The Alliance has been battling the Syndics for a century—and losing badly. Now its fleet is crippled and stranded in enemy territory. Their only hope is a man who has emerged from a century-long hibernation to find he has been heroically idealized beyond belief...
Captain John "Black Jack" Geary's legendary exploits are known to every schoolchild. Revered for his heroic "last stand" in the early days of the war, he was presumed dead. But a century later, Geary miraculously returns from survival hibernation and reluctantly takes command of the Alliance fleet as it faces annihilation by the Syndics.
Appalled by the hero-worship around him, Geary is nevertheless a man who will do his duty. And he knows that bringing the stolen Syndic hypernet key safely home is the Alliance's one chance to win the war. But to do that, Geary will have to live up to the impossibly heroic "Black Jack" legend...
1763. Gideon Seymour, cutpurse and gentleman, hides from the villainous Tar Man. Suddenly, the sky peels away like fabric, and from the gaping hole fall two curious-looking children. Peter Schock and Kate Dyer have fallen straight from the twenty-first century, thanks to an experiment with an antigravity machine.
Before Gideon and the children have a chance to gather their wits, the Tar Man takes off with the machine — and Kate and Peter's only chance of getting home. Soon Gideon, Kate, and Peter are swept into a journey through eighteenth-century London and form a bond that, they hope, will stand strong in the face of unfathomable treachery.
In this riveting and adventure-packed follow-up to the award-winning New York Times bestseller Peter and the Starcatchers, Peter leaves the relative safety of Mollusk Island—along with his trusted companion, Tinker Bell—for the dark and dangerous streets of London.
On a difficult journey across the sea, he and Tink discover the mysterious and deadly Lord Ombra, who is intent on recovering the missing starstuff—celestial dust that contains unimagined powers.
In London, Peter attempts to track down the indomitable Molly, hoping that together they can combat Ombra's determined forces.
But London is not Mollusk Island; Peter is not the boy he used to be; and Lord Ombra— the Shadow Master—is unlike anything Peter, or the world, has ever seen.
Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson have done it again—written a compulsively readable, magical, impossible-to-put-down tale that will delight readers of all ages.
Athletic Jamie isn't sure about spending the summer in the city with her romance–novel–writing mum. But when she meets irresistible Josh, Jamie realizes she could probably use all the romance advice she can get!
Lacrosse camp 9 a.m.–noon (can't be late! "Coach" Josh will freak out)
Basketball camp 1:00–4:00 (so many screaming kids...)
Shopping with Mona 4:30 (finally a break)
Date with Andrew 7:30 (he's so perfect... isn't he?)
A magnificent blend of fact and fiction, The Dante Club is a brilliantly realized paean to Dante's continued grip on our imagination, and a captivating thriller that will surprise readers from beginning to end.
Words can bleed.
In 1865 Boston, the literary geniuses of the Dante Club—poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher J. T. Fields—are finishing America's first translation of The Divine Comedy and preparing to unveil Dante's remarkable visions to the New World. The powerful Boston Brahmins at Harvard College are fighting to keep Dante in obscurity, believing that the infiltration of foreign superstitions into American minds will prove as corrupting as the immigrants arriving at Boston Harbor.
The members of the Dante Club fight to keep a sacred literary cause alive, but their plans fall apart when a series of murders erupts through Boston and Cambridge. Only this small group of scholars realizes that the gruesome killings are modeled on the descriptions of Hell's punishments from Dante's Inferno. With the lives of the Boston elite and Dante's literary future in America at stake, the Dante Club members must find the killer before the authorities discover their secret.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and an outcast police officer named Nicholas Rey, the first black member of the Boston police department, must place their careers on the line to end the terror. Together, they discover that the source of the murders lies closer to home than they ever could have imagined.
Marco Polo was nicknamed "Marco of the millions" because his Venetian countrymen took the grandiose stories of his travels to be exaggerated, if not outright lies. As he lay dying, his priest, family, and friends offered him a last chance to confess his mendacity, and Marco, it is said, replied, "I have not told the half of what I saw and did."
Now, Gary Jennings has imagined the half that Marco left unsaid as even more elaborate and adventurous than the tall tales thought to be lies. From the palazzi and back streets of medieval Venice to the sumptuous court of Kublai Khan, from the perfumed sexuality of the Levant to the dangers and rigors of travel along the Silk Road, Marco meets all manner of people, survives all manner of danger, and, insatiably curious, becomes an almost compulsive collector of customs, languages, and women.
In more than two decades of travel, Marco was variously a merchant, a warrior, a lover, a spy, even a tax collector - but always a journeyer, unflagging in his appetite for new experiences, regretting only what he missed.
Here - recreated and reimagined with all the splendor, the love of adventure, the zest for the rare and curious that are Jennings's hallmarks - is the epic account, at once magnificent and delightful, of the greatest real-life adventurer in human history.
The Uses of Haiti tells the truth about uncomfortable matters—uncomfortable, that is, for the structures of power and the doctrinal framework that protects them from scrutiny. It tells the truth about what has been happening in Haiti, and the US role in its bitter fate.
Noam Chomsky, from the introduction
In this third edition of the classic The Uses of Haiti, Paul Farmer looks at what has happened to the health of the poor in Haiti since the coup. Winner of a McArthur Genius Award, Paul Farmer is a physician and anthropologist who has worked for 25 years in Haiti, where he serves as medical director of a hospital serving the rural poor. He is the subject of the Tracy Kidder biography, Mountains Beyond Mountains.
Jas is in trouble. Because of who he is—an eighteen-year-old Asian living in London. Because of the gang he hangs out with. And because of the woman he fancies, Samira, who Jas shouldn't have taken a shining to because she is, as his pals point out, not one of his own.
He's in trouble because his education, never mind his career, is going nowhere. And he's fallen into the schemes, games, and prejudices of his friends on the streets of the big western city in which he lives. But Jas's main trouble is Jas himself, and he doesn't even know the trouble he's in. Try as hard as he does, he's failing to make sense of what it is to be young, male, and what you might say is Indostani in a city that professes to be a melting pot but is a city of racial and religious exclusion zones.
Without his parents' aspirations to assimilate, without the gifts of his more academically accomplished contemporaries, Jas is a young man without a survival plan to get by in the big city. He's out of touch, an anachronism posing as young man who's up-to-date, living free-style, making things up as he goes along in suburbs of West London.
Gautam Malkani's extraordinary comic novel portrays the lives of young Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu men in the ethnically charged enclave of one of the biggest western cities, London. A world usually—but wrongly—portrayed as the breeding ground for Islamic militants is, in actuality, a world of money, flash cars, cell phones, rap music, and MTV, as well as rivalries and feuds, and the small-time crooks who exploit them.
In Malkani's hilarious depiction of multiculturalism, race is no more than a proxy for masculinity, or lack of masculinity, among young men struggling to get by in a remorseless city. Just as Martin Amis and Irvine Welsh captured the mood and the ethos of the eighties and nineties, twenty-nine-year-old Gautam Malkani brilliantly evokes the life of immigrants who are not immigrants in Londonstani, bringing an entirely fresh perspective to contemporary fiction as he does so.
Sunset Song is a poignant tale of young Chris Guthrie, who finds herself torn between her deep love for the land and the harsh realities of farming life. Despite the challenges, she decides to stay in the rural community of her childhood.
The story unfolds as World War I brings about unforeseen changes, making her a widow and mocking the efforts of her youth. This narrative beautifully captures the essence of resilience and the enduring spirit of a woman amid the backdrop of a changing world.
Beware of Pity is the only novel published during the lifetime of the great Austrian writer, Stefan Zweig. Zweig was a master anatomist of the deceitful heart, and in this powerful narrative, he uncovers the seed of selfishness within even the finest of feelings.
The story revolves around Hofmiller, an Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer stationed at the edge of the empire. Invited to a party at the home of a rich local landowner, Hofmiller finds himself a world away from the dreary routine of his barracks. The surroundings are glamorous, wine flows freely, and the exhilarated young Hofmiller asks his host's lovely daughter for a dance, only to discover that sickness has left her painfully crippled.
This seemingly minor blunder sets off a chain of events that will ultimately destroy his life, as pity and guilt gradually implicate him in a well-meaning but tragically wrongheaded plot to restore the unhappy invalid to health.
Beware of Pity is an almost unbearably tense and powerful tale of unrequited love and the danger of pity, set against the backdrop of the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is a devastating depiction of the torment of the betrayal of both honour and love.
Have you ever loved someone who's mortally wounded you? Phineas Poe, disgraced cop and morphine addict, has just been released from a psych ward when he meets a beautiful woman named Jude in a hotel bar. Red dress, black hair, body like a knife. He takes her back to his room and wakes the next morning in a bathtub full of blood and ice, missing a kidney.
Dragging himself from a hospital bed, Phineas discovers he wants to be with Jude like a hunger—and he wants to find her and kill her. Falling for her is the start of a twisted love story that takes him from the snowy streets of Denver to the high plains of Texas where the boundaries between torturer and victim, killer and accomplice, become nightmarishly distorted.
Where do dreams come from? What stealthy nighttime messengers are the guardians of our most deeply hidden hopes and our half-forgotten fears? Drawing on her rich imagination, two-time Newbery winner Lois Lowry confronts these questions and explores the conflicts between the gentle bits and pieces of the past that come to life in dream, and the darker horrors that find their form in nightmare.
In a haunting story that tiptoes between reality and imagination, two people—a lonely, sensitive woman and a damaged, angry boy—face their own histories and discover what they can be to one another, renewed by the strength that comes from a tiny, caring creature they will never see.
Gossamer is perfect for readers not quite ready for Lois Lowry's Newbery-Award winner The Giver and also for readers interested in dreams, nightmares, spirits, and the dream world.
Maurice is heartbroken over unrequited love, which opened his heart and mind to his own sexual identity. In order to be true to himself, he goes against the grain of society’s often unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics.
Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, would probably end his career. Thus, Maurice languished in a drawer for fifty-seven years, the author requesting it be published only after his death (along with his stories about homosexuality later collected in The Life to Come).
Since its release in 1971, Maurice has been widely read and praised. It has been, and continues to be, adapted for major stage productions, including the 1987 Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Hugh Grant and James Wilby.
What, if anything, is it that makes the human uniquely human? This, in part, is the question that G.K. Chesterton starts with in this classic exploration of human history. Responding to the evolutionary materialism of his contemporary (and antagonist) H.G. Wells, Chesterton in this work affirms human uniqueness and the unique message of the Christian faith.
Writing in a time when social Darwinism was rampant, Chesterton instead argued that the idea that society has been steadily progressing from a state of primitivism and barbarity towards civilization is simply and flatly inaccurate. "Barbarism and civilization were not successive stages in the progress of the world," he affirms, with arguments drawn from the histories of both Egypt and Babylon.
As always with Chesterton, there is in this analysis something (as he said of Blake) "very plain and emphatic." He sees in Christianity a rare blending of philosophy and mythology, or reason and story, which satisfies both the mind and the heart. On both levels, it rings true. As he puts it, "in answer to the historical query of why it was accepted, and is accepted, I answer for millions of others in my reply; because it fits the lock; because it is like life."
Here, as so often in Chesterton, we sense a lived, awakened faith. All that he writes derives from a keen intellect guided by the heart's own knowledge.
You've lost your job as a department store lingerie buyer, your car's been repossessed, and most of your furniture and small appliances have been sold off to pay last month's rent. Now the rent is due again. And you live in New Jersey. What do you do?
If you're Stephanie Plum, you become a bounty hunter. But not just a nickel-and-dime bounty hunter; you go after the big money. That means a cop gone bad. And not just any cop. She goes after Joe Morelli, a disgraced former vice cop who is also the man who took Stephanie's virginity at age 16 and then wrote details on a bathroom wall. With pride and rent money on the line, Plum plunges headlong into her first case, one that pits her against ruthless adversaries - people who'd rather kill than lose.
In Stephanie Plum, Evanovich has created a resourceful and humorous character who stands apart from the pack of gritty female detectives.
Once, Special Agent Smoky Barrett hunted serial killers for the FBI. She was one of the best—until a madman terrorized her family, killed her husband and daughter, and left her face scarred and her soul brutalized.
Turning the tables on the killer, Smoky shot him dead—but her life was shattered forever. Now Smoky dreams about picking up her weapon again. She dreams about placing the cold steel between her lips and pulling the trigger one last time. Because for a woman who's lost everything, what is there left to lose? She's about to find out.
In all her years at the Bureau, Smoky has never encountered anyone like him: a new and fascinating kind of monster, a twisted genius who defies profilers' attempts to understand him. And he's issued Smoky a direct challenge, coaxing her back from the brink with the only thing that could convince her to live.
The killer videotaped his latest crime—an act of horror that left a child motherless—then sent a message addressed to Agent Smoky Barrett. The message is enough to shock Smoky back to work, back to her FBI team. And that child awakens something in Smoky she thought was gone forever.
Suddenly the stakes are raised. The game has changed. For as this deranged monster embarks on an unspeakable spree of perversion and murder, Smoky is coming alive again—and she's about to face her greatest fears as a cop, a woman, a mother, and a merciless killer's next victim.
Imriel de la Courcel's blood parents are history's most reviled traitors, but his adoptive parents, the Comtesse Phèdre and the warrior-priest Joscelin, are Terre d'Ange's greatest champions.
Stolen, tortured, and enslaved as a young boy, Imriel is now a Prince of the Blood, third in line for the throne in a land that revels in art, beauty, and desire. It is a court steeped in deeply laid conspiracies... and there are many who would see the young prince dead. Some despise him out of hatred for his birth mother Melisande, who nearly destroyed the realm in her quest for power. Others because they fear he has inherited his mother's irresistible allure - and her dangerous gifts. And as he comes of age, plagued by dark yearnings, Imriel shares their fears.
At the royal court, where gossip is the chosen poison and assailants wield slander instead of swords, the young prince fights character assassins while struggling with his own innermost conflicts. But when Imriel departs to study at the famed University of Tiberium, the perils he faces turn infinitely more deadly. Searching for wisdom, he finds instead a web of manipulation, where innocent words hide sinister meanings, and your lover of last night may become your hired killer before dawn.
Now a simple act of friendship will leave Imriel trapped in a besieged city where the infamous Melisande is worshiped as a goddess; where a dead man leads an army; and where the prince must face his greatest test: to find his true self.
Seattle's Fremont is lovingly labeled by locals as the “Center of the Universe”. It is one of Seattle's most eclectic and dynamic neighborhoods. Just over a century ago, it was little more than lush primeval forest, but it has grown into a vibrant community.
The area developed as the home of the city's blue-collar workers and became a bohemian haven for local artists. Today, it's a thriving urban mecca filled with bars, restaurants, hip boutiques, and art studios that cater to the worldly aware.
Most recently, Fremont has become the address of high-tech giants like Adobe. It continues to evolve, reflecting the changes in industry that have contributed to Fremont's reputation as an urban area on the cutting edge.
In this graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel charts her fraught relationship with her late father. Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the Fun Home. It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.
Bracing for a final clash with the evil warlord Morgarath, the Rangers rally the kingdom’s allies, and Will is chosen, along with his friend Horace, as special envoys to nearby Celtica. But the simple mission soon takes an unsettling turn – the Celticans have disappeared, their town abandoned. The scheming hand of Morgarath, it seems, has been far from idle. He has found a way to bring his legions over the once impassible eastern mountains and is planning to ambush the king’s army in a rout. Now with help many miles away, Will and Horace are the only ones standing in the way of the dark lord’s plans. They have shown great skill and courage in their training, but how will they fare in the face of true evil?
Perfect for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, Christopher Paolini’s Eragon series, and George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire series.
They have always scared him in the past—the Rangers, with their dark cloaks and shadowy ways. The villagers believe the Rangers practice magic that makes them invisible to ordinary people. And now 15-year-old Will, always small for his age, has been chosen as a Ranger's apprentice. What he doesn't yet realize is that the Rangers are the protectors of the kingdom. Highly trained in the skills of battle and surveillance, they fight the battles before the battles reach the people.
And as Will is about to learn, there is a large battle brewing. The exiled Morgarath, Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night, is gathering his forces for an attack on the kingdom. This time, he will not be denied...
Here is the fantasy adventure that launched the Ranger's Apprentice series, an epic story of heroes and villains that has become an international phenomenon. Perfect for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, Christopher Paolini’s Eragon series, and George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire series.
If a martian landed in America and set out to determine the nation's official state religion, he would have to conclude it is liberalism, while Christianity and Judaism are prohibited by law. Many Americans are outraged by liberal hostility to traditional religion. But as Ann Coulter reveals in this, her most explosive book yet, to focus solely on the Left's attacks on our Judeo-Christian tradition is to miss a larger point: liberalism is a religion—a godless one. And it is now entrenched as the state religion of this county.
Though liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, it bears all the attributes of a religion. In Godless, Coulter throws open the doors of the Church of Liberalism, showing us its sacraments (abortion), its holy writ (Roe v. Wade), its martyrs (from Soviet spy Alger Hiss to cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal), its clergy (public school teachers), its churches (government schools, where prayer is prohibited but condoms are free), its doctrine of infallibility (as manifest in the "absolute moral authority" of spokesmen from Cindy Sheehan to Max Cleland), and its cosmology (in which mankind is an inconsequential accident).
Then, of course, there's the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. For liberals, evolution is the touchstone that separates the enlightened from the benighted. But Coulter neatly reverses the pretense that liberals are rationalists guided by the ideals of free inquiry and the scientific method. She exposes the essential truth about Darwinian evolution that liberals refuse to confront: it is bogus science.
Writing with a keen appreciation for genuine science, Coulter reveals that the so-called gaps in the theory of evolution are all there is—Darwinism is nothing but a gap. After 150 years of dedicated searching into the fossil record, evolution's proponents have failed utterly to substantiate its claims. And a long line of supposed evidence, from the infamous Piltdown Man to the "evolving" peppered moths of England, has been exposed as hoaxes.
Still, liberals treat those who question evolution as religious heretics and prohibit students from hearing about real science when it contradicts Darwinism. And these are the people who say they want to keep faith out of the classroom?
Liberals' absolute devotion to Darwinism, Coulter shows, has nothing to do with evolution's scientific validity and everything to do with its refusal to admit the possibility of God as a guiding force. They will brook no challenges to the official religion.
Fearlessly confronting the high priests of the Church of Liberalism and ringing with Coulter's razor-sharp wit, Godless is the most important and riveting book yet from one of today's most lively and impassioned conservative voices.
Sesher Kobita, The Last Poem is a profound work by the illustrious author Rabindranath Tagore. This novel strips away societal and familial supports to bring forth an intimate dialogue between two captivating characters: Amit Rai and Labanyalata.
Within its pages, Tagore navigates the emotional evolution of these characters through a series of scintillating conversations. At its surface, it's an unusual love story, but as one delves deeper, other significant themes emerge.
Is love important in marriage?
Does marriage allow space, both physical and mental, for both partners? These questions are explored with Tagore's characteristic depth.
Moreover, Tagore's mastery over the Bengali language is evident as he plays elaborate language games, making this work not only a romantic drama but also a reflection on the language itself.
The novel’s engagement with issues of romantic love and the everyday responsibilities of marriage remains relevant, prompting readers to reflect deeply on these timeless questions.
They say Bethany Hamilton has saltwater in her veins. How else could one explain the passion that drives her to surf? How else could one explain that nothing—not even the loss of her arm—could come between her and the waves?
That Halloween morning in Kauai, Hawaii, Bethany responded to the shark’s stealth attack with the calm of a girl with God on her side. Pushing pain and panic aside, she began to paddle with one arm, focusing on a single thought: “Get to the beach....”
And when the first thing Bethany wanted to know after surgery was “When can I surf again?” it became clear that her spirit and determination were part of a greater story—a tale of courage and faith that this soft-spoken girl would come to share with the world.
Soul Surfer is a moving account of Bethany’s life as a young surfer, her recovery after the attack, the adjustments she’s made to her unique surfing style, her unprecedented bid for a top showing in the World Surfing Championships, and, most fundamentally, her belief in God. It is a story of girl power and spiritual grit that shows the body is no more essential to surfing—perhaps even less so—than the soul.
The Omen is a classic tale of the antichrist who comes to Earth in the form of a young boy. This chilling story has captivated audiences for decades, blending elements of horror and suspense.
In this gripping narrative, a seemingly ordinary child harbors a dark secret that could spell doom for humanity. The tale unfolds with a series of unsettling events that lead to an inevitable confrontation between good and evil.
Prepare yourself for a journey into the heart of darkness, where every shadow hides a sinister truth and every choice could be your last. The Omen is not just a story, but an experience that will leave you questioning the nature of fate and the true essence of evil.
Cassandra Palmer can see the future and communicate with spirits—talents that make her attractive to the dead and the undead. The ghosts of the dead aren’t usually dangerous; they just like to talk…a lot. The undead are another matter.
Like any sensible girl, Cassie tries to avoid vampires. But when the bloodsucking mafioso she escaped three years ago finds Cassie again with vengeance on his mind, she’s forced to turn to the vampire Senate for protection. The undead senators won’t help her for nothing, and Cassie finds herself working with one of their most powerful members, a dangerously seductive master vampire—and the price he demands may be more than Cassie is willing to pay...
Eric Moore has a prosperous business, a comfortable home, and a stable family life in a quiet town. Then, on an ordinary night, his teenage son Keith babysits Amy Giordano, the eight-year-old daughter of a neighboring family. The next morning, Amy is missing, and Eric isn't sure his son is innocent.
In his desperate attempt to hold his family together by proving his - and the community's - suspicions wrong, Eric finds himself in a vortex of doubt and broken trust. What should he make of Keith's strange behavior? Of his wife's furtive phone calls to a colleague? Of his brother's hints that he knows things he's afraid to say?
In a "heart-wrenching and gut-wrenching" race against time and mistrust, Eric must discover what has happened to Amy Giordano and face the long-buried family secrets he has so carefully ignored.
After a violent storm in the South Pacific in the year 1643, Roberto della Griva finds himself shipwrecked—on a ship. Swept from the Amaryllis, he has managed to pull himself aboard the Daphne, anchored in the bay of a beautiful island. The ship is fully provisioned, he discovers, but the crew is missing.
As Roberto explores the different cabinets in the hold, he remembers chapters from his youth: Ferrante, his imaginary evil brother; the siege of Casale, that meaningless chess move in the Thirty Years' War in which he lost his father and his illusions; and the lessons given him on Reasons of State, fencing, the writing of love letters, and blasphemy.
In this fascinating, lyrical tale, Umberto Eco tells of a young dreamer searching for love and meaning; and of a most amazing old Jesuit who, with his clocks and maps, has plumbed the secrets of longitudes, the four moons of Jupiter, and the Flood.
Matt Freeman thought his troubles were over when he closed Raven's Gate... but in fact, they were just beginning. His fate — and the fate of the world — is tied to four other kids across the globe.
The second is a street kid in Peru. He and Matt have never met; they don't even speak the same language. But destiny is going to throw them together as the evil threat of the Old Ones grows... and another Gate suddenly comes into play.
Another masterful thriller from the supernaturally suspenseful Anthony Horowitz.
For 10 years, Arlene has kept her promises, and God has kept His end of the bargain. Until now. When an old schoolmate from Possett turns up at Arlene's door in Chicago asking questions about Jim Beverly, former quarterback and god of Possett High, Arlene's break with her former hometown is forced to an end.
At the same time, Burr, her long-time boyfriend, has raised an ultimatum: introduce him to her family or consider him gone. Arlene loves him dearly but knows her lily white (not to mention deeply racist) Southern Baptist family will not understand her relationship with an African American boyfriend. Reluctantly, Arlene bows to the pressure, and she and Burr embark on the long-avoided road trip back home.
As Arlene digs through guilt and deception, her patched-together alibi begins to unravel, and she discovers how far she will go for love and a chance at redemption.
Life will never be the same for Ananka Fishbein after she ventures into an enormous sinkhole near her New York City apartment.
A million rats, delinquent Girl Scouts out for revenge, and a secret city below the streets of Manhattan combine in this remarkable novel about a darker side of New York City you have only just begun to know about...
Pulled down from the clouds at the end of a kite string, Mary Poppins is back. In Mary’s care, the Banks children meet the King of the Castle and the Dirty Rascal, visit the upside-down world of Mr. Turvy and his bride, Miss Topsy, and spend a breathless afternoon above the park, dangling from a clutch of balloons.
More than thirty years ago, nutrition researcher T. Colin Campbell and his team at Cornell, in partnership with teams in China and England, embarked upon the China Study, the most comprehensive study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease. What they found, when combined with findings in Colin's laboratory, opened their eyes to the dangers of a diet high in animal protein and the unparalleled health benefits of a whole foods, plant-based diet.
In 2005, Colin and his son Tom, now a physician, shared those findings with the world in The China Study, hailed as one of the most important books about diet and health ever written. Featuring brand new content, this heavily expanded edition of Colin and Tom's groundbreaking book includes the latest undeniable evidence of the power of a plant-based diet, plus updated information about the changing medical system and how patients stand to benefit from a surging interest in plant-based nutrition.
The China Study - Updated and Expanded Edition presents a clear and concise message of hope as it dispels a multitude of health myths and misinformation. The basic message is clear: The key to a long, healthy life lies in three things: breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
First published in 1975, Paul Theroux's strange, unique, and hugely entertaining railway odyssey has become a modern classic of travel literature. Here, Theroux recounts his early adventures on an unusual grand continental tour. Asia's fabled trains — the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express — are the stars of a journey that takes him on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian.
Brimming with Theroux's signature humor and wry keen observations, this engrossing chronicle is essential reading for both the ardent adventurer and the armchair traveler.
In a breathtaking adventure story, the paranoid and brilliant inventor Allie Fox takes his family to live in the Honduran jungle, determined to build a civilization better than the one they've left.
Fleeing from an America he sees as mired in materialism and conformity, he hopes to rediscover a purer life. But his utopian experiment takes a dark turn when his obsessions lead the family toward unimaginable danger.
Genome offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of the incredible breakthrough of mapping the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome. This achievement raises questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, longevity, and free will.
By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. From Huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome.
This book will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind.
Snakes and Earrings is a vivid exploration of a young woman's journey into the dark and enigmatic world of Japan's underground youth culture. This novel, both shocking and beautiful, paints a picture of a world as amoral and fascinating as the landscapes of Less Than Zero and Trainspotting.
Nineteen-year-old Lui is enchanted by the snakelike forked tongue of a stranger named Ama. Intrigued and drawn to this new world, she immediately moves in with him and begins planning to have her own tongue pierced. Her journey of self-discovery and boundary-pushing doesn't stop there. She asks Ama's mysterious friend, Shiba, to design an exquisite dragon tattoo for her back.
As Lui and Shiba's relationship develops into an affair, Ama's jealousy rises, leading to an explosive situation. This story is a captivating tale of desire, identity, and the lengths one will go to in search of meaning.
It's taken him eleven centuries to find the right woman. He's not about to lose her now.
Jessi St. James has GOT to get a life. Too many hours studying ancient artifacts has given the archaeology student a bad case of sex on the brain. So she figures she must be dreaming when she spies a gorgeous half-naked man staring out at her from inside the glass of an ancient mirror.
But when a split-second decision saves her from a terrifying attempt on her life, Jessi suddenly finds herself confronting six and a half feet of smoldering INSATIABLE alpha male.
Heir to the arcane magic of his Druid ancestors, Cian MacKeltar was trapped inside the Dark Glass eleven centuries ago. And when the Dark Glass is stolen, an ancient enemy will stop at nothing to reclaim it.
For Jessi, the sex god in the mirror is not only tantalisingly real, he's offering his protection—from exactly what, Jessi doesn't know. And all he wants in exchange is the exquisite pleasure of sharing her bed...
An FBI agent, rotting away in a high-security prison for a murder he did not commit... His brilliant psychotic brother, about to perpetrate a horrific crime... A young woman with an extraordinary past, on the edge of a violent breakdown...
An ancient tomb with an enigmatic curse, about to be unveiled at a celebrity-studded New York gala... The New York Museum of Natural History receives their pilfered gem collection back... ground down to dust. Diogenes, the psychotic killer who stole them in Dance of Death, is throwing down the gauntlet to both the city and to his brother, FBI Agent Pendergast, who is currently incarcerated in a maximum security prison.
To quell the PR nightmare of the gem fiasco, the museum decides to reopen the Tomb of Senef. An astounding Egyptian temple, it was a popular museum exhibit until the 1930s, when it was quietly closed. But when the tomb is unsealed in preparation for its gala reopening, the killings—and whispers of an ancient curse—begin again.
And the catastrophic opening itself sets the stage for the final battle between the two brothers: an epic clash from which only one will emerge alive.
Considered by many to be her masterpiece, Edith Wharton's epic work is a scathing yet personal examination of the exploits and follies of the modern upper class. As she unfolds the story of Undine Spragg, from New York to Europe, Wharton affords us a detailed glimpse of what might be called the interior décor of this America and its nouveau riche fringes.
Through a heroine who is as vain, spoiled, and selfish as she is irresistibly fascinating, and through a most intricate and satisfying plot that follows Undine's marriages and affairs, she conveys a vision of social behavior that is both supremely informed and supremely disenchanted.
A delightfully dishy novel about the all-time most impossible boss in the history of impossible bosses. Andrea Sachs, a small-town girl fresh out of college, lands the job “a million girls would die for.” Hired as the assistant to Miranda Priestly, the high-profile, fabulously successful editor of Runway magazine, Andrea finds herself in an office that shouts "Prada! Armani! Versace!" at every turn, a world populated by impossibly thin, heart-wrenchingly stylish women and beautiful men clad in fine-ribbed turtlenecks and tight leather pants that show off their lifelong dedication to the gym. With breathtaking ease, Miranda can turn each and every one of these hip sophisticates into a scared, whimpering child.
THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA gives a rich and hilarious new meaning to complaints about “The Boss from Hell.” Narrated in Andrea’s smart, refreshingly disarming voice, it traces a deep, dark, devilish view of life at the top only hinted at in gossip columns and over Cosmopolitans at the trendiest cocktail parties. From sending the latest, not-yet-in-stores Harry Potter to Miranda’s children in Paris by private jet, to locating an unnamed antique store where Miranda had at some point admired a vintage dresser, to serving lattes to Miranda at precisely the piping hot temperature she prefers, Andrea is sorely tested each and every day—and often late into the night with orders barked over the phone. She puts up with it all by keeping her eyes on the prize: a recommendation from Miranda that will get Andrea a top job at any magazine of her choosing. As things escalate from the merely unacceptable to the downright outrageous, however, Andrea begins to realize that the job a million girls would die for may just kill her. And even if she survives, she has to decide whether or not the job is worth the price of her soul.
The Devil's Teeth is a thrilling journey into the world of great white sharks, nestled in the remote Farallon Islands, just twenty-seven miles off the coast of San Francisco. Susan Casey, a journalist, becomes fascinated by these fearsome predators after seeing them in a documentary. Her curiosity transforms into an obsession, leading her to the islands.
Accompanied by biologists Scot Anderson and Peter Pyle, Casey experiences the stark reality of life in this isolated region. Living in a haunted, 135-year-old house, she witnesses the majestic, terrifying sharks up close and personal.
This book is not just a tale of adventure and survival; it explores the boundary between human civilization and the untamed wilderness, where humans are neither wanted nor needed.
What would you do for love? Would you die? Would you kill?
Landscaper Mitchell Rafferty thinks it must be some kind of joke when he receives a call, "We have your wife. You can get her back for two million cash."
On an ordinary afternoon, in a normal suburban neighborhood, Mitch finds himself caught in a nightmare. The caller is dead serious and confident that if Mitch loves his wife enough, he will find a way to raise the money.
Mitch loves her more than life itself. He's got seventy-two hours to prove it. But he'll pay a lot more. He'll pay anything.
From its tense opening to its shattering climax, The Husband is a thriller that will hold you in its relentless grip for every twist, every shock, every revelation...until it lets you go, unmistakably changed.
This is a Dean Koontz novel, after all, and there's no other experience quite like it.
On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down's Syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this story that unfolds over a quarter of a century - in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that long-ago winter night. Norah Henry, who knows only that her daughter died at birth, remains inconsolable; her grief weighs heavily on their marriage. And Paul, their son, raises himself as best he can, in a house grown cold with mourning. Meanwhile, Phoebe, the lost daughter, grows from a sunny child to a vibrant young woman whose mother loves her as fiercely as if she were her own.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has not ceased to stir vigorous debate since its first publication in 1762.
Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others, Rousseau argues instead for a pact, or ‘social contract’, that should exist between all the citizens of a state and that should be the source of sovereign power.
From this fundamental premise, he goes on to consider issues of liberty and law, freedom and justice, arriving at a view of society that has seemed to some a blueprint for totalitarianism, to others a declaration of democratic principles.
KimihIro Watanuki has a wish on layaway with Yūko Ishikawa, the sultry time-space witch who can grant anyone's deepest desire... for a price! Still, working like a slave in Yūko's shop hasn't dampened Kimihiro's enthusiasm for his cute classmate Himawari-chan, nor his irritation with his too-cool rival Dōmeki, the guy who always seems to be around during Kimihiro's most embarrassing moments.
But when Dōmeki, trying to be a good samaritan, inadvertently becomes the object of a terrible grudge, Kimihiro seeks Yūko's help. However, the cost for her assistance is steep: Kimihiro would be permanently impaired! Is such a sacrifice worth it for someone he would rather have disappear?
Includes chapters 43–47.