several tiers that made up the eastern portion of the
Malanian citadel. Wisps of mist still trickled the down tree-shrouded hill,
filtering through the rings of buildings and lance-like minarets interconnected by
a web of narrow walkways and flying buttresses threaded amongst the ancient
evergreens. Drawing a breath, Bannor scanned the gates and paths. No one was
coming up behind him. He turned his attention back to the maze of trelliswork
that formed the gateway to the Queen's contemplation grove, a collection of rock
mosaics, outdoor atriums, and flower gardens. Few save the queen and her
closest family entered this place, making it an excellent spot to hide out. With a
final guilty scan to make sure he wasn't observed, he leaped up grabbed the top
edge of the gate, swung over, and dropped on the far side. His heels hit the
packed turf with a thud that sent a twinge of pain shooting up his back.
Clutching his side, he leaned against the hedge with teeth gritted against the
discomfort. The wound from being impaled on Odin's spear had been slow to
heal. It might be three or four tendays yet before he regained full mobility.


Savant's Ascendant


Bannor and Wren are on another adventure doing what they
do best... getting into and out-of trouble. The two savants
embark on a simple reconnaissance mission with their new
friends from the Shael Dal. Naturally, there are the little
bumps that make the danger duo's life so interesting--
massacres, spies, and hostile alien assassins... At the behest of
Koass the eternal, Bannor has pierced the veil of secrecy
around the Baronians, and the soldiers of Baronia have a
single response: Destroy.


The devastation of the party chamber looked and felt familiar to Bannor.
Friends bleeding and broken, the air tainted with the smell of burned flesh and
hair, the drained feeling of fear unraveling in his stomach. The conflict had
followed him to Malan. Only now, the opponents were bigger, more vicious, and
more organized. The only thing that saved them was that hugely powerful allies
had been on hand to fend off the assault. The multi-tiered hall with its
beautiful stone, crystal and glasswork had become a blood-splashed scene of
carnage. Smoke still rose from corpses, and bits of cloth and tapestry smoldered
from contact with battle magic. The hard granite floor was scored, pitted, and
blackened from powerful hits and the crushing strength of those who had done
battle. Despite the grisly display, even the youngest of the four to five score
party-goers were reacting more with agitation than horror. The Felspar and
Frielos families did not like having their fun disturbed. Bannor pulled at his
perspiration-slick silk tunic and scrubbed his hands through his hair. What a
mess. The King and Queen, along with Baron and Baroness looked like they
had run through a briar patch, cut, scratched, and bruised with their fine
clothes in tatters. Few of Loric's family, or the many friends that had been with
them escaped injury.



Will Hill
Rising

Sixteen-year-old Jamie Carpenter's life was violently upended
when he was brought into Department 19, a classified government
agency of vampire hunters that was formed to deal with a little
problem . . . known as Dracula.

But being the new recruit at the Department isn't all weapons
training and covert missions. Jamie's own mother has been turned
into a vampire--and now Jamie will stop at nothing to wreak
revenge on her captors. Even if that means facing down Dracula
himself.


Sergeant Ted Pearson of the Lincolnshire Police stamped his cold feet on the
pavement, and checked his watch again. His partner, Constable Dave Fleming,
watched him, a nervous look on his face. Half ten, thought the Sergeant, with a
grimace. I should be at home with my feet up. Sharons making lasagne tonight,
and its never as good warmed through. The 999 call had been made from the
hospitals reception desk at 9.50pm. Sergeant Pearson and his partner had been
finishing up the paperwork on an illegal immigration case they were working on
one of the farms near Louth, both men looking forward to getting the forms filed
and heading home, when they had been told the call was theirs. Grumbling,
they had climbed into their car and driven the short distance from the police
station to the hospital, blue lights spinning above them, their siren blaring
through the freezing January night. They had reached the hospital in a little
over three minutes, and were questioning the nurse who had made the call, a
young Nigerian woman with wide, frightened eyes, when Sergeant Pearsons
radio buzzed into life. The message it conveyed was short and to the point.
Secure access to potential crime scene. Do not investigate, or talk to potential
witnesses. Stand guard until relieved.






Will Hobbs
Down the Yukon

The great race across Alaska!As Dawson City goes up in
flames, Jason Hawthorn itches to join the new rush for gold
in Nome, 1,700 miles away. He and his brothers have been
cheated out of their sawmill, so when a $20,000 prize is
announced for the winner of a race to Nome, Jason enters.
His partner in the canoe is Jamie Dunavant, the adventurous
girl he loves. Will they make it to the finish line, despite the
hazards of the Yukon River, two dangerous rivals, and the
terrors of the open sea?


The trouble started over a mongrel dog, small, mostly black, shorthaired and
shivering. Without the fur to keep itself warm or the size to pull a sled, it had no
business being in the North. How an animal so unsuited to living in the shadow
of the Arctic Circle ever made it all the way to the Klondike is anyones guess.
The gold rush had dumped a legion of abandoned dogs in Dawson City. They
were a noisy, thieving bunch generally ignored by the population, including me.
I no longer had the heart for dogs. During my struggle to catch up with my
brothers in Dawson City, Id lost a magnificent husky, as fine an animal as
ever drew breath. His name was King. The two of us had clawed our way over
the Chilkoot Pass late in the fall of 97, only to lose our race with freeze-up on
the Yukon. On New Years Eve, thats when I lost King. More than a year later
I missed him nearly as much as I missed Jamie Dunavant, the raven-haired
Canadian girl Id met along the trail. Jamie was performing thousands of miles
south, bringing the Klondike to the big cities. She was famous. Jamie had first
become a sensation right in Dawson City, on the stage of the Palace Grand
Theater. The Princess of Dawson, thats what the miners called her. Man, oh
man, how I missed her.




Jackie's Wild Seattle

How do you rescue a coyote trapped in the elevator of a
downtown office building? How do you save an injured seal at
the bottom of a cliff with the tide coming in? Fourteen-year-old
Shannon and her younger brother, Cody, are about to find out
as they spend a summer of breathless, sometimes reckless,
often hilarious adventure visiting their uncle Neal at a wildlife
center called Jackie's Wild Seattle.

When Uncle Neal is injured, it's up to Shannon, Cody, and Sage,
the rescue dog, to keep the circle of healing unbroken.


didnt even recognize him when he headed toward us at the crowded baggage
carousel. Just some confused guy with a shaved head, thats what I thought at
first, but then he called my name. I did a double take. Could this be our Uncle
Neal? Shannie, over here, he called as he came closer. I recognized his voice,
but otherwise I was drawing a blank. I was expecting him to look like his
snapshot on our refrigerator back home, with curly black hair, a full face, and a
neatly trimmed beard. This Neal had a thin face and was clean-shaven from
skull to chin. The uncle I was expecting had the strong, chiseled arms and legs
of a climber. This version was almost skinny and had no muscle definition. Plus
he had a tattoothe word Sage on his left arm. My mother had never said
anything about her brother having a tattoo. All the same, it had to be him. I
could see my mother in the lines around his steel gray eyes, the shape of his lips,
and the dimple on his chin. I go by Shannon now, I muttered as he gave me a
hug. Only Cody could get away with calling me Shannie these days. Neal tried
to shake with Cody, but my little brother shrank back. He isnt shy, I said,
he just hates shaking hands. No I dont, Cody protested. Its just weird,
thats all. I looked from Cody to this stranger-uncle and back, feeling so not
okay about the next nine weeks. Out of nervousness I checked my watch.
During the flight Id turned it back three hours. Here in Seattle, it was only
nine-thirty in the morning. Wed started our trip at La Guardia airport in New
York, checking in at 5 A.M. I couldnt help yawning.


Jason's Gold


"Gold!" Jason shouted at the top of his lungs. "Read all
about it! Gold discovered in Alaska!"
Within hours of hearing the thrilling news, fifteen-year-old
Jason Hawthorn jumps a train for Seattle, stow away on a
ship bound for the goldfields, and joins thousands of fellow
prospectors attempting the difficult journey to the Klondike.
The Dead Horse Trail, the infamous Chilkott Pass, and a
five-hundred-mile trip by canoe down the Yukon River lie
ahead. With help from a young writer named Jack London,
Jason and his dog face moose, bears, and the terrors of a
subartic winter in this bone-chilling survival story.


When the story broke on the streets of New York, it took off like a wildfire on a
windy day. Gold! Jason shouted at the top of his lungs. Read all about it!
Gold discovered in Alaska! The sturdy fifteen-year-old newsboy waving the
paper in front of Grand Central Depot had arrived in New York only five days
before, after nearly a year spent working his way across the continent. Gold
ship arrives in Seattle! Jason yelled. EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it!
Prospectors from Alaska. Two tons of gold! The headline, GOLD IN ALASKA,
spanned the width of the entire page, the letters were so enormous. People were
running toward him like iron filings to a magnet. He was selling the New York
Herald hand over fist. His sack was emptying so fast, it was going to be only a
matter of minutes before he was sold out.











The Maze

Just fourteen, Rick Walder is alone, on the run, and
desperate. Stowing away in the back of a truck, he suddenly
finds himself at a dead end, out in the middle of nowhere.
The Maze. In this surreal landscape of stark red rock spires
and deep sandstone canyons, Rick stumbles into the remote
camp of Lon Perigrino, a bird biologist who is releasing
fledgling California condors back into the wild. Intrigued by
the endangered condors and the strange bearded man
dedicated to saving them, Rick decides to stay on. When two
men with a vicious dog drive up in a battered old Humvee,
Rick discovers that Lon and his birds are in grave danger.
Will he be able to save them?


Rick Walker tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. The state of Nevada
has a problem with you the judge began, then paused to glare at him over
his reading glasses. Rick Walker glanced at his social worker, seated beside him
on his right. He wondered if the pause meant he was supposed to answer. He
wasnt sure what to make of this bald and bony-headed old man who was the
judge. The sign on the door of his courtroom said he was THE HONORABLE
SAMUEL L. BENDIX. At the moment he seemed more hostile than honorable.
Why? the judge suddenly demanded. Rick was confused. Why what? What
was the judge asking him? Once again his eyes went to his social worker for
help. Janice Baker seemed confused too. As Rick looked back toward the black
robe, he felt his lip quiver. In an instant he forgot that his social worker had
warned him about the judges enormous discretionary power. He reverted to
his instincts for dealing with powerful adversaries: dont show fear, or youll be
eaten alive. With a slight shrug he asked, Why what? He saw the judges skin
flush red up and over his skull. Why were you throwing the stones, repeatedly,
at the stop sign? Why would anyone throw more than thirty rocks at a stop
sign? Rick knew he couldnt afford to say anything further that would get
taken the wrong way. He hesitated, looking deep inside for the real answer.
Thats what the judge wanted: the real answer. His hesitation lengthened.



Wild Man Island

On the last day of a sea kayaking trip in southeast Alaska,
fourteen-year-old Andy Galloway paddles away from his
group to visit the nearby site where his archaeologist father
died trying to solve the mystery of the first Americans. A
sudden, violent storm blows Andy's kayak off course and
washes him ashore on Admiralty Island, an immense
wilderness known as the Fortress of the Bears. Struggling to
survive, Andy encounters a dog running with wolves and then
a man toting a stone-tipped spear. The wild man vanishes
into the forest, but the dog reappears and leads Andy to a
cave filled with Stone Age tools and weapons. Running for his
life, Andy retreats deep into the cave, where danger, suspense,
and discovery await.


I WAS PUSHING THE LIMITS. My kayak was out in front of the others but
still within shouting distance. So far they werent calling me back. It was the
sixth day, the last full day of our trip, and this was the area where we were
supposed to have the best chance of seeing the humpbacks. Gimme a whale, I
thought. Im ready for forty tons of breaching humpback whale just like on the
postcards. My eyes were locked on the horizon. The last thing I expected was
action right under my nose. Whooosh! came a fountain of water and an
explosion of breath as something huge burst out of the water only a few yards
away. There, right next to me, was the head of what might have been a giant
seal. Big eyes, little ears, long whiskersI didnt know what it was. The
animal looked me over for a second, snorted, then slipped back underwater.
Wow! I said under my breath. Come back and give me another look, big
fella. For a minute, nothing. I was sure it was gone for good when, suddenly,
the sea erupted with fountains and whooshes. This time five of the critters were
bobbing up and down and snorting. Their large eyes were dark and mischievous.
A furry water polo team with attitude, thats how they struck me. I waved. In
response, they swam straight at me. At the last second, point-blank and
enormous, they slipped under my kayak. When they popped up again, they were
back where they had first appeared. Still checking me out, they snorted at me,
almost comically. Cool trick, I called.


Will Kingdom
Mean Spirit

Suddenly a victim of her own remarkable gifts, Seffi Callard, the
world's best-known spiritual medium, has been forced to back away
from the glamour and the glow of public adulation, becoming a
paranoid recluse at her father's home in the Cotswolds. Who is stalking
Seffi Callardand from which side of the grave?


TRUST NO-ONE, SEFFIs TELLING HERSELF, AS SHE DOES SO OFTEN
lately. Trust none of them. This has been a mistake, this is very wrong even
by my strangled standards. Despite all the people, a party going on, she feels
something hollow in the room. Sometimes, in her head, theres the sensation of a
bright white, penetrating light, turning to grey, turning to black. And then,
suddenly, Kierans here. A boy of eighteen or nineteen. Instantly she trusts
Kieran, hes so messed up and full of shame. Hes sending her a faintly fogged
picture of himself: bare feet no more than three inches above the hay? No
rushes. Rush matting. On the floor of light through slats, no glass
greenery bars of sunlight a kind of rough, rustic summerhouse. A gazebo.
Kierans hanging there. Seffi, sitting very still on her straight chair, in her claret-
coloured velvet gown, hands enfolded on her lap, is aware of Kieran hanging.
How does she know his name? She just does. Reticence is rare unless youre
dealing with a personality for whom formalitys an obsession or a way of life
say a former army officer, or a butler. OK, Kieran, hold on, Seffi murmurs,
nodding. Hes pressing her, innocent as a big puppy. Just wait Well get
to it, yah? Miss Callard?







Will Lavender
Obedience -

When the students in Winchester Universitys Logic and
Reasoning 204 arrive for their first day of class, they are
greeted not with a syllabus or texts, but with a startling
assignment from Professor Williams: Find a hypothetical
missing girl named Polly. If after being given a series of clues
and details the class has not found her before the end of the
term in six weeks, she will be murdered.
At first, the students are as intrigued by the premise of their
puzzle as they are wary of the strange and slightly creepy
Professor Williams. But as they delve deeper into the mystery,
they begin to wonder: Is the Polly story simply a logic exercise,
designed to teach them rational thinking skills, or could it be
something more sinister and dangerous?
The mystery soon takes over the lives of three students as
they find disturbing connections between Polly and
themselves. Characters that were supposedly fictitious begin
to emerge in reality. Soon, the boundary between the
classroom assignment and the real world becomes blurred
and the students wonder if it is their own lives, they are being
asked to save.


The strange thing about Williams was that nobody had ever seen him. The
faculty guidebook showed a gray box labeled NOT PICTURED; group photos
in the Winchester yearbooks only showed Williamss hand or arm, even though
the captions advertised his presence. The colleges website gave a brief
curriculum vitae but no photographic evidence. By that Monday afternoon, the
first day of classes for the fall term at Winchester University, the search for
Williams had, for some of his students, become almost compulsive. It was as if
Williams were hiding himself from them, as if he were teasing them somehow. It
had become a tradition at Winchester for students to find a picture of their
professors before classes began; in this way, it was commonly believed, they
could allay some of the anxiety when the man or woman strode into the room. It
was a method of one-upping the faculty, of stealing some of their precious
authority. And so this thing with Williams had become a big deal. Some of the
students of Logic and Reasoning 204 were so incensed over Williamss
invisibility that they were convinced they were being tricked. One student, a
Young Republican who carried a briefcase to each class, brought out his
battered and veined Code of Conduct, and much of the class hovered over him
while he searched the index for words like Deception and Faculty Misconduct.


Will North
Water, Stone, Heart -

Escaping from the predictable routine of his university life in
Philadelphia, Andrew travels to England and channels his
pain into a weeklong course on building stone walls. In the
village of Boscastle, he discovers a magical landscape of
dizzying cliffs, jagged coastline, lush valleys, and hills lined
with stone hedges that have stood the test of time. At the
Stone Academy, Andrew immerses himself in the grueling task
of piecing together rock into intricate walls. Under the
tutelage of his weathered instructor, he learns there is more to
laying stone than hard labor. And he soon falls under the spell
of Boscastles rhythms and quirks, which include a weekly
sing-along, a museum devoted to witchcraft, and a colorful
group of residents ranging from a precocious nine-year-old
girl who communes with nature to an offbeat reverend who
has been known to give referrals to the town witch.


You all right down there? Andrew Stratton looked up toward the cliff top, ten
feet above his head, but the afternoon sun was in his eyes and all he could
make out was the silhouette of a woman's head and shoulders, etched against a
Wedgwood-blue sky. Stratton was standing on a narrow grassy ledge above the
sea, which he shared with a loudly bleating, black-faced sheep. The shape of a
dog appeared beside the woman. The shape barked. Um, yes, he called back.
I was just walking along and saw this sheep stranded down here. And you
decided to join it? Yes well, no I mean, I thought I'd try to help it back
up to the top. But whenever I get near it, it looks as if it's going to jump. Do
you always have that effect? What? Oh, nothing. From the slender shelf he
and the sheep occupied, it was, he guessed, at least two hundred feet straight
down to the Atlantic breakers crashing far belowso far, in fact, that he could
barely hear the thudding combers above the whistle of the wind.








Will Osborne
13 Ghosts

Repeatedly the evidence in these haunting tales points to the same
conclusion. Examine for yourself accounts of eerie phenomena
such as: the man who had a premonition of his own death, the
ghost who solved a murder, the revenge of the murderer's skull,
the lieutenant who flew back from the, and more.
All of these stories have been thoroughly investigated. Many have
been reported in the newspapers or court transcripts. None has
ever been proven the results of a hoax. There has never been a
satisfactory explanation for any of these events except...ghosts.
If you read these tales when you're alone at night, be careful. The
truth is more frightening than fiction.


Lord Dufferin couldn't sleep. It wasn't the fact that he was away from home.
His work as a British diplomat had taken him all over the world, and he was
used to sleeping in strange beds. In fact, he felt quite comfortable in the huge,
castle-like home of his Irish friend. But for some reason, even though it was very
late and he was very tired, sleep would not come. Finally, he got out of bed,
slipped on his robe, and walked over to the window. The night was clear and
the dew-covered lawns of the estate shimmered under the light of a full moon. It
was a beautiful sight, and Lord Dufferin began to relax as he stood gazing out
into the peaceful night. He was almost ready to go back to bed when he saw the
strange little man stagger out of the shadows near the hedge. Lord Dufferin
watched as the shadowy figure trudged into the moonlight and began struggling
across the lawn. The man was staring intently at the ground, and on his back
was a big black box. The box was obviously very heavy, for it seemed to be all
the little man could do to carry it without falling over. Lord Dufferin wondered
what could be inside the box. The man was clearly headed toward the house
with it, but why? Perhaps he was making a delivery of some kind, but so late at
night? And why did he insist on carrying such a heavy load alone?





Will Pearson
Mental Floss Presents Instant Knowledge -

Mental floss is proud to present a full-bodied jolt of
inspiration for thirsty minds on the go. Blended with
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and add conversation. It's that simple!


Dear Consumer:
Were happy to tell you that you can still get knowledge the old way.
mental_floss will always be the family-owned company you can trust for those
delicious, slow-roasted facts youve grown to love. But after numerous taste tests
and focus groups, weve realized that theres an even better way to serve our
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the next. Whether youre racing to a cocktail party or the water cooler, a poker
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mental_flosss Instant Knowledge is a full-bodied jolt for thirsty minds on the go.
Best of all, mental_floss has made sure that these rich blends are ready in
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conversation. Its that simple! And if you need a little guidance on how best to
use these facts (who youll be able to impress or where best to drop your
newfound knowledge), weve provided that, too.








William Alexander
52 Loaves

William Alexander is determined to bake the perfect loaf of
bread. He tasted it long ago, in a restaurant, and has been
trying to reproduce it ever since. Without success. But now
he's going to try again-every week for one year-until he gets it
right. He will bake his peasant loaf from scratch. And because
Alexander is nothing if not thorough, he really means "from
scratch": growing, harvesting, winnowing, threshing, and
milling his own wheat.
Alexander's often hilarious quest takes our (anti)hero through
dangerous back alleys of Morocco, where he bakes his loaf in
an ancient communal oven; to Paris, where he enrolls in the
"cours de boulangerie" at the famed Ecole Ritz Escoffier; to a
monastery in Normandy, where (his lack of French and faith
notwithstanding) he becomes bread baker to the monks; and
finally to his own backyard, where he builds a lopsided brick
oven and learns that perfection is just a state of mind.


Next! My heart was pounding so hard at the airport security checkpoint, I was
certain the TSA agent would see it thrusting through my jacket. Laptop, I
blurted out for no apparent reason, my voice cracking like a teenagers on a first
date as I placed my computer into the plastic tray. Liquids. The TSA
inspector held up my regulation Baggie stuffed with three-ounce bottles and
nodded approvingly. I reached into my backpack and casually pulled out a
half-gallon plastic container filled with a bubbling, foul-smelling substance.
Sourdough. I might just as well have said, Gun! Uh-uh, you cant bring
that on a plane! a TSA Official stationed at the next line called out. I wanted
to say, Who asked you? but sensibly kept my mouth shut as I looked around
nervously. Thanks to that blabbermouth, every passenger and TSA employee at
the security checkpoint was looking my way. Can he bring dough? another
inspector yelled. A buzz had now started, with murmurs of dough audible
from the passengers behind me, all of whom, Im sure, hoped they werent on my
flight. A tense and chaotic ten minutes later, I found myself talking with a
stone-faced supervisor.





William Arden
The Mystery of the Dancing Devil

Three young detectives search for a stolen statue only to find
that it has mysteriously come to life.


YOURE DETECTIVES, the little red-haired girl said eagerly. You can find
Anastasia! I want to hire you! She held out fifty cents in her grubby hand. Pete
Crenshaw laughed. We dont look for dolls, Winnie. Our cases are
somewhat more important, Winifred, added Jupiter Jones. Anyway Bob
Andrews grinned at Petes six-year-old neighbour Ill bet you lost your doll
right in your house. Sure. Pete laughed. You go home and look some more,
Winnie. We have to take my dads movie projector to be fixed. The three boys,
known throughout Rocky Beach, California, as the junior detective team of The
Three Investigators, had been spending the first morning of the spring vacation
straightening up the Crenshaw garage. They had just finished, and were about
to take Mr. Crenshaws movie projector to the repair shop, when Winifred
Dalton pushed through the high hedge from next door and requested their help.
Were sorry you lost your doll, Pete went on, but my dad wants his projector
in a hurry. Im afraid weve got to go right away, Winnie. I didnt lose
Anastasia! I didnt, Winnie cried. She flew away. She was in her bed in the
yard, and she flew away!





The Mystery of the Dead Man's Riddle

Three young detectives go on a high-stakes
treasure hunt in order to restore a fortune to the
rightful heirs.


IT WAS AN HOUR before dinner on a spring Wednesday in Rocky Beach,
California. Bob Andrews, the Records and Research man of The Three
Investigators, was in his room writing up the trios latest case a minor affair
of finding Mrs. Hesters lost diamond ring. From outside came the sounds of
neighborhood children playing in the late afternoon sunshine. A car door
banged close by; Bobs father had arrived home from work. A few moments later
Mr. Andrews came into Bobs room, grinning. He carried a long piece of paper.
How would you and your detective friends like to find a fortune, Mr. Andrews
said, and keep it all! Gosh, Dad, the blond boy said, you mean someone
lost a fortune, and if we find it we can keep it? It isnt lost, Mr. Andrews
said. Its hidden! WEALTHY ECCENTRIC LEAVES











The Mystery of the Deadly Double

The Three Investigators foil a plot to kidnap the son of a
political leader in an African colony.


NOBODY MOVE! Pete Crenshaw cried. Bob Andrews and Jupiter Jones
froze. The boys were in their secret headquarters inside an old mobile home,
where they ran their junior detective firm The Three Investigators. The old
house trailer was carefully hidden under piles of junk in The Jones Salvage
Yard, but there was always danger that someone would stumble upon one of the
secret entrances to it. Bob and Jupe looked carefully around their small office
and listened intently. Had Pete heard something threatening? What whats
wrong, Pete? Bob whispered. Pete glared fiercely at his two friends.
Somebody, he declared, stole my lunch? Bob gaped. Your your lunch?
Thats all you! Your lunch, Second? Jupiter echoed, incredulous. The tall
Second Investigator laughed. Just a joke. Besides, my lunch is important. Im
getting hungry. A poor joke, Jupiter said sternly. False alarms are very
dangerous. You know the story of the boy who cried wolf. That kind of fun
can








The Mystery of the Headless Horse

When three junior detectives search for a valuable old Spanish sword
lost since the Mexican War, the headless statue of a horse yields a clue.


HEY, JUPE! DIEGO ALVARO WANTS to talk to you, called Pete
Crenshaw as he came out of the front door of Rocky Beach Central School.
Classes had just finished for the day, and his friends Jupiter Jones and Bob
Andrews were already outside waiting for him. I didnt know you knew
Alvaro, Bob said to Jupiter. I dont really, Jupiter replied. Hes in the
California History Club with me, but he always keeps pretty much to himself.
What does he want, Pete? I dont know. He just asked if youd meet him at
the gate of the athletic field after school if you could spare the time. He acted
like it was pretty important. Perhaps he needs the services of The Three
Investigators, Jupe said hopefully. Jupiter, Pete and Bob were members of a
junior detective team, and they hadnt had a case in quite a while. Pete
shrugged. Maybe. But its you he wants to see. Well all go and meet him,
ordered Jupe. Pete and Bob nodded and fell into step with their overweight
friend. They were used to doing what Jupiter wanted. As the brainy leader of
The Three Investigators, Jupe made most of the decisions for the group.
Sometimes the other two boys objected. Pete, a tall, athletic boy, hated Jupes
habit of boldly walking into danger while on a case. Bob, a slight, studious
youth, admired Jupes quick intelligence but occasionally flared at his high-
handed ways. Still, life was never dull when Jupiter was around. He had an
uncanny ability to scent a mystery and find excitement. Most of the time the
three boys were the best of friends.





The Mystery of the Laughing Shadow

The three investigators try to solve a mystery involving a gold
Indian amulet and a weird laughing shadow that appeared to
them in the night.


BOB ANDREWS and Pete Crenshaw were still two miles from their homes in
Rocky Beach when they had to turn on their bicycle lights. Darkness comes
suddenly in the mountains of southern California in the winter. Gosh, Pete
said, we should have started back sooner. The swim was worth being late.
Bob grinned. Their fine day in the mountains, topped off by a swim in a
mountain stream, had been spoiled only by the absence of Jupiter Jones, the
third member of their Three Investigators trio. Jupe had had to work in his
Uncle Tituss salvage yard. Tired but happy, the two boys were pedalling past a
high stone wall in the mountain darkness when a thin, startling cry suddenly
came out of the night. Help! Surprised, Pete squeezed his brakes, coming to an
abrupt stop. Bob ran full tilt into him. Ooff! Bob grunted. Pete whispered,
Did you hear that? Bob untangled his bike and glanced quickly towards the
wall. Yes, I heard it. Do you suppose someones hurt? While the two boys
stood there, listening, something moved in the brush behind the wall.









The Mystery of the Moaning Cave

Many years ago, the young bandit El Diablo disappeared into a
cave, never to be seen again. Now an eerie moaning sound is
coming from his old hideout, and the ranchers who live nearby
think he may still be alive.

The Three Investigators set out to explore the moaning cave and
soon wish they had come armed with more than a flashlight!


Aaoooahhhhhhoooooooooooooooooooo! The eerie moan rolled out
across the valley in the twilight. Thats it, Pete Crenshaw whispered. Its
started again. Pete, Jupiter Jones and Bob Andrews were crouched on a high
ridge in a remote corner of the Crooked-Y Ranch, just a few hundred feet from
the Pacific Ocean. The moan came again, long, drawn-out and chilling.
Aaaaaaaaaaahhhh ooooooooooo oooo! A shiver ran up Petes spine. I
dont blame the ranch hands for not wanting to come here anymore, he said to
his companions. Maybe it comes from the lighthouse we saw on the way, Bob
suggested in a low tone. Maybe its some kind of echo from the foghorn. Jupiter
shook his head. No, Bob, I dont think its the lighthouse. The sound is not that
of a foghorn signal. Besides, there isnt any fog this evening. Then what
Bob began, but Jupiter was no longer crouched beside him. The stocky First
Investigator was trotting off to the right along the ridge. Pete and Bob leaped up
and followed. The sun was almost gone now in the crevasse between the coast
mountains, and a hazy purple light hung over the valley.








The Mystery of the Purple Pirate

Searching for a legendary pirate treasure, the three investigators
find a band of modern day pirates.


WHEN HIS ALARM CLOCK rang violently, Pete Crenshaw opened one eye
and groaned. Only the second week of summer vacation and already he wished
bitterly that hed never agreed to do yard work for his next-door neighbours
while they were away on a trip. But the funds of the junior detective agency to
which he belonged were at an all-time low after an end-of-school trip to
Disneyland, and the team needed summer money. The other two sleuths had
also been put to work: Bob Andrews had a part-time job at the library, and
Jupiter Jones had reluctantly agreed to work extra hours at The Jones Salvage
Yard, where he lived with his aunt and uncle. With a final groan, Pete crawled
out of bed and hurried into his clothes. When he dragged himself into the
kitchen, he saw that his father was already having breakfast. Too early for you,
Pete? Mr. Crenshaw said, grinning. Got to do that dumb yard work, Pete
grumbled as he got his orange juice from the refrigerator. Summer money, eh?
Well, maybe theres an easier way. This was left in our mailbox last night. Mr.
Crenshaw put a yellow sheet of paper at Petes place as the boy sat down.







The Mystery of the Shrinking House

The Three Investigators solve a case involving an international gang
of art forgers.


UNCLE TITUS! Jupiter Jones cried. Look over there! The truck from The
Jones Salvage Yard had just stopped in the driveway of the old house in
Remuda Canyon on the outskirts of Rocky Beach. Jupiter and his friend Pete
Crenshaw were sitting in the truck cab with Uncle Titus Jones. What? Uncle
Titus said, startled. Look where, Jupiter? There! On the side of the house!
Jupiter pointed into the twilight. A black shape seemed to hang halfway up the
side of the big old frame house in the canyon. I dont see a thing, Jupiter
Jones, Uncle Titus said. Gosh, Pete said, neither do I, Jupe. Jupiter stared.
The figure in black was gone. One minute it had been on the side of the house,
then it had disappeared into thin air! Or had it been there at all? Im sure I
saw someone! Jupiter said. Someone all in black on the side of the house!
Uncle Titus looked dubiously at the big frame house. The canyon walls cast
strange, eerie shadows on the isolated house and the small cottage near it. All
seemed quiet and peaceful.










The Secret of Phantom Lake

Three junior detectives investigate a mystery involving an
Oriental chest, a sunken ship, and a baffling dual identity.


WOW! BOB ANDREWS cried. Its a real Malay Kris! Eyes shining, Bob
displayed the rippled blade of the long knife to his two companions, Jupiter
Jones and Pete Crenshaw. The boys were in a roadside museum a few miles
north of their home in Rocky Beach. Pete gently felt the wavy edge of the Kris
and shuddered. Jupiter nodded wisely. Many ships sailed from California to
the East Indies in the old days, Jupiter remarked. A number of the artifacts in
this little museum came from the Orient. Pete and Bob groaned silently as Jupe
began to lecture them. The stocky boy had a head full of interesting facts, but he
tended to become unbearably pompous when sharing his knowledge. Aunt
Mathilda Jones interrupted the lecture by calling across the room, Im more
interested now in where these artifacts are going, Jupiter Jones! Stop loafing, you
young scamps, and load the truck. Yes, Aunt Mathilda. Jupiter said meekly.
The tourist museum, which specialised in relics from old seafaring days, was
closing down. Aunt Mathilda and Uncle Titus Jones had arranged to buy its
small collection for resale in The Jones Salvage Yard, the most elegant junkyard
on the West Coast.






The Secret of the Crooked Cat -

With a clue provided by an unusual stuffed cat, The Three
Investigators solve the mysterious troubles of an accident-prone
carnival.


ON AN AFTERNOON in early September, Jupiter Jones and Pete Crenshaw
were busily working in Jupiters workshop in The Jones Salvage Yard. To be
honest, Jupiter was working while Pete watched, and it was Pete who first saw
Uncle Titus Jones staggering up to them carrying two big wooden tubs. Boys,
Uncle Titus announced as he plunked down the two tubs in front of them, I
have a job for you. I want these tubs painted in red, white and blue stripes!
Pete gaped at the tubs. Stripes on washtubs? You mean right this minute,
Uncle Titus? Jupiter asked. The stocky boy looked glumly at the array of tiny
electronic parts on his workbench. Jupes building a new thingumajig for The
Three Investigators, Pete explained to Uncle Titus. A new invention, eh?
Uncle Titus said, momentarily distracted from his washtubs. What is it, Pete?
Who knows? Gosh, you know Jupiter, Pete exclaimed. Im just the helper.
Who tells me anything?











William Bayer
Pattern Crimes -

It begins when the strangely marked body of a young
prostitute is found just outside the walls of the Old City of
Jerusalem. A similarly disfigured corpse of an American
nun turns up. Then an Arab boy. As the list of victims
grows, their only apparent connection is the bizarre
markings on their bodies, it appears that Israel is facing
its first serial murder case.

David Bar-Lev, chief of the Pattern Crimes Unit of the
Jerusalem police, is not so sure. A tough yet sensitive
investigator with a powerful intelligence and a querying
mind, he begins searching for a pattern that will explain
the apparently random killings.


He woke up suddenly and then he remembered: Today was his birthday. Today
he was sixty years old. He was sweating. The sheets were damp. His nightmare
had been terrible. "Anna!" No answer. He opened his eyes. Light was streaming
in through the shutters. He squinted. Another blinding California day. They
were all blinding here. The dogs! Where were the dogs? "Irina!" When he heard
her footsteps he lay back against his pillows and composed his face. "Happy
birthday." She gave him her look when she said it, the one she'd been giving him
for years. It reminded him of her expression of amusement and contempt from
the days, so long ago, when they still made love. The dogs bounded in after her,
Boris and Peter, great black shaggy leaping things, eyes moist, excited, gums wet,
salivating. He petted them, massaged their ears. The maid followed with his
breakfast tray. "Felicidad, Senor Targov." She was Mexican, young, pretty, dark.
A good figure toohe often spied on her when she swam laps up and down the
pool. While she arranged the tray, he watched Irina throw open the shutters.
"Take the dogs out with you, Bianca," she instructed the maid. Targov gave
them each a final roughing of the ears.





William Bell
Alma

Times have been tough since Almas father died and she and her
mother had to give up their farm and move into town. Luckily,
Alma can always retreat into the books of her favourite author,
R.R. Hawkins.
When Almas teacher notices her lovely handwriting, she
recommends Alma for a job transcribing letters for Miss Lily, a
reclusive old woman who has just arrived from Boston.
Eventually, their mutual love of reading creates a strong
friendship. Miss Lily lends Alma some of her favourite books,
introduces her to calligraphy, and encourages her passion to
write stories.
But who is the difficult and solitary old woman who reminds
Alma of Dickens Miss Havisham? And why is she so secretive
about the part of her life she refuses to share? Could she be, as
Alma begins to suspect, R.R. Hawkins herself? Alma is
determined to find out.


Brush those carrots carefully, Alma. Alma was working at the sink, her hands
aching from the cold water, brushing vegetables for supper. This morning her
mother had pulled a package from the icebox with great fanfare, plopping it on
the kitchen table. Alma had unwrapped it. Its only meat, she had
complained. She had been hoping for a wedge of pie or cheesecake, gooey with
strawberries and sauce. Its lamb. The kitchen had a bit left over last night.
We can make Irish stew. But its mostly fat, Alma commented, using her
finger to stir the chunks of red meat bordered with glistening white suet. I
thought you liked Irish stew, her mother had said. Now the lamb, trimmed and
cut into small pieces, lay on a saucer. Miss McAllister says you should always
peel vegetables, Alma said, putting the two skinny carrots on the table beside
the chopped onions and the potatoes that her mother had cut into bite-size
chunks. Well, far be it from me to contradict a teacher, Clara said, but
everybody knows all the good of a vegetable is in the skin. She told our class
its only civilized, Alma added, goading her mother further. Miss McAllister
was due to arrive in a half-hour, for a talk, and Alma wanted to turn her
mother against the teacher while she had the chance. Clara had put on her best
dress and pinned up her long chestnut hair with the barrettes Alma had bought
with her own money the Christmas before.


Fanatics

Garnet Havelock has just finished his
apprenticeship in furniture making, and has
found a workshop for his new business in an
old coach house on the isolated estate of
recently deceased Professor Eduardo
Corbizzi. Garnet signs a contract with the
late professor's long-time companion, the
eccentric and inscrutable Mrs. Valentina
Stoppini, who presides over the mansion
and is its only occupant. The terms of the
deal are excellent, but there's a catch: Garnet
has to repair the library's fire damage and
keep all details about the estate confidential.
Only after he agrees does Mrs. Stoppini
inform him that the professor died of a
seizure in the library under mysterious
circumstances involving "an accident" and
"a small fire." It isn't long before a
distressing collision of past and present
drags Garnet towards a horrifying truth he
could never have imagined.


A LONG TIME AGO, when my grade eight teacher got so fed up with my
behaviour that she kicked me out of class, she had no ideashe was so knotted
with anger she wouldnt have caredthat her outburst of frustration would lead
to a crime. Mrs. Sykes was cursed with wide, wet rubbery lips. When she talked,
water gathered in the corners of her mouth and her lips shone with moisture. If
she was irritated, as she was that day, the spit machine went into high gear and
produced a tiny rainstorm that made you feel as if youd stuck your head out a
car window on a drizzly day. Go away! she shouted. The classroom door
slammed in my face. I shrugged my shoulders, wiped my cheeks and forehead
on my sleeve, and ambled down the hall to the library. Mrs. Tanner greeted me
with a sour, unsympathetic look and heaved her bulky body from her chair
behind the checkout desk. Muttering that this was the third time in a month, she
thrust an old book with a blue cloth cover into my hands and ordered me to sit
in the corner farthest from her desk but still in her line of vision. Read, she
commanded. Quietly. The collection of ancient Greek myths hooked me right
away. I read until the end of the day, then checked out the book and took it
home. I renewed it so many times that Mrs. Tanner eventually gave up trying to
get it back. When I graduated and went on to high school, the blue volume
remained on the shelf in my room.


The Blue Helmet -

Lee wants to be a Tarantula a member of the biggest, most
powerful gang in his neighborhood. But when his initiation goes
wrong and the police catch him robbing an auto supply store,
Lees father sends him to live with his aunt in New Toronto.

Lee feels more lost than ever. His mothers death from cancer
and his fathers constant absence working two jobs mean he has
practically had to raise himself. But though he initially resists
his Aunt Reena and the customers of Reenas Unique Caf a
ragtag collection of the unusual, the unkempt, and the deeply
eccentric Lee gradually learns to open himself up to his new
surroundings. When Lee strikes up an unlikely friendship, he is
suddenly confronted by the ravages of violence, and is forced to
face the consequences of his own aggression.


I THOUGHT YOU GUYS arent supposed to smoke on duty. The fat
plainclothes cop named Carpino lowered his window an inch. Youre a strange
one to talk about rules, he said. The unmarked police car hissed through
deserted Sunday morning streets, wipers flapping greasy drizzle from the
windshield, the rattling fan fighting a losing battle against condensation. My
father would have had a fit if hed heard the fan, and launched into a rant
about proper maintenance. But, as usual, he wasnt around. I sat up front
beside the cop. The car was hot and stuffy and smelled of stale coffee,
hamburger grease, and tobacco. With the palm of my hand I squeegeed mist
from the side window. Outside, the rain brimmed in the curb gutters, pushing
dirt and soggy food wrappers toward plugged sewer grates. My head throbbed
and I winced every time the car hit a pothole. I flipped down the visor and
examined my face in the vanity mirror. An angry red scab was forming over the
split in my swollen upper lip, my nose was puffed and red, and the cheek under
one eye was bruised and purple. Disgusted, I pushed the visor back into position.
Anyway, I told the cop, youre wasting your time. Ill be back. He dropped
his cigarette butt out the window, took a left through an orange light, and
headed toward the on-ramp for the highway.




WILLIAM BENNETT TURNER
FIGURES OF SPEECH FIRST AMENDMENT HEROES -

For the last 25 years, William Bennett Turner has taught a
course on the First Amendment at UC Berkeley. His
book, Figures of Speech, describes the colorful characters that
have played roles in important First Amendment
controversies. Choosing figures and cases from his own
personal experience, Turner illustrates broad First
Amendment principles and describes how weve arrived at our
contemporary understanding of the First Amendments
meaning.












William Boniface
The Hero Revealed -

In the town of Superopolis, everyone has a superpower.
Everyone, that is, except Ordinary Boy. He'swell, he's pretty
much ordinary. But that won't stop him from taking on
supervillains like the sinister Professor BrainDrain....

This spring, welcome to Superopolis and The Extraordinary
Adventures of Ordinary Boy, a clever, funny new series for
kids who've outgrown Captain Underpants or anyone who
loves The Incredibles and The Tick. Packed with dynamic
illustrations and starring a smart young hero who could hold
his own with Charlie Bone, Klaus Baudelaire, and Stanley
Yelnats, this is a series that kids will find undeniably super!


Sure, it sounds like a great opening title, but the reality is, well Im ordinary.
I know youre thinking, Whats the big deal? So are most people. Thats why
its called being ordinary. The problem is, I live in a place where absolutely no
one is ordinary. Its called Superopolis, and, as you might guess with a name
like that, this is a city where everyone has some sort of superpower. Nobody
knows why everyone here has a power. Maybe its something in the water. Or
maybe theres a radioactive meteor buried under the city. Everyone here also
eats a lot of potato chips, but I doubt that has anything to do with it. Whatever
the cause, it clearly has no effect on me. Youre probably wondering by now
what my real name is. Well, Im wondering, too. You see, in Superopolis,
everyones name has something to do with his or her superpower. It doesnt take
too long before a baby starts showing some sort of powerlike being able to
float, for instance. Then the parents will probably start calling him Floating
Baby. They may come up with something a little more original if they happen to
be cleverbut, frankly, most people arent. Then, when he gets older, hell
become Floating Boy, and as an adult hell be known as Floating Man. Get it?
Thats what happened to me.




William Boyd
Any Human Heart

Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, but Logan
Mountstuart's - lived from the beginning to the end of the
twentieth century - contains more than its fair share of both.
As a writer who finds inspiration with Hemingway in Paris
and Virginia Woolf in London, as a spy recruited by Ian
Fleming and betrayed in the war and as an art-dealer in '60s
New York, Logan mixes with the movers and shakers of his
times. But as a son, friend, lover and husband, he makes the
same mistakes we all do in our search for happiness. Here,
then, is the story of a life lived to the full - and a journey deep
into a very human heart.


Y , Logan, I wrote. Y , Logan Mountstuart, vivo en la Villa Flores, Avenida
de Brasil, Montevideo, Uruguay, America del Sur, El Mundo, El Sistema Solar,
El Universo. These were the first words I wrote or to be more precise, this is
the earliest record of my writing and the beginning of my writing life words
that were inscribed on the flyleaf of an indigo pocket diary for the year 1912
(which I still possess and whose pages are otherwise void). I was six years old. It
intrigues me now1 to reflect that my first written words were in a language not
my own. My lost fluency in Spanish is probably my greatest regret about my
otherwise perfectly happy childhood. The serviceable, error-dotted,
grammatically unsophisticated Spanish that I speak today is the poorest of poor
cousins to that instinctive colloquial jabber that spilled out of me for the first
nine years of my life. Curious how these early linguistic abilities are so fragile,
how unthinkingly and easily the brain lets them go. I was a bilingual child in
the true sense, namely that the Spanish I spoke was indistinguishable from that
of a Uruguayan.






Armadillo

To his colleagues, Lorimer Black, the handsome, mild-mannered
insurance adjuster rising through the ranks of his London firm,
is known as the guy who has it all the sleek suits, the enviable
status. But when Lorimer arrives at a routine business
appointment and finds his client hanging from a water pipe, his
life spirals out of control. His company car is blowtorched after
he investigates a fire at a luxury hotel. He becomes the fall guy of
a new colleague who puts the company in the red and the victim
of a vicious attack by the possessive husband of a mysterious
actress.

As Lorimer becomes increasingly entangled in an apparent
conspiracy that involves everyone he knows, his own past
becomes known. A brilliant satirical noir, Armadillo confirms
Boyd's place as England's most versatile, sublime novelist.(


In these times of ours and we dont need to be precise about the exact date
but, anyway, very early in the year, a young man not much over thirty, tall
six feet plus an inch or two with ink-dark hair and a serious-looking, fine-
featured but pallid face, went to keep a business appointment and discovered a
hanged man. Lorimer Black stared aghast at Mr. Dupree, his mind at once
clamorous with shocked alarm and curiously inert the warring symptoms of a
form of mental panic, he supposed. Mr. Dupree had hanged himself from a
thinly lagged water pipe that crossed the ceiling in the little anteroom behind
reception. A small set of aluminium folding steps lay on its side beneath his
slightly splayed feet (his tan shoes needed a good clean, Lorimer noticed). Mr.
Dupree was simultaneously the first dead person he had encountered in his life,
his first suicide and his first hanged man and Lorimer found this congruence of
firsts deeply troubling.









On the Yankee Station

From California poolsides to the battlegrounds of Vietnam, here
is a world populated by weary souls who turn to fantasy as their
sole escape from life's inequities. Stranded in an African hotel
during a coup, an oafish Englishman impresses a young
stewardess with stories of an enchanted life completely at odds
with his sordid existence in "The Coup." In the title story, an
arrogant, sadistic American pilot in Vietnam underestimates the
power of revenge when he relentlessly persecutes a member of
his maintenance crew. With droll humor and rare compassion,
Boyd's enthralling stories remind us of his stature as one of
contemporary fiction's finest storytellers.


Then the brothel was raided. Christ, hed only gone down to Spinozas to
confront Patience with her handiwork. She hadnt been free when Morgan first
arrived, so he had chatted to the owner, Baruchas his better-read clients
whimsically dubbed the diminutive Levantine pimpfor half an hour or so,
and watched the girls dancing listlessly under the roof fans. His anger had
subsided a bit but he managed to stoke up a rage when he was eventually
ushered into Patiences cubicle. Hey! he had roared, lowering his greyish Y-
fronts. Bloody look at this mess! But then his tirade had been cut short by the
whistles and stompings of Sgt. Mbele and his vice squad. The day had started
badly. Morgan woke, hot and sweaty, his sheets damp binding-cloths. Three
things presented themselves to his mind almost simultaneously: it was
Christmas Eve, in four days he would be catching the next boat home from
Douala and he had a dull ache in his groin. He eased his seventeen-and-a-half
stone out of bed and started for the bathroom. There, a hesitant diagnosis set off
by the unfamiliar pain was horrifyingly confirmed by the sight of his opaque,
forked and pustular urine.






Ordinary Thunderstorms

One May evening in London, Adam Kindred, a young
climatologist in town for a job interview, is feeling good about
the future as he sits down for a meal at a little Italian bistro.
He strikes up a conversation with a solitary diner at the next
table, who leaves soon afterward. With horrifying speed, this
chance encounter leads to a series of malign accidents, through
which Adam loses everythinghome, family, friends, job,
reputation, passport, credit cards, cell phonenever to get
them back.

The police are searching for him. There is a reward for his
capture. A hired killer is stalking him. He is alone and
anonymous in a huge, pitiless modern city. Adam has nowhere
to go but downunderground. He decides to join that vast
army of the disappeared and the missing who throng Londons
lowest levels as he tries to figure out what to do with his life
and struggles to understand the forces that have made it
unravel so spectacularly.


LET US START WITH THE RIVERALL THINGS BEGIN WITH THE
RIVER AND we shall probably end there, no doubt but lets wait and see how
we go. Soon, in a minute or two, a young man will come and stand by the rivers
edge, here at Chelsea Bridge, in London. There he is lookstepping hesitantly
down from a taxi, paying the driver, gazing around him, unthinkingly, glancing
over at the bright water (its a flood tide and the river is unusually high). Hes a
tall, pale-faced young man, early thirties, even-featured with tired eyes, his
short dark hair neatly cut and edged as if fresh from the barber. He is new to
the city, a stranger, and his name is Adam Kindred. He has just been
interviewed for a job and feels like seeing the river (the interview having been
the usual tense encounter, with a lot at stake), answering a vague desire to get
some air. The recent interview explains why, beneath his expensive trenchcoat,
he is wearing a charcoal-grey suit, a maroon tie with a new white shirt and why
hes carrying a glossy solid-looking black briefcase with heavy brass locks and
corner trim. He crosses the road, having no idea how his life is about to change
in the next few hours massively, irrevocably no idea at all.






William Breton
Ten Days to Zero Zero

There is a new Camelot in Washington. Daniel Galbraith, the
vigorous, poker-playing new US President, is determined to
recapture America's lead in the battle for world public opinion
on total nuclear disarmament. When the Soviet premier dares
him to sign an agreement to get rid of all remaining strategic
weapons in six months Galbraith counters with ten days!

Within hours, a high-tech female poisoner has been recruited
to assassinate both himself and the Soviet leader. Galbraith
faces 'International Halloween' - every spook in the world has a
stake in seeing that a Zero-Zero Agreement never is signed -
and calls upon the only man he can trust to see him through:
his oldest friend, and brother-in-law, Jack Lowel.












WILLIAM BRODRICK
The Gardens of the Dead

When Elizabeth Glendinning, Q.C., dies of heart failure while
making a desperate phone call to the police, her colleagues
and family are devastated and mystified. What was she doing
in east London at the time of her death, and what was she
trying to tell the police in her last phone call? After her funeral,
her son, Nicholas, Inspector Cartwright, the officer she was
trying to call, and Father Anselm, Elizabeths former colleague,
all receive packages about a case from years earlier: Regina v.
Riley. The package also includes mysterious newspaper
clippings about the accidental drowning of John Bradshaw,
who just happens to be the son of the principal witness in the
case. Why is Elizabeth still following the case? And what does
she want the three people to do with the information she has
sent them?


Elizabeth Glendinning QC walked purposefully beside Regents Canal in Mile
End Park towards a trestle-table covered with junk from the houses of the dead.
Behind it, his jaw working as if hed tasted ash, sat Graham Riley, lolling in a
camp-chair. To her right, sausages and onions sizzled on a hotplate; steam rose
from an urn; clothing hung jammed on racks; bits of houses were laid on a
blanket by a sign that read Architectural Reclamation; tools from yesteryear,
rusted, robust and manly, stood propped against a dinted van. Elizabeth passed
them all, not quite looking, keeping her eye rather on the calm of the waterway
to her left, and away from Graham Riley. Despite years of handling tension,
Elizabeth found the strain this morning unbearable: she had devised two grand
schemes to bring this man from the camp-chair to the courtroom, that he might
answer to his many victims. The first of these, after months of preparation, was
about to be fulfilled. Riley looked up, across the autumn fair, in utter disbelief.
Elizabeth was dressed in courtly black. She wore no make-up. Her hair had
been precisely cut at quite fantastic expense. Through anxiety, her skin was pale
and her lips peculiarly bloodless.





The Sixth Lamentation -

Larkwood Priory, England: Father Anselm is stopped by an old
man. What, he is asked, should a man do when the world has
turned against him? Anselm's response: claim sanctuary. But
the answer sets off more trouble than he ever could have
imagined when the man returns, demanding the protection of
the Church. He is Eduard Schwermann, a suspected Nazi war
criminal.

Agnes Aubret has unburdened a secret to her granddaughter
Lucy. Fifty years earlier, Agnes was in occupied Paris, risking
her life to smuggle Jewish children to safety-until her group
was exposed by an SS officer: Eduard Schwermann.

Not only has the Church granted Schwermann sanctuary before;
in 1944 it helped him escape from France to begin a new life in
Britain. As Anselm attempts to find out why and as Lucy delves
deeper into her grandmother's past, their investigations
dovetail to form a remarkable story.


Night and day Ive lived among the tombs, cutting myself on stones, replied
Agnes quietly, searching her memory. Doctor Scotts eyes narrowed slightly. His
East Lothian vowels had lilted over diagnosis and prognosis, gently breaking the
news while Agnes gazed at a gleaming spring daffodil behind his head, rising
alone from a rogue plant pot balanced on a shelf a present from a patient,
perhaps, or free with lots of petrol. Soon it would topple and fall. She forgot the
flower when those old words, unbidden, rumbled from her mouth. Agnes
couldnt place where they came from. Was it something Father Rochet had said,
worse for wear, back in the forties? Something shed read? It didnt matter. They
were hers now, coming like a gift to name the past: an autobiography. Agnes
glanced at her doctor. He was a nice fellow, at home with neurological
catastrophe but less sure of himself with mangled quotation. He looked over-
troubled on her account and she was touched by his confusion. Do you mean to
tell me that, after all Ive been through, Im going to die from a disease whose
patron is the Duchess of York?







William Browning Spencer
Resume With Monsters -

Philip Kenan is battling a series of bad jobs - and the monsters
from H. P. Lovecraft's fiction go with him. Philip's first
confrontation with the monsters set in motion a bizarre chain of
events that finally sent his girlfriend Amelia packing. Now the
battle rages from the dank, cramped sweatshop of Philip's former
place of employment, Ralph's One-Day Resumes, to the gleaming,
deadly corridors of corporate giant Pelidyne. Can he save Amelia
this time, or will the monsters triumph and consign all humanity
to an existence of grim servitude?


Ralphs One-Day Rsums was located in an industrial park that also housed
insurance salesmen, auto mechanics, computer repairmen and a karate school.
Philip Kenan accelerated to make the left into the parking lot, then braked hard
to avoid losing his muffler on the huge speed bump that must have been a
legend amid the local hordes of fire ants. Philip parked, unbuckled the seat belt,
exhaled. Work. It could be worse. It had been. This was safe harbor. So far, he
had seen no signs of Cthulhu or Yog-Sothoth or his dread messenger,
Nyarlathotep. Philip waved to the receptionist, a pretty blond girl who was
talking on the phone. He walked quickly down the hall and into the bathroom
which, while cryptlike and dank, contained no hideous, disorienting graffiti
from mad Alhazred's Necronomicon. It was five in the evening, time for a
middle- aged, lovesick, failed-novelist and near-obsolete typesetter to get to work.
He just needed a minute to collect himself, to splash some water in his face, to
check for nosebleeds, see that his eyes were in their sockets, see that no lichen
grew on his forehead, that sort of thing. All was in order. Sane as rain.






William Buhlman
Adventures beyond the Body

If you ever wondered what might lie beyond the
reality we experience every day, if you've ever
thrilled to accounts of out-of-body travel and
longer to go alone for the ride, this fascinating,
practical guide is for you. America's leading
expert on out-of-body travel tells the riveting
story of his travels to other realms and offers
easy-to-use techniques to guide you on your
journey of a lifetime and beyond.

Travel into parallel realities . . .











William C. Carter
Proust in Love

The acclaimed Proust biographer William C. Carter portrays
Prousts amorous adventures and misadventures from
adolescence through his adult years, supplying where
appropriate Prousts own sensitive, intelligent, and often
disillusioned observations about love and sexuality. Proust is
revealed as a man agonizingly caught between the constant
fear of public exposure as a homosexual and the need to find
and express love. In telling the story of Proust in love, Carter
also shows how the authors experiences became major
themes in his novel In Search of Lost Time.
Carter discusses Prousts adolescent sexual experiences, his
disastrous brothel visit to cure homosexual inclinations, and
his first great loves. He also addresses the duel Proust
fought after the journalist Jean Lorrain alluded to his
homosexuality in print, his flirtations with respectable women
and high-class prostitutes, and his affairs with young men of
the servant class. With new revelations about Prousts love life
and a gallery of photographs, the book provides an
unprecedented glimpse of Prousts gay Paris.












William Codpiece Thwackery
Fifty Shades of Mr Darcy_ A Parody

Lizzy Steele had been brought up to be a proper lady with
perfect manners, skilled in conversation, and well respected in
the community. But when Mr. Elliot Bingley comes to court
Lizzy's sister, she is given the opportunity to learn a somewhat
different skill set upon her introduction to his friend, a Mr.
Fitzwilliam Darcy. It only takes one chance meeting with this
tall, dark stranger for Lizzy to be lured into Darcy's secret
world of lascivious practices and lusty urges. Drawn like a
moth to his flame, Lizzy is the mistress of her own undoing,
for Darcy has made no protestations of love; indeed, his
intentions were made plain from the outset. But even the most
innocent and well brought-up of young ladies have urges, and
as Lizzy learns that a riding crop isn't just used for going for a
canter on her pony, a whole new world is revealed to her
shaded black and leather-clad.


It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good
riding crop must be in want of a pair of bare buttocks to thrash. At least, that is
how it seemed to Elizabeth Bennet. Tied to the bedpost in Mr Darcys boudoir,
her stays unlaced and her bloomers in a state of disarray, trembling in
anticipation of the first thwack of leather upon her unblemished skin, she
pondered upon the circumstances that had brought her to this most indecorous
pass. If Mr Bingley had never come to Netherfield and set his heart upon her
sister Jane, then she, Elizabeth, would never have encountered his close friend,
Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy. And that one chance meeting was all it had taken for
her to be lured into his secret world of hot and horny perverted sex, like a
helpless moth drawn towards a candle flame. Worst of all, she was the mistress
of her own undoing. Mr Darcy had made no protestations of love. In fact, he
had made his intentions plain from the outset. I do not make love, Miss
Bennet, he had told her. I bonk. I have it off. I get my end away, I rodger, I
boff.






William Dalrymple
City of Djinns

Sparkling with irrepressible wit, City of Djinns peels back the
layers of Delhi's centuries-old history, revealing an
extraordinary array of characters along the way-from eunuchs
to descendants of great Moguls. With refreshingly open-
minded curiosity, William Dalrymple explores the seven
"dead" cities of Delhi as well as the eighth city-today's Delhi.
Underlying his quest is the legend of the djinns, fire-formed
spirits that are said to assure the city's Phoenix-like
regeneration no matter how many times it is destroyed.
Entertaining, fascinating, and informative, City of Djinns is an
irresistible blend of research and adventure.


THE FLAT PERCHED at the top of the house, little more than a lean-to riveted
to Mrs Puris ceiling. The stairwell exuded sticky, airless September heat; the
roof was as thin as corrugated iron. Inside we were greeted by a scene from
Great Expectations: a thick pall of dust on every surface, a family of sparrows
nesting in the blinds and a fleece of old cobwebs great arbours of spider silk
arching the corner walls. Mrs Puri stood at the doorway, a small, bent figure
in a salwar kameez. The last tenant did not go out much, she said, prodding
the cobwebs with her walking stick. She added: He was not a tidy gentleman.
Olivia blew on a cupboard; the dust was so thick you could sign your name in it.
Our landlady, though a grandmother, soon proved herself to be a formidable
woman. A Sikh from Lahore, Mrs Puri was expelled from her old home during
Partition and in the upheavals of 1947 lost everything. She arrived in Delhi on a
bullock cart. Forty-two years later she had made the transition from refugee
pauper to Punjabi princess. She was now very rich indeed. She owned houses all
over Delhi and had swapped her bullock for a fleet of new Maruti cars, the
much coveted replacement for the old Hindustan Ambassador. Mrs Puri also
controlled a variety of business interests.




Nine Lives

A middle-class woman from Calcutta finds unexpected
fulfillment living as a Tantric in an isolated, skull-filled
cremation ground . . . A prison warder from Kerala is
worshipped as an incarnate deity for two months of every
year . . . A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment watching
her closest friend ritually starve herself to death . . . The
twenty-third in a centuries-old line of idol makers struggles to
reconcile with his sons wish to study computer
engineering . . . An illiterate goatherd keeps alive in his
memory an ancient 200,000-stanza sacred epic . . . A temple
prostitute, who resisted her own initiation into sex work,
pushes her daughters into the trade she nonetheless regards
as a sacred calling.


The idea for this book was born sixteen years ago, on a high, clear, Himalayan
morning in the summer of 1993. I was corkscrewing my way up from the banks
of the river Bhagirathi, along the steep sides of a thickly wooded valley. The
track was soft and mossy, and it led though ferns and brackens, thickets of
brambles and groves of tall Himalayan cedar trees. Small waterfalls tumbled
through the deodars. It was May, and after a ten-day trek I was one days walk
from my destination: the great Himalayan temple of Kedarnath, believed by
Hindus to be one of the principal homes of Lord Shiva and so, along with Mount
Kailash in Tibet, one of the two candidates for the Hindu Mount Olympus. I
was not alone on the road. The previous night I had seen groups of pilgrims
mainly villagers from Rajasthan camping beside the temples and bazaars at
the bottom of the mountain, warming their hands over small driftwood fires.
Now, in the light of morning, their numbers seemed to have miraculously
multiplied, and the narrow mountain track appeared like a great sea of Indian
humanity. Every social class from every corner of the country was there.







The Last Mughal -

On a hazy November afternoon in Rangoon, 1862, a shrouded
corpse was escorted by a small group of British soldiers to an
anonymous grave in a prison enclosure. As the British
Commissioner in charge insisted, No vestige will remain to
distinguish where the last of the Great Moghuls rests.

Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal Emperor, was a mystic,
an accomplished poet and a skilled calligrapher. But while his
Mughal ancestors had controlled most of India, the aged Zafar
was king in name only. Deprived of real political power by the
East India Company, he nevertheless succeeded in creating a
court of great brilliance, and presided over one of the great
cultural renaissances of Indian history.


AT 4 P.M. on a hazy, humid winters afternoon in Rangoon in November 1862,
soon after the end of the monsoon, a shrouded corpse was escorted by a small
group of British soldiers to an anonymous grave at the back of a walled prison
enclosure. This enclosure lay overlooking the muddy brown waters of the
Rangoon River, a little downhill from the great gilt spire of the Shwe Dagon
pagoda. Around the enclosure lay the newly constructed cantonment area of the
portan anchorage and pilgrimage town that had been seized, burned and
occupied by the British only ten years earlier. The bier of the State Prisoneras
the deceased was referred towas accompanied by two of his sons and an
elderly, bearded mullah. No women were allowed to attend, and a small crowd
from the bazaar who had somehow heard about the prisoners death were kept
away by armed guards. Nevertheless, one or two managed to break through the
cordon to touch the shroud before it was lowered into the grave.









William David
Enemy Within

Martin Lever is a 32-year-old software engineer who,
working with his friend Alec, has over 8 years created a
successful software company that is on the verge of
becoming a multi-billion dollar public corporation.

The Defense Dept. of the UK government starts to take a
serious interest in their latest software developments, the
Company is about to float on the London Stock Exchange,
and a cash buyer for the Company also suddenly appears
out of nowhere.

It is at this point that life really gets interesting as his
brothers problems and insidious government forces start to
take a hand in his life.









The rain is hammering down, I am soaking wet, and vaguely aware of the drips
running down my neck and seeping in to my shirt collar. As I lie on the grass
verge my eyes become accustomed to a darkness that is only slightly relieved by
the young moon, and slowly, I regain a sense of my surroundings and what has
happened. Looking down I see that my right jacket sleeve is torn, and wiping
my forehead I see the smear of blood on the back of my hand. It's not only rain
that is giving me that trickling sensation on the forehead. I need to get up but
feel stiff, and looking down see that I am covered in mud and that my left
trouser leg is torn, almost shredded. On my feet I am unsteady but I turn
around; below, down the slope, away from the road I can make out the remains
of two cars. Mine, a silver Range Rover upside down with the engine still
running, the exhaust fumes puffing out of the tail pipe, and to the left a blue
Volvo estate car on its side with it's badly crushed nose half way up the base of
a large tree.







William Davis
Wheat Belly

A renowned cardiologist explains how eliminating wheat
from our diets can prevent fat storage, shrink unsightly
bulges, and reverse myriad health problems.

Every day, over 200 million Americans consume food
products made of wheat. As a result, over 100
million of them experience some form of adverse health
effect, ranging from minor rashes and high blood sugar to the
unattractive stomach bulges that preventive cardiologist
William Davis calls wheat bellies. According to Davis, that
excess fat has nothing to do with gluttony, sloth, or too much
butter: Its due to the whole grain wraps we eat for lunch.


FLIP THROUGH YOUR parents or grandparents family albums and youre
likely to be struck by how thin everyone looks. The women probably wore size-
four dresses and the men sported 32-inch waists. Overweight was something
measured only by a few pounds; obesity rare. Overweight children? Almost
never. Any 42-inch waists? Not here. Two-hundred-pound teenagers? Certainly
not. Why were the June Cleavers of the fifties and sixties, the stay-at-home
housewives as well as other people of that era, so much skinnier than the
modern people we see at the beach, mall, or in our own mirrors? While women
of that era typically weighed in at 110 or 115 pounds, men at 150 or 165 pounds,
today we carry 50, 75, even 200 pounds more. The women of that world didnt
exercise much at all. (It was considered unseemly, after all, like having impure
thoughts at church.) How many times did you see your mom put on her jogging
shoes to go out for a three-mile run? Exercise for my mother was vacuuming the
stairs. Nowadays I go outdoors on any nice day and see dozens of women
jogging, riding their bicycles, power walkingthings wed virtually never see 40
or 50 years ago. And yet, were getting fatter and fatter every year.





William Deresiewicz
A Jane Austen Education

A self-styled intellectual rebel dedicated to writers such as
James Joyce and Joseph Conrad, Deresiewicz never thought
Austen's novels would have anything to offer him. But when
he was assigned to read Emma as a graduate student at
Columbia, something extraordinary happened. Austen's
devotion to the everyday, and her belief in the value of
ordinary lives, ignited something in Deresiewicz. He began
viewing the world through Austen's eyes and treating those
around him as generously as Austen treated her characters.
Along the way, Deresiewicz was amazed to discover that the
people in his life developed the depth and richness of literary
characters-that his own life had suddenly acquired all the
fascination of a novel. His real education had finally begun.


I was twenty-six, and about as dumb, in all human things, as any twenty-six-
year-old has a right to be, when I met the woman who would change my life.
That shed been dead for a couple of hundred years made not the slightest
difference whatsoever. Her name was Jane Austen, and she would teach me
everything I know about everything that matters. The thing that takes my breath
away when I think back on it all is that I never wanted to read her in the first
place. It happened quite by accident, and very much against my will. I had
been eager, when Id gone back to school to get my Ph.D. the year before, to fill
the gaps in my literary educationChaucer and Shakespeare, Melville and
Miltonbut the one area of English literature that held no interest for me, that
positively repelled me, was nineteenth-century British fiction. What could be
duller, I thought, than a bunch of long, heavy novels, by women novelists, in
stilted language, on trivial subjects? The very titles sounded ridiculous. Jane
Eyre. Wuthering Heights. Middlemarch. But nothing symbolized the dullness
and narrowness of that whole body of work like the name Jane Austen. Wasnt
she the one who wrote those silly romantic fairy tales? Just thinking about her
made me sleepy.




William Dietrich
Blood of the Reich

On the eve of World War II, explorer Kurt Raeder receives orders
from Reichsfhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler to set out from Berlin in
search of a legendary energy source hidden among the mountains
of Tibet that could bring Nazi victory. Only one man can stop
Raeder and his team of SS officers: wealthy American zoologist
Benjamin Hood. Together with aviatrix Beth Calloway, he must
race to the Buddhist kingdom before the tides of history run red
with blood.

Decades later, in the present-day city of Seattle, software publicist
Rominy Pickett is saved from certain death by a mysterious
journalist who claims to know the truth about her family. Rominys
history and courage hold the key to defeating, for the last time, the
evil forces again on the rise.


First day of spring, and pregnant with the same expectancy that gripped Kurt
Raeder at his unexpected summons from Reichsfhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler.
The Prussian sky was cold, ragged sunlight dappling the German capital with
that glitter atop iron that promised an end to winter. So might Himmler be the
pagan sun to part the clouds of Raeders stalled career. So might Raeder win his
own expedition. We have read with interest your books on Tibet, the summons
stated. With that simple missive the explorer had been yanked out of the ennui
of his university teaching and the gloom of his wifes death, the opportunity like
the twin lightning bolts of the SS Rune. As Raeder walked from the U-Bahn into
the heart of Nazi power, Berlin seemed to share his anticipation. The city was
its habitual gray, buds swollen but little green on the trees yet. The paving was
bright from a nights rain, however, and the capital seemed poised, purposeful,
like one of the new steel tanks that had waited on the border for the Anschluss
with Austria just nine days before. Now the two nations were united in a single
German Reich, and once more public apprehension about a Nazi gamble had
turned to excitement bright as the red swastika banners, vivid as a wound. All
the world was waiting to see what Germany would do next.




The Scourge of God

After decades of assault by barbarian tribes, Rome is weakening
and in danger of being overrun. By a.d. 449, Attila, ruler of the
Huns, has become Europe's most powerful monarch, his ferocity
earning him the title "the Scourge of God." Now he is poised to
assault the West.

It begins with an illicit affair. Honoria, sister of Valentinian III,
emperor of the Western Roman Empire, creates a scandal when
she is discovered in bed with her steward. Imprisoned for her
indiscretion, Honoria sees the instrument of her deliverance in
the form of the most feared warrior in the known world -- Attila.
Desperate, she dispatches a messenger to the leader of the Huns,
asking for his aid. Taking the entreaty as a marriage proposal,
Attila begins to mass his forces to claim the half of the Roman
Empire he feels should be his dowry, thus setting in motion the
engines of war.


Three hundred and seventy-six years after the birth of Our Savior, the world
was still one. Our Roman Empire endured as it had endured for a thousand
years, extending from the cold moors of Britannia to the blistering sands of
Arabia, and from the headwaters of the Euphrates River to the Atlantic surf of
North Africa. Romes boundaries had been tested countless times by Celt and
German, Persian and Scythian. Yet with blood and iron, guile and gold, all
invaders had been turned back. It had always been so, and in 376 it seemed it
must always be so. How I wish I had lived in such security! But I, Jonas
Alabandahistorian, diplomat, and reluctant soldiercan only imagine the
old Empires venerable stability the way a sailors audience imagines a faraway
and misty shore. My fate has been to exist in harder times, meeting the great
and living more desperately because of it. This book is my story and those I had
the fortune and misfortune to observe, but its roots are older. In that year 376,
more than half a century before I was born, came the first rumor of the storm
that forever changed everything. In that year, historians recount, came the first
rumor of the Huns.






William F. Blake
Basic Private Investigation











William Fotheringham
Cyclopedia

This essential book is a miscellany of facts, figures, interesting snippets,
and quirky characters from the world of cycling. It tells you everything
you could ever want to know about the bicycle from the history of the
Tour de France to Chris Hoy's dominance of the Beijing Velodrome via
the origins of the ubiquitous quick release system and the diet that
powered Graeme Obree to the world hour record - marmalade and
cornflakes.


The particular joy of cycling is in its infinite variety, its seemingly boundless
history. Get on a bike and you can go anywhere, literally and metaphorically.
Unlike a football or a tennis racket, a bike has multiple uses. It is
simultaneously a piece of high-tech sports gear, a means of transportation to
work or the store, a way of discovering the world, an escape to solitude and
nature, a social network that beats any of the virtual variety, and a means of
discovering your personal limits, whether by crawling up an Alpine pass or
shredding your nerves downhill on a mountain bike. Over the last 150 years
cycling has helped to change the world and it may yet help to save it from
environmental catastrophe. Bikes have carried politicians, soldiers, explorers,
suffragettes, socialists, artists, and artisans. Yet as cyclists we tend to exist in
our own bubbles. We race, we ride to work, we may fret over whether to buy
carbon fiber or titanium, we pedal off to picnics, we find new places. For
whatever reason we ride our bikes, and whatever the depth of our personal
passion, there will be sides of cycling, its history, its culture, that we dont even
know exist. There isnt time to go everywhere and the signposts are not always
there in the first place. And that is where this book may just be able to help, by
giving some idea of the multiplicity of areassocial, technical, sporting,
cultural, historicalto which two wheels can transport us.





William Gay
Twilight -

Suspecting that something is amiss with their father's burial,
teenager Kenneth Tyler and his sister Corrie venture to his
gravesite and make a horrific discovery: their father, a whiskey
bootlegger, was not actually buried in the casket they bought
for him. Worse, they learn that the undertaker, Fenton Breece,
has been grotesquely manipulating the dead.
Armed with incriminating photographs, Tyler becomes
obsessed with bringing the perverse undertaker to justice. But
first, he must outrun Granville Sutter, a local strongman and
convicted murderer hired by Fenton to destroy the evidence.
What follows is an adventure through the Harrikin, an eerie
backwoods filled with tangled roads, rusted machinery, and
eccentric squatters-old men, witches, and families among
them-who both shield and imperil Tyler as he runs for safety.


The wagon came out of the sun with its attendant din of iron rims turning on
flinty shale, its worn silvergray fired orange by the malefic light flaring behind
it, the driver disdaining the road for the shortcut down the steep incline, erect
now and sawing the lines, riding the brake onehanded until the wheels locked
and skidded, then releasing it so that wagon and team and man moved in a
constantly varying cacophony of shrieks and rattles and creaks and underlying
it all the perpetual skirling of steel on stone. Pattons store. A grinning man
would halt the wagon with an upraised arm but it would not halt. When he
noticed the quiltcovered cargo the wagon transported, he called, What you got
there, Sandy? The driver turned and spat and wiped his mouth and glanced
back briefly but he didnt stay the wagon. Dead folks, he said. The wagon went
on and vanished like some ghostwagon in the vaporous mist rising from the river.
Coming into Ackermans Field the wagon and its curious freight accrued to
itself a motley of children and barking dogs and a few dusty turtlebacked
automobiles and such early risers as were stirring and possessed of enough
curiosity to join the macabre parade to its ultimate end on the courthouselawn.





William Gibson
All Tomorrow's Parties

Although Colin Laney (from Gibson's earlier novel Idoru) lives in
a cardboard box, he has the power to change the world. Thanks to
an experimental drug that he received during his youth, Colin can
see "nodal points" in the vast streams of data that make up the
worldwide computer network. Nodal points are rare but
significant events in history that forever change society, even
though they might not be recognizable as such when they occur.
Colin isn't quite sure what's going to happen when society reaches
this latest nodal point, but he knows it's going to be big. And he
knows it's going to occur on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco,
which has been home to a sort of SoHo-esque shantytown since
an earthquake rendered it structurally unsound to carry traffic.


THROUGH this evening's tide of faces unregistered, unrecognized, amid
hurrying black shoes, furled umbrellas, the crowd descending like a single
organism into the station's airless heart, comes Shinya Yamazaki, his notebook
clasped beneath his arm like the egg case of some modest but moderately
successful marine species. Evolved to cope with jostling elbows, oversized Ginza
shopping bags, ruthless briefcases, Yamazaki and his small burden of
information go down into the neon depths. Toward this tributary of relative
quiet, a tiled corridor connecting parallel escalators. Central columns, sheathed
in green ceramic, support a ceiling pocked with dust-furred ventilators, smoke
detectors, speakers. Behind the columns, against the far wall, derelict shipping
cartons huddle in a ragged train, improvised shelters constructed by the city's
homeless. Yamazaki halts, and in that moment all the oceanic clatter of
commuting feet washes in, no longer held back by his sense of mission, and he
deeply and sincerely wishes he were elsewhere. He winces, violently, as a
fashionable young matron, features swathed in Chanel micropore, rolls over his
toes with an expensive three-wheeled stroller. Blurting a convulsive apology,
Yamazaki glimpses the infant passenger through flexible curtains of some pink-
tinted plastic, the glow of a video display winking as its mother trundles
determinedly away.



Burning Chrome

Ten brilliant, streetwise, high-resolution stories from the man
who coined the word cyberspace. Gibson's vision has become a
touchstone in the emerging order of the 21st Century, from the
computer-enhanced hustlers of Johnny Mnemonic to the
technofetishist blues of Burning Chrome. With their vividly
human characters and their remorseless, hot-wired futures,
these stories are simultaneously science fiction at its sharpest
and instantly recognizable Polaroids of the postmodern
condition.


Mercifully, the whole thing is starting to fade, to be-come an episode. When I do
still catch the odd glimpse, its peripheral; mere fragments of mad-doctor chrome,
confining themselves to the corner of the eye. There was that flying-wing liner
over San Francisco last week, but it was almost translucent. And the shark-fin
roadsters have gotten scarcer, and freeways discreetly avoid un-folding
themselves into the gleaming eighty lane monsters I was forced to drive last
month in my rented Toyota. And I know that none of it will follow me to New
York; my vision is narrowing to a single wave-length of probability. Ive worked
hard for that. Tele-vision helped a lot. I suppose it started in London, in that
bogus Greek taverna in Battersea Park Road, with lunch on Cohens corporate
tab. Dead steam-table food and it took them thirty minutes to find an ice bucket
for the retsina. Cohen works for Barris-Watford, who publish big, trendy "trade"
paperbacks: illustrated histories of the neon sign, the pinball machine, the
windup toys of Occupied Japan. Id gone over to shoot a series of shoe ads;
California girls with tanned legs and frisky Day-Glo jogging shoes had capered
for me down the escalators of St. Johns Wood and across the platforms of
Tooting Bec.





Count Zero

A corporate mercenary wakes in a reconstructed body, a
beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation
reactivates him, for a mission more dangerous than the one
hes recovering from: to get a defecting chief of R&Dand the
biochip hes perfectedout intact. But this proves to be of
supreme interest to certain other partiessome of whom
arent remotely human...


THEY SENT A SLAMHOUND on Turners trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his
pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called
Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of
bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized
hexogene and flaked TNT. He didnt see it coming. The last he saw of India
was the pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel. Because he
had a good agent, he had a good contract. Because he had a good contract, he
was in Singapore an hour after the explosion. Most of him, anyway The Dutch
surgeon liked to joke about that, how an unspecified percentage of Turner
hadnt made it out of Palam International on that first flight and had to spend
the night there in a shed, in a support vat It took the Dutchman and his team
three months to put Turner together again. They cloned a square meter of skin
for him, grew it on slabs of collagen and shark-cartilage polysaccharides. They
bought eyes and genitals on the open market. The eyes were green.








Difference Engine

1855: The Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing,
powered by steam-driven cybernetic Engines. Charles Babbage
perfects his Analytical Engine and the computer age arrives a
century ahead of its time. And three extraordinary characters
race toward a rendezvous with history - and the future: Sybil
Gerard - dishonored woman and daughter of a Luddite
agitator; Edward "Leviathan" Mallory - explorer and
paleontologist; Laurence Oliphant - diplomat and spy. Their
adventure begins with the discovery of a box of punched
Engine cards of unknown origin and purpose. Cards someone
wants badly enough to kill for...


COMPOSITE IMAGE, OPTICALLY encoded by escort-craft of the trans-
Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, October 14,
1905. A villa, a garden, a balcony. Erase the balconys wrought-iron curves,
exposing a bath-chair and its occupant. Reflected sunset glints from the nickel-
plate of the chairs wheel-spokes. The occupant, owner of the villa, rests her
arthritic hands upon fabric woven by a Jacquard loom. These hands consist of
tendons, tissue, jointed bone. Through quiet processes of time and information,
threads within the human cells have woven themselves into a woman. Her name
is Sybil Gerard. Below her, in a neglected formal garden, leafless vines lace
wooden trellises on whitewashed, flaking walls. From the open windows of her
sickroom, a warm draft stirs the loose white hair at her neck, bringing scents of
coal-smoke, jasmine, opium. Her attention is fixed upon the sky, upon a
silhouette of vast and irresistible gracemetal, in her lifetime, having taught
itself to fly. In advance of that magnificence, tiny unmanned aeroplanes dip
and skirl against the red horizon.







Distrust That Particular Flavor

William Gibson is known primarily as a novelist, with his work
ranging from his groundbreaking first novel, Neuromancer, to
his more recent contemporary bestsellers Pattern Recognition,
Spook Country, and Zero History. During those nearly thirty
years, though, Gibson has been sought out by widely varying
publications for his insights into contemporary
culture. Wired magazine sent him to Singapore to report on
one of the world's most buttoned-up states. The New York
Times Magazine asked him to describe what was wrong with
the Internet. Rolling Stone published his essay on the ways our
lives are all "soundtracked" by the music and the culture
around us. And in a speech at the 2010 Book Expo, he
memorably described the interactive relationship between
writer and reader.


When I started to try to learn to write fiction, I knew that I had no idea how to
write fiction. This was actually a plus, that I knew I didnt know, but at the
time it was scary. I was afraid that people who were somehow destined to write
fiction came to the task already knowing how. I clearly didnt, so likely I wasnt
so destined. I sat at the typewriter, the one on which Id written undergraduate
essays, trying to figure out how to try. Eventually I began to try to write a
sentence. I tried to write it for months. It grew longer. Eventually it became:
Seated each afternoon in the darkened screening room, Graham came
gradually to see the targeted numerals of the academy leader as hypnagogic
sigils preceding the dreamstate of film. Im not sure it was Graham. Maybe it
was Bannister. It was a sentence far too obviously in the manner of J. G.
Ballard, and Ballard gave his protagonists sturdy, everyman British middle-
class surnames.









Mona Lisa overdrive

Enter Gibson's unique world--lyric and mechanical, erotic and
violent, sobering and exciting--where multinational corporations
and high tech outlaws vie for power, traveling into the computer-
generated universe known as cyberspace. Into this world comes
Mona, a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future
whose life is on a collision course with internationally famous
Sense/Net star Angie Mitchell. Since childhood, Angie has been
able to tap into cyberspace without a computer. Now, from
inside cyberspace, a kidnapping plot is masterminded by a
phantom entity that has plans for Mona, Angie, and all humanity,
plans that cannot be controlled . . . or even known. And behind
the intrigue lurks the shadowy Yazuka, the powerful Japanese
underworld, whose leaders ruthlessly manipulate people and
events to suit their own purposes . . . or so they think.


The ghost was her father's parting gift, presented by a black-clad secretary in a
departure lounge at Narita. For the first two hours of the flight to London it lay
forgotten in her purse, a smooth dark oblong, one side impressed with the
ubiquitous Maas-Neotek logo, the other gently curved to fit the user's palm. She
sat up very straight in her seat in the first-class cabin, her features composed in
a small cold mask modeled after her dead mother's most characteristic
expression. The surrounding seats were empty; her father had purchased the
space. She refused the meal the nervous steward offered. The vacant seats
frightened him, evidence of her father's wealth and power. The man hesitated,
then bowed and withdrew. Very briefly, she allowed the mask her mother's
smile. Ghosts, she thought later, somewhere over Germany, staring at the
upholstery of the seat beside her. How well her father treated his ghosts.










Neuromancer

The Matrix is a world within the world, a global consensus-
hallucination; the representation of every byte of data in
cyberspace . . .

Case had been the sharpest data-thief in the business, until
vengeful former employees crippled his nervous system. But
now a new and very mysterious employer recruits him for a
last-chance run. The target: an unthinkably powerful artificial
intelligence orbiting Earth in service of the sinister Tessier-
Ashpool business clan. With a dead man riding shotgun and
Molly, mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case
embarks on an adventure that ups the ante on an entire genre
of fiction.


THE SKY ABOVE the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Its not like Im using, Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way
through the crowd around the door of the Chat. Its like my bodys developed
this massive drug deficiency. It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke. The
Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a
week and never hear two words in Japanese. Ratz was tending bar, his
prosthetic arm jerking monotonously as he filled a tray of glasses with draft
Kirin. He saw Case and smiled, his teeth a webwork of East European steel and
brown decay. Case found a place at the bar, between the unlikely tan on one of
Lonny Zones whores and the crisp naval uniform of a tall African whose
cheekbones were ridged with precise rows of tribal scars. Wage was in here
early, with two joeboys, Ratz said, shoving a draft across the bar with his good
hand. Maybe some business with you, Case? Case shrugged. The girl to his
right giggled and nudged him.








Pattern Recognition

Cayce Pollard is an expensive, spookily intuitive market-
research consultant. In London on a job, she is offered a
secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets
of video that have been appearing on the Internet. An
entire subculture of people is obsessed with these bits of
footage, and anybody who can create that kind of brand
loyalty would be a gold mine for Cayce's client. But when
her borrowed apartment is burgled and her computer
hacked, she realizes there's more to this project than she
had expected.


Five hours' New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in CamdenTown to the
dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm. It is that flat and
spectral non-hour, awash in limbic tides, brainstem stirring fitfully, flashing
inappropriate reptilian demands for sex, food, sedation, all of the above, and
none really an option now. Not even food, as Damien's new kitchen is as devoid
of edible content as its designers' display windows in Camden High Street. Very
handsome, the upper cabinets faced in canary-yellow laminate, the lower with
lacquered, unstained apple-ply. Very clean and almost entirely empty, save for
a carton containing two dry pucks of Weetabix and some loose packets of herbal
tea. Nothing at all in the German fridge, so new that its interior smells only of
cold and long-chain monomers. She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white
noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal
soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the
vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet
above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must
be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage. She wonders if this gets gradually
worse with age: the nameless hour deeper, more null, its affect at once stranger
and less interesting?




Spook Country

Hollis Henry is an investigative journalist, on assignment from
a magazine called Node. Node doesn't exist yet, which is fine;
she's used to that. But it seems to be actively blocking the kind
of buzz that magazines normally cultivate before they start up.
Really actively blocking it. It's odd, even a little scary, if Hollis
lets herself think about it much. Which she doesn't; she can't
afford to.

Milgrim is a junkie. A high-end junkie, hooked on prescription
antianxiety drugs. Milgrim figures he wouldn't survive twenty-
four hours if Brown, the mystery man who saved him from a
misunderstanding with his dealer, ever stopped supplying
those little bubble packs. What exactly Brown is up to Milgrim
can't say, but it seems to be military in nature. At least,
Milgrim's very nuanced Russian would seem to be a big part of
it, as would breaking into locked rooms.


R ausch, said the voice in Hollis Henrys cell. Node, it said. She turned on
the bedside lamp, illuminating the previous evenings empty can of Asahi Draft,
from the Pink Dot, and her sticker-encrusted PowerBook, closed and sleeping.
She envied it. Hello, Philip. Node was her present employer, to the extent that
she had one, and Philip Rausch her editor. Theyd had one previous
conversation, the one which had resulted in her flying to L.A. and checking into
the Mondrian, but that had had much more to do with her financial situation
than with any powers of persuasion on his part. Something in his intonation of
the magazines name, just now, those audible italics, suggested something she
knew shed quickly tire of. She heard Odile Richards robot bump lightly
against something, from the direction of the bathroom. Its three there, he said.
Did I wake you? No, she lied.










Virtual Light

2005: Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of
what used to be California. Here the millenium has come and
gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles,
Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now
working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle
messenger turned pickpocket who impulsively snatches a pair of
innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades.
What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you
rich--or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run,
zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure
information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible
thing to crash...


The courier presses his forehead against layers of glass, argon, high-impact
plastic. He watches a gunship traverse the citys middle distance like a hunting
wasp, death slung beneath its thorax in a smooth black pod. Hours earlier,
missiles have fallen in a northern suburb; seventy-three dead, the kill as yet
unclaimed. But here the mirrored ziggurats down Lzaro Crdenas flow with
the luminous flesh of giants, shunting out the nights barrage of dreams to the
waiting avenidasbusiness as usual, world without end. The air beyond the
window touches each source of light with a faint hepatic corona, a tint of
jaundice edging imperceptibly into brownish translucence. Fine dry flakes of
fecal snow, billowing in from the sewage flats, have lodged in the lens of night.
Closing his eyes, he centers himself in the background hiss of climate-control.
He imagines himself in Tokyo, this room in some new wing of the old Imperial.
He sees himself in the streets of Chiyoda-ku, beneath the sighing trains. Red
paper lanterns line a narrow lane. He opens his eyes. Mexico City is still there.
The eight empty bottles, plastic miniatures, are carefully aligned with the edge
of the coffee table: a Japanese vodka, Come Back Salmon, its name more
irritating than its lingering aftertaste.





Zero History -

When she sang for The Curfew, Hollis Henry's face was known
worldwide. She still runs into people who remember the poster.
Unfortunately, in the post-crash economy, cult memorabilia
doesn't pay the rent, and right now, she's a journalist in need
of a job. The last person she wants to work for is Hubertus
Bigend, twisted genius of global marketing; but there's no way
to tell an entity like Bigend that you want nothing more to do
with him. That simply brings you more firmly to his attention.

Milgrim is clean, drug-free for the first time in a decade. It
took eight months in a clinic in Basel. Fifteen complete
changes of his blood. Bigend paid for all that. Milgrim's
idiomatic Russian is superb, and he notices things. Meanwhile
no one notices Milgrim. That makes him worth every penny,
though it cost Bigend more than his cartel-grade custom-
armored truck.


Inchmale hailed a cab for her, the kind that had always been black, when shed
first known this city. Pearlescent silver, this one. Glyphed in Prussian blue,
advertising something German, banking services or business software; a
smoother simulacrum of its black ancestors, its faux-leather upholstery a shade
of orthopedic fawn. Their moneys heavy, he said, dropping a loose warm
mass of pound coins into her hand. Buys many whores. The coins still
retained the body heat of the fruit machine from which hed deftly wrung them,
almost in passing, on their way out of the Kings Something. Whose money?
My countrymens. Freely given. I dont need this. Trying to hand it back.
For the cab. Giving the driver the address in Portman Square. Oh Reg, she
said, it wasnt that bad. I had it in money markets, most of it. Bad as
anything else. Call him. No.










William Golding
Lord of the Flies

William Golding's compelling story about a group of very
ordinary small boys marooned on a coral island has become a
modern classic. At first, it seems as though it is all going to be
great fun; but the fun before long becomes furious and life on the
island turns into a nightmare of panic and death. As ordinary
standards of behavior collapse, the whole world the boys know
collapses with themthe world of cricket and homework and
adventure storiesand another world is revealed beneath,
primitive and terrible. Lord of the Flies remains as provocative
today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate
debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. Though
critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial
publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both
students and literary critics who compared it to J.D. Salingers
The Catcher in the Rye in its influence on modern thought
and literature.


The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began
to pick his way toward the lagoon. Though he had taken off his school sweater
and trailed it now from one hand, his grey shirt stuck to him and his hair was
plastered to his forehead. All round him the long scar smashed into the jungle
was a bath of heat. He was clambering heavily among the creepers and broken
trunks when a bird, a vision of red and yellow, flashed upwards with a witch-
like cry; and this cry was echoed by another. "Hi!" it said. "Wait a minute!"
The undergrowth at the side of the scar was shaken and a multitude of
raindrops fell pattering. "Wait a minute," the voice said. "I got caught up." The
fair boy stopped and jerked his stockings with an automatic gesture that made
the jungle seem for a moment like the Home Counties.










Rites of Passage

In the cabin of an ancient, stinking warship bound for Australia,
a man writes a journal to entertain his godfather back in
England. With wit and disdain, he records mounting tensions
on board, as an obsequious clergyman attracts the animosity of
the tyrannical captain and surly crew.


Honoured godfather,
With those words I begin the journal I engaged myself to keep for you-no words
could be more suitable! Very well then. The place: on board the ship at last.
The year: you know it. The date? Surely what matters is that it is the first day
of my passage to the other side of the world; in token whereof I have this
moment inscribed the number "one" at the top of this page. For what I am about
to write must be a record of our first day. The month or day of the week can
signify little since in our long passage from the south of Old England to the
Antipodes we shall pass through the geometry of all four seasons! This very
morning before I left the hall I paid a visit to my young brothers, and they were
such a trial to old Dobbie! Young Lionel performed what he conceived to be an
Aborigine's war dance. Young Percy lay on his back and robbed his belly,
meanwhile venting horrid groans to convey the awful results of eating me! I
cuffed them both into attitudes of decent dejection, then descended again to
where my mother and father were waiting. My mother-contrived a tear or two?
Oh no, it was the genuine article, for there was at that point a warmth in my
own bosom which might not have been thought manly. Why, even my father We
have, I believe, paid more attention to sentimental Goldsmith and Richardson
than lively old Fielding and Smollett!



Sometime, Never -

Each of the three tales of imagination in this book is by a master
of the art, and in each, there is incident and invention enough to
surpass most full-length novels.

Envoy Extraordinary, by William Golding, tells of a barbarian
genius who arrives in ancient Rome with three inventions - and
the results are appalling.

Consider Her Ways, by John Wyndham, presents a shocking and
utterly convincing picture of a world of women - without men.

Boy in Darkness, by Mervyn Peake, is a venture into a dream-like
world of strangeness and terror - quite unlike anything you have
ever read, and unforgettable.


The curtains between the loggia and the rest of the villa were no defence against
the eunuch's voice. His discourse on passion was understandably but divinely
impersonal. It twisted and soared, it punched the third part of a tone suggestive
of a whole man's agony, it broke into a controlled wobble, dived, panted neatly
in syncopation for breath. The young man who stood against one of the pillars of
the loggia continued to roll his head from side to side. There were furrows in his
forehead as deep as youth could make them and his eyelids were not screwed up
but lowered as if they were a weary and unendurable weight. Beyond and below
him the garden was overwhelmed with sunset. A glow, impersonal as the eunuch
voice, lay over him, but even so it was possible to see that he was exquisite to
look at, tall, red-haired and gentle. His lips fluttered and a sigh came through
them. The old man who sat so restfully by the other pillar of the loggia looked
up from his work. "Mamillius." Mamillius shrugged inside his toga but did not
open his eyes. The old man watched him for a while. The expression on his face
was difficult to read, for the sunlight was reflected from the stone pavement and
lit him upside down so that the nose was blunted and an artificial benevolence
lay about the mouth. There might have been a worried smile under it. He raised
his voice a little. "Let him sing again."




The Inheritors

Eight Neanderthals encounter another race of beings like
themselves, yet strangely different. This new race, Homo
sapiens, fascinating in their skills and sophistication,
terrifying in their cruelty, sense of guilt, and incipient
corruption, spell doom for the more gentle folk whose world
they will inherit.


Lok was running as fast as he could. His head was down and he carried his
thorn bush horizontally for balance and smacked the drifts of vivid buds aside
with his free hand. Liku rode him laughing, one hand clutched in the chestnut
curls that lay on his neck and down his spine, the other holding the little Oa
tucked under his chin. Lok's feet were clever. They saw. They threw him round
the displayed roots of the beeches, leapt when a puddle of water lay across the
trail. Liku beat his belly with her feet. Faster! Faster I" His feet stabbed, he
swerved and slowed. Now they could hear the river that lay parallel but hidden
to their left. The beeches opened, the bush went away and they were in the little
patch of flat mud where the log was. There, Liku." The onyx marsh water was
spread before them, widening into the river. The trail along by the river began
again on the other side on ground that rose until it was lost in the trees. Lok,
grinning happily, took two paces towards the water and stopped. The grin faded
and his mouth opened till the lower lip hung down. Liku slid to his knee then
dropped to the ground. She put the little Oa's head to her mouth and looked over
her. Lok laughed uncertainly.






William Gurstelle
Practical Pyromaniac -

The Practical Pyromaniac combines science, history, and
DIY pyrotechnics to explain humankinds most useful and
paradoxical tool: fire. William Gurstelle, author of the
bestselling Backyard Ballistics and frequent contributor
to Popular Mechanics and Make magazine, presents 25
projects with instructions, diagrams, photos, and links to
video demonstrations that enable people of all ages
(including young enthusiasts with proper supervision) to
explore and safely play with fire.











William H. McNeill
Plagues and Peoples

Upon its original publication, Plagues and Peoples was an immediate critical
and popular success, offering a radically new interpretation of world history as
seen through the extraordinary impact--political, demographic, ecological, and
psychological--of disease on cultures. From the conquest of Mexico by
smallpox as much as by the Spanish, to the bubonic plague in China, to the
typhoid epidemic in Europe, the history of disease is the history of humankind.
With the identification of AIDS in the early 1980s, another chapter has been
added to this chronicle of events, which William McNeill explores in his new
introduction to this updated edition.


N early twenty years ago, as part of my self-education for writing The Rise of
the West: A History of the Human Community, I was reading about the
Spanish conquest of Mexico. As everyone knows, Hernando Cortez, starting off
with fewer than six hundred men, conquered the Aztec empire, whose subjects
numbered millions. How could such a tiny handful prevail? How indeed? All
the familiar explanations seemed inadequate. If Montezuma and his friends
first thought the Spaniards were gods, experience soon showed otherwise. If
horses and gunpowder were amazing and terrible on first encounter, armed
clashes soon revealed the limitations of horseflesh and of the very primitive guns
the Spaniards had at their disposal. Cortezs skill in finding allies among the
Indian peoples of Mexico and rallying them against the Aztecs was certainly
important, but most of his Indian allies committed themselves to the Spanish
side only when they had reason to think Cortez would win.










William Hartston
The encyclopedia of useless information

Discover what all the other encyclopedias leave out
This is the superbly satisfying compendium of weird factoids
too interesting to be contained in your average encyclopedia.
Daring to cross-reference the un-cross-reference-able, to
alphabetize what cannot be alphabetized, and to deliver the
highest concentration of fun that can fit in one book's spine,
this information is too useless to waste:
In Denmark, pigs go 'knor'; in Germany, horses go 'prrrh'; in
ancient Greece, dogs went 'au au.' Italians sneeze 'ecci ecci.'
A teacher in Italy was disciplined in 1996 for passing
students exam answers hidden in salami sandwiches.
In 1957 the U.S. air force completed a survey of the Atlantic
Ocean but refused to divulge its width on the grounds that
the information might be of military use to the Russians.
In Paris in 1740 a cow was hanged in public following its
conviction for sorcery.









William Heffernan
Red Angel

New York City detective Paul Devlin navigates a fascinating web
of Cuban politics, voodoo, and even the Miami mafia in the
latest installment in this Edgar Award-winning series.


The priest stood in the center of the clearing, naked to the waist, his stomach
protruding over white cotton trousers that billowed about his legs. His shaved
head, a gleaming brown, rocked from side to side; eyes rolled back, mouth open,
almost as if in pain. Bare feet began to stamp the ground, raising small puffs of
dust. Then his eyes snapped forward, wide and glaring, fixed on the badly
burned corpse that lay before him on the ground. BabaluAye erikunde.
BabaluAye obiapa. Bindome. The sound of drums filled the clearing, low and
sonorous, the resonant beat intensifying as the higher pitch of basket rattles and
beating sticks joined the rhythm. Now the chanting voices came, repeating the
priests words, over and over, the bodies of the worshipers moving in a circle
about the corpse, swaying to the drums, heads rocking wildly as if unsupported
by bone. The priests hands shot into the air, his grizzled, aging face resolute,
eyes intent on the body. The arms caught the light of torches that illuminated
the circle and cast wavering shadows that made it appear he, too, was dancing.
Drums and chanting ceased. Worshipers stood frozen in place, bodies tense with
anticipation. BabaluAye nfumbe. BabaluAye nkise.





William Hill
Department 19

Jamie Carpenter's life will never be the same. His father is dead,
his mother is missing, and he was just rescued by an enormous
man named Frankenstein. Jamie is brought to Department 19,
where he is pulled into a secret organization responsible for
policing the supernatural, founded more than a century ago by
Abraham Van Helsing and the other survivors of Dracula. Aided
by Frankenstein's monster, a beautiful vampire girl with her
own agenda and the members of the agency, Jamie must
attempt to save his mother from a terrifyingly powerful vampire.


Jamie Carpenter tasted blood and dirt and swore into the wet mud of the
playing field. Get off me! he gurgled. A shrieking laugh rang out behind his
head, and his left arm was pushed further up his back, sending a fresh
thunderclap of pain through his shoulder. Break it, Danny, someone shouted.
Snap it off! I just might, replied Danny Mitchell, between gales of laughter.
Then his voice was low and right next to Jamies ear. I could, you know, he
whispered. Easy. Get off me, you fat A huge hand, its fingers like
sausages, gripped his hair and pushed his face back into the dirt. Jamie
squeezed his eyes shut and flailed around with his right hand, trying to push
himself up from the sucking mud. Someone grab his arm, Danny shouted.
Hold it down. A second later, Jamies right arm was gripped at the wrist and
pressed to the ground. Jamies head started to ache as his body begged for
oxygen. He couldnt breathe, his nostrils full of sticky, foul-smelling mud, and
he couldnt move, his arms pinned and 210 pounds of Danny Mitchell sitting
astride his back. Thats enough! Jamie recognized the voice of Mr. Jacobs, the
English teacher.





William Hope Hodgson
Boats of the Glen Carrig

Being an account of their Adventures in the Strange places of
the Earth, after the foundering of the good ship Glen Carrig
through striking upon a hidden rock in the unknown seas to the
Southward. As told by John Winterstraw, Gent., to his Son
James Winterstraw, in the year 1757, and by him committed
very properly and legibly to manuscript. A Wildside Fantasy
Classic!


Now we had been five days in the boats, and in all this time made no
discovering of land. Then upon the morning of the sixth day came there a cry
from the bo'sun, who had the command of the lifeboat, that there was something
which might be land afar upon our larboard bow; but it was very low lying, and
none could tell whether it was land or but a morning cloud. Yet, because there
was the beginning of hope within our hearts, we pulled wearily towards it, and
thus, in about an hour, discovered it to be indeed the coast of some flat country.
Then, it might be a little after the hour of midday, we had come so close to it
that we could distinguish with ease what manner of land lay beyond the shore,
and thus we found it to be of an abominable flatness, desolate beyond all that I
could have imagined. Here and there it appeared to be covered with clumps of
queer vegetation; though whether they were small trees or great bushes, I had no
means of telling; but this I know, that they were like unto nothing which ever I
had set eyes upon before.







Carnacki, the Ghost Finder

Ghost finder and ghost breaker, Carnacki is a psychic sleuth
fighting against sinister forces from the Outside. These nerve-
chilling tales of conflict with dark powers lurking on the shadow-
rim of human consciousness include such classics as The
Gateway of the Monster, The Thing Invisible and The
Searcher of the End House.


In response to Carnacki's usual card of invitation to have dinner and listen to a
story, I arrived promptly at 427, Cheyne Walk, to find the three others who were
always invited to these happy little times, there before me. Five minutes later,
Carnacki, Arkright, Jessop, Taylor and I were all engaged in the "pleasant
occupation" of dining. "You've not been long away, this time," I remarked as I
finished my soup; forgetting momentarily, Carnacki's dislike of being asked even
to skirt the borders of his story until such time as he was ready. Then he would
not stint words. "That's all," he replied with brevity; and I changed the subject,
remarking that I had been buying a new gun, to which piece of news he gave an
intelligent nod, and a smile which I think showed a genuinely good-humoured
appreciation of my intentional changing of the conversation. "As Dodgson was
remarking just now, I've only been away a short time, and for a very good
reason too - I've only been away a short distance. The exact locality I am afraid
I must not tell you; but it is less than twenty miles from here; though, except for
changing a name, that won't spoil the story. And it is a story too! One of the
most extraordinary things I have ever run against.






House on the Borderland -

A manuscript is found: filled with small, precise writing and
smelling of pit-water, it tells the story of an old recluse and
his strange home - and its even stranger, jade-green double,
seen by the recluse on an otherworldly plain where gigantic
gods and monsters roam.

Soon his earthly home is no less terrible than his bizarre
vision, as swine-like creatures boil from a cavern beneath the
ground and besiege it. But a still greater horror will face the
recluse - more inexorable, merciless, and awful than any
creature that can be fought or killed.


Many are the hours in which I have pondered upon the story that is set forth in
the following pages. I trust that my instincts are not awry when they prompt me
to leave the account, in simplicity, as it was handed to me. And the MS. itself
You must picture me, when first it was given into my care, turning it over,
curiously, and making a swift, jerky examination. A small book it is; but thick,
and all, save the last few pages, filled with a quaint but legible handwriting,
and writ very close. I have the queer, faint, pit-water smell of it in my nostrils
now as I write, and my fingers have subconscious memories of the soft, "cloggy"
feel of the long-damp pages. I read, and, in reading, lifted the Curtains of the
Impossible that blind the mind, and looked out into the unknown. Amid stiff,
abrupt sentences I wandered; and, presently, I had no fault to charge against
their abrupt tellings; for, better far than my own ambitious phrasing, is this
mutilated story capable of bringing home all that the old Recluse, of the
vanished house, had striven to tell.








Men of the Deep Waters

Included in this volume of William Hope Hodgson's short
fiction are the stories, "On the Bridge," "The Seahorses," "The
Derelict," "My House Shall Be Called the House," "From the
Tideless Sea," "The Captain of the Onion Boat," "The Voice in
the Night," "Through the Vortex of a Cyclone," "The Mystery
of the Derelict," and "The Shamraken Homeward-Bounder,"
and the poems "The Song of the Great Bull Whale," and "Grey
Seas Are Dreaming of My Death."


For Wa-ha! I am hale, And when I make sail My thundering bulk roars over
the tides, Roars over the tides, And everything hides, Save the Albicore-fool! a-
splitting his sides-- A fish kangaroo a-jumping the tides. For he's naught but a
fish and a half, Wa! Ha! A haddock far less than a young bull calf! With me
Wa! Ha! Ha! He has far too much side For a bit of a haddock a-jump in the
tide! Yea, I am the Great Bull Whale! I have shattered the moon when asleep
On the face of the deep, by a stroke of my sweep I have shattered its features
pale. Like the voice of a wandering gale Is the smite of my sounding tail, For
Wa-ha! I am hale, And when I make sail My thundering bulk roars over the
tide, Roars over the tide, And scatters it wide, And laughs at the moon afloat on
its side-- 'Tis naught but a star that hath died!











Night Land, The

The Night Land is a tale of the remote future - billions
of years after the death of the sun. It is one of the most
potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written...
there is a sense of cosmic alienage, breathless mystery,
and terrified expectancy unrivalled in the whole range
of literature... this fantasy of a night-black, dead planet,
with the remains of the human race concentrated in a
stupendously vast metal pyramid and besieged by
monstrous, hybrid and altogether unknown forces of
darkness, is something that no reader can ever forget.


"And I cannot touch her face And I cannot touch her hair, And I kneel to empty
shadows Just memories of her grace; And her voice sings in the winds And in
the sobs of dawn And among the flowers at night And from the brooks at sunrise
And from the sea at sunset, And I answer with vain callings ... " It was the Joy
of the Sunset that brought us to speech. I was gone a long way from my house,
walking lonely-wise, and stopping often that I view the piling upward of the
Battlements of Evening, and to feel the dear and strange gathering of the Dusk
come over all the world about me. The last time that I paused, I was truly lost
in a solemn joy of the Glory of the Coming Night; and maybe I laughed a little
in my throat, standing there alone in the midst of the Dusk upon the World.
And, lo! my content was answered out of the trees that bounded the country
road upon my right; and it was so as that some one had said: "And thou also!"
in glad understanding, that I laughed again a little in my throat; as though I
had only a half-believing that any true human did answer my laugh; but rather
some sweet Delusion or Spirit that was tuned to my mood.







William Horwood
Awakening

Half-human, half-hydden, Jack is still struggling to decide
which world he belongs in, but one thing is certain: he must
reunite the four gems in time for the Shield-Maiden to wield
them. If he fails, both the Hydden world and the human world
will face extinction. Finding the gems is hard enough; he also
has to face the fact that the Shield-Maiden is his teenage
daughter, who is just as unsure of her destiny as he is.


It was a hushed, still night and a million stars and a rising moon shone down
upon White Horse Hill in Berkshire, England. Their light picked out the sinewy
lines of the prehistoric horse carved into the chalk beneath the grass. It was so
clearly visible from the Vale below that two people had stopped awhile in the
hushed and magical dark beneath the hill, on the pilgrim road that ended there.
It looks as if its about to gallop off across the Universe, said one of them softly,
or maybe its just showing us the way home. The one who spoke was eighteen,
more man than boy. His name was Jack and he was stocky and strong, with a
forward thrust to his head that suggested purpose and intent. The other was his
partner Katherine, who was the same age, as tall as he but fair-haired. She was
tired and in pain, her head bowed. She held one of her hands to her belly, the
other rested on Jacks arm. She stood with difficulty. Katherine was pregnant
and very near her time. Were nearly home, he said. She raised her head
wearily and nodded, too tired to speak or even smile. The trees and bushes that
lined the old way were silver and shimmery in the night. Somewhere from across
the Vale a church clock began to strike midnight. Aprils over, said Jack.
Summers begun. The White Horse looked down on them and the stars and
moon lit their path as they continued on their way.



Duncton Tales -


A million readers have reveled in William Horwood's now
classic trilogy The Duncton Chronicles , which tells how
Moledom's Stone followers struggled to find peace and truth for
allmole.
But now Moledom's greatest tale can be told - from which all
began and to which all is leading.
If you have never read a Duncton story before, start here and
now.
If you are already a Stone follower then prepare for the greatest
pilgrimage of your life to find the Silence of the Stone.



Greetings mole, and welcome. Today, when moledom has its liberty, and all
systems allow moles to speak their minds without fear of retribution or attack,
and to worship as they will, only pilgrims like yourself visit sleepy Duncton
Wood. Moles reared to a sense of history, who can never quite forget that their
present freedoms were won by Duncton moles, and who, if only once in their
lives, wish to visit this old place of ours, and see the tunnels and trek the surface
where our great forebears lived. All moledom knows that it was they who a
century ago, in those dark days when disciples of the cruel Word spread down
from the north with their tyranny of dogma and destruction, had the courage to
raise their talons in defence of faith in the Stone, and riskedand sometimes
losttheir lives that future generations might be free. The inspiring story of that
generation of Duncton moles has often been told, most notably by Woodruff of
Arbor Low, whose Duncton Chronicles is as good and true account of the war of
Word on Stone as is ever likely to be scribed.








Hyddenworld

It has lain lost and forgotten for fifteen hundred years in the
ancient heartland of England a scrap of glass and metal
melded by fierce fire. It is the lost core of a flawless Sphere
made by the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon CraeftLords in
memory of the one he loved. Her name was spring and
contained in the very heart of this work is a spark from the Fires
of Creation.

But while humans have lost their belief in such things, the
Hydden little people existing on the borders of our world
have not. Breaking the silence of centuries they send one of
their own, a young boy, Jack, to live among humans in the hope
that he may one day find what has been lost for so long. His
journey leads him to Katherine, a girl he rescues from a tragic
accident its a meeting that will change everything. It is only
through their voyage into the dangerous Hyddenworld that they
will realize their destiny, find love, and complete the great quest
that will save both their worlds from destruction.


Shortly before dawn on the first day of Spring the White Horse and its rider
came out of the darkness of winter to pause awhile on Waseley Hill near Brum
in Englalond. Wraiths of cold mist stirred with the fretting of the horses hoofs
and lingered in the hollows and ditches downslope of where it stood, more
fearful of the rising sun than of the rider on its back. For she was nothing much
to look at now and barely more than a wraith herself. As she was too old to
easily dismount, the White Horse dropped gently to its knees and let her down.
Her hands and fingers were bent, her eyes rheumy, her white hair thin and her
papery face wrinkled with fifteen hundred years of journeying. Around her neck
was an old pendant disc of gold, worn and battered, its gems nearly all lost
yet still a thing of beauty. The rider had seen through all the seasons of her life
and with the coming of Spring she had started to live on borrowed time while
she completed her great task, before returning to the stars. For her quest was not
yet done, and with what little time and energy remained to her she intended to
see it to its end. Her body might be that of a crone but her eyes shone still with
the light of the love she had received when she was young and beautiful, which
she, in return, had given back to the Earth and mortals ever since.





William Irwin
Arrested Development and Philosophy

A smart philosophical look at the cult hit television show,
"Arrested Development Arrested Development" earned six
Emmy awards, a Golden Globe award, critical acclaim, and a
loyal cult following--and then it was canceled. Fortunately,
this book steps into the void left by the show's premature
demise by exploring the fascinating philosophical issues at the
heart of the quirky Bluths and their comic exploits. Whether
it's reflecting on Gob's self-deception or digging into Tobias's
double entendres, you'll watch your favorite scenes and
episodes of the show in a completely new way. Takes an
entertaining look at the philosophical ideas and tensions in
the show's plots and themes Gives you new insights about the
Bluth family and other characters: Is George Michael's crush
on his cousin unnatural? Is it immoral for Lindsay to lie about
stealing clothes to hide the fact that she has a job? Are the
pictures really of bunkers or balls? Lets you sound super-
smart as you rattle off the names of great philosophers like
Sartre and Aristotle to explain key characters and episodes of
the show


Three years ago we set out to keep this family together . . . and it looks as if . . .
(pardon us if we get a bit choked up here) it looks as if weve succeeded in that
goal. Okay, maybe were not really the CEOs of any company, and we
certainly didnt succeed in keeping the Bluths on television, let alone together,
but we do have some people to thank for making this book happen. We really
lucked out a number of times and would like to extend serious thanks to our
Banana Stand staff both for moving the Bluth Company down one floor to save
on costs and ultimately saving the company, and for contributing wonderful
works to our book without having made too many huge mistakes. Were also
endlessly grateful to Connie Santistiban for making this work sparkle, and Bill
Irwin for his Michael-esque patience in working with Kriss (very) Buster-esque
pestering (panic attacks and all) about the viability of the project.









True Blood and Philosophy

The first look at the philosophical issues behind Charlaine
Harris's "New York Times" bestsellers "The Southern
Vampire Mysteries" and the "True Blood" television series
Teeming with complex, mythical characters in the shape of
vampires, telepaths, shapeshifters, and the like, "True Blood,"
the popular HBO series adapted from Charlaine Harris's
bestselling "The Southern Vampire Mysteries," has a rich
collection of themes to explore, from sex and romance to
bigotry and violence to death and immortality. The goings-on
in the mythical town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, where
vampires satiate their blood lust and openly commingle with
ordinary humans, present no shortages of juicy metaphysical
morsels to sink your teeth into.










Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy

J. K. Rowlings wildly popular Harry Potter books may
appear to be simple childrens tales on the surface, but like
Hogwarts, they conceal many hidden chambers, trapdoors,
and perplexing secrets. Drawing on all seven books in the
Harry Potter series, The Ultimate Harry Potter and
Philosophy offers a powerful brew of insights about good and
evil, love, death, power, sacrifice, and hope. Is it true, as
Dumbledore says, that our choices reveal far more about us
than our abilities do? Is there an afterlife, and what might it
be like? Heres a Pensieve for your thoughts. So take a healthy
slug of Baruffios Brain Elixir and join Basshams Army of
talented philosophers in exploring the mind-stretching
deeper questions of the Potter books and films.


Souls play a huge part in the Harry Potter saga. At different points in the books,
Harry, Sirius Black, and Dudley Dursley narrowly avoid having their souls
sucked out by dementors; Barty Crouch Jr. does not escape this fate. And
notoriously, Lord Voldemort intentionally creates six Horcruxes, and
unintentionally creates a seventh in Harry, thereby dividing his own soul into
eight parts, all of which must be destroyed before Voldemort can die. So, what is
the soul? In Harrys world, people have souls that generally survive bodily death.
But it is not entirely obvious how souls work and what their nature is. Over the
centuries, philosophers and theologians have proposed and debated various
accounts of the soul. In this chapter, well survey some of those accounts before
turning to the questions of how souls work in J. K. Rowlings books and whether
her picture of the soul is plausible.










William Kamkwamba
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a country where
magic ruled and modern science was mystery. It was also a
land withered by drought and hunger, and a place where hope
and opportunity were hard to find. But William had read
about windmills in a book called Using Energy, and he
dreamed of building one that would bring electricity and
water to his village and change his life and the lives of those
around him. His neighbors may have mocked him and called
him misalacrazybut William was determined to show
them what a little grit and ingenuity could do.


THE PREPARATION WAS COMPLETE, so I waited. The muscles in my
arms still burned from having worked so hard, but now I was finished. The
machinery was bolted and secured. The tower was steady and unmoving under
the weight of twisted steel and plastic. Looking at it now, it appeared exactly as
it wassomething out of a dream. News of the machine had spread to the
villages, and people were starting to arrive. The traders spotted it from their
stalls and packed up their things. The truckers left their vehicles along the roads.
Everyone walked into the valley, and now gathered in its shadow. I recognized
these faces. Some of these people had mocked me for months, and still they
whispered, even laughed. More of them were coming. It was time. Balancing the
small reed and wires in my left hand, I used the other to pull myself onto the
towers first rung. The soft wood groaned under my weight, and the compound
fell silent. I continued to climb, slowly and assuredly, until I was facing the
machines crude frame. Its plastic arms were burned and blackened, its metal
bones bolted and welded into place. I paused and studied the flecks of rust and
paint, how they appeared against the fields and mountains beyond. Each piece
told its own tale of discovery, of being lost and found in a time of hardship and
fear. Finally together now, we were all being reborn.



WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER
BOUNDARY WATERS

The Quetico-Superior Wilderness: more than two million acres
of forest, white-water rapids, and uncharted islands on the
Canadian/American border. Somewhere in the heart of this
unforgiving territory, a young woman named Shiloh -- a
country-western singer at the height of her fame -- has
disappeared. Her father arrives in Aurora, Minnesota, to hire
Cork O'Connor to find his daughter, and Cork joins a search
party that includes an ex-con, two FBI agents, and a ten-year-
old boy. Others are on her trail as well -- men hired not just to
find her, but to kill her.

As the expedition ventures deeper into the wilderness, strangers
descend on Aurora, threatening to spill blood on the town's
snowy streets. Meanwhile, out on the Boundary Waters, winter
falls hard. Cork's team of searchers loses contact with
civilization, and like the brutal winds of a Minnesota blizzard,
death -- violent and sudden -- stalks them.


HE WAS A TOUGH OLD BIRD, the redskin. Milwaukee allowed himself the
dangerous luxury of admiring the old man fully. He was smart, too. But way
too trusting. And that, Milwaukee knew, was his undoing. Milwaukee turned
away from the Indian and addressed the two men sitting by the campfire. I can
go on, but the Indians not going to talk. I can almost guarantee it. I thought
you guaranteed results, the nervous one said. Ill get what you want, only it
wont be coming from him. Go on, the nervous man said. He squeezed his
hands together and jerked his head toward the Indian. Do it. Your ball
game. Milwaukee stepped to the campfire and pulled a long beechwood stick
from the coals. The end of the stick glowed red, and two licks of flame leaped
out on either side like the horns of a devil held in Milwaukees hand. The old
Indian hung spread-eagled between two small birch trees, secured to the slender
trunks by nylon cords bound about his wrists and ankles. He was naked,
although the night was cool and damp enough to make his blood steam as it
flowed down his skin over the washboard of his ribs. Behind him, darkness
closed like a black curtain over the rest of the deep woods. The campfire lit the
old man as if he were a single actor in a command performance.




Red Knife -

When the daughter of a powerful businessman dies as a result
of her meth addiction, her father, strong-willed and brutal
Buck Reinhardt, vows revenge. His target is the Red Boyz, a
gang of Ojibwe youths accused of supplying the girl's fatal drug
dose. When the head of the Red Boyz and his wife are
murdered in a way that suggests execution, the Ojibwe gang
mobilizes, and the citizens of Tamarack County brace
themselves for war, white against red.
Both sides look to Cork O'Connor, a man of mixed heritage, to
uncover the truth behind the murders. A former sheriff, Cork
has lived, fought, and nearly died to keep the small-town
streets and his family safe from harm. He knows that violence
is never a virtue, but he believes that it's sometimes a
necessary response to the evil that men do. Racing to find
answers before the bloodshed spreads, Cork himself becomes
involved in the darkest of deeds. As the unspeakable unfolds in
the remote and beautiful place he calls home, Cork is forced to
confront the horrific truth: Violence is a beast that cannot be
contained.


It was not yet dawn and already he could smell death. It came to him in the
scent of the bear fat mixed with red ochre that was the war paint smeared
across his face. It was in the sulfur odor of his powder horn and in the stink of
his own sweat-drenched body as he bent to the stroke of his paddle. It was in the
air itself, something crisp and final, as if these were the last breaths he would
ever draw, and it made his nostrils burn. In the east, the sky hinted at color, a
faint flush of red. The dark lake surface around the canoes carried a suggestion
of the same hue, blood mixed with the juice of blackberries. The only sound was
his own breathing and the occasional liquid gurgle of water as he swept his
paddle back.












William Kienzle
Marked for Murder

The time is always the same -- Sunday afternoons. The
victims are the same -- older prostitutes who cruise Detroit's
seedier streets. The method's the same -- a gruesome ritual
that shocks the city. Most chillingly of all, the killer seems to
be the same -- a quiet man in the black garb and high white
collar of a Catholic priest. Father Koesler may never forgive
himself for what he is about to uncover . . .


Its all right, you knowI mean, if you cant. . . The young man tried
feverishlyas he had for the past fifteen minutesto stimulate himself. But the
longer and more frantically he tried, the less likely it seemed that he would
maintain or even attain an erection. And, before hed begun, she had spent
another quarter of an hour trying to help him. Shed used every means she knew.
And she knew them all. Nothing. Believe me, honey, Louise Bonner assured
him, it happens to everybody once in a while. Its nothing to get upset about.
Tomorrow youll probably have a hard-on all day. I can do it. His teeth were
clenched as he thrashed about. Goddammit, Ive done it all my life. Yeah,
sure, honey. But this is your first time with a woman, right? He flushed deeper
as he continued his effort. All his life. Louise suppressed a smile. All seventeen
or eighteen years of his brief life. She had a mental image of him in his room,
alone. On the walls, photos of females, nude or in various stages of dishabille.
And there he would masturbate the night away. Then the fateful daytoday.
Hed saved his money. Or his father gave him ten bucks, told him to find a
whore and become a man.





Masquerade

A rabbi, a nun, a monk, and an Episcopal priest - all mystery
writers - have been invited to appear at Marygrove College to
speak at a mystery writers' conference. Although different in
denomination, they all have one thing in common: they loathe the
featured speaker, the popular and sleazy televangelist, the
Reverend Klaus Krieg. When murder suddenly smites the
Reverend, the hateful faithful are prime suspects. Father Koesler,
serving as consultant at the conference, throws himself into the
investigation and discovers that, although being wrong isn't a sin,
it could be murder...


What the hell is this doing here? Father Ed Sklarski glanced around the large
room, but got no answer from the sprinkling of relaxing priests. No response
forthcoming, he tried a slightly different tack. Who brought this here? Father
Jim Tracy looked up from the book he was reading. What is it? Sklarski
rattled the heavy stock paper. I dont know. I just found it on the table here.
Some sort of brochure. From Marygrove. A writers conference or something.
Something about religion and murder mysteries. If its about religion, its in
the right place here. Tracy smiled and returned to his book. Sklarski, with
nothing better to do at the moment, read on silently from the artsy pamphlet. ----
------------------------------------
Featured Speakers: Klaus Krieg, Founder of P.G. Press, and internationally
famous evangelist of the P.G. Television Network. Rev. David Benbow, Rector
of St. Andrews Episcopal Church, Chicago, Illinois, and author of three novels.
The latest: Father Emrich and the Reluctant Convert. Sister Marie Monahan,
IHM, Director of Continuing Education for the Archdiocese of Miami, Florida,
and author of Behind the Veil. Rev. Augustine May, OCSO, Trappist of St.
Francis Abbey, Wellesley, Massachusetts, and author of A Rose by Any Other
Name, as well as many articles in monastic publications.





William Knoedelseder
Bitter Brew

From countless bar signs, stadium scoreboards,
magazine ads, TV commercials, and roadside
billboards, the name Budweiser has been burned into
the American consciousness as the "King of Beers."
Over a span of more than a century, the company
behind it, Anheuser-Busch, has attained legendary
status. A jewel of the American Industrial Revolution,
in the hands of its foundersthe sometimes reckless
and always boisterous Busch family of St. Louis,
Missouriit grew into one of the most fearsome
marketing machines in modern times. In Bitter Brew,
critically acclaimed journalist Knoedelseder paints a
fascinating portrait of immense wealth and power
accompanied by a barrelful of scandal, heartbreak,
tragedy, and sudden death.


In the grand ballroom of the Hyatt at Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on the
afternoon of May 13, 2008, several hundred Anheuser-Busch distributors sat in
rows of uncomfortable chairs, restlessly awaiting the arrival of August Busch IV,
the forty-three-year-old president and CEO of Anheuser-Busch, Inc., Americas
premier brewery. The Fourth, as he was commonly called in the industry, was
twenty minutes late, and no one from the company had appeared with an
explanation for the delay. The distributors were among 1,200 beer professionals
from around the world attending the eighteenth annual National Beer
Wholesalers Association/Brewers Legislative Conference. This years three-day
event coincided with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition,
and Anheuser-Busch had taken the opportunity to schedule a separate meeting
with its distributors, the independent operators whoby a law passed in
Prohibitions wakeserve as the middlemen between the brewery and retailers.










William Kowalski
Eddie's Bastart

"Eddie's Bastard" is William Amos Mann IV, known as Billy -
- the son of a heroic pilot killed in Vietnam and an unknown
woman. The last in a line of proud, individualistic Irish-
American men, Billy is discovered in a basket at the door of
the dilapidated mansion where his bitter, hard-drinking
grandfather, Thomas Mann, has exiled himself. Astonished
and moved by the arrival of his unexpected progeny, Thomas
sets out to raise the boy himself -- on a diet of love, fried
baloney, and the fascinating lore of their shared heritage.
Listening to his sets out to capture the stories on paper. He is
a Mann, Grandpa reminds him daily, and thus destined for
greatness.










The Adventures of Flash Jackson

Set in William Kowalski's signature town of Mannville, New
York, The Adventures of Flash Jackson is the story of
tomboyish Haley Bombauer and her ambition to bust out of
the confines of her smalltown upbringing. With compassion
and humor, the novel tells of her emergence into a world that,
in her words, "was not designed with girls in mind," and her
efforts to find a way to fit in without having to give up her
beloved independence.










William Kuhn
Mrs Queen Takes the Train

After decades of service and years of watching her family's
troubles splashed across the tabloids, Britain's Queen is
beginning to feel her age. She needs some proper cheering up.
An unexpected opportunity offers her relief: an impromptu
visit to a place that holds happy memoriesthe former royal
yacht, Britannia, now moored near Edinburgh. Hidden
beneath a skull-emblazoned hoodie, the limber Elizabeth
(thank goodness for yoga) walks out of Buckingham Palace
into the freedom of a rainy London day and heads for King's
Cross to catch a train to Scotland. But a characterful cast of
royal attendants has discovered her missing. In uneasy
alliance a lady-in-waiting, a butler, an equerry, a girl from the
stables, a dresser, and a clerk from the shop that supplies Her
Majesty's cheese set out to find her and bring her back before
her absence becomes a national scandal.


Several years ago, on a dark afternoon in December, Her Majesty Elizabeth the
Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, and
Her Other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth of
Nations, Defender of the Faith, Duchess of Edinburgh, Countess of Merioneth,
Baroness Greenwich, Duke of Lancaster, Lord of Mann, Duke of Normandy sat
at her desk, frowning at a computer screen. The desk had once belonged to
Queen Victoria. Its surface was polished but uneven, like many other pieces of
furniture in Windsor Castle, so the computer keyboard wobbled when The
Queen pressed on it. She folded a piece of paper into a tiny square and slipped
it underneath a corner. The keyboard was one thing, but the computer itself was
another. She expected it to work, but in her experience it was just as bad as the
keyboard, though the reasons were more mystifying. It was always locking up
just when she found something she thought she might like to see. She had been
instructed to look for the cursor when this happened.







Reading Jackie

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis never wrote a memoir, but she
told her life story and revealed herself in intimate ways
through the nearly 100 books she brought into print during
the last two decades of her life as an editor at Viking and
Doubleday. Based on archives and interviews with Jackie's
authors, colleagues, and friends, Reading Jackie mines this
significant period of her life to reveal both the serious and the
mischievous woman underneath the glamorous public image.


In the end, the diagnosis came as something of a relief. She had been feeling
unwell for so long and didnt know what it was. She had had flu symptoms ever
since the previous summer, when she and her companion Maurice Tempelsman
had traveled in southern France. They went not to the beaches and shops along
the Riviera where everyone imagined she liked to go, but along the Rhne, to the
Roman towns at Arles and Avignon. She wrote a postcard to one of her authors,
Peter Ss, saying shed been to Roussillon, where they made a famous paint out
of local clay and ochre-colored pigment. Ss was also a painter and an
illustrator, and she loved talking to him about art. She didnt tell him that she
hadnt felt quite right. She expected all that to clear up. Then, during the fall,
when she didnt improve, and in the Caribbean around Christmas, when she
was worse, she knew she needed some help. When the doctors told her in
January 1994 that she had non-Hodgkins lymphoma, it wasnt the end of the
world. Yes, it was cancer. But they thought theyd found it early enough to treat
it and make her well. At least she knew what she was dealing with. She could
read about it in a book.






William Lashner
Bitter Truth

A stained legal career spent defending mob enforcers, two-bit
hoods, and other dregs of humanity has left Philadelphia lawyer
Victor Carl jaded and resentful -- until a new client appears to
offer him an escape and a big payday. Caroline Shaw, the
desperate scion of a prominent Main Line dynasty, wants him to
prove that her sister Jacqueline's recent suicide was, in fact,
murder before Caroline suffers a similar fate.

It is a case that propels Carl out of his courtroom element and into
a murky world of fabulous wealth, bloody family legacies, and
dark secrets. Victor Carl would love nothing more than to collect
his substantial fee and get out alive. But a bitter truth is dragging
him in dangerously over his head, and ever closer to the
shattering revelation that the most terrifying darkness of all lies
not in the heart of a Central American jungle...but in the twisted
soul of man.


SUPPOSE EVERY HUNDRED million dollars has its own sordid story and the
hundred million I am chasing is no exception. I am on a TACA International
flight to Belize in search of my fortune. Underneath the seat in front of me lies
my briefcase and in my briefcase lies all I need, officially, to pick my fortune up
and take it home with me. I lift the briefcase onto my lap and open it, carefully
pulling out the file folder, and from that folder, with even more care, pulling out
the document inside. I like the feel of the smooth copy paper in my hands. I read
it covetously, holding it so the nun sitting next to me cant steal a peek. Its text
is as short and as evocative as the purest haiku. Default judgment is awarded
in favor of the plaintiff in the amount of one hundred million dollars. The
document is signed by the judge and stamped in red ink and certified by the
Prothonotary of the Court of Common Pleas of the City of Philadelphia and
legal in every state of the union and those countries with the appropriate treaties
with the United States, a group in which, fortunately, Belize is included. One
hundred million dollars, the price of two lives plus punitive damages. I bring the
paper to my nose and smell it. I can detect the sweet scent of mint, no, not
peppermint, government. One hundred million dollars, of which my fee, as the
attorney, is a third.




Blood and Bone

For a son, every funeral before his father's death is a
rehearsal and every funeral thereafter is a memorial.
Kyle Byrne, the illegitimate son of a prominent
Philadelphia lawyer, had to sneak into his father's funeral
when he was fourteen years old. Twelve years later, his
father's death still casts a shadow upon his heart.
Now amiable and handsome, Kyle finds himself drifting
through a life of slack. With his house in foreclosure and
his part-time job lost, he spends his days playing Xbox
and his nights in Philly bars, drinking excessively much
and sleeping with the wrong type of women. Life is, well,
actually damn sweet.
But when his father's former law partner is brutally
murdered, the cops see Kyle as a possible suspect and
start asking uncomfortable questions about his father's
death. And after a strange encounter with one of his
father's former clients, Kyle enters into a search for
answers that leads from his father's past to the highest
pinnacles of powerand forces Kyle to lay bare the
deceptions and losses in his own life.


KYLE, ALL OF TWELVE years old, hated the suit. He hated everything else
about this day, toohis Uncle Maxs voice droning on from the drivers seat of
the battered black pickup, the bright sun shining into his eyes, the way the truck
was filled with smoke from his mothers cigarette, the expectant dread that
twisted his stomach. But most of all he hated the suit. His mother had bought it
for him just yesterday, snatched it off the rack at some discount warehouse and
held it up for him, limp and gray, as if it were some dead animal she had shot
and dragged home. For tomorrow, she said with that same detached smile she
had been wearing ever since he came home from school, backpack still on his
shoulder, and she told him the news. I dont want to wear a suit, he said. I
bought it big, she said, ignoring his declaration, so you could have it for next
year, too. And now there it was, wrapped around his body like a fist, his first
suit. It didnt fit right; the pants were too long, the shoulders too narrow, the tie
choked him. He wondered how anyone could wear such an uncomfortable thing
every day. Especially the tie. His father always had one slung around his neck
whenever he came for a visit. Navy blue suit, dark thin tie, yellow-toothed smile
and shock of white hair. Hello, boyo, hed say whenever he saw Kyle, giving
his hair a quick tousle.




Falls the Shadow

A beautiful young woman is dead, her husband convicted of the
murder. In seeking a new trial for the husband, defense attorney
Victor Carl must confront not only a determined prosecutor and
a police detective who might have set up his client, but also a
strange little busybody named Bob.

Bob has the aspiration; one could even say compulsion, to help
those around him. And it usually works out well for all
concerned, except when it ends in blood. But Victor doesnt
know that . . . yet.

Thanks to Bob, Victor is suddenly dressing better, dating a
stunning woman, and both his economic prospects and his teeth
are gleaming. Its all good, until Victor finds a troubling
connection between Bob and the murdered wife. Is Bob a kind
of saint or is this obsessive Good Samaritan, in reality, a
murderer?


Unlike the rest of you, I cheerfully admit to my own utter selfishness. I am self-
made, self-absorbed, self-serving, self-referential, even self-deprecating, in a
charming sort of way. In short, I am all the selfs except selfless. Yet every so
often I run across a force of nature that shakes my sublime self-centeredness to
its very roots. Something that tears through the landscape like a tornado, leaving
nothing but ruin and reexamination in its wake. Something like Bob. Take, for
example, the strange happenings one night when I brought Bob to a bar called
Chaucers. Chaucers was strictly a neighborhood joint, prosaic as they come,
except for the name. The narrow corner bar had rock posters glued to the walls,
Rolling Rock on tap, a jukebox stocked with Jim Morrison and Ella Fitzgerald.
It was the kind of bar where you drank when you werent in the mood to put on
a nicer pair of shoes. My, what a colorful establishment, said Bob as we
stepped inside. Its just a bar, I said. Oh, its more than that, Victor. A bar is
never just a bar. It is like a watering hole on some great African plain, where all
creatures great and small sit by clean blue waters to relax and refresh
themselves. Dont get out much, do you?






Fatal Flaw

Some victims deserve nothing less than the truth . . . Ethically
adventurous Philadelphia lawyer Victor Carl usually does the right
thing, but often for the wrong reasons. When old law school
classmate Guy Forrest is accused of murdering his beautiful lover,
Hailey Prouix, in their Main Line love nest, Carl agrees to represent
him -- while keeping silent about his own prior romantic
involvement with the victim, and his present determination to see
that his client is punished for the brutal crime. But once Carl sets
the machinery of retribution in motion, it may be impossible to stop
it, even after his certainty begins to crack. Now Victor Carl must
race across the country to uncover shocking truths: Who, really, was
Hailey Prouix? And why is a killer still waiting in her shadow?


GUY FORREST was sitting on the cement steps outside the house when I
arrived. His head was hidden in his hands. Rain fell in streams from his
shoulders, his knees, tumbled off the roof of his brow. He was slumped naked in
the rain, and beside his feet lay the gun. From his nakedness and the diagonal
despair of his posture, I suspected the worst. What did you do? I shouted at
him over the thrumming rain. He didnt answer, he didnt move. I prodded him
with my foot. He collapsed onto his side. Guy, you bastard. What the hell did
you do? His voice rose from the tangled limbs like the whimperings of a beaten
dog. I loved her. I loved her. I loved her. Then I no longer suspected, then I
knew.












Hostile Witness

Hard-luck Philadelphia lawyer Victor Carl is just itching for the
opportunity to sell out. Then good fortune comes knocking at
his door in the guise of William Prescott III, a blue-blood
attorney from one of the city's most prestigious firms. Prescott
wants Victor to represent a councilman's aide who is on trial,
along with his boss, for extortion, arson, and murder. It's the
juiciest, highest-profile courtroom extravaganza in years -- and
all Carl has to do is show up, shut up, and follow Prescott's lead.

But it soon becomes clear that someones setting him and his
client up to take a long, hard fall. Victor Carl may be desperate
and unethical but he's no one's patsy. And to survive in this legal
snake pit of secrets, lies, and lethal double-crosses, he's going to
play the game his way.


WHAT I HAVE LEARNED through my short and disastrous legal career is
that in law, as in life, the only rational expectation is calamity. Take my first
case as a lawyer. There were three of us at the start, fresh out of law school,
hanging up our shingles together because none of the large and prosperous firms
in Philadelphia would have us. We were still young then, still wildly optimistic,
still determined to crack it on our own. Guthrie, Derringer and Carl. Im Carl.
All it would take, we figured, was one case, one accidental paraplegia, one
outrageous sexual harassment, one slip of the surgeons knife, one slam-bam-in-
your-face case to make our reputations, not to mention our fortunes. We were
only one case away from becoming figures of note in the legal community that
had so far left us out in the cold. But before that grand and munificent case
came walking through our door, we were sitting with our feet on our desks,
reading the newspapers, waiting for anything. Ive got something right here for
you, Victor, said Samuel R. Sussman, dropping a document on my desk. He
was a bellicose little man who leaned forward when he talked and did
annoying things like jab his finger into my chest for emphasis. But he was
family.





Killer's Kiss

There's nothing easieror more dangerousthan falling into
bed with an old lover.

Especially when you're Victor Carl.

Once upon a time, Victor was engaged to a woman named Julia.
She was beautiful and elegant and not the kind of woman to end
up with a second-rate lawyer on the edge of insolvency. Victor
always assumed she'd burn him, and she did.

Now she's back, trailing an expensive perfume that reeks of
trouble.

Julia's husband has been murdered, her fingerprints are all over
the crime scene, and $1.7 million in cash is missing. Julia is
suddenly in desperate need of a fall guy. Is that why she turns up
on Victor's doorstep on the night of the murder, with her lipstick
fresh and her heels high? It's all enough to make Victor doubt
the healing power of love.


They came for me in the nighttime, which is usually the way of it. They
knocked so loudly the walls shook. Two men in ties and raincoats. I could see
them through the peephole in my door. They werent wearing fedoras, but they
might as well have been. Its late, I yelled without opening the wooden door.
And I dont need any magazines. Were looking for Victor Carl. Whos
looking? The shorter one leaned toward the door until a walleye filled the
peephole. Then he pulled back and reached into his jacket. The badge glinted
like a set of freshly sharpened teeth. Im naked, I said. Then put something
on, said the guy with the badge. Our stomachs are strong, but not that
strong. In the bedroom I slipped on a pair of jeans and a shirt. I knew who they
were before the badge was flashed. I had seen the two of them prowling the
corridors of the Criminal Justice Building, where I plied most of my trade these
days, defending the riff and the raff. You can always tell the cops in the
courthouse, theyre the ones laughing and rubbing their hands, talking about
where they are going to eat lunch. While they waited in the hallway, I took the
time to put on socks and a pair of heavy black shoes with steel tips. When
dealing with the police, if you dont protect your toes, they are sure to be stepped
on.




Marked Man

All Victor Carl knows is that hes just woken up with his suit in
tatters, his socks missing, and a stinging pain in his chest
thanks to a new tattoo he doesnt remember getting: a heart
inscribed with the name Chantal Adair.
My apartment is trashed, my partnership is cracking up, Im
drinking too much, flirting with reporters, sleeping with
Realtors. Frankly, Im in desperate need of something hard
and clean in my life, and finding Chantal is all I have.
Is Chantal Adair the love of Victors life or a terrible drunken
mistake? Victor intends to find out, but right now, he has bigger
concerns. His client, a wanted man, needs to come in out of the
cold, and he has a stolen painting for Victor to use as advantage.

But someone is not happy that the painting has surfaced. Or
that the client is threatening to tell all. Or that Victor is sniffing
around for information about Chantal Adair. The closer Victor
comes to figuring it all out, the deeper into danger he falls, as
the ghosts of the past return to claim whats theirs.


It must have been a hell of a night. One of those long, dangerous nights where
the world shifts and doors open and you give yourself over to your more perilous
instincts. A night of bad judgment and wrong turns, of weariness and hilarity
and a hard sexual charge that both frightens and compels. A night where your
life changes irrevocably, for better or for worse, but who the hell cares, so long as
it changes. Batten down the hatches, boys, were going deep. It must have been a
night just like that, yeah, if only I could remember it. It started inauspiciously
enough. The preceding few days I had been in the center of a media storm. The
New York Times on line one, Live at Five on line two, Action News at six,
details at eleven. Now, I am never one to shy from free publicity the one
thing, I always say, that money cant buy but still, the exposure and the
hubbub, the constant vigilance to make sure my name was spelled correctly, the
crank calls and dire threats and importunings to my venality, all of it was
taking a toll. So that night, after work, I took a detour over to Chaucers, my
usual dive, for a drink.







Past Due -

A defense attorney who lives his life in shades of gray,
Victor Carl fights all the right fights for all the wrong
reasons. With a failing legal practice, a dead-end love life,
a pile of unpaid traffic tickets, and a talent for mixing it
up in tough working-class bars and sparring with
obstinate cops, Victor skates on the razor's edge of legal
ethics in search of the easy buck. But the one absolute in
Victor's life is loyalty, especially to a clienteven if he
happens to be dead. Like Joey Cheaps, a no-account who
takes a knife to the throat down on the waterfront, but
not before he shares with his lawyer his part in a terrible
crime.


THERE IS SOMETHING perversely cheerful about a crime scene in the middle
of the night, the pulsating red and blue lights, the great beams of white, the
strobes of photographers flashes. Festively festooned with yellow tape, a crime
scene at night is a place cars drive slowly by, as if before an overdone
Christmas display with bowing reindeers and whirling Santas. In the uniformed
workers busily going about their business, in the helicopters spinning madly
overhead, in the television vans with their jaunty microwave disks, in the
reporters giving their live reports, in the excited onlookers excitedly looking on,
in all of it lies the thrilling sense of relief that the arbitrary finger of desolation
has squashed flat this night a total stranger. Unless the corpse within the tape is
not a total stranger. Then, suddenly, the crime scene at night is not so cheery. I
didnt yet know why I had been summoned to the crime scene at Pier 84 on
Philadelphias dank waterfront, or whose death was the subject of this swirl of
activity, but I knew the deceased was not a total stranger or I would never have
been called, and that was enough to turn the cheeriness of the scene into
something bleak and icy. The possibilities flitted through my mind like bats
through a dusky sky, an endless swarm, each swoop or swerve carrying its own
name and causing its own jolt of fear.




William Least Heat-Moon
Blue Highways

Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue
Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's back
roads. William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than
the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity
about "those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at
all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill:
Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom,
Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot,
Mississippi." His adventures, his discoveries, and his
recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered
along the way amount to a revelation of the true American
experience.


BEWARE thoughts that come in the night. They arent turned properly; they
come in askew, free of sense and restriction, deriving from the most remote of
sources. Take the idea of February 17, a day of canceled expectations, the day I
learned my job teaching English was finished because of declining enrollment at
the college, the day I called my wife from whom Id been separated for nine
months to give her the news, the day she let slip about her friendRick or
Dick or Chick. Something like that. That morning, before all the news started
hitting the fan, Eddie Short Leaf, who worked a bottomland section of the
Missouri River and plowed snow off campus sidewalks, told me if the deep cold
didnt break soon the trees would freeze straight through and explode. Indeed.
That night, as I lay wondering whether I would get sleep or explosion, I got the
idea instead. A man who couldnt make things go right could at least go. He
could quit trying to get out of the way of life. Chuck routine. Live the real
jeopardy of circumstance. It was a question of dignity.







Roads to Quoz

About a quarter century ago, a previously unknown writer
named William Least Heat-Moon wrote a book called Blue
Highways. Acclaimed as a classic, it was a travel book like no
other. Quirky, discursive, endlessly curious, Heat-Moon had
embarked on an American journey off the beaten path.
Sticking to the small places via the small roads--those colored
blue on maps--he uncovered a nation deep in character, story,
and charm.
Now, for the first time since Blue Highways, Heat-Moon is
back on the backroads. ROADS TO QUOZ is his lyrical, funny,
and touching account of a series of American journeys into
small-town America.


Dear Sir
You remember the promise you exacted from me last summer in Philadelphia to
visit the Maison Rouge Grant on the Ouachita. You see I adopt the good old
French orthography of that river. I know not whether your motive was to give me
pleasure or to inflict a salutary discipline. If the latter, should you take the
trouble to read this, I shall have my revenge. In any view, I cannot doubt that it
originated in a benevolent wish in some way to confer a benefit. I am now
seated to give you a sketch of my mode of performing that promise. I spin this
long yarn with the more confidence, being aware that you cannot but take an
interest in reading surveys, however inadequate, of a region so extensive, so
fertile, so identifed with your name as its possessor, into the alluvial swamps of
which, in your bygone days, you too have plunged. The Ouachita is a beautiful
river, of interesting character and capabilities; and, although unknown to song,
classical in forest narrative and tradition, as having been the locale of the
pastoral experiments of the Marquess Maison Rouge and Baron de Bastrop, as
well as many other adventurers, Spanish, French, and American, not to mention
its relation to American history as the point where Aaron Burr masked his
ultimate plans of ambition and conquest.




William Luther Pierce
The Turner Diaries -

At 9:02 am on Wednesday April 19, 1995, two tons of
explosives ripped apart the federal office building in Oklahoma
City and the psyche of America. The worst case of domestic
terrorism in our history, this explosion killed 169 men, women,
and children. The author of this book has written, if [this book]
had been available to the general public . . . the Oklahoma
bombing would not have come as such a surprise. It has been
considered by the Justice Department and other government
agencies as the bible of right-wing militia groups, and the FBI
believes it provided the blueprint for the Oklahoma City
bombing. Barricade Books has published it so America can
better understand the cause of racism and extremism.


September 16, 1991. Today it finally began! After all these years of talking-and
nothing but talking-we have finally taken our first action. We are at war with
the System, and it is no longer a war of words. I cannot sleep, so I will try
writing down some of the thoughts which are flying through my head. It is not
safe to talk here. The walls are quite thin, and the neighbors might wonder at a
late-night conference. Besides, George and Katherine are already asleep. Only
Henry and I are still awake, and he's just staring at the ceiling. I am really
uptight. l am so jittery I can barely sit still. And I'm exhausted. I've been up
since 5:30 this morning, when George phoned to warn that the arrests had begun,
and it's after midnight now. I've been keyed up and on the move all day. But
at the same time I'm exhilarated. We have finally acted! How long we will be
able to continue defying the System, no one knows. Maybe it will all end
tomorrow, but we must not think about that. Now that we have begun, we must
continue with the plan we have been developing so carefully ever since the Gun
Raids two years ago. What a blow that was to us! And how it shamed us! All
that brave talk by patriots, "The government will never take my guns away,"
and then nothing but meek submission when it happened.




William Manche
World lit only by fire

From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by
ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and
wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose,
and with the grace and authority of his extraordinary gift for
narrative history, William Manchester leads us from a
civilization tottering on the brink of collapse to the grandeur
of its rebirth - the dense explosion of energy that spawned
some of history's greatest poets, philosophers, painters,
adventurers, and reformers, as well as some of its most
spectacular villains - the Renaissance.


THE DENSEST of the medieval centuriesthe six hundred years between,
roughly, A.D. 400 and A.D. 1000are still widely known as the Dark Ages.
Modern historians have abandoned that phrase, one of them writes, because of
the unacceptable value judgment it implies. Yet there are no survivors to be
offended. Nor is the term necessarily pejorative. Very little is clear about that
dim era. Intellectual life had vanished from Europe. Even Charlemagne, the
first Holy Roman emperor and the greatest of all medieval rulers, was illiterate.
Indeed, throughout the Middle Ages, which lasted some seven centuries after
Charlemagne, literacy was scorned; when a cardinal corrected the Latin of the
emperor Sigismund, Charlemagnes forty-seventh successor, Sigismund rudely
replied, Ego sum rex Romanus et super grammaticaas king of Rome, he
was above grammar. Nevertheless, if value judgments are made, it is
undeniable that most of what is known about the period is unlovely. After the
extant fragments have been fitted together, the portrait which emerges is a
mlange of incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange
myths, and an almost impenetrable mindlessness.





William Martin
Harvard Yard

Peter Fallon, the hero of William Martin's bestselling novel
Back Bay, has found evidence that a priceless treasure-an
undiscovered Shakespeare play-is hidden somewhere in the
venerable halls of Harvard University. An antiquarian who
knows many of the school's carefully guarded secrets, Fallon
understands the powerful implications of the discovery. But
as he delves into the school's past-from witch hangings to the
fires of the Civil War to the riotous 1960s-he learns that men
and women have risked death, disgrace, and banishment in
pursuit of this invaluable relic. And, as he uncovers rifts
between generations, families, friends, and lovers, Fallon
begins to understand something else: that finding this
landmark manuscript is a matter of life and death.(








William Meikle
Crustaceans -

It begins with a dead whale on a Boston shoreline...not an
unusual occurrence. But the things that claw their way out of
the blubber are unusual. A cast of giant crabs, evolved over
centuries, make their way to the city using the sewer system.
Soon they are swarming around Manhattan, hunted by a
SWAT team tasked with ridding the city of the menace...before
the menace rids itself of the city.


The whale farted. The noise was like a cotton sheet being slowly ripped in two.
The body shuddered along its whole length in a long slow ripple. The three men
standing beside it giggled nervously, then had to stand back as the odour tickled
their nostrils. Are you sure its dead? Toms asked, pinching fingers to his nose
and breathing as lightly as he could through his mouth. Just intestinal gases
finding their way out, McGuire said. Nothing to worry about. That smell
isnt just anything, Toms replied. Its so thick I can chew it. He sniffed at his
clothes. And its sinking into my jacket. I do believe its toxic. McGuire
nodded. Sure is ripe. And thats just the first of many. As if to accentuate his
point the whale farted again. McGuire had to turn his head away, and it was
several seconds before he could speak. Lets get the blood and tissue samples.
Then well call it a night. This big boy isnt going anywhere. Maybe in the
morning the gases will have worked their way out. Or maybe the wind will
get up and keep it from hanging around too long, Toms said. But whatever
you say boss. One tissue sample, coming up.






William Mirza
The Moving Prison

The year is 1979 and Ezra Solaiman and his family are trapped
in a country in turmoil. Their homeland is increasingly ruled
by Islamic fundamentalists who are becoming a law unto
themselves. The Solaimans plan their escape only to have Ezra
captured and imprisoned on trumped-up charges. Unsure just
who his enemies are, Ezra is desperate for a way out,out of
prison, out of Iran, out of the chaos his life has become. The
Moving Prison is a riveting tale of revolution and revelation, of
failure ... and faith.


The leather handle of the carrying case felt gummy, moistened by sweat from
his palms. Looking over the shoulder of the taxi driver, Ezra could see, in the
rearview mirror, the military jeep bearing down on them from behind. It was
directly behind them now, its bumper nearly touching theirs. Ezras heart was
hammering like a caged beast against his ribs, and despite all his efforts to
remain calm, he knew his breathing had to be audible to everyone in the car.
The jeeps driver started honking. The taxi driver glanced in his rearview mirror
and began to pull to the side of the road. Ezras nostrils flared in panic and his
eyes were wide, round discs of fear. It was getting dark. The traffic on Nasser
Khosrow Avenue was already bumper to bumper, moving scarcely faster than
the pedestrians jamming the sidewalks on both sides. The druggist wearily
leaned against his shop door and slid the lock home, waving once more at his
last customer of the day, an elderly woman who tucked her parcel under her
arm and walked away.







William Murray
The Age of Titans

While we know a great deal about naval strategies in the
classical Greek and later Roman periods, our
understanding of the period in between--the Hellenistic
Age--has never been as complete. However, thanks to
new physical evidence discovered in the past half-
century and the construction of Olympias, a full-scale
working model of an Athenian trieres (trireme) by the
Hellenic Navy during the 1980s, we now have new
insights into the evolution of naval warfare following the
death of Alexander the Great. In what has been
described as an ancient naval arms race, the successors
of Alexander produced the largest warships of antiquity,
some as long as 400 feet carrying as many as 4000
rowers and 3000 marines. Vast, impressive, and
elaborate, these warships "of larger form"--as described
by Livy--were built not just to simply convey power but
to secure specific strategic objectives.








William Nicholson
I Could Love You

When Belinda discovers her husband is having an affair, her
world is turned upside down; shes furious, hurt, and bent on
evening the score. But Belinda isnt the only one in her
affluent suburban neighborhood suffering the indignities and
disappointments of middle life. Instead of resting
comfortably in the glow of earlier good decisions, she and her
neighbors have just as much angst as they did in their
twenties, even if the drama is buried under accreting layers of
everyday life.

One of Belindas friends fears her own husband is having an
affair. But when she finds out theres no other womanthat
hes found God insteadthis, to her, is the biggest betrayal.
A renowned artist, near death, is convinced that his entire life
has been a waste. And a schoolteacher, upon achieving his
dream of selling a screenplay to Hollywood, finds himself
buffeted by the maddening whims of the studio execs (who
are no longer looking for a serious drama, but a low-brow
comedy about a talking dog).


Dont you find, says Belinda, widening her blue eyes at Laura and wrinkling
her pretty little nose, even though youre over fifty and married and da-de-da,
dont you sometimes feel this overwhelming urge to, oh, you know do it with
someone else? Laura laughs and shakes her head, not disagreeing. Doesnt
everyone? she says. Theyre sharing an early lunch, sitting at the end table of
the restaurant called the Real Eating Company, by the glass doors onto the
terrace, which is deserted on this cold December day. The nearest other diners
are three tables away, but even so Laura keeps her voice down, hoping Belinda
too will lower her voice. Its not like Im dead yet, says Belinda. Im not so
bad for my age. You look fabulous, Belinda. Laura is happy to offer the ex
pected praise. You know you do. Impossible to be jealous of Belinda, shes so
transparent in all her needs. Yes, shes pretty, with her chipmunk face and her
limpid eyes and that bob of silky-soft blonde hair that you want to reach out
and stroke. And shes kept her figure, slight as a girl, a boy almost. But with it
all theres a generosity, a way of seeming to say, Im pretty for you, its my
contribution, enjoy me. So when she calls and says shes having a crisis and
lets do lunch, using those very words as if shes a New York businesswoman
when as far as anyone knows she does nothing at all, Laura finds herself saying
yes.


The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life -

Welcome to Edenfield, an English village in Sussex. It is home
to rich and poor, young and old, incomers and folk who've
lived there forever. Among the incomers is mother of two
Laura, who, twenty years on, is still pining for Nick, her first
love at university. He dumped her, broke her heart, and went
to live in the States. Now he's back. Her husband Henry is a
TV writer who commutes daily and resents the lack of
acknowledgment his latest TV series is receiving. Journalist
Liz, the single mother (who Henry lusts after on the train to
London), still sleeps with her ex ten years after they split and
hates herself afterwards. Local schoolmaster Alan, teaches
their children and gets endless rejections for the plays he
writes in his spare time. Martin, the struggling farmer, can't
bear the yummy mummies and their privileged children; and
the kindly local vicar hides a dark secret.


She recognizes the handwriting on the envelope. She drinks from her mug of tea,
looks across the kitchen table at Henry, sees him absorbed in the triage of the
morning post. One pile for the bin, one pile for later, one for now. He uses a
paper knife when opening letters. Not a kitchen knife, an actual slender, dull-
edged blade made for the purpose. The children silent, reading. Rain outside the
windows puckering the pond. Laura wills the letter to remain unnoticed. Its
been forwarded from her parents address. You know Belinda Redknapp? she
says. Should I? Henry inattentive. One of the school mothers. You rather
fancied her. Husband like a frog. They all have husbands like frogs. The
bankers, lawyers, insurance company executives whose children are their
childrens friends, whose wealth makes Henry feel poor. Anyway, she wants to
meet Aidan Massey. Henry looks up, surprised. Why? She thinks hes sexy.
Carrie pauses her absorbed scrutiny of the Beano. Whos sexy? The man on
Daddys programme. Oh.








William Ollie
THE DAMNED -

It came on a Friday afternoon, wiping everything good from
the land. It came, followed by Hell on earth, bands of brutes
and nightmarish creatures, the hopeless and The Damned.

Scott thought it had to be a joke when a raving lunatic
heralding the end of the world broke onto the airwaves. Then
a road rage incident of bullets and blood left him in a place
devoid of light, where rasping screams and whispered moans
bubbled up from the darkness.
Now Scott has woken next to a bloated corpse in a deserted
rehabilitation center. Outside, the world is dust and ash.
People are screaming, people are dying.

And Scott Freemans nightmare has just begun.


After a long and frustrating week at the end of what may well have been the
shittiest day of his life, Scott Freeman found himself tagging along behind a
light blue Honda Accord while the auburn-haired moron driving it puttered
along slow as hell in the fast lane. The guy, side-by-side with two other pricks,
was keeping Scott and a long procession of others from reaching a wide-open
expanse of freeway wavering like a mirage beneath the searing hot August sun.
Skynyrds Gimme Back My Bullets blared from the radio, a sharp contrast to
the tortoise-like pace of the traffic. A shitty day at the end of a shitty week, and
here he was traveling down a three-lane Interstate at fifty miles an hour, clear
sailing ahead and the fuckers didnt even have the common decency to move
over and let the rest of them by. And this son of a bitch in his Honda. Probably
with a cell phone glued to his ear. The guy turned a degree or two to the left,
and damned if Scott didnt see a telephone pressed to the side of his head; the
prick smiling and laughing and shaking his head while Scott shouted and shook
his fist.






William P. McGivern
The Caper of the Golden Bulls -

This dramatic heist is planned for the jeweled Virgin Mary
statues from the festival parade bull race in Pamplona, Spain.
"The Dove", terror of Scotland Yard, Peter Churchman has
retired quietly to a small village until nasty former teammates
Angela and Francois Morel blackmail him into planning and
helping steal diamonds from the effigies stored in a bank vault.
His new love, Grace, mother of three, surprises him with her
talents. Other characters, some slimy, some honorable, get
involved for a lively escapade and twist ending. Peter and Grace
are fun, skilful, and witty in an exotic holiday villa 1960s
atmosphere. 1967 film stars Stephen Boyd, Yvette Mimieux,
Giovanna Ralli.(


On pleasant mornings Peter Churchman enjoyed swimming in the piscina at the
foot of his garden. It was a charming little pool, enclosed by oleanders and a
bathhouse crimson with bougainvillaea, but it had been constructed, oddly
enough, without a drain; when it was necessary to change the water, Peter's
maids, and some of their friends from nearby villas, kicked off their alpargatas,
put on old uniforms, jumped into the pool, and emptied it with buckets. It was
tedious work, but the girls made a holiday of it, splashing about the pool as
busily as wrens in a bird bath; and when they were finished they scrubbed the
sides and bottom clean with coarse tufts of esparto grass which they twisted from
the slopes of the mountain behind the villa. After all this it took the pool three
days to fill. Once upon a time Peter had found this mildly annoying, but that
was before his conversion to the philosophical view; after that significant event
he had come easily and naturally to the conclusion that a temporarily
inoperative swimming pool was a light cross indeed to carry through
life. Most men acquire the philosophical view with a deliberate intellectual
effort, or because they have no other choice. Not so with Peter. One morning he
had waked with the thought -brilliant and final as a lightning bolt that he had
wasted far too much time worrying about things that were never going to happen
to him.



William P. Young
The Shack -

Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been
abducted during a family vacation, and evidence that she may
have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack
deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of
his "Great Sadness," Mack receives a suspicious note,
apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a
weekend.

Against his better judgment, he arrives at the shack on a wintry
afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he
finds there will change Mack's world forever.

In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly
irrelevant The Shack wrestles with the timeless question,
"Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The
answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform
you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to
read this book!


March unleashed a torrent of rainfall after an abnormally dry winter. A cold
front out of Canada then descended and was held in place by a swirling wind
that roared down the Gorge from eastern Oregon. Although spring was surely
just around the corner, the god of winter was not about to relinquish its hard-
won dominion without a tussle. There was a blanket of new snow in the
Cascades, and rain was now freezing on impact with the frigid ground outside
the house; enough reason for Mack to snuggle up with a book and a hot cider
and wrap up in the warmth of a crackling fire. But instead, he spent the better
part of the morning telecommuting into his downtown desktop. Sitting
comfortably in his home office wearing pajama pants and a T-shirt, he made his
sales calls, mostly to the East Coast. He paused frequently, listening to the
sound of crystalline rain tinging off his window and watching the slow but
steady accumulation of frozen ice thickening on everything outside. He was
becoming inexorably trapped as an ice-prisoner in his own homemuch to his
delight.






William Palmer
Films of the Nineties

Through movies such as Forrest Gump and Titanic, The Films
of the Nineties offers a reel-to-reel cultural analysis, chronicling
the concept of spin as a major sociopolitical persuasion
strategy.














William Peter Blatty
Crazy

New York, 1941: Joey El Bueno is just a smart-aleck kid,
confounding the nuns and bullies at St. Stephens school on
East 28th Street when he first meets Jane Bent, a freckle-faced
girl with red pigtails and yellow smiley-face barrettes who
seems to know him better than he knows himself. A magical
afternoon at the movies, watching Cary Grant in Gunga Din, is
the beginning of a puzzling friendship that soon leaves Joey
baffled and bewildered.

Jane is like nobody he has ever met. She comes and goes at will,
nobody else seems to have heard of her, and is it true that she
once levitated six feet off the ground at the refreshment counter
of the old Superior movie house on Third Avenue? Joey, an avid
reader of pulp magazines and comic books, is no stranger to
amazing stories, but Jane is a bewitching enigma that keeps him
guessing for the rest of his lifeuntil, finally, it all makes sense.


Where do I begin? The seventh grade at St. Stephens on East 28th Street in 1941,
I suppose, because thats where and when I first met Jane, back before we grew
up and she started disappearing and then reappearing in someplace like Tibet
or Trucial Oman from where shed send me picture postcards with tiny scrawled
messages in different-colored inks such as, Thinking of you sometimes in the
morning or Angkor Wat really smells. Joey, dont ever come here for a
vacation, but thered be only a day between the postmarked dates and
sometimes no difference at all between them, and then all of a sudden shed
reappear again looking years younger, which is nothing, I suppose, when
compared to that time when supposedly she levitated six feet off the ground
when she thought they were running out of Peter Paul Mounds candy bars at the
refreshment counter of the old Superior movie house on 30th Street and Third
Avenue back when there were el trains rumbling overhead and a nickel got you
two or three feature films, plus a Buck Jones Western chapter, four cartoons,
bingo and an onstage paddleball contest, when supposedly a theater usher
approached her and told her, Hey, come on, kid, get down, you cant be doing
that crazy stuff in here! and right away she wobbled down to the seedy lobby
carpet, gave the usher the arm and yelled, Thats the same kind of crap they
gave Tinkerbell!


Dimiter

Dimiter opens in the worlds most oppressive and isolated
totalitarian state: Albania in the 1970s. A prisoner suspected of
being an enemy agent is held by state security. An unsettling
presence, though subjected to unimaginable torture he
maintains an eerie silence. He escapes---and on the way to
freedom, completes a mysterious mission. The prisoner is
Dimiter, the American agent from Hell.

The scene shifts to Jerusalem, focusing on Hadassah Hospital
and a cast of engaging, colorful characters: the brooding
Christian Arab police detective, Peter Meral; Dr. Moses Mayo, a
troubled but humorous neurologist; Samia, an attractive, sharp-
tongued nurse; and assorted American and Israeli functionaries
and hospital staff. All become enmeshed in a series of baffling,
inexplicable deaths, until events explode in a surprising climax.


Ninety three million miles from the sun, in the damp of a windowless concrete
room in a maze of other rooms and cells and passageways where grace and hope
had never touched, the Interrogator sat behind a tight wooden table with a mind
gone blank as the notepad before him. The Prisoner radiated mystery. After
seven days of torture he had yet to utter a word. Silent, his head bowed down,
hands manacled, he stood beneath the blinding grip of the spotlight in the
middle of the room like a barrier to comfort. Who are you? The Interrogators
voice was straw. All the questions had been asked. None had been answered.
Now they all had worn away to this single probe as if locked within the
Prisoners name were his nature. Who are you? Drained, the Interrogator
waited, squinting at the sweat-blurred lines on the pad. In the hush of the
chamber he could hear his own breathing and the desultory faint sharp clicks of
his pen point tapping at the tables stained dark oak. For a moment his ears
twitched up minutely, straining toward a sound heard dimly through the walls:
the scuffing of shoes, a body being dragged. He could not tell if the sounds were
real or imagined. Here even the dust in the air was heard shrieking. Another
odd sound intruded. What was it?





Legion


A young boy is found horribly murdered in a mock crucifixion.
Is the murderer the elderly woman who witnessed the crime?
A neurologist who can no longer bear the pain life inflicts on
its victims? A psychiatrist with a macabre sense of humor and
a guilty secret? A mysterious mental patient, locked in silent
isolation?
Lieutenant Kinderman follows a bewildering trail that links
all these people, confronting a new enigma at every turn even
as more murders surface. Why does each victim suffer the
same dreadful mutilations? Why are two of the victims priests?
Is there a connection between these crimes and another series
of murders that took place twelve years agoand supposedly
ended with the death of the killer?


HE THOUGHT OF DEATH IN ITS INFINITE GROANINGS, OF Aztecs
ripping out living hearts and of cancer and threeyearolds buried alive and he
wondered whether God was alien and cruel, but then remembered Beethoven
and the dappling of things and the lark and Hurrah for Karamazov and
kindness. He stared at the sun coming up behind the Capitol, streaking the
Potomac with orange light, and then down at the outrage, the horror at his feet.
Something had gone wrong between man and his creator, and the evidence was
here on this boathouse dock. I think theyve found it, Lieutenant. Excuse
me? The hammer. Theyve found it. The hammer. Oh, yes. Kindermans
thoughts found a grip on the world. He looked up and saw the crime lab crew on
the dock. They were gathering with eyedropper, test tube and forceps;
remembering with camera, sketchpad and chalk. Their voices were hushed,
mere whispered fragments, and they moved without sound, gray figures in a
dream.








The Ninth Configuration -

The Ninth Configuration is set in a remote castle that the
US government is using as a military asylum. A Marine
Corps psychiatrist with a crisis of faith encourages his
patients to enact their fantasies as part of their therapy.
However, he proves himself to be more deeply disturbed
than at first appears and finally sacrifices himself to save
one of his patients.


The mansion was isolated and Gothic, massive, trapped in a wood, grotesque. It
crouched beneath the stars under clustered spires like something enormous and
deformed, unable to hide, wanting to sin. Its gargoyles grinned at the forest
pressing in on it thickly all around. For a time nothing moved. Dawn sifted in.
Thin fall sunlight pried at the morning entombed within the arborescent gloom,
and fog curled up from rotted leaves like departing souls, dry and weak. In the
breeze, a creaking shutter moaned for Duncan and a haunted crow coughed
hoarsely in a meadow far away. Then silence. Waiting. The voice of a man
from within the mansion carried with firm conviction, startling a small green
heron from the moat. Robert Browning had the clap and he caught it from
Charlotte and Emily Bronte. A second man, angry, bellowed, Cutshaw, shut
your mouth! He caught it from both of them. Shut up, you crazy bastard!
You dont want to hear the truth. Krebs, sound Assembly! the angry man
ordered.








William Poundstone
Fortune's Formula -

In 1956 two Bell Labs scientists discovered the scientific
formula for getting rich. One was mathematician Claude
Shannon, neurotic father of our digital age, whose genius is
ranked with Einstein's. The other was John L. Kelly Jr., a
Texas-born, gun-toting physicist. Together they applied the
science of information theory--the basis of computers and the
Internet--to the problem of making as much money as
possible, as fast as possible.
Shannon and MIT mathematician Edward O. Thorp took the
"Kelly formula" to Las Vegas. It worked. They realized that
there was even more money to be made in the stock market.
Thorp used the Kelly system with his phenomenonally
successful hedge fund, Princeton-Newport Partners. Shannon
became a successful investor, too, topping even Warren
Buffett's rate of return. Fortune's Formula traces how the
Kelly formula sparked controversy even as it made fortunes at
racetracks, casinos, and tradingdesks. It reveals the dark side
of this alluring scheme, which is founded on exploiting an
insider's edge.


THE STORY STARTS with a corrupt telegraph operator. His name was John
Payne, and he worked for Western Unions Cincinnati office in the early 1900s.
At the urging of one of its largest stockholders, Western Union took a moral
stand against the evils of gambling. It adopted a policy of refusing to transmit
messages reporting horse race results. Payne quit his job and started his own
Payne Telegraph Service of Cincinnati. The new services sole purpose was to
report racetrack results to bookies. Payne stationed an employee at the local
racetrack. The instant a horse crossed the finish line, the employee used a hand
mirror to flash the winner, in code, to another employee in a nearby tall
building. This employee telegraphed the results to pool halls all over Cincinnati,
on leased wires. In our age of omnipresent live sports coverage, the value of
Paynes service may not be apparent. Without the telegraphed results, it could
take minutes for news of winning horses to reach bookies. All sorts of shifty
practices exploited this delay. A customer who learned the winner before the
bookmakers did could place bets on a horse that had already won.






William Powers
Twelve by Twelve

Why would a successful American physician choose to live in a
twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot cabin without running water or
electricity? To find out, writer and activist William Powers
visited Dr. Jackie Benton in rural North Carolina. No Name
Creek gurgled through Bentons permaculture farm, and she
stroked honeybees wings as she shared her wildcrafter
philosophy of living on a planet in crisis. Powers, just back
from a decade of international aid work, then accepted
Bentons offer to stay at the cabin for a season while she
traveled. There, he befriended her eclectic neighbors
organic farmers, biofuel brewers, eco-developers and
discovered a sustainable but imperiled way of life.
In these pages, Powers not only explores this small patch of
community but draws on his international experiences with
other pockets of resistance. This engrossing tale of Powerss
struggle for a meaningful life with a smaller footprint proposes
a paradigm shift to an elusive soft World with clues to
personal happiness and global healing.


I KNOW A DOCTOR who makes eleven thousand dollars a year, my
mother said. I looked up, suddenly curious. Shes an acquaintance of mine,
my mother continued, passing me a basket of bread across the dinner table.
Lives an hour from here in a twelve-foot by twelve-foot house with no
electricity. I noticed my fathers empty seat next to her and felt my chest
tighten. He was still in the hospital. We still werent sure if theyd been able to
remove the entire tumor from his colon. Id come down to North Carolina from
New York City, where Id recently settled after several years in Bolivia, so that
I could be with him as he recovered. My mother went on: Shes a tax resister.
As a senior physician she could make three hundred thousand dollars, but she
only accepts eleven so as to avoid war taxes. Did you know that fifty cents out
of every dollar goes to the Pentagon? Hold on. So this doctor Jackie
Benton. Doctor Jackie Benton, she lives in a twelve by twelve house?
Thats physically impossible. That bookcase is twelve by twelve. She doesnt
have any running water, either. She harvests the rainwater from her roof.
Havent you heard of her? Shes a bit of a local celeb.





William Rabkin
Call of the Mild, The


Shawn Spencer has always hated the wilderness-by which he
means anything outside the delivery radius of his favorite pizza
place. But Psych has been hired to solve a baffling case of
industrial espionage, and the only way to catch the spy is to join
their client's bonding retreat-a grueling seven day backpacking
mountain trek.
But when one of the campers turns up with a bullet in the head,
Shawn and Gus soon realize that sheer cliffs, rampaging bears,
and freeze- dried pineapple aren't the greatest threats they face.


It was the same dream that had tormented Gus since he was seven. He was lost
in the woods, whacking through thick undergrowth with only a sliver of moon to
light his way. Shawn had been next to him just a second ago. Now he was gone.
Gus wanted to call out for him. Or for help. Or for his mother. But he didnt
dare make a sound. Something was hunting him. Gus didnt know what. He
couldnt see it. But he could hear it. Crashing through brush and snapping
branches as it plunged towards him. Closer and closer, until Gus could hear its
ragged breathing. Feel the hot breath on the back of his neck. Then Gus did
scream. Scream and run, run blindly, barely feeling the low branches flay the
flesh from his body, tripping, stumbling, until he saw the chasm opening up
beneath him. This was the worst part of the dream. Gus could see the plunge
just ahead of him, the cliff falling off hundreds of feet down to a roaring river
far below. There was plenty of time to stop or turn away. But no matter how
hard he willed his feet to change direction, they kept pounding inexorably
towards the cliffs edge. He pummeled his thighs, tried to throw himself to the
ground, to grab hold of a treeanything to slow himself down. Nothing worked.
His feet kept propelling him forwards. Even as he felt his left footit was
always the left that went firsttake that fatal, final step with only open air
beneath it, he could not stop.


Fatal Frame of Mind

When the Santa Barbara art museum unveils its newest
acquisition, the long-lost masterpiece by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
isn't the only surprise behind the red curtain-so is the
museum's curator. Dead. The case has everything Shawn likes:
it's bizarre, it's baffling, and there's a snack bar at the crime
scene. But the investigation gets a lot less fun as he and Gus
begin to realize that the clues are leading them towards a
centuries-old cabal desperate to hide a terrible secret-and more
than willing to kill the two detectives who are trying to reveal it.


There had to be a way out of this. Shawn was only eleven years old. His life
couldn't be over already. There was so much he hadn't done yet. He hadn't even
kissed a girl. Not that he felt any sense of loss over that particular
nonexperience, but it was only one of a million things he'd been told he'd get to
do "when he got older." That was back in a more innocent time, when he could
peer into the future and see something other than four blank walls and a barred
door. Shawn rolled off his bed and went to the window. Cracking open the
blinds, he peered out. The man in the gray suit was still standing in front of the
house. His government-issued sedan was still parked across the street. His jacket
still bulged with the outline of his gun. There was no way Shawn could get past
him. And now Shawn's life was about to get even worse. Because his father's
truck had just turned the corner and was pulling into the garage. In a couple of
seconds Henry Spencer would walk to his front steps, and he would stop to talk
to the man in the gray suit. If he had been a kind father, a considerate father, a
loving father, he would have simply ignored the fact that a federal agent was
standing guard over their house until Shawn had had a chance to explain. But
Henry was a cop long before he was a dad, and Shawn knew that the law
enforcement officer part of him would always take over in moments of crisis.




Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read

After the PSYCH detective agency gets some top-notch publicity,
Shawn's high-school nemesis, Dallas Steele, hires him to help
choose his investments. Naturally, their predictions turn out to
be total busts. And the deceptive Dallas is thrilled that he has
completely discredited and humiliated Shawn for the last time--
until he's found murdered.

But the police have a suspect found--at the scene with a
smoking gun. And she says Shawn took control of her mind and
forced her to do it. After all, he is a psychic...


The speed was exhilarating. Intoxicating. The plastic letters on the hatchback
spelled out TOYOTA, but as Gus piloted the blue Echo down State Street, it
might as well have been a Ferrari. He stomped down on the gas and felt 105
horses galloping under the hood. The four cylinders screamed like an F/A-18
Hornet in a Blue Angels formation. Gus knew if he cracked down the window,
the blast of wind would blow his hair right off his headif he didnt keep it
buzzed close to his scalp just for such an occasion. At the very least, it would
whip his Donald Trump Collection power tie out the window. God only knew if
the clip-on would be strong enough to keep it in the car. Even so, Gus was
tempted. It would be worth the risk to face the primal force of natures fury. But
to crank down the window meant taking one hand off the wheel, and ahead in
the distance, he saw danger. Danger that would require all his driving skill. As
the light changed from green to yellow, a flock of schoolkids stood on the corner,
waiting for the WALK sign. If they spread out in the crosswalk, there would be
no way to avoid plowing into them. Gus took his foot off the gas. There was a
strangled scream from the seat beside him. Its okay, Shawn, Gus said. I see
them.





Mind Over Magic

When a case takes Shawn and Gus into an exclusive club for professional
magicians, they're treated to a private show by the hottest act on the
Vegas Strip, "Martian Magician" P'tol P'kah. But when the wizard
seemingly dissolves in a tank of water, he never rematerializes. And in his
place, there's a corpse in a three-piece suit and a bowler hat.

Eager to keep his golden boy untarnished, the magician's manager hires
Shawn and Gus to uncover the identity of the dead man and find out what
happened to P'tol P'kah. But to do so, the pair will have to pose as a new
mentalist act, and go undercover in a world populated by magicians,
mystics, Martians-and one murderer...


The criminal justice system was a farce. Millions of lawyers fought in thousands
of courtrooms, and the result was almost always the same. Criminals walked
free and victims were hurt all over again. Henry Spencer had been fighting this
realization for all the years hed been a member of the Santa Barbara Police
Department. Hed had to, because if he had ever acknowledged it, hed never
have been able to put on his blues in the morning. But as of today, there was no
longer any way to deny the truth. The court had jammed his face in it as surely
as if he were a puppy that had left a mess on the living room carpet. Six months
Henry had been tracking a bunko crew. Six months he had interviewed the little
old ladies whose life savings had been scammed away by these sleazebags.
Finally hed been allowed to set up a sting and the creeps walked right into it
caught on tape, caught with the cash, caught with no doubt. Except to the
United States criminal justice system, that was. For them, there was plenty of
doubt. Reasonable doubt, they called it, but it was only reasonable if you could
bring yourself to believe that the crooks accidentally switched a bag full of scrap
paper for the one holding their victims life savings, and then accidentally used
her money to buy first-class tickets to Antigua.










Mind-Altering Murder


When Shawn's partner Gus decides he doesn't want to be a
detective anymore and gets a real job, Shawn wonders: Is this
the end of Psych? Or is it the end of Gus?

After a fellow executive at Benson Pharmaceuticals turns up
dead, Gus realizes he needs Shawn more than ever to solve the
murder before he's forced to take an early-and permanent-
retirement.


Santa Barbara police detective Henry Spencer stared down at the red mark on
the paper. It was good, he had to admit. He'd been working on a big forgery
case for the past few weeks, and nothing he'd come across there had looked as
authentic as this. Henry drew his thumb across the paper, pressing down hard
as he tried to smudge the red ink. It didn't smear. It had been on the page long
enough to set. That didn't mean the mark was genuine. Henry's prey was crafty
and thorough. He would have taken the time to prepare his forgery well in
advance. But no matter how good he was, the felon must have made a mistake
somewhere. Henry pulled a magnifying glass out of his desk drawer and peered
at the red mark through it. He knew where he'd find the telltale signs of
tampering--there would be an extra line added to the mark's right side, or its
bottom curve would have been erased and a new slash drawn through the
middle. But no matter how long Henry stared at the symbol, he could find no
evidence that this was anything but the original mark. Which meant the
impossible had happened. Shawn had gotten an A on his book report.







William Sleator
House of Stairs -

One by one, five sixteen-year-old orphans are brought to a strange
building. It is not a prison, not a hospital; it has no walls, no
ceiling, and no floor. Nothing but endless flights of stairs leading
nowhere except back to a strange red machine. The five must
learn to love the machine and let it rule their lives. But will they
let it kill their souls?


The whirring around them had been going on for quite a long time. It sounded
as though they were in an elevator, but the movement was so smooth that he
could not tell whether they were being carried up or down or even to the side.
Once again, as they had done several times in the past hour, his hands moved
involuntarily to reach up and push the blindfold away from his eyes; and once
again they were stopped by the cord that bound his wrists. But he did not
struggle against the cord. Peter never struggled. After a time the whirring
stopped. The cord was removed, and he was pushed gently forward. Quick,
efficient hands untied his blindfold and pulled it off. The door behind him slid
shut, the whirring began, faded away, and he was alone. For a moment he
could not see, quickly closing his eyes against the white glare. He closed them
again just as quickly, suddenly dizzy, after his first clear look at where he was.
It was very cautiously that he opened them for the third time. All he could see
were stairs. The high, narrow landing on which he stood seemed to be the only
flat place there was, and above and below him, growing smaller in the distance,
were only flights of steps. Without railings they rose and fell at alarming angles,
forking, occasionally spiraling, rising briefly together only to veer apart again,
crossing above and below one another, connected at rare intervals by thin
bridges spanning deep gulfs..


William Styron
Lie Down in Darkness

William Styron traces the betrayals and infidelities--the
heritage of spite and endlessly disappointed love--that afflict
the members of a Southern family and that culminate in the
suicide of the beautiful Peyton Loftis.


RIDING down to Port Warwick from Richmond, the train begins to pick up
speed on the outskirts of the city, past the tobacco factories with their ever-
present haze of acrid, sweetish dust and past the rows of uniformly brown
clapboard houses which stretch down the hilly streets for miles, it seems, the
hundreds of rooftops all reflecting the pale light of dawn; past the suburban
roads still sluggish and sleepy with early morning traffic, and rattling swiftly
now over the bridge which separates the last two hills where in the valley below
you can see the James River winding beneath its acid-green crust of scum out
beside the chemical plants and more rows of clapboard houses and into the
woods beyond. Suddenly the train is burrowing through the pinewoods, and the
conductor, who looks middle-aged and respectable like someones favorite uncle,
lurches through the car asking for tickets. If you are particularly alert at that
unconscionable hour you notice his voice, which is somewhat guttural and
negroidoddly fatuous-sounding after the accents of Columbus or Detroit or
wherever you came fromand when you ask him how far it is to Port Warwick
and he says, Aboot eighty miles, you know for sure that youre in the
Tidewater.




Sophie's Choice

Three stories are told: a young Southerner wants to become a
writer; a turbulent love-hate affair between a brilliant Jew and a
beautiful Polish woman; and of an awful wound in that woman's
past--one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward
destruction.


In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan,
so I had to move to Brooklyn. This was in 1947, and one of the pleasant features
of that summer which I so vividly remember was the weather, which was sunny
and mild, flower-fragrant, almost as if the days had been arrested in a
seemingly perpetual springtime. I was grateful for that if for nothing else, since
my youth, I felt, was at its lowest ebb. At twenty-two, struggling to become some
kind of writer, I found that the creative heat which at eighteen had nearly
consumed me with its gorgeous, relentless flame had flickered out to a dim pilot
light registering little more than a token glow in my breast, or wherever my
hungriest aspirations once resided. It was not that I no longer wanted to write, I
still yearned passionately to produce the novel which had been for so long
captive in my brain. It was only that, having written down the first few fine
paragraphs, I could not produce any others, or--to approximate Gertrude Stein's
remark about a lesser writer of the Lost Generation--I had the syrup but it
wouldn't pour. To make matters worse, I was out of a job and had very little
money and was self-exiled to Flatbush--like others of my countrymen, another
lean and lonesome young Southerner wandering amid the Kingdom of the Jews.





The Suicide Run -

In Blankenship, written in 1953, Styron draws on his stint as
a guard at a stateside military prison at the end of World War
II. Marriott, the Marine and The Suicide Runwhich
Styron composed in the early 1970s as part of an intended
novel that he set aside to write Sophies Choicedepict the
surreal experience of being conscripted a second time, after
World War II, to serve in the Korean War. My Fathers
House captures the isolation and frustration of a soldier
trying to become a civilian again. In Elobey, Annobn, and
Corisco, written late in Styrons life, a soldier attempts to
exorcise the dread of an approaching battle by daydreaming
about far-off islands, visited vicariously through his childhood
stamp collection.


AMID THE SMELLY STRETCH of riptides and treacherous currents formed by
the confluence of the upper East River and Long Island Sound stands a small
low-lying island. Surmounted for most of its length by ancient prison buildings,
it is an island hardly distinguishable, in its time-exhausted drabness, from
those dozen or so other islands occupied by prisons and hospitals which give to
the New York waterways such a bleak look of municipal necessity andfor
some reason especially at twilightthat air of melancholy and erosion of the
spirit. Yet something here compels a second glance. Something makes this island
seem even excessively ugly, and a meaner and shabbier eyesore. Perhaps this is
because of the islands situation; for a prison island it just seems to be in too
nice a place. It commands a fine wide view of the blue Sound to the east and the
white houses on the mainland nearbyhouses which, though situated in the
Bronx, are so neat and scrubbed and summery-looking as to make New York
City seem as remote as Nantucket. One passing by the island might more
logically envision a pretty park here, or groves of trees, or a harbor for sailboats,
than this squalid acre of prison buildings.






William T. Finkelbean
Fifty Shades of Gray_ Zombie Sex Dungeon

Sickly erotic, dementedly amusing, and moving only to the
dysfunctional. Fifty Shades of Gray: Zombie Sex Dudgeon
brings the fantasy into print of a zombie wandering into the
lair of Madam Donna's Dungeon of Dominatrix Delights.
There is no limit to the pain the undead can endure. What a
zombie has to offer in the joy of sex is explored in this trashy
short story.


A lone figure sauntered under dying streetlights in the Meat packing District of
New York City. From a distance, it would have been mistaken for an ordinary
man going through bad times, dressed in tattered rotting clothes, and walking
barefoot on the grime of the cold brick street. Looking perhaps for a garbage
dumpster to pilfer for a late meal, or a dark alley with cardboard boxes to
huddle under for the night. The figure wore the outward appearance of a man.
The body was now contorted by the sting of death. Its hands reached out to find
food, withered fingers clutched into empty air. Its mouth was agape, yearning to
tear into fresh, blood rich flesh, and feel the quench of the living flow into the
hollow cavity of its stomach. A rat the size of a small dog scurried about the
curbside searching for morsels of discarded food. Its nose found a treasure of
pizza crust, partially covered in sweet red sauce and cheese. Sitting upright and
enjoying its meal, its sensitive nose picked up another scent, an unfamiliar scent
that excited fear in its tiny brain. Self-preservation overruled hunger. The rat let
the crust drop and it headed for the protective cover of a parked car down the
street. An unknown force animated the walking corpse. None in the world of
reality would dare call it what it truly was. None would call it: zombie.




William T. Vollmann
INTO the FORBIDDEN ZONE -

Just weeks after multiple disasters struck Japan, National
Book Award winner William T. Vollmann ventures into the
nuclear hot zone, outfitted only with rubber kitchen gloves, a
cloth facemask, and a capricious radiation detector. In this
Byliner Original from the new digital publisher Byliner,
Vollmann emerges with a haunting report on daily life in a
now-ravaged Japan a country he has known and loved for
many years. And in the cities and towns hit hardest by the
earthquake, tsunami, and radioactive contamination,
Vollmann finds troubling omens of a future heading toward us
all.


THE GOLDEN RULE OF JOURNALISMkeep ones dental appointments
I had now neglected for a couple of years, but in obedience to the current
practicalities of Japan I made haste to cultivate my hygienist, who pressed the
X-ray cameras snout against patients cheekbones and therefore wore a
dosimeter badge clipped to her pinkish smock. Thanks to her, I grew acquainted
with the phone number of Carol (on subsequent dialings I got Ginger), who
connected me with a salesman named Bob, who allowed that he did still have
one Geiger counter in stockor, more precisely, a postGeiger-Mller sort of
gadget which, said Bob (who had not actually inspected it but seemed to be
interpolating from some data screen), resembled an electronic calculator.
Current and cumulative exposure, X-ray and gamma, a programmable exposure
alarmoh, delicious! Never mind its inability to detect alpha or beta particles;
wouldnt those be approximately innocuous so long as I refrained from ingesting
them? (Within the body, remarked my radiation incident guide, alpha and
beta emitters are the most hazardous since they can transfer ionizing radiation
to surrounding tissue, damaging DNA or other cellular material.)





William Todd Rose
Box of Darkness -

Open the Box of Darkness to delve into a nightmare world of the
macabre. Within these pages lurk refugees from a madman's
nightmares. From traditional terrors such as vampires and ghosts to
bizarre fetish-horrors of the author's own design, this book is for
serious lovers of horror.


It's a little known fact the souls are greasy and taste like gristle marinated in
bitter coffee and dusted with nutmeg. To look at them, one would think they'd
go down easy: they seem almost like cotton candy, like something that can be
pulled into long strands and allowed to dissolve upon the tongue; fine, gossamer
filaments of pink and blue and orange, so delicate and tenuous they seem to
teeter on the edges of reality. But even if you choke down the bile that
instinctively stings your esophagus, you still have to chew. And chew. And chew.
As your teeth grind and rip at the ectoplasmic treat, you also feel the dead
screaming within your throat. Imagine a mouthful of flies, their wings buzzing
and bristling to the point that the vibrations tingle your entire skull. Your
eardrums quiver and your eyes water as the vibrations take on tone and texture:
you hear the pain, you feel their torment, and taste agony as another incisor
tears through their afterlife. At this point, their defense mechanisms kick in and
suddenly it feels like millions of needles are rammed into your tongue. A foul
stench wafts from your mouth, like a sewage treatment plant with slabs of
rancid meat churning in the dirty froth, and your pulse races as panicked
thoughts dart through your mind: I'm going to choke, I'm going to die, get it out
of me, get it out, oh dear God, GET IT OUT!!!





William Tenn
Here Comes Civilization

Contains the rest of Tenn's short fiction (not included in
Volume 1), the novel Of Men and Monsters, the essay The
Fiction in Science Fiction, and several other long pieces.
Introduction by Robert Silverberg. Afterword by George
Zebrowski. Dustjacket art by Rolf Mohr.


That's what Ricardo calls me. I don't know what I am. Here I am, I'm sitting in
my little nine-by-six office. I'm reading notices of government surplus sales. I'm
trying to decide where lies a possible buck and where lies nothing but more
headaches. So the office door opens. This little guy with a dirty face, wearing a
very dirty, very wrinkled Palm Beach suit, he walks into my office, and he
coughs a bit and he says: "Would you be interested in buying a twenty for a
five?" That was it. I mean, that's all I had to go on. I looked him over and I
said, "Wha-at?" He shuffled his feet and coughed some more. "A twenty," he
mumbled. "A twenty for a five." I made him drop his eyes and stare at his shoes.
They were lousy, cracked shoes, lousy and dirty like the rest of him. Every once
in a while, his left shoulder hitched up in a kind of tic. "I give you twenty," he
explained to his shoes, "and I buy a five from you with it. I wind up with five,
you wind up with twenty." "How did you get into the building?" "I just came
in," he said, a little mixed up. "You just came in," I put a nasty, mimicking note
in my voice. "Now you just go right back downstairs and come the hell out.
There's a sign in the lobbyNO BEGGARS ALLOWED."





The Human Angle

1 Project Hush (1954) short story
7 The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway (1955) short story
23 Wednesday's Child (1956) short story
44 The Servant Problem (1955) novelette
75 Party of the Two Parts (1954) novelette
98 The Flat-Eyed Monster (1955) novelette
132 The Human Angle (1948) short story
137 A Man of Family (1956) short story

















William Trevor
After Rain

In this collection of twelve dazzling, acutely rendered tales, he
once again plumbs the depths of the human heart. Here we
meet a blind piano tuner whose wonderful memories of his
first wife are cruelly distorted by his second; a woman in a
difficult marriage who must chose between her indignant
husband and her closest friend; two children, survivors of
divorce, who mimic their parents? melodramas; a heartbroken
woman traveling alone in Italy who experiences an epiphany
studying a forgotten artists Annunciation.


Violet married the piano tuner when he was a young man. Belle married him
when he was old. There was a little more to it than that, because in choosing
Violet to be his wife the piano tuner had rejected Belle, which was something
everyone remembered when the second wedding was announced. Well, she got
the ruins of him anyway, a farmer of the neighbourhood remarked, speaking
without vindictiveness, stating a fact as he saw it. Others saw it similarly,
though most of them would have put the matter differently. The piano tuners
hair was white and one of his knees became more arthritic with each damp
winter that passed. He had once been svelte but was no longer so, and he was
blinder than on the day he married Violet a Thursday in 1951, June 7th. The
shadows he lived among now had less shape and less density than those of
1951. I will, he responded in the small Protestant church of St Colman,
standing almost exactly as he had stood on that other afternoon. And Belle, in
her fifty-ninth year, repeated the words her one-time rival had spoken before this
altar also. A decent interval had elapsed; no one in the church considered that
the memory of Violet had not been honoured, that her passing had not been
distressfully mourned.




Bit on the Side

In these twelve stories, a waiter divulges a shocking life
of crime to his ex-wife; a woman repeats the story of her
parents unstable marriage after a horrible tragedy; a
schoolgirl regrets gossiping about the cuckolded man
who tutors her; and, in the volumes title story, a middle-
aged accountant offers his reasons for ending a love
affair. At the heart of this stunning collection is Trevors
characteristic tenderness and unflinching eye for both
the humanizing and dehumanizing aspects of modern
urban and rural life.


His eyes had been closed and he opened them, saying he wanted to see the
stable-yard. Emilys expression was empty of response. Her face, younger than
his and yet not seeming so, was empty of everything except the tiredness she felt.
From the window? she said. No, hed go down, he said. Will you get me the
coat? And have the boots by the door. She turned away from the bed. He would
manage on his own if she didnt help him: shed known him for twenty-eight
years, been married to him for twenty-three. Whether or not she brought the coat
up to him would make no difference, any more than it would if she protested. It
could kill you, she said. The fresh aird strengthen a man. Downstairs, she
placed the boots ready for him at the back door. She brought his cap and muffler
to him with his overcoat. A stitch was needed where the left sleeve met the
shoulder, she noticed. She hadnt before and knew he wouldnt wait while she
repaired it now. Whatre you going to do there? she asked, and he said nothing
much. Tidy up a bit, he said.








Cheating at Canasta

Trevor's precise and unflinching insights into the hearts and lives of
ordinary people are evidenced once again in this stunning new collection.
From a chance encounter between two childhood friends to the memories
of a newly widowed man to a family grappling with the sale of their
ancestral land, Trevor examines with grace and skill the tenuous bonds of
our relationships, the strengths that hold us together, and the truths that
threaten to separate us. Subtle yet powerful, his stories linger with the
reader long after the words have been put away.
These twelve exquisitely nuanced tales of regret, deception, adultery,
aging, and forgiveness confirm Trevor's reputation as a master of the form
and one of literature's preeminent chroniclers of the human condition.


Cahal sprayed WD-40 on to the only bolt his spanner wouldnt shift. All the
others had come out easily enough but this one was rusted in, the exhaust unit
trailing from it. He had tried to hammer it out, he had tried wrenching the
exhaust unit this way and that in the hope that something would give way, but
nothing had. Half five, hed told Heslin, and the bloody car wouldnt be ready.
The lights of the garage were always on because shelves had been put up in
front of the windows that stretched across the length of the wall at the back.
Abandoned cars, kept for their parts, and cars and motor-cycles waiting for
spares, and jacks that could be wheeled about, took up what space there was on
either side of the small wooden office, which was at the back also. There were
racks of tools, and workbenches with vices along the back wall, and rows of new
and reconditioned tyres, and drums of grease and oil. In the middle of the
garage there were two pits, in one of which Cahals father was at the moment,
putting in a clutch. There was a radio on which advice was being given about
looking after fish in an aquarium. Will you turn that stuff off? Cahals father
shouted from under the car he was working on, and Cahal searched the
wavebands until he found music of his fathers time.










Children Of Dynmouth

A small, pretty seaside town is harshly exposed by a young boy's
curiosity. His prudent interest, oddly motivated, leaves few
people unaffected - and the consequences cannot be ignored.


Dynmouth nestled on the Dorset coast, gathered about what was once the single
source of its prosperity, a small fishing harbour. In the early eighteenth century
it had been renowned for its lace-making and its turbot, and had later
developed prettily as a watering place. Being still small, it was now considered
unspoilt, a seaside resort of limited diversions, its curving promenade and
modest pier stylish with ornamental lamp-posts, painted green. At the foot of
grey-brown cliffs a belt of shingle gave way to the sand on which generations of
Dynmouths children had run and played, and built castles with moats and
flag-poles. In an unspectacular way the town had expanded inland along the
valley of the Dyn. Where sheep had grazed on sloping downs a sandpaper
factory stood now and opposite it, on the other side of the river, a tile-works. At
the eastern end of the promenade, near the car-park and the public lavatories,
there was a fish-packing station. Plastic lampshades were scheduled to be
manufactured soon on a site that had once been known as Long Dogs Field,
and there were rumours denied by the town council that the Singer Sewing
Machine organization had recently looked the town over with a view to
developing a plant there. There were three banks in Dynmouth, Lloyds,
Barclays and the National Westminster. There were municipal tennis-courts
beside the Youth Centre, and a Baptist chapel and a Methodist chapel, the
Church of Englands St Simon and St Jude, the Catholic Queen of Heaven.


Collected Stories

This collection includes tales from the award-winning author's
seven previous books of short stories, as well as four that have
never appeared in paperback form in America. Startling, funny,
compassionate, and profound, Trevor's stories engage and
provoke as only the best fiction can.


I am Mrs da Tanka, said Mrs da Tanka. Are you Mr Mileson? The man
nodded, and they walked together the length of the platform, seeking a
compartment that might offer them a welcome, or failing that, and they knew
the more likely, simple privacy. They carried each a small suitcase, Mrs da
Tankas of white leather or some material manufactured to resemble it, Mr
Milesons battered and black. They did not speak as they marched purposefully:
they were strangers one to another, and in the noise and the bustle, examining
the lighted windows of the carriages, there was little that might constructively be
said. A ninety-nine years lease, Mr Milesons father had said, taken out in
1862 by my grandfather, whom of course you never knew. Expiring in your
lifetime, I fear. Yet you will by then be in a sound position to accept the
misfortune. To renew what has come to an end; to keep the property in the
family. The property was an expression that glorified. The house was small
and useful, one of a row, one of a kind easily found; hut the lease when the time
came was not renewable which released Mr Mileson of a problem. Bachelor,
childless, the end of the line, what use was a house to him for a further ninety-
nine years?





Felicia's Journey

Felicia is unmarried, pregnant, and penniless. She steals away
from a small Irish town and drifts through the industrial
English Midlands, searching for the boyfriend who left her.
Instead, she meets up with the fat, fiftyish, unfailingly
reasonable Mr. Hilditch, who is looking for a new friend to
join the five other girls in his Memory Lane. But the strange,
sad, terrifying tricks of chance unravel both his and Felicia's
delusions in a story that will magnetize fans of Alfred
Hitchcock and Ruth Rendell even as it resonates with William
Trevor's own "impeccable strength and piercing profundity"


She keeps being sick. A woman in the washroom says: Youd be better off in the
fresh air. Wouldnt you go up on the deck? Its cold on the deck and the wind
hurts her ears. When she has been sick over the rail she feels better and goes
downstairs again, to where she was sitting before she went to the washroom. The
clothes she picked out for her journey are in two green carrier bags; the money is
in her handbag. She had to pay for the carrier bags in Chawkes, fifty pence
each. They have Chawkes name on them, and a Celtic pattern round the edge.
At the bureau de change she has been given English notes for her Irish ones. Not
many people are travelling. Shrieking and pretending to lose their balance,
schoolchildren keep passing by where she is huddled. A family sits quietly in a
corner, all of them with their eyes closed. Two elderly women and a priest are
talking about English race-courses. It is the evening ferry; she wasnt in time for
the morning one. Thats Irelands Eye, one of the children called out not long
after the boat drew away from the quayside, and Felicia felt safe then.







Love and Summer

Its summer and nothing much is happening in Rathmoye. So
it doesnt go unnoticed when a dark-haired stranger appears
on his bicycle and begins photographing the mourners at Mrs.
Connulty?s funeral. Florian Kilderry couldnt know that the
Connultys are said to own half the town: he has only come to
Rathmoye to photograph the scorched remains of its burnt-
out cinema.

A few miles out in the country, Dillahan, a farmer and a decent
man, has married again: Ellie is the young convent girl who
came to work for him when he was widowed. Ellie leads a quiet,
routine life, often alone while Dillahan runs the farm.

Florian is planning to leave Ireland and start over. Ellie is
settled in her new role as Dillahan?s wife. But Florian?s visit to
Rathmoye introduces him to Ellie, and a dangerously reckless
attachment begins.


On a June evening some years after the middle of the last century Mrs Eileen
Connulty passed through the town of Rathmoye: from Number 4 The Square to
Magennis Street, into Hurley Lane, along Irish Street, across Cloughjordan
Road to the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer. Her night was spent there. The
life that had come to an end had been one of good works and resolution, with a
degree of severity in domestic and family matters. The anticipation of personal
contentment, which had long ago influenced Mrs Connultys acceptance of the
married state and the bearing of two children, had since failed her: she had
been disappointed in her husband and in her daughter. As death approached,
she had feared she would now be obliged to join her husband and prayed she
would not have to. Her daughter she was glad to part from; her son - now in his
fiftieth year, her pet since first he lay in her arms as an infant - Mrs Connulty
had wept to leave behind. The blinds of private houses, drawn down as the
coffin went by, were released soon after it had passed. Shops that had closed
opened again. Men who had uncovered their heads replaced caps or hats,
children who had ceased to play in Hurley Lane were no longer constrained.
The undertakers descended the steps of the church. Tomorrows Mass would
bring a bishop; until the very last, Mrs Connulty would be given her due.




Two Lives

William Trevor's astonishing range as a writer--his humor,
subtlety, and compassionate grasp of human behavior--is fully
demonstrated in these two short novels. In Reading Turgenev,
a lonely country girl escapes her loveless marriage in the arms
of a bookish young man. In My House in Umbria, a former
madam befriends the other survivors of a terrorist bombing
with surprising results. Nominated for the Booker Award.


A woman, not yet fifty-seven, slight and seeming frail, eats carefully at a table
in a corner. Her slices of buttered bread have been halved for her, her fried egg
mashed, her bacon cut. Well, this is happiness! she murmurs aloud, but none
of the other women in the dining-room replies because none of them is near
enough to hear. Shes privileged, the others say, being permitted to occupy on her
own the bare-topped table in the corner. She has her own salt and pepper.
Hurry now. Appearing from nowhere, Miss Foye curtly interrupts the womans
private thought. You have a visitor waiting. Would be Peter Martyr. Another
woman, overhearing the news about a visitor, makes this suggestion, but at once
theres a general objection. Why should the visitor be identified so since the lone
woman wouldnt lift a hand to take the knife from his head, Peter Martyr not
being of her religion? Heretic! a voice calls out. Heathen, another mutters.
The woman who eats alone pays no attention. They mean no harm; they are not
against her; in their confusion they become carried away.








William W. Johnstone
The Devil's Cat

Cats have overrun the town and evil seems to waft in from the
swamps with the hot, fetid breeze. Soon Sam, Nydia, and Little
Sam are battling the forces of darkness, standing alone against
the ultimate predator.


They had drifted for a year, not stopping for very long at any one place. Nydia
knew her husband was looking for something, and knew what it was. But they
had yet to find it. Xaviere Flaubert's coven. Since leaving upstate New York,
Sam, Nydia, and Little Sam had kept contact with others to the barest
minimum. They were hunters, but yet they knew they were also the hunted.
They were hunting Satan's followers, and Satan's followers were hunting them.
Once, Sam thought he had found them in a small town in Illinois. That proved
to be false. They drove south into Georgia, and once more Sam felt he had
found the followers of the Evil One. But again he was wrong. "Sam?" Nydia
said. "Let's try Nebraska." "Why there?" he asked. "The beginning," she said
simply. Sam pointed the nose of the car west. On the fringes of what had once
been the town of Whitfield, Nebraska, Sam stopped the car. "They aren't here,"
he said to his beautiful, raven-haired young wife. "But something is." "Can
we get closer?" "We can try."







The Devil's Heart

The Lord of Darkness had promised eternal life and endless
orgy to get a pledge of love from the coven members. The few
who had fought against his hideous powers in Whitfield in
1958 can't believe it could happen again. But then hot wind
begins to blow. . . .


It had been abnormally hot for this late in the season. By this time in
northwestern Nebraska there was usually a lash of winter's approach in the air,
a bite that brought color to the cheeks of pedestrians, urgently but
softly speaking of the harsh winter just ahead. But the winds that blew across
the plains and rolling sand hills had a torrid touch, oppressively so, bringing a
sudden surliness to the people of this sparsely populated county, turning most
tempers raw and confusing a few as to why. The many knew why. The few
would learn too late. And out in the badlands, some miles from Whitfield,
inside a fenced-in area where horror sprang to life back in the late
1950s something stirred. A creature cautiously stuck its head out of a hidden
cave and looked around, viewing its surroundings through evil, red eyes. The
Beast had felt the hot fingers of the wind pushing through the cave entrance as a
probing hand might do, signaling those which serve another Master that it was
time. The Dark One was near. The wind grew in strength and heat, the Beast
snarling in reply. The manlike creature rose from its sentry position to crawl out
of the filthy hole, rising to stand like a human, bits of dust and twigs and
blowing sand striking its hairy body. But to the Beast, it was a signal of love, a
gesture of welcome.




The Devil's Kiss

As the years pass, Black Wilder is waiting for just the right
moment to emerge from the shadows in the small prairie town.
The time is now, the beasts are hungry, the Undead are awake,
and the putrid stench of evil hangs in the area. The townspeople
are about to be touched by the Devil's kiss.


The minister slowed his car, then smiled with recognition at the man standing
by the side of the road, beside his automobile. The minister pulled off the
highway, cut his engine, and got out. "You're a long way from home, old friend,"
the minister said. "Got car troubles?" "No," the man replied, the sunlight of
early spring sparkling off a strange-looking medallion hanging about his neck.
"But you're a long way from home as well, Brother Hayes." "Once a month to
Waldron until they find a minister. But you know that." "Yes. How did the
services go?" "Very well, thank you. But why are you out here? Not to be prying,
of course." The Baptist minister cut his eyes as he detected movement in the rear
seat of the automobile. His eyes widened with shock. "What... why, that's
Reverend Balon's wife! What?" He had turned toward the car, not believing a
deacon in his church would have another man's wife with himnot this far
from Whitfield. Then he saw the other man. Dalton Revere, an elder in Balon's
church. The minister moved toward the car, to get a better look at the couple
seated in the rear. He had heard talk, but had dismissed it as rumor. Now this.







The Devil's Touch

The town of Logandale is showing signs of the foul presence of
the Prince of Darkness. Hollow-eyed, hungry corpses rise from
unearthly tombs to gorge themselves on living flesh, spawning a
new generation of restless Undead. Only Sam and Nydia Balon
have faced the master before and know what must be done.


She knelt in the center of the circle drawn on the floor. The circle was drawn
with yellow chalk. She was careful that one bare knee was placed on the symbol
denoting La Maison De Dieu, the past, and her other bare knee on the symbol
denoting La Lune, the future. The symbols were widely separated and she was
forced to spread her thighs far apart. She was naked. The candles in the huge
room flickered, casting long yellow shadows around the room, darkly
illuminating the circle of men and women surrounding the girl in the yellow
circle. A lone flute, played by a young man wearing a black hooded robe cast its
lonely sounds, the notes fluttering almost passively through the room. The scene
was soon to become anything but passive. Kitty Carrier kept her eyes downcast
as she had been instructed by the Coven leader. She knew what was next in
store for her. Sweat beaded her face and began trickling down between her
breasts at the thought. "Renaissance," a man spoke from the darkness outside
the circle. It was time for Kitty's rebirth. A rubber penis was placed in the circle,
the lifelike dildo covered with drawings of many colors. Just under the flared
head was a drawing depicting the fifteenth card of the major arcana of the tarot:
Le Diable. The Devil faced upward, just under the flared head of the rubber
penis. When the Devil is positioned thusly, the picture denotes bondage;
subordination; suffering; shock; ravage; violence; self-punishment.



William Young
Monster

Nick Case has been pursued by a hulking, Sasquatch-like
monster his whole life - in a recurring series of
nightmares. But a chance encounter with a retired
concert violinist reveals that the nightmares might be
something more than just bad dreams, and that he might
be the monster he's been running from.

While he tries to make sense of the dreams, his entire life
starts unraveling around as he becomes unwittingly
embroiled in what appears to be a fine art counterfeiting
ring. As the events unfold, Nick begins to wonder which
nightmare is the real one: the life he lives awake, or the
behemoth in his REM sleep?


There was blood on Nick Case's tongue. Not much, perhaps just a trace, but
there was blood on his tongue. Its sweet taste lingered there for a moment before
he swallowed and rolled his head over toward the clock radio. The red numbers
blazed in the dark: 3:47. He moved his tongue against the roof of his mouth and
pressed the small cut against it, once again tasting a droplet of blood. He
blinked hard and stared at the clock before he was conscious of why he had just
awoken. The Monster had returned. He slipped his legs out from beneath the
covers and looked over at his girlfriend, Sarah. She was still deep in the
nothingness sleep of middle night, her blond hair trailing across her face like
moonlight illuminated rivers. He walked into the kitchen and poured a glass of
water from the faucet. It was luke warm and seeped into the small puncture on
his tongue with a faint sting. He looked out the kitchen window and down the
empty street at the closed-up patio of the corner coffee shop: There was no
Monster there. Just before Nick awoke the Monster had been standing there, its
red eyes burning through the night. Now, there were just white patio chairs
stacked in fours and chained to the center posts of each patio table. Of course,
the Monster had only been there moments ago in a dream, but the Monster had
been absent from his dreams for almost a decade.



Willie Crawford
Bacony Chowder

Best selling soul food cookbook, by soul food
expert Willie Crawford. Recipes include such
traditional dishes as collard greens, black-eye
peas, macaroni and cheese, sweet potato pie,
pound cake, grits, catfish, chitterlings, chicken
And dumplings, tea cakes, you name it!





















Willie Geist
American Freak Show

Geist treats us to the first look at President Sarah Palins
unconventional inaugural address, performed live on WWEs Monday
Night Raw after her renegade victory in the 2012 election. We go inside
the ballroom for a Dean Martinstyle welcome roast of Bernie Madoff
upon his arrival in Hell, with Pol Pot serving as sidesplitting
roastmaster. Geist provides us with never-before-seen FBI wiretap
transcripts of the more mundane, but equally profane, telephone
conversations of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. And George
W. Bushs batting-cage-and-waterslide-themed plans for a presidential
library are laid out publicly for the first time.

From Obama to Oprah, Afghanistan to Lohan, and Snooki to the
Salahis, Willie Geist spares no one as our host of this wild American
Freak Show. Youll laugh out loud while weeping for the future of
America.


I was sitting on the set of Morning Joe one day talking to my friend and cohost
Mike Barnicle during a commercial break when a loud, confident voice shot
across the studio, interrupting our conversation: Morning, fellas! Im innocent
of all charges! You have to understand that very few of our guests on the show
include a legal plea in their personal introduction, so it didnt take long to figure
out who had arrived. Blago was in the building. Wed been expecting him.
Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was there to promote a book, but
watching him move across the room, you would have thought he was running for
third-floor fire warden in our building. He shook the hand of just about every
member of our crew (and those of some confused foreign tourists who wondered
why a strange, aggressively enthusiastic man with odd hair was telling them he
was innocent of an unspecified crimewas he part of their NBC tour?). After
signing a couple of unsolicited autographs, Blago leapt onto the set and
launched into what sounded like the dry run of an opening statement for his
pending trial.









Willie Nelson
Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die

In Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die, Willie Nelson
muses about his greatest influences and the things that are
most important to him, and celebrates the family, friends,
and colleagues who have blessed his remarkable journey.
Willie riffs on everything: music, wives, Texas, politics, horses,
religion, marijuana, children, the environment, poker, hogs,
Nashville, karma, and more. He shares the outlaw wisdom he
has acquired over eight decades, along with favorite jokes and
insights from friends and others close to him. Rare family
pictures, beautiful artwork created by his son Micah Nelson,
and lyrics to classic songs punctuate these charming and
poignant memories. Willie Nelson has touched millions and
none more deeply than his family, friends, and bandmates,
several of whom share, for the first time, intimate stories
about the Red Headed Stranger.


Im flashing back to my first memories; they are of a blacksmith shop in Abbott,
Texas. My grandfather is shoeing a horse. He is heating the horseshoe in the
roaring hot coals in the furnace. Im standing on my tiptoes turning the bellows
that blows the air on the furnace, keeping the fire going. He heats the horseshoe
till it is red-hot, then fits it to the horses hoof, cools it off in water, and nails it
onto the horses hoof. A horse kicked him one day and ruptured his stomach. He
wore a truss the rest of his life until he died from pneumonia at fifty-six. I was
seven years old at the time my grandfather died. The next memory is my first
introduction to gospel music. It is of a tabernacle that sat next to my house,
where in the summertime we had revivals. The Methodists, the Baptists, and the
Church of Christ all held their church services in the tabernacle. I am sitting at
the table looking out the window, listening to them all. My first performance in
church was when I was about five. I was wearing a white sailor suit with red
trim. I start to recite a poem my grandmother taught me, but I have been picking
my nose, which now starts to bleed. I hold my nose with one finger and while
blood runs all over my little white sailor suit I recite my poem:





Willow Rose
Beyond

She wakes up on a flying steamboat on her way to a school run
by Angels in a white marble castle. On the boat, she meets Mick
who has been dead for more than a hundred years but still looks
like a teenager. He helps her past the difficult beginning at the
new school in a new world. One day some of Meghan's
roommates find a mirror in the cellar of the school and they
persuade her to go through it with them - well knowing it is
strictly against the rules of the school. Meghan ends up back on
earth where she meets Jason. But Jason is in danger and
Meghan knows something important. Something that is a
matter of life and death. Soon she is forced to choose between
the two worlds. The one she belongs to now and the one she left.


How do I say this? Well, the thing is I am a spirit. Before you close this book
because you dont believe in a life after death, just take a deep breath and listen
to my story. It might be interesting to you. You might want to know that death is
only the beginning of the next great adventure. I know I would have liked to
have known that when I was still alive. Maybe you do believe that there is an
afterlife, maybe you have even seen us, or at least seen what we can do. Either
way I am sure you will enjoy my story. Before I begin we need to get the facts
straight. In the world of the supernatural we make distinctions between spirits.
Some are like meRuach, as we are called here, which is Hebrew meaning
the wind of man or the spirit of man. As a Ruach I am a part of the
Spiritual Realm, which is just as real as the Natural Realm. Those who are still
human in flesh and blood just cant see it. I can go wherever I want, do what I
want, and even talk to whomever I want, including humans. Then there are the
Seirims, which means hairy beings. You can call them demons if you prefer.
They are the evil spirits that ascend from Hell and walk the earth just like us,
but they make bad things happen to people, and make them feel guilty and
depressed. How did I get to be a spirit? Well I really dont know. I guess I died
in some sort of way.



One, Two _. He Is Coming for You

Set in the Danish coastal town of Karrebaeksminde, journalist
Rebekka Franck returns to her hometown with her six-year-old
daughter. She is trying to escape her ex-husband and starting a
new life for her and her daughter, when the small sleepy town
experiences a murder. One of the kingdoms wealthiest men is
brutally murdered in his summer residence in
Karrebaeksminde. While Rebekka Franck and her punk
photographer Sune try to cover the story for the local
newspaper, another murder happens on a high society rich man.
Now Rebekka Franck realizes that the drowsy little kingdom of
Denmark has gotten its first serial killer and soon a series of
dark secrets - long buried but not forgotten will see the day of
light.


One, two the song in his head wouldnt escape. Sure, he knew where it came
from. It was that rhyme from the horror movies. The ones with the serial killer,
that Freddy Krueger guy with a burned, disfigured face, red and dark green
striped sweater, brown fedora hat, and a glove armed with razors to kill his
victims in their dreams and take their souls, which would kill them in the real
world. A Nightmare on Elm Street, that was the movies name. Yes, he knew
its origin. And he had his reasons for singing that particular song in this exact
moment. He knew why, and so would his future victims. He lit a cigarette and
stared out the window at a waiting bird in the bare treetop. Waiting for the
sunlight to come back, just like the rest of the kingdom of Denmark at this time
of the year. Waiting for spring with its explosion of colors, like a sea of promises
of sunlight and a warmer wind. But still the winter had to go away. And it
hadnt. The trees were still naked, the sky gray as steel, the ground wet and
cold. February always seemed the longest month in the little country though it
was the shortest in the calendar. People talked about it every day as they
showed up for work or school. Every freaking day since Christmas. Now, it
wouldnt be long before the light came back. But in reality it always took
months of waiting and anticipating before spring finally appeared. The man
staring out the window didnt pay much attention to the weather though. He
stood with his cigarette between two fingers. To him, the time he had been
waiting ages for was finally here.


Willy Vlautin
Motel Life

With "echoes of Of Mice and Men" (The Bookseller, UK), The
Motel Life explores the frustrations and failed dreams of two
Nevada brothers on the run after a hit-and-run accident
who, forgotten by society, and short on luck and hope,
desperately cling to the edge of modern life.


THE NIGHT IT HAPPENED I was drunk, almost passed out, and I swear to
God a bird came flying through my motel room window. It was maybe five
degrees out and the bird, some sorta duck, was suddenly on my floor surrounded
in glass. The window must have killed it. It would have scared me to death if I
hadnt been so drunk. All I could do was get up, turn on the light, and throw it
back out the window. It fell three stories and landed on the sidewalk below. I
turned my electric blanket up to ten, got back in bed, and fell asleep. A few
hours later I woke again to my brother standing over me, crying uncontrollably.
He had a key to my room. I could barely see straight and I knew then I was
going to be sick. It was snowing out and the wind would flurry snow through the
broken window and into my room. The streets were empty, frozen with ice. He
stood at the foot of the bed dressed in underwear, a black coat, and a pair of old
work shoes. You could see the straps where the prosthetic foot connected to the
remaining part of his calf. The thing is, my brother would never even wear
shorts. He was too nervous about it, how it happened, the way he looked with a
fake shin, with a fake calf and foot. He thought of himself as a real failure with
only one leg. A cripple. His skin was blue. He had half- frozen spit on his chin
and snot leaking from his nose. Frank, he muttered, Frank, my life, Ive
ruined it.


Wilson Rawls
Summer of the Monkeys

The last thing a fourteen-year-old boy expects to find along an
old Ozark river bottom is a tree full of monkeys. Jay Berry
Lee's grandpa had an explanation, of course--as he did for
most things. The monkeys had escaped from a traveling circus,
and there was a handsome reward in store for anyone who
could catch them. Grandpa said there wasn't any animal that
couldn't be caught somehow, and Jay Berry started out
believing him . . .

But by the end of the "summer of the monkeys," Jay Berry Lee
had learned a lot more than he ever bargained for--and not
just about monkeys. He learned about faith, and wishes
coming true, and knowing what it is you really want. He even
learned a little about growing up . . .


Up until I was fourteen years old, no boy on earth could have been happier. I
didnt have a worry in the world. In fact, I was beginning to think that it wasnt
going to be hard at all for me to grow up. But just when things were really
looking good for me, something happened. I got mixed up with a bunch of
monkeys and all of my happiness flew right out the window. Those monkeys all
but drove me out of my mind. If I had kept this monkey trouble to myself, I
dont think it would have amounted to much; but I got my grandpa mixed up in
it. I felt pretty bad about that because Grandpa was my pal, and all he was
trying to do was help me. I even coaxed Rowdy, my old bluetick hound, into
helping me with this monkey trouble. He came out of the mess worse than
Grandpa and I did. Rowdy got so disgusted with me, monkeys, and everything
in general, he wouldnt even come out from under the house when I called him.
It was in the late 1800s, the best I can remember. Anyhowat the time, we
were living in a brand-new country that had just been opened up for settlement.
The farm we lived on was called Cherokee land because it was smack dab in
the middle of the Cherokee Nation. It lay in a strip from the foothills of the
Ozark Mountains to the banks of the Illinois River in northeastern Oklahoma.
This was the last place in the world that anyone would expect to find a bunch
of monkeys.


Where the Red Fern Grows -


Billy, Old Dan, and Little Ann -- a Boy and His Two Dogs...
A loving threesome, they ranged the dark hills and river
bottoms of Cherokee country. Old Dan had the brawn, Little
Ann had the brains -- and Billy had the will to train them to be
the finest hunting team in the valley. Glory and victory were
coming to them, but sadness waited too. And close by was the
strange and wonderful power that's only found...



WHEN I LEFT MY OFFICE THAT BEAUTIFUL SPRING DAY, I HAD no
idea what was in store for me. To begin with, everything was too perfect for
anything unusual to happen. It was one of those days when a man feels good,
feels like speaking to his neighbor, is glad to live in a country like ours, and
proud of his government. You know what I mean, one of those rare days when
everything is right and nothing is wrong. I was walking along whistling when I
heard the dogfight. At first I paid no attention to it. After all it wasnt anything
to get excited about, just another dogfight in a residential section. As the sound
of the fight grew nearer, I could tell there were quite a few dogs mixed up in it.
They boiled out of an alley, turned, and headed straight toward me. Not
wanting to get bitten or run over, I moved over to the edge of the sidewalk. I
could see that all the dogs were fighting one. About twenty-five feet from me
they caught him and down he went. I felt sorry for the unfortunate one. I knew if
something wasnt done quickly the sanitation department would have to pick up
a dead dog. I was trying to make up my mind to help when I got a surprise. Up
out of that snarling, growling, slashing mass reared an old redbone hound. For a
second I saw him. I caught my breath. I couldnt believe what I had seen.





Winifred Conkling
The Complete Guide to Vitamins

Here is your comprehensive, portable, one-step guide to all
over-the counter vitamins, herbs, and supplements currently
available -- an easy-to-use alphabetical listing that includes
valuable information on the most effective forms of each
supplement, the nutrient's food source and proper dosage, as
well as signs of deficiency, safe use, and possible side effects.


If you eat a balanced diet and follow a healthy lifestyle, do you really need to
take nutrition supplements? A few years ago, most doctors would have
congratulated you on your clean living and told you to skip the supplements to
save money. Today, however, most experts realize that almost everyone
including youcan benefit from taking some supplements. Why the about-face?
Simply put, my colleagues and I in the medical profession have a better
understanding of nutrition and biochemistry than we did just a generation ago.
Advances in our knowledge about nutrition and disease have underscored the
essential role vitamins, minerals, herbs, and other substances play in good
health. In addition, mounting evidence has shown that taking supplements may
help prevent heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, and other chronic diseases. I
recommend supplements to virtually every patient I see at my Health Integration
Centers in Torrance and Santa Monica, California.








Winter Pennington
Darkness Embraced

Two hundred years ago, Epiphany was reborn a vampire. Sired
by Renata, the Queen of the Rosso Lussuria, Epiphany
willingly played the role of the queens beloved petuntil she
was cast from Renatas bed and lost her protection from the
Elder vampires.

Epiphany has done her best not to become a target, trying to
remain as inconspicuous as possible, like a long-forgotten
memory huddling beneath the mantle of Vascos power, her
one true friend among the Rosso Lussuria. Now Renata has
called Epiphany forth to face the challenges ahead that could
elevate her clan status to the ranks of an Elder. But Epiphany
has few friends and many enemies, and the chances of
surviving the challenges are slim.

Surrounded by harsh vampire politics and secret ambitions,
Epiphany learns that an old enemy is plotting treason against
the woman she once loved, and to save all she holds dear, she
must embrace and form an alliance with the dark.(


Life and death placed a wager and my body was their playing ground. Sleep
would not come. Having been bedridden for too many days to keep track of, I
grew restless. It was not a restlessness of the body, for my body was sore and
weary from fighting the long battle. I was wasting away, pale and bird-thin,
with Deaths kiss lingering like half moons beneath my lashes. She would take
me slowly, this merciless lover. I needed to feel the cool night air against my
skin. The room was stuffy, suffused with warmth from the glow of a bedside
lantern. Having a room of my own had at first been a pleasant respite. Now, the
wal s silently mocked me like the bars of a prison. They confined me. The
solitude was a painful reminder of my failing health. The others would not come
near me unless they had to. I forced myself out of the bed, fighting the cutting
betrayal of my body. I slipped my feet into a pair of slippers and retrieved the
thick woolen cloak from the armoire, sluggishly settling it about my shoulders.
Ironic, that I would take such a precaution given my condition.







World Audience
Anatomy of an Adult Film -

Anatomy of an Adult Film is a one-of-a-kind, original book, an
accurate description of a vast industry, as revealed by inside experts.
Anatomy of an Adult Film is very entertaining reading. "If anyone
knows the pornography business, Sunset Thomas does. She writes
about our world of flesh and money with the insight and knowledge
of a true insider. Like all great confessionals, Anatomy of an Adult
Film tells it like it is and keeps it sexy as hell." --Larry Flynt "Having
known Sunset for almost two decades (more than most people), I can
speak with authority when I attest to the fact that no one knows the
business better. Having seen it from so many perspectives...actress,
contract player, centerfold, cover girl, strip club owner, brothel
worker, columnist, etc. etc. (Get the picture?)...her insights are
entertaining and valuable.


Most folks dont believe my life storywhen I tell them over drinks or by the
poolwith just the facts. Im too smart, too pretty: the facts just dont seem to
square. But me, Ive been a porn star, a prostitute, a pawn, and a king.
Whoopsie, thats Old Blue Eyes! Im not plagiarizing his song, but Im singing a
similar tune. The truth is, Im just a simple girl from the little town of Sikeston,
Missouri. Im the youngest of eleven my Momma raised to be strong, proud, and
sassy. I never graduated from High School, but I reckon I had the good fortune
of what they call here in Vegas Kismet. See, the breaks just fell my way. Larry
Flynt took a liking to me, and from my first shoot with him, all I had to do was
act naturallynot really acting at all. I became a contract girl in the porn
industry, an HBO television star, a Penthouse Pet, and a XXX-Hall of
Famerbaby, Ive seen it all and done more! My story is something of a
campfire tale. A little bit of fiction mixed in the stew of a life story. Anatomy of
an Adult Film is a partnership between me and R. Richard, who approached me
with the idea some months back. Hes an established writer of erotic fiction, and
the concept of detailing my life alongside the components necessary to get me on
the screen was very appealing.







Wrath James White
Hero

Adelle Smith has lived her entire life for the betterment of
mankind. A Civil Rights Activist in the Sixties and Seventies,
she has spent most of her adult life attending marches, giving
speeches, and lending a hand to anyone in need.

But on the very evening, she is to be acknowledged with a
Lifetime Achievement Award for her humanitarian efforts, a
stroke leaves her partially paralyzed and unable to speak. Now
Adelle's in the care of a ruthless hospice nurse, who sees not a
hero before her, but the cause of her many hardships growing
up as a child of interracial parents, someone who decides to
give Adelle her very own brand of "Physical Therapy"
consisting of pain and suffering, mental cruelty and torture.

And now, after a lifetime of helping others, Adelle needs help,
quickly, before another round of brutal treatment snuffs out
her life.


The nurse stood above the young boy watching his heart beat and his lungs
expand and contract through a large surgical incision that went from his upper
chest to his abdomen. All the critical veins and arteries had already been
cauterized, stapled and sutured. The surgeon had left just minutes after
finishing his last cut to attend to other patients, leaving her to close the incision.
There had been a drive-by shooting on Columbia Avenue. Five teenagers had
been shot not including her patient. Two of them were already in the morgue.
DOA. The other three were in the adjoining operating rooms. She could hear
them screaming. There had been seven other shootings that night. A typical
Saturday night. Shed barely had time to wash the blood of one victim from her
hands before the next was wheeled in. It was like being a battlefield nurse.
West Philadelphia, like South Philly, and North Philly, had become a
warzone. Only when the ER was busy like this did the doctors leave the nurses
to close up their patients for them. Plus, they trusted her. She was one of the best
ER nurses on the staff, next in line to be head nurse. She had never lost her cool,
never been overwhelmed by all the blood and death and gotten emotional like
some of the other nurses. She had always remained in control, professional, calm
and efficient, if somewhat aloof.



Like Porno for Psychos

From a world-ending orgy to home liposuction. From the
hidden desires of politicians to a woman with a fetish for lions.
This is a place where necrophilia, self-mutilation, and murder
are all roads to love. Like Porno for Psychos collects the
extreme erotic horror from the celebrated hardcore horror
master. Wrath James White is your guide through sex, death,
and the darkest desires of the heart.


Cocoas face was covered in livid purple bruises. Her front teeth had been
completely shattered and her nose was smeared across her face as if shed gone
twelve rounds with a heavyweight. Her neck bore the marks of ligature
strangulation. The finger saw the perpetrator used to murder her was still
embedded in her esophagus. A hideous gaping wound yawned open beneath her
chin like a blood-soaked second smile. The serrated wire had cut straight
through to her vertebrae, nearly decapitating her. Coagulated blood formed a
tremendous pool all around her. Her tank top and miniskirt had been pulled up
and her bra and panties were missing. One of her breasts looked like it had
been chewed up. If G hadnt paid for it himself, hed never have been able to
tell that her clothes were once white. G turned his head as shivers began to raise
goosebumps all over his skin. Thats all he could stand to look at. The rest of
the damage was just too horrible. He shoved the picture across the table, back
toward the detective. This is the second ho youve lost this week, Tyson. Is this
how you protect your girls?







Orgy of Souls

Twenty souls for his brother's life is a price that seductively
beautiful Samson is willing to pay. Twenty souls drenched in
blood, powdered with cocaine and more than one kind of
ecstasy. A fair trade for the life of a brother. A fair trade for
the life of a priest. And everyone he meets seems so willing to
give theirs away. Samuels faith often wavers. Diagnosed with
HIV and in rapid decline, he hides his disillusionment in the
rituals of the priesthood. But when Samson brings him the
first blood-signed contract for a young woman's immortal
soul, the steamy world of high fashion male models and the
quiet decay of a sickly priest begin to writhe against the
realities of life, death, and otherworldly power. Brotherly love
is a deadly seduction, beauty a dangerous game. Come
worship in the brutal temple of Orgy of Souls. Your faith will
never be the same again.


Samson glided through the dance club, the pounding bass a second heartbeat in
his chest, his body bouncing slightly, almost imperceptibly in time with the
rhythm. His eyes sparkled with lust as he gazed across the dance floor at a sea
of sweltering, undulating flesh. He wanted to make love to the entire room, the
entire building, the whole faceless mass of humanity. No one person stood out
from the next. They were all the same to him, neither male nor female. Only
flesh. And he couldnt wait to throw himself among them, to feel the press of
their bodies against his, their smooth skin, slicked with perspiration, sliding
against his own. He popped another tablet of Ecstasy and his flesh began to
tingle. This was his element. People waved to him, shook his hand, patted him
on his back, hugged him, and gave him the occasional pound and kiss. There
were few people he didnt know. Hed been a bouncer here once upon a time,
and hed recently done a stint as a guest DJ on Friday nights. Then his
modeling career had taken off and hed quit his job at the club, but the lights,
the music, and the women still drew him. Just another patron on the prowl for
someone to swap body fluids with. Samson! Samson!






Population Zero

When Todd was just a child, he learned that sometimes it was
necessary to sterilize or euthanize animals in order to keep
their population from growing too rapidly. It was the humane
thing to do, the best thing for the environment. Yet, every day
at his job at the Welfare Department, Todd sees the dregs of
humanity multiplying unchecked, overburdening the earth
with a tidal wave of humanity. But if he can convince them not
to reproduce, if he can convince everyone to voluntarily
sterilize themselves, then he might just prevent the coming
population explosion. And those who can't be convinced


Honey's stomach undulated beneath Todd's hand as he rubbed her bloated
belly. He could see the faint impressions of little faces and tiny paws stretching
her flesh as the puppies moved around inside of her. The Golden Retriever had
crawled back into the far corner of the closet, panting heavily, struggling to give
birth. Blood and fluid dripped from her vagina while she paced around the tiny
closet in a tight circle, squatting occasionally as if she were trying to defecate.
Her body quivered and her legs shook from the exertion. "Come on, Honey.
You're doing fine, girl." He filled her water bowl and Honey lapped feverishly at
the water. "That's a good girl." Todd stroked her fur while she continued to
drink. He was excited. Honey was his best friend. She had been his since he
was just a year old. Todd could not remember a time when she hadn't been by
his side. She was, for the most part, his only friend. His mother was deeply
religious and had homeschooled him rather than send him to public school,
saving him from a "heathenous secular education."








Resurrectionist, The

Dale has the miraculous ability to heal and raise the recent dead.
But he's also insane. When he uses his power to brutally kill the
woman next door, night after night, no one will believe her
impossible story, so it's up to her to find a way to end the living
nightmare.


Dale walked slowly down the hall, yawning and rubbing his eyes as he tiptoed
to his parents bedroom where the screaming was increasing in intensity,
growing ever more shrill and agonized. He shivered despite his flannel pajamas
and held his comic book clenched tight in his fist like a security blanket, rolling
it up and squeezing it until the pages creased and wrinkled and the cover tore.
He hadnt slept yet. Hed been lying in bed reading The Man of Steel, trying not
to fall asleep until the fighting was over. Just as he had every night, hed lain
awake listening to the wet smack of knuckles striking flesh, the roar of his
fathers angry voice and his mothers own shrill, defiant retort, not backing
down until the blows began to fall without relent. Then, when his mother had
been beaten into silence, that horrible sound would come. That squishy,
rhythmic smack of flesh against flesh mingled with grunts and groans and his
mothers muffled sobs. A part of him had always worried that someday his
father would go too far and he would wind up an orphan. A part of him figured
it was inevitable. When Dale heard that new sound, wetter, more violent, less
rhythmic, cries and screams that turned into a gurgling wheeze, he knew that
his mother was dead before he ever walked into the bedroom.





Scabs

A man haunted by the children that teased him when he was
young destroys anyone who tries to love him. An OBGYN has a
religious conversion that leads to an act of terrorism. A
promiscuous man tries desperately to hold onto a woman. A
former drug dealer runs from the demons of his past. The
ghost of a former classmate visits the one boy who was kind to
her when she was alive. The daughter of a mafia hit man uses
her skills of persuasion to get a former lover to acknowledge
his son.

These are tales of pain and regret, revenge and redemption.
Blending the emotional with the extreme, the perverse with the
profound, the violent, and visceral with the philosophical and
the socio-political, these stories epitomize the controversial
style that has made Wrath James White a genre favorite.


The lithe and sensuous cinnamon-skinned black woman whose desk lay directly
across from Maliks cubicle was staring at him again. Malik could feel her eyes
crawling over him like maggots on a fresh corpse. He knew what she was
thinking. Tar-baby, mud-duck, black scab, black dog, nigger, jungle-bunny,
ugly, dirty, filthy, African! Hed heard it all before, not from some racist
rednecks but from his own people, everyday of his life for as long as he could
remember. He was getting tired of it. Sick and tired. As a teenager hed used
every skin lightning crme on the shelves and hed done nothing more than given
himself a severe case of acne and several chemical burns that had blistered and
left scars. He turned his head to catch her staring and she smiled at him
holding his gaze. Malik turned quickly away. He knew she was just trying to
fuck with him. Maliks self-esteem had been formed in the early eighties when
he was just reaching puberty and Michael Jackson, Prince, and Ray Parker Jr.
were the symbols of black male sexuality. Effete, sallow-toned, androgynous
beings, whose voices lilted like castrated tenors and whose racial composition
was as ambiguous as their sexuality. Malik was the very antithesis of that
cultural aesthetic, being the color of liquid night, with thick African features,
and a large muscular body that held no suggestion of femininity. By eighties
pop-cultural standards he was pure ugly, a bete noire destined for solitude and
depression.


Sloppy Seconds

Who Wants Some of Wrath's Sloppy Seconds?

Who wouldn't? Each year at the World Horror Convention, the
most anticipated event is the Gross-Out Contest, where authors
stand up in front of everyone and deliver some of the most
disturbing, gut-wrenching tales anyone has ever heard.

Wrath James White's stories are among the best of them. Now,
we present his stories for the first time in print - uncut.


Mary was a 500-lb contortionist who'd died with her titanic legs still wrapped
around the back of her neck. Her legs were like two pale, bloated logs
crosshatched with varicose veins. Even in death, her face was pinched and
creased with the exertion of maintaining such an uncomfortable position. Her
skin was now loose, slack, nearly sliding off of her from the buildup of necrotic
fluids as she decomposed, adding yet more ripples to the rolls and rolls of
billowy fat suspended from her chin in successive rows of increasing girth. Her
engorged breasts and stomach were but more layers in a cascade of flesh that
hung all the way down to the cavernous orifice yawning between her mammoth
thighs. Her vagina had been turned inside out as if a grenade had gone off in
her uterus. The labia were red and swollen like a baboon's ass and glistened
with a virulent unctuousness as a steady stream of dank liquid dribbled out of
her raw and bleeding snatch. It looked like an infected hatchet wound - more
the symbol of man's fury than his lust. A gangrenous stench wafted from her
syphilitic cooze as I knelt between her thighs and licked my lips appreciatively.








Yaccub's Curse -

Malik is an enforcer for the most notorious drug dealer in G-
town. But when he is ordered to kill a local crack whore and
her newborn child, he has a revelation that leads him into a
desperate battle with a man who might be Satan himself.
Caught in a struggle between good and evil, sanity and
madness, redemption and damnation, the violence of the
streets and the power of the occult, Malik must risk his life to
save a newborn crack baby that he believes to be Jesus Christ.
But is Malik a force good or were he and his employer both
created millenniums ago by an evil geneticist for the same
purpose, to ensure strife between the races.


A parade of lost souls shambled up and down Germantown Avenue as the day
came to an end. The destitute and drug addled, in various stages of intoxication
and withdrawal crowded the street in every direction. They staggered out of
bars, nodded in alleys and doorways, and paced the sidewalk, desperate for the
next score, eyes filled with hunger and madness. It looked like a blaxploitation
version of Night of The Living Dead. Dealers as old as fifty and as young as ten
slang little white rocks of hardened cocaine mixed with baking soda to legions of
the damned. Hopelessly addicted whores gyrated their emaciated half-naked
bodies trying to attract a customer with whom to share their disease.
Germantown Ave was one big outdoor fleamarket for drugs and sex. The gaudy
red BMW sat idling at the curb. Its driver, a light-skinned black man with a
lopsided yellow-toothed grin, leered out at the whores wandering the avenue.
The passenger in the back seat was obscured by night, watching as a teenage
whore with a large round ass that had somehow survived the ravages of chronic
cocaine use stepped out of the shadows. Those remarkable buttocks bounced and
jiggled seductively as she strolled the avenue.






Wren Emerson
I Wish__ -

Thistle Nettlebottom knows her life isn't exactly normal. She
travels the country with her secretive mother and bestselling
author grandmother in a pink RV going from book signings to
crazy research trips. She's never been to public school or had
a boyfriend, but she can pick a lock and hotwire a car. One
day the phone rings and they set a course to a tiny town that's
not on any maps. Suddenly, Thistle finds her whole life
changing.

She's finally found the home she's been searching for.

Thistle soon realizes that Desire isn't like other towns and
she's not like other girls. The family she trusted has lied to
her about everything her entire life and the things she doesn't
know about herself could cost her everything. Her legacy as
one of the most powerful witches the town has ever seen has
made her enemies that have been waiting patiently for a
chance to destroy her. Thistle needs to learn to use her
powers to protect herself before they succeed.


When a two hundred and fifty pound man takes a swing at your face, the last
thing you want is to be blind. But that's exactly the predicament I found myself
in while fighting Shep Claphan one September afternoon. I could hear voices
murmuring around us, but I couldn't hear him. I knew less about Shep's past
than I did about my own, but I always imagined him as a soldier or a stunt
man or a martial arts expert. And he was attempting to kick my ass. Not
exactly a challenge when you consider that I was 5'7" to his 6'4" and weighed
half as much. I didn't hear his foot lash out until it caught me in the stomach. It
stung, but it was obvious since I was still standing that he pulled most of the
power of that kick. What I did hear was the gasps of the people that
surrounding us. I swung in the direction the kick had come from, but I didn't hit
anything. Chuckles from the peanut gallery. He kicked the back of my leg,
forcing me to take a knee. Behind me. I swept my leg along the ground, hoping
to knock his feet out from under him, but he was too fast. I followed the
movement into a standing position and punched in short efficient jabs. I was
gratified to feel one land somewhere soft. It wasn't a solid connection and
judging by the way it slid off his body, it was most likely his shoulder. At least
now I had an idea of what his position was. I swung at him again, but missed
by a mile, judging from the reactions of the people watching.


Writers of Cracked dot Com
You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News -

Some facts are too terrifying to teach in school.
Unfortunately, Cracked.com is more than happy to
fill you in:
* A zombie apocalypse? It could happen. 50% of humans are
infected with a parasite that can take over your brain.
* The FDA wouldn't let you eat bugs, right? Actually, you
might want to put down those jellybeans. And that apple. And
that strawberry yogurt.
* Think dolphins are our friends? Then these sex-crazed thrill
killers of the sea have you right where they want you.
* The most important discovery in the history of genetics?
Francis Crick came up with it while on LSD.
* Think you're going to choose whether or not to buy this book?
Scientists say your brain secretly makes all your decisions 10
seconds before you even know what they are.
If youre a fan of The Oatmeal or Frak.com and hate being
wrong about stuff, youll love what you find in YOU MIGHT
BE A ZOMBIE from the twisted minds at Cracked.


YOU have been the victim of a conspiracy to make the world around you more
boring than it actually is. Its true. Did you know that you could save the lives
of thousands of depressed people by painting the Golden Gate Bridge blue? How
about the brain parasite currently infecting 50 percent of people on earth that
turns lab rats into zombiesdid you know about that? We didnt think so.
Nearly everything your impressionable mind soaks up from your peers, teachers,
parents, and the media is a lie. Imagine if Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas had
been rolled into a single movie and set loose aboard the spaceship from Aliens.
Thats the real world youve been missing. The people who taught you
everything you know took that movie, edited out all of the most aggressively ass-
kicking scenes, and made it into a Saturday-morning cartoon. This book is the
shocking, unrated directors cut. You hold in your hands the most mind-blowing
nuggets of information federal and local anti-headsplosion laws allow us to
print on anything thats not a tarp. In these pages, you will find answers to
questions you didnt even know you should be asking. Questions like, Why were
the Nazis so well dressed? and, Why is this five-inch-long hornet chasing me?





Wyclef Jean
Purpose

Purpose is Wyclef Jeans powerful story of a life rooted in
struggle, soul-searching, art, and survival. In his own voice the
multi-platinum musician and producer shares everything,
from his childhood in Haiti to his rise to the top of the
American music scene. For the first time ever, Wyclef reveals
the behind-the-scenes story of the Fugees, including his
partnership with Lauryn Hill and Pras Michel, the details of
their award-winning album The Score, and the solo career
that followed. For fans of early Wyclef efforts like The
Carnival or later albums like From the Hut, To the Projects,
To the Mansionand for fans of books like Jay-Zs Decoded
or Russell Simmons Super RichWyclefs Purpose is an
inspiring, one-of-a-kind look at one of the worlds most
talented artists.


My first thought was extraordinary: Look, theres my uncle Ray. Hes on TV.
I stood at the control board in Studio A at Platinum Sounds, the recording
studio Ive owned and made records in since 2000. Platinum is an institution
founded on my success with the Fugees. Its a fitting legacy for a group that has
sold over 15 million copies but released just one major-label album. The Score
was recorded in a damp, smoke-filled basement on a tough stretch of Clinton
Street in East Orange, New Jersey, on the only equipment we could afford, but
nothing limited our soul and imagination. Platinum is a palace compared to
that basement. I brought none of that old gear along, but the same spark of
invention is there. Many hip-hop hits have been recorded thereby everyone
from T.I. to DMX. Classic tracks by a true cross-section of artists have been
laid down in those rooms, too: U2 did most of their last album there. Tom Jones
has recorded there, and so has Patti LaBelle. That evening, I was working on a
song called Two Strangers in the Night. I dont come into the studio with
anything more than a few lyrical ideas on paper usually, or melodies Ive
recorded in voice mails that I leave for myself. I always have the song concept in
mind, and then I let the raw spirit of the music and the moment guide me until
it becomes what it is meant to be. I play piano, guitar, and can figure out any
instrument with strings, so I always have too many options.


Wynne Channing
What Kills Me

An ancient prophecy warns of a girl destined to
cause the extinction of the vampire race.

So when 17-year-old Axelia falls into a sacred well
filled with blood and emerges a vampire, the
immortal empire believes she is this legendary
destroyer. Hunted by soldiers and mercenaries,
Axelia and her reluctant ally, the vampire
bladesmith Lucas, must battle to survive.

How will she convince the empire that she is just an
innocent teenager-turned bloodsucker and not a
creature of destruction? And if she cannot, can a
vampire who is afraid of bugs summon the courage
to fight a nation of immortals?


The suns down. I am so dead. I walked out of the bakery with a box of cannoli
balanced in my hands and when I saw the dark sky, my smile faded. I
shouldered my way through the crowds and rushed into a piazza. The clock on
the church tower read 9:25 p.m. I rounded the fountain in the center of the
square, my flip flops slapping at my heels. I shifted my box of pastries so that it
was under my arm like a football and quickened my pace. Sofia is going to kill
me. When I left the house at 7:30 p.m., I had told her that Id be only twenty
minutes. But Id lost track of time wandering the narrow cobblestone streets,
snapping pictures. So far, I wasnt being a good guest in her home. Two days
ago, I had accidentally used dishwasher soap in her laundry machine,
producing a titanic bubble bath. This was not the way to redeem myself. A few
people sat on the stone stairs around the fountain. A bearded man plucked at a
guitar and nodded his head. A woman reclined against her boyfriend, her
hands on his knees as if they were the arms of a chair. One young man stood
alone on the top of the stairs. His hands were in the pockets of a charcoal coat
with an asymmetrical zipper that cut across his chest. His face was backlit
against the street lamps, but I knew that he was staring at me. He had such
rigid posture that nothing but his head moved as he watched me cross the
square.


Wynter Daniels
Hidden Magic

Psychic Jilly Livingston is on the run after stabbing an abusive
ex-boyfriend. Now living under a new identity in a spiritualist
camp far away, she is hesitant to help sexy detective Zander
Parsons find a missing teenager. Although working with a cop
jeopardizes her new life, she feels compelled to help the girl
who reached out to her through a psychic vision. But when a
faceless stalker targets her, she has no choice but to put her
trustand her hearton the line.


I shouldnt have come back. She was a block away when she remembered she
hadnt packed up the only photo she had left of her mama. Her mother had
been far from perfect, but now that she was gone there was no fixing all the shit
shed screwed up. She had to return. It would only take a moment then could get
the hell out of there, for good. A slap of icy evening air stung Lauren Picards
cheeks as she climbed out of her old Toyota, which shed loaded with a duffel
and several black trash bags full of her belongings. She raced across the weed-
choked yard then took the steps two at a time to the second-story apartment
shed shared with Jamal for the past two and a half years. Grabbing the framed
picture from the mantle, she gave the place one last glance. The rocking chair
shed rescued from someones trash and lovingly refinished would have to be left
behind as would the abstract painting her friend Ruby had given her. They were
just things. She couldnt say she was sorry to be leaving. She didnt love Jamal
anymore, couldnt wait to put miles between them. There was a time when shed
thought he was the onethe person she could finally find that connection with,
something no one had ever given her. But in the end, all hed wanted to connect
was his fist to her body. Goddess knew she had enough bruises and scars to last
a lifetime.