"A final reminder of why [Nabb] is irreplaceable among English-speaking novelists who write mysteries with Italian locales.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review “Nabb’s books display all the rich prose and quirky characters that Christie was famous for.”—BookPage “The world of crime fiction [is] poorer for the loss of Magdalen Nabb.”—The Boston Phoenix “Charming. . . . Lovely.”—Rocky Mountain News “If you didn’t make it to Florence this summer, don’t despair. . . . There’s a new Marshal Guarnaccia investigation.”—Chicago Tribune “Surpasses the best of Simenon.”—Kirkus Reviews “There is no other series quite like the Guarnaccia stories.”—The Washington Post Book World Daniela is a quiet single mother studying for a doctorate in chemistry. She rarely goes out, so her murder in her bedroom at the family’s new villa seems inexplicable. It is true that her mother, who appears to be an alcoholic; her younger sister, who has had mental problems; and her father, who has made his money running nightclubs and is probably involved in the international sex trade, are not your average home-loving Italian nuclear family, but what can she have done to be singled out for slaughter? And why has the prosecutor asked specifically for Marshal Guarnaccia to head the investigation? This is the fourteenth book in this acclaimed series. Magdalen Nabb, who was born and educated in England, lived and wrote in Florence, where she died on August 18, 2007.From BooklistStarred Review The final Marshal Guarnaccia mystery (Nabb died in August) reminds us all over again that this quiet, deceptively rich series has never received the acclaim it deserves. This time Guarnaccia, the self-effacing carbinieri marshal, must move well out of his comfort zone—the shopkeepers and blue-collar residents whom he encounters on the streets of Florence—to the world of the city’s wealthy and, in particular, to one severely dysfunctional family, the Paolettis, whose oldest daughter has been shot in her home. The more Guarnaccia digs into the case, the more he senses trouble: not only is the head of the family up to his neck in the sex trade, but the prosecutor of the case may be entangled as well, putting the lowly marshal up against powerful foes more than capable of ruining his career. As always, Nabb wins us over with the Columbo-like Guarnaccia’s mixture of surface bumbling and subtle shrewdness, mixed with a heightend sensitivity to both everyday woes and heart-wrenching tragedy. Fans of Donna Leon’s Guido Brunetti will find in Guarnaccia the ideal workingman’s parallel to the equally sensitive but far more intellectual Venetian commissario. Nabb writes more traditional, Simenon-style mysteries than Leon, but she is every bit as skilled in finding nuance in the smallest detail and in giving readers a sense of how the dailiness of a policeman’s life is both a source of support and frustration. This series will be missed by all devotees of the Italian crime novel. --Bill Ott Review"Vita Nuova is a skilfully plotted mystery which shows Guarnaccia at his most vulnerable ... a splendid addition to this enjoyable series." Sunday Telegraph, Seven "[there is] much to enjoy, combining a tale of dark family secrets with an expose of sex trafficking to produce a classic crime puzzle with touching flashes of insight into human nature." Telegraph

<p>'Parents will line up single file for the first guide to Manhattan’s private schools.'-<i>The New York Observer</i></p><p>'The information is on the mark and insightful. . . . Parents will pass <i>The Manhattan Family Guide</i> to parents as gleefully as they once passed notes in class.'-<i>New York Magazine</i></p><p>'A knowing look at those privileged places of learning.'-<i>Town &amp; Country</i></p><p>'Parents can turn to Goldman and Hausman’s objective and informative <i>Manhattan Family Guide to Private Schools</i>, the first to cover subjects from admission to tuition, curriculum and general atmosphere.'-<i>Avenue</i> magazine</p><p>This guide, written by parents for parents, is a perennial seller. Revised and expanded in this fifth edition, it is the first, last and only word for parents on choosing the best private and selective public schools for their children. Including information on admissions procedures, programs, diversity, school size, staff, tuition and scholarships, this essential reference guide lists over 80 elementary and high schools located in Manhattan and adjacent boroughs, including special-needs schools and selective public schools and programs.</p><p><b>Victoria Goldman</b> has children in private schools and is often quoted for her expertise concerning private education. Her articles have appeared in <i>New York Magazine</i> and <i>The New York Times</i>. She is co-author of <i>The Manhattan Directory of Private Nursery Schools</i> and the author of <i>The Los Angeles Guide to Private Schools</i>.</p>

<p>Barcelona in 1912 is a city still recovering from the dramatic incidents of the so-called 'Tragic Week' when Catalonian conscripts bound for the unpopular war in Spanish Morocco had rebelled at the city's dockside against the royalist forces. In the fighting, many were killed, and afterwards, even more put in prison. Including an Englishman, who was later found dead in his cell. The dead man had been a prominent businessman in Gibraltar, so what had he been doing in Barcelona? What part did he play in the illicit three-way trade between Gibraltar, Spanish Morocco and Barcelona? And just how did he really meet his end - murdered, in a prison cell? The case, in Gibraltar's view, cries out for investigation - and by someone independent of the Spanish authorities. So Scotland Yard are summoned to send out one of their men - but who? Seymour ticks all the right boxes - he has experience of the tangled diplomatic world of that part of the Mediterranean. He speaks foreign languages. And possibly most importantly of all - he grew up near the docks of London's East End so with any luck, knows how to swim if pushed in the water.</p><h3>Publishers Weekly</h3><p><P>Pearce's solid fifth pre-WWI historical to feature Sandor Seymour of Special Branch (after 2007's <I>A Dead Man in Tangier</I>) takes the Scotland Yard detective to Barcelona, Spain, to crack a two-year-old cold case-the death, while in a Spanish prison, of an English businessman, Sam Lockhart. Lockhart was arrested during the bloody riots that erupted in Barcelona in 1910 after reserve troops refused orders to serve in Spanish Morocco. Seymour's assignment enables him to reunite with Chantale de Lissac, his half-Arab, half-French romantic interest, who uses her people skills to help him learn more about the hidden personal and political passions that may have led to Lockhart's murder. As usual, Pearce is more concerned with-and more successful at-bringing his chosen milieu to life than stumping the reader with a puzzle. Fans of the author's Gareth Owen series (<I>The Mark of the Pasha</I>, etc.) will note similarities between Chantale and Owen's independent-minded Egyptian girlfriend-turned-wife. <I>(Dec.)</I></P>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.</p>

The author recounts his experiences living in China while teaching English at a Chinese medical college

Francis St. Croix spotted it first, a black dot floating in an ocean of water and ice.

Sometimes Jo still wakes suddenly, thinking she can hear Lauren’s cry. Although twelve years have passed since her baby daughter was abducted, photos of the child continue to arrive by post with the words, I Still Have Her, scrawled across the back. The police think it’s the work of a hoaxer but Jo has always believed them to be genuine – and until there is some hard evidence to the contrary, she will always hold on to the belief that Lauren is still alive. But if the pictures really do come from the kidnapper it means that they have been keeping track of Jo’s movements all these years – and recently Jo has begun to feel as if she is being watched – and that whoever has her daughter is getting closer. Is Jo’s husband right to dismiss her fears as paranoia, or might Jo herself be in danger? As her life begins to unravel Jo fears that the truth may lie in older events; in a half-forgotten childhood world, scarred by rumours of insanity and murder.

293 pages ; 20 cm, Includes reading group guide discussion questions

<div>The only survivor of a secret World War II British naval mission to Antarctica struggles for life and sanity in this harshest of environments. This is a paean to the natural beauty of Antarctica as well as a memorable story of courage, of the triumph of the human spirit, and of a transcendent love.<br>

<p><p>a Gil And Alys Cunningham Investigation Set In Medieval Scotland.</p><h3>publishers Weekly</h3><p><p>the Baffling Return Of David Drummond, Who Vanished As A Child Three Decades Earlier, Is But One Of Several Intriguing Puzzles Gil Cunningham Investigates In Mcintosh's Excellent Sixth Mystery To Feature The 15th-century Scottish Constable (after 2008's <i>the Rough Collier</i>). David Was About 11 When He Disappeared Without A Trace From Glen Buckie, But Somehow He's Aged Only Five Or Six Years In The Meantime. Cunningham Must Also Ascertain The Fates Of Four Men, All Choir Members, Who Have Recently Gone Missing. Some Locals Believe Only The Supernatural Can Explain These Inexplicable Events-one Is Sure The Devil Himself Is Behind Them. Cunningham, Who Seeks A More Mundane Agency, Doggedly Interviews Those Who Might Be Responsible For The Abductions, Including David's Older Brother, Andrew, Whose Singing Voice Has Been Damaged And Who May Resent Those With Uninjured Voices. Mcintosh Does A Solid Job Of Blending Plot And Period Detail. <i>(july)</i></p>copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, A Division Of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.</p>

Funny, fast, witty, and brutal.David Bowie Jake Arnotts brilliant trilogy of criminal life in England forms a kind of Godfather -like history of Britains gangland, spanning 40 years. The first, The Long Firm (1999), caught everyone by surprise and was adapted into a TV series broadcast in the United States on BBC America. The New York Times said it was a great read from start to finish. The sequel, He Kills Coppers (2001), was likewise lauded. The third, truecrime , revisits his first triumph, bringing back Harry Stark, an underworld boss on the lam. Harry is rumored to be laying low on Cyprus, the law having given up its pursuit, but someone is looking who isnt concerned with the niceties of extradition, somebody who has as much use for the rules as Harry.

In 1904 a force of 2500 British Imperial troops invaded Tibet. Their mission was to march on the fabled capital of Lhasa and seize its ruler and spiritual head, the Dalai Lama, and compel him to expel foreign provocateurs. All this was but another strategic deployment in the Great Game being played by the major European powers as part of their international one-upmanship and global jousting. The soldiers were accompanied by London journalist Edmund Candler, who reported the experiences of the invaders (and published them in a book The Unveiling of Lhasa). As Candler notes, the further into the country they march, the odder things get, and the less certain they become of their mission. Tibet seems a cryptic place, full of magic and menace, rocks and snow and natives that look like clay. Most of the time it is as if they, the Westerners, are invading nothing. Tibet seems an awesome emptiness bounded by soaring mountains, yet something is there, awaiting them. But it is more like a rendezvous - an appointment with a metaphysical reality far greater than the Europeans' mechanistic concept. The Tibetan troops who resist are easily dispatched by the invaders' superior weapons, yet it is the English who are unnerved. The fallen defenders do not cry out, they do not weep. The deeper the British trek, the more penetrated and undone the soldiers feel. The commanding officer grows sick and weaker the further they advance, as if he himself were violated by the incursion. Some of the men under his command become contentious, others lust for punitive combat with no quarter given. Yet, as Candler observes, the enemy they most often engage is themselves. Unlike the rest, Candler is enthralled - mesmerized by the extraordinary terrain and events; it is obvious to him that no objective awaits the invasion force in Lhasa, despite what the officers insist. Yet he continues on with them, drawn by the ineffable beauty and mystery of this fabled realm into which they have trekked with their demonstrable superiority and high-minded, self-serving purposes.

With disarming candor, Judith Grossman reveals what it was like before abortions were available . . . only yesterday.

Alone and pregnant, Shakilah Nair has returned to Singapore after a fifteen-year exile. Her story is one of passion and violence, set in a world shared with ghosts, vampires, and other spirits.words : 68794

A memoir by the celebrated author of <i>Men</i>. <p>Memory can distort, diffuse, simply omit. Or it can clarify, confirm, preserve forever fragments from the flow of our lives. From such pieces, Margaret Diehl has re-created the enchantment of her large Southern family settled in the North, whose four siblings are exquisitely joined: "We each had our place in the family, each of us a different age, like a step, connected, and nobody else anywhere related to us as we were to each other. It was a metaphysical pleasure." They are by turns innocent, nave, joyous, bumptious, young, then suddenly slashed, stricken by a reality that attaches permanently, especially to her, body and soul: "My book of hours."</p> <p>Her older brother, the most exceptional, the best-loved, the bright shining light of the family-and her absolute champion and hero-is killed. He is fourteen, she nine, and her small young soul is sent careening through the world in some entirely new and frightening way, imbued with an overwhelming sense of his absence from her eternity on earth.</p>

Slough House is a dumping ground for British intelligence agents who’ve screwed up a case in any number of ways—by leaving a secret file on a train or blowing a surveillance. River Carter, one such “slow horse,” is bitter about his failure and about his tedious assignment transcribing cell phone conversations. When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, River sees an opportunity to redeem himself. Is the victim who he first appears to be? And what’s the kidnappers’ connection with a disgraced journalist? As the clock ticks on the execution, River finds that everyone has his own agenda.From Publishers WeeklyBanished to London's Slough House—the junkyard for disgraced MI5 agents—for botching a high-profile training exercise, River Cartwright spends his days sifting through garbage and transcribing phone conversations in Herron's riveting spy thriller. His boss, Jackson Lamb, who governs Slough House as if it's his own kingdom, makes sure the slow horses know they'll never get back to high-profile work at Regent's Park. River, bored with his tedious assignments, discovers that one of his fellow agents has been lifting information from Robert Hobden, a well-known journalist. When a Muslim teenager is kidnapped and a video promising to decapitate him appears online, River wonders if it's connected to Hobden, who has ties to the extremist British Patriotic Party. Herron (Smoke & Whispers) avoids the easy cliché of misfits banding together to right a wrong, instead painting his slow horses as complex characters who are just as fallible as their faster counterparts. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistSlough House is an “administrative oubliette” for British intelligence. Spooks who have screwed up in a big way are assigned there, and no one has ever been returned to real service. In spook speak, the denizens of Slough House are Slow

Introduced by Naomi Mitchison. Set over two thousand years ago on the clam and fertile shores of the Black Sea, Naomi Mitchison's *The Corn King and the Spring Queen* tells of ancient civilisations where tenderness, beauty and love vie with brutality and dark magic. Erif Der, a young witch, is compelled by her father to marry his powerful rival, Tarrik the Corn King, so becoming the Spring Queen. Forced by her father, she uses her magic spells to try and break Tarrik's power. But one night Tarrik rescues Sphaeros, an Hellenic philosopher, from a shipwreck. Sphaeros in turn rescues Tarrik from near death and so breaks the enchantment that has bound him. And so begins for Tarrik a Quest - a fabulous voyage of discovery which will bring him new knowledge and which will reunite him with his beautiful Spring Queen.Auszeichnung : isbn searchedwords : 268844

Billy Boyle is sent by his "Uncle" Ike Eisenhower to Northern Ireland to find stolen weapons and to prevent the Irish Republic from joining the Axis in World War II. Fifty Browning Automatic Rifles have been stolen from a US army base in Northern Ireland. They might be intended for use in a German-sponsored IRA uprising. Tension runs high between the Republic, which is independent, and Protestant-ruled Northern Ireland, still part of Britain despite its heavily Catholic population. It is in Germany's interest to foment an outbreak of hostilities to divert British and US attention from the continent of Europe.Billy searches for the missing weapons with the help of a beautiful Irish woman, an officer in British Intelligence. Soldiers of the US Army, members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary as well as of local Protestant societies, and local Catholic laymen all come under suspicion. Bodies begin to accumulate, and Billy finds unexpected challenges to his Boston-Irish upbringing and his own IRA sympathies. There are rogues on both sides, he learns.

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. "Uncle Ike" (aka General Eisenhower) personally pins silver first lieutenant bars on Billy Boyle in Benn's stellar fifth WWII mystery (after 2009's Evil for Evil). In December 1943, Billy's leave with his British girlfriend in Italy is cut short. Orders send him to London to look into a Soviet officer's shooting murder, which may be retaliation for the execution of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest that's been blamed on the Germans but probably was committed by Russians. Since the Soviets are allies, the investigation requires the utmost sensitivity. Billy's loyalties are tested because his friend who works for the Polish government in exile, Lieutenant Kazimierz, is a prime suspect. Benn excels at depicting the impact of war on London--the bricks from bombed buildings piled neatly on the streets, families living in Tube stations, "the odor of the Blitz." Destruction aside, Billy never forgets that "Even in the midst of war, murder is unacceptable." Copyright В© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Billy Boyle, special investigator with General EisenhowerвЂTMs staff, is not nearly as naive as he was at the beginning of World War II. So when heвЂTMs assigned to find the murderer of a Russian security officer in London during the buildup to D-Day, he recognizes that the stability of the Allied operation could hinge on this politically charged case. The Polish contingent, including BillyвЂTMs chum, Lieutenant “Kaz” Kazmierz, is incensed over evidence that implicates the Russians in the murder of hundreds of Polish prisoners in the so-called Katyn Massacre, while the Allies—needing to keep the goodwill of the Soviets—are content with blaming the Nazis for the killings. Could Kaz have killed the Russian as partial payback? The British investigators think so, but Billy doesnвЂTMt buy it. Benn shrewdly combines the political cat-and-mouse game with the murder investigation, offering a fascinating glimpse of the wartime intelligence world (Allies spying on Allies) and how it laid the groundwork for the Cold War. In addition, his portrayals of the invdividual lives affected by the global machinations reflect an almost Graham Greene–like feel for nuance. Definitely one of the best in a steadily improving series. --Bill Ott

Roberta Shea's forebears carved a cattle ranch out of the Wyoming wilderness. But she does not share in her neighbors' assumption that the pioneers' sacrifices have bestowed upon them the right to exploit the land as they see fit. Roberta has converted her ranch into a rehabilitation center for birds of prey. Locally, she is referred as "the eagle lady." She is about to release two juvenile bald eagles whom she has restored to health to join others of this endangered species that winter in a nearby canyon. Her husband, Glenn, a state senator, loves the stubborn woman he is married to, but he wishes she could be a bit more politic when it comes to denouncing the neighbors. When a neighbor, struggling to protect his sheep from marauding coyotes, does what he feels he has to, he sets in motion a chain of events that will challenge Roberta's loyalties. Inspired by a true event in 1971 that led to the passage of the Endangered Species Act, this is a poetic evocation of Wyoming's high prairie country and of the bitter clash between the competing claims of the Old West and the New.

Praise for the Billy Boyle series: “The brash kid from Southie is still open, direct and fearless in his manner (and in his wonderfully loose-jointed use of the English language) and in no danger of losing his cover as a ‘happy-go-lucky Yank.’ But even amid the excitement of the spirited wartime storytelling, Benn allows Boyle’s experiences to change him in ways both subtle and dramatic.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review “Thoroughly enjoyable.”—The Seattle Times “This series brings WWII alive.”—Deadly Pleasures “Great fun. Benn knows his war history.”—The Globe and Mail “Kudos to author Benn . . . and here’s hoping that Billy will continue to make his way through his Uncle Ike’s world for many titles to come.”—Bookslut.com Billy Boyle awakens in a field hospital in Sicily with amnesia. In his pocket is a yellow silk handkerchief embroidered with the initial L. Gradually he remembers: he has been sent ashore in advance of the troops with this token from Lucky Luciano to contact the head of the Sicilian Mafia. But he must also thwart a murderous band of counterfeiters of Army scrip led by Vito Genovese. James R. Benn is the author of Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery, selected by Book Sense as one of the top five mysteries of 2006 and nominated for a Dilys Award. The First Wave was a Book Sense Notable title. Benn is a librarian and lives in Hadlyme, Connecticut.

"Jim Hutchins is holding a twelve gauge shotgun on his sworn enemy, his well-to-do brother-in-law, Emory Holler. What has made Jim snap?"--BOOK JACKET. "Well, Emory is rich because he's collected the insurance money for the supposedly accidental death of his wife, Jim's only sister. Pauline, Jim's wife, spends her spare time dancing naked for Emory. And Jim's best - his only - friend has suddenly died of an embolism."--BOOK JACKET. "In addition, the IRS is dunning Jim for back taxes; the town is about to seize the land on which the Hutchins have been living, in a trailer, since their house burned down; and each of his living children - two sons and a daughter - is in some sort of bizarre difficulty. Besides this, there is a panty thief roaming the area."--BOOK JACKET. "You might think this is enough for any man to confront but there is more, much more. Jim, an indomitable hero, shows us the hidden side of his small New Hampshire town with humor and penetrating insight into human frailty."--BOOK JACKET.

Set in Quebec at the turn of the 19th to 20th century, The Heart Specialist is the epic story of Agnes White, a lonely orphaned girl fascinated by the "wrong" things--microscopes, dissections, and anatomy instead of more ladylike interests--who rises to the status of one of the world's most celebrated pioneering women doctors. Not only does she break through patriarchal academic barriers; she masters the science of the human heart, becoming a scholar of international fame, all in a place and time inimical to intelligent women.When Agnes is small, her father, a French-Canadian doctor living in Montreal, is charged with the murder of his handicapped sister. Although he is eventually acquitted, his reputation is ruined, and he flees, abandoning Agnes and her pregnant mother. Less than a year later, her mother dies of consumption, leaving Agnes and her baby sister Laure on their own. Agnes's sparse memories of her father have an abiding impact on her, and she is...

In 1913, a poisoned cat, an exiled Sultan, and a new vision of an ascendant Greece threaten the Balkans with utter chaos and war. Something has to be done, and fast. Who was behind the feline poisoning? British Special Branch officer Seymour is on the case.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Pastor Sten Schyttelius, his wife, and his son, a schoolteacher, have been shot dead. Could this be the work of a cult of Satanists, as the clues left by the murderer indicate? Detective Inspector Irene Huss is on the case. Helene Tursten’s Irene Huss mysteries have been highly praised and have been made into a film and a TV series. Tursten was born in Göteborg, Sweden, where she now lives with her husband and daughter.From Publishers WeeklySwedish author Tursten's taut third contemporary police procedural (after 2006's The Torso) opens with a compelling setup: after Det. Insp. Irene Huss and her team find Jacob Schyttelius, a divorced teacher, shot to death in his isolated cottage, his computer monitor marked with a bloody Satanic symbol, they visit his parents, Sten and Elsa, only to find them dead as well and with the same markings on their computer. The data on both machines was erased professionally, and the only viable lead, Jacob's London-based sister, Rebecka, is too devastated by the dual tragedy to offer much assistance. Huss focuses her inquiry on Sten, a minister who had been investigating a local Satanist movement, in the belief that he may have been killed in revenge. The solution is both logical and depressing. Tursten does her usual solid job of populating the novel with credible, flawed characters and bringing to life modern Swedish society. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistThe third Irene Huss mystery to appear in the U.S. is considerably less gritty than either detective Inspector Huss(2003) or The Torso(2006), but it continues Tursten's sensitive exploration of how a female detective manages to balance family life with police work: not only the time pressures but also the jarring psychological disconnects that occur when jumping between dramatically different worlds. This time Huss' case--the execution-style murders of a minister, his wife, and their schoolteacher son--takes the Swedish detective from the scene of the crime, a village outside Goteborg, to London, where the traumatized daughter of the minister lives. Road-trip mysteries inevitably sacrifice the signature landscape that is often key to the series' appeal, but in this case, the fact that Huss is on her own in London gives Tursten the opportunity to probe deeper into her heroine's character. The plot itself is less compelling than the previous two entries in the series--the shocking climax will be guessed early on--but Huss is quickly becoming one of the most satisfying lead characters in the thriving world of Swedish crime fiction. Bill OttCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reservedFormats : EPUB

Randall is glib, handsome and crooked...but he has a code of honor. Although he sold cars and real estate for a living before moving up to burglary there are a few things he won't do for money. While casing a house on the Main Line he connects with perky Pam, a real estate agent who doesn't have his scruples. She thinks he might be just the man for a job she has in mind. Pam wants all of the fortune her husband is due to inherit. She'll pay Randall to dispose of Jerry, a dentist who has been sharing his toothbrush with his assistant, Carmela. While Randall is hesitating over his career choice he falls in love with Karen, the nurse who is caring for Jerry's dying father. Randall wants the money Pam offered him, but he's not eager to do what it takes to earn it. So Pam turns for help to a small time Philadelphia hood who turns out to be Carmela's boyfriend Jesus. Jesus is anxious to demonstrate his manhood. And the result is an extraction that is far bloodier than anyone expected.

214 p. : 22 cm

Two major crimes occupy Det. Insp. Hal Challis and his subordinate and now lover, Sgt. Ellen Destry, in this superior police procedural from Australian Disher, the fifth entry in the Ned Kelly Award–winning series (after 2007's Chain of Evidence). Challis and his team of Waterloo, Queensland, officers investigate the brutal assault on a private school chaplain as well as the murder of a public official in charge of enforcing compliance with land use regulations. Extra pressure for the first case's resolution comes from a prominent politician who already has an axe to grind with the police. That Challis's relationship with Destry violates police regulations complicates matters. Disher has a gift for terse description (e.g., Challis's boss wore the look of a man who'd been adored but only by his mother and long ago). While the deus ex machina solution to the official's murder may disappoint some, the personal interactions among Challis and his colleagues will quickly engage even newcomers.

In a remarkably short time, Mark Jacobs has published four dozen stories in periodicals ranging from <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i> to <i>Southwest Review</i>. In 1994 he published a collection entitled <i>A Cast of Spaniards</i>, which received complimentary reviews, including a starred <i>Publishers Weekly</i> that cited its "exquisite craftsmanship." In 1996 he published the novel <i>Stone Cowboy</i>, on the basis of which Robert Olen Butler predicted he would "become our own Graham Greene." <p>In his new collection, Jacobs explores the spiritual territory he knows so well, South America. In "Two Dead Indians," a dying Paraguayan veteran of the Chaco War, visited by ghosts of his Bolivian enemies, relives one unexplainable night in the desert, 60 years past. The title story finds a grown-up victim of a government-run "school for girls" in quiet confrontation with the school's old and broken director. Jacobs' characters are inundated by their unrecorded and recorded histories, the press of their Western ambitions and the gravity of their traditional beliefs. The modernity their societies hold out like a taunting promise seems self-destructive. Yet they prevail, at times brilliantly interweaving their psychic selves with the difficult beauty of their circumstances.</p>

Pearl leaves her sister to marry a handsome rancher in Great Falls, Minnesota, where she discovers that she is handy at running the ranch, but her marriage falters and jeopardizes the lifestyle she has come to love.

You wouldn't think getting shot would be somebody's idea of a big break, but it might just be "Dip's". When he takes a bullet for the mob boss's kid, his luck seems to turn. "The Big Squeeze" is uncannily realistic and gritty: the portrait of a tough guy in a tough corner, rendered with an authenticity that has become Cirni's hallmark.

Obligada por su origen noble a contraer matrimonio con el cruel gobernador Festino, la joven Caris de Éfeso huye en dirección a Alejandría disfrazada de eunuco. Su sueño es estudiar el arte de Hipócrates y dedicarse a la medicina, un sueño imposible para una mujer en el año 371 d.C. No obstante las dificultades, Caris logra convertirse en médico y, gracias a sus conocimientos, acercarse a las más altas esferas del poder en pleno ocaso del Imperio Romano. Basando esta trama en una detallada descripción de la medicina hipocrática y, por encima de todo, en una cuidada y rica ambientación en la mítica Alejandría, Gillian Bradshaw ha escrito una novela de ágil lectura y gran interés histórico.

<div>A photojournalist's 14-year, 4,000 mile quest, following in the footsteps of the great explorers.<br> <br> Both the heaven and hell of the High Arctic, Ellesmere Island lies a mere 450 miles from the North Pole. This mountainous jewel has the highest peaks in the Western Hemisphere east of the Rockies and is full of breathtaking scenery and enchanting wildlife. It also has the highest misery-per-visitor ratio in the world, according to The New York Times. What possesses people to go there, often repeatedly, sometimes to suffer and die? Jerry Kobalenko has made more visits to and walked more miles on Ellesmere island than anyone, past or present.<br> <br> Kobalenko investigates the motives and mistakes of the island's first explorers; recounts the disastrous 1881-84 expedition of Adolphus Greely in vivid detail; searches for clues to the mysterious disappearance of scientist-explore Hans Kruger and the murder of an Inuit guide; recreates some of the explorer's island_s most difficult journeys; has an almost deadly encounter with a polar bear; and reflects upon the meaning of extreme adventure and his own complicated relationship with a place that, like revenge, is best served cold. Part travelogue, part historical research, part natural science, part adventure mystery, The Horizontal Everest brings to life one man's total involvement with a forbidding but romantic island.<br>

Aimee's childhood friend, Laure, is a policewoman. Her partner, Jacques, has set up a meeting in Montmartre with an informer. When Laure goes along as backup, Jacques is lured to a rooftop, where he is shot to death. Laure's gun has been fired, gunpowder residue is on her hands, and she is charged with her partner's murder. The police close ranks against the alleged cop killer. Aimee is determined to clear Laure's name. In doing so, she encounters separatist terrorists, Montmartre prostitutes, a surrealist painter's stepdaughter, and a crooked Corsican bar owner, and learns of "Big Ears"--the French "ear in the sky" that records telephonic and electronic communications for the security services. Identifying Jacques' murderer brings her closer to solving her own father's death, which still haunts her. She cannot rest until she finds out who was responsible.

A psychological thriller from the New York Times–bestselling author: "No one writes twisted, suspenseful novels quite like Sophie Hannah" (Liane Moriarty).Naomi Jenkins, a successful professional woman prone to panic attacks, has a terrible secret she's been keeping for three years. Also secret is Naomi's current relationship with Robert Haworth, who is married, albeit unhappily.When Robert doesn't show up for one of their trysts, Naomi fears for him—but the police don't take it seriously, since Robert's wife claims he isn't missing. Naomi is desperate, and comes up with a plan: If she convinces the police that Robert is a danger to others, they will have to track him down. Using details from her own troubled past, she spins a story for them—but twists and turns lie ahead that she never expected."Naomi's concern for her married lover's well-being grows when his wife insists he is fine, just away. Naomi...

Prizewinning writer Maryse Condé reimagines Emily Brontë's passionate novel as a tale of obsessive love between the "African" Razyé and Cathy, the mulatto daughter of the man who takes Razyé in and raises him, but whose treatment goads him into rebellious flight. Retaining the emotional power of the original, Condé shows the Caribbean society in the wake of emancipation.words : 102716

Aimée’s childhood friend, Laure, is a policewoman. Her partner, Jacques, has set up a meeting in Montmartre with an informer. When Laure reluctantly goes along as backup, Jacques is lured to an icy rooftop, where he is shot to death. Laure’s gun has been fired, gunpowder residue is found on her hands, and she is charged with her partner’s murder.The police close ranks against the alleged cop killer. Aimée is determined to clear Laure. In doing so, she encounters separatist terrorists, Montmartre prostitutes, a surrealist painter’s stepdaughter, a crooked Corsican bar owner, and learns of “Big Ears”—the French “ear in the sky” that records telephonic and electronic communications—which the Security Services monitor. Identifying Jacques’ murderer brings her closer to solving her own father’s death in an explosion in the Place Vendôme years earlier. It still haunts her. She cannot rest until she finds out who was responsible.Wörter : 87683

in un mondo senza luce, rischiarato appena dalle insegne al neon dei centri commerciali, che si svolge lavventura del giovane Chuck Deckle: Chuckie abbandona gli studi e si ritrova a New York, impegnato in unimprobabile carriera di macellaio. Sfortunatamente, sprovvisto della qualit fondamentale per esercitare il mestiere: non sa tagliare la carne. Cos, anzich farsi strada nel mondo del lavoro, percorrer gironi concentrici e discendenti del suo inferno personale, da una macelleria allaltra, da un licenziamento allaltro. Da Manhattan al Bronx, mentre attraversa New York sulla sua Volkswagen scassata, Chuck Deckle percorre il duro cammino di chi, per un motivo o per laltro, ha scelto di non stare in carreggiata.

Pauline Gedge. Includes Bibliographical References.

Demonic possession or psychic break? One of Esquire's Top 50 horror novels of all time delves deep into the terrifying consequences of losing control.'A perfect horror novel.'—Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda—a successful architect in a happy marriage—finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.The new voice in Amanda's head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. A book on demon possession suggests that the figure on the shore could be the demon Naamah, known to scholars of the Kabbalah as the second wife of Adam, who stole into his dreams and tricked him into fathering her child. Whatever the case, as the violence of her erratic behavior increases, Amanda knows that she must act to put her life right, or see it destroyed.This new edition of the cult classic features a brand new post-script by the author and an'Are You Possessed?'questionnaire.

<p>From the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, <i>A Working Stiff’s Manifesto</i>, comes this darkly entertaining first novel. Jake Skowran has been laid off from his job as a factory supervisor. The work he is offered is a lot less than legal, but he has little choice except to take it. He is going to carve off a piece of the economy or die trying.</p> <p>"Levison is the real deal . . . bracing, hilarious and dead on."—<i>The New York Times Book Review</i></p>

<p>1<br>  <br> Emaline searches the sky for storm clouds from the doorway<br> of the Victoria Inn. The man snoring at her feet grunts,<br> rolls over, and curls himself around an upturned bottle of<br> whiskey. She picks up her skirt, steps over him onto the<br> porch. Can’t predict the weather this time of year. Fools<br> even the wild flowers. Mistake three days of sunshine for<br> the start of May when one hard freeze will snap the petals<br> right off and kill the early batch of mosquitoes already<br> swarming.<br>  <br> Across the road, the chapel’s canvas roof sags like wet<br> clothes on a line. It won’t take another snow like the last.<br> Klein promised to fix the damn thing, but he’s probably knee<br> deep in the creek with the rest of them. It’s no wonder nobody<br> in these parts has struck pay dirt yet, what with their canvas<br> tents and frame cabins so easy to desert. Why would the earth<br> give up its gold just to be abandoned on rumor of another<br> strike? The soil is a shrewd old whore and has learned better<br> than to give her gold for free.<br>  <br> A person should have a solid foundation, Emaline always<br> says, some sort of permanence in her life, a place for luck to<br> grow. That’s why she’s insisting on having the chapel finished.<br> Nothing establishes a place like inviting God to stay. She<br> imagines a tidy steeple with a sensible wooden cross, a simple<br> oak pulpit and rows of sober pews. No stained glass. No<br> gaudy ornamentation. Save that for the Baptists who mistake<br> the sound of their own voices for the word of God. Behind<br> the chapel she pictures a cemetery with graves surrounded<br> by white picket fences to keep souls from drifting. Emaline<br> is tired of drifting. That’s how she thinks of it; not pioneering,<br> certainly not running, but drifting. True, Motherlode isn’t<br> much to look at. Not yet. But she has a feeling about the<br> place; call it intuition.<br>  <br> The ravine walls stand at attention on either side of her<br> valley and the cedars that brush the rim are a feathered fringe<br> in the glare of the afternoon sun. A movement up the road<br> catches her eye. She squints to see better.<br>  <br> “Preacher,” she says. The man at her feet grunts but doesn’t<br> move. Emaline nudges him with her toe. “John.” She kicks<br> him harder. Another grunt. “Goddamnit, John! Wake your<br> sorry ass up and look down the road.”<br>  <br> She reaches under him with her toe, lifts with all her might,<br> and John rolls sideways down the steps to land in a stupor<br> at the bottom. A stocky black man steps out of the building<br> behind her and stares in the direction of Emaline’s gaze.<br>  <br> “T’ain’t no one but Randall, missus. And his mule.”<br>  <br> “I can see who it is, Jed.” But her shoulders slump and<br> she lets out a breath, slowly, hoping Jed won’t notice. “And<br> don’t be calling me no missus.”<br>  <br> Jed crosses his arms in front of him and places his hand<br> to his chin, a common posture for him. It’s hard to tell whether<br> he’s deep in thought or simply hiding a smile. Emaline sits<br> down, knees apart on the steps above Preacher John and<br> glares back at Jed.<br>  <br> “Whatever you say, Miss Emaline,” he says, retreating into<br> the building just as another, smaller figure appears around<br> the mass of manzanita marking the edge of Motherlode.<br>  <br> * * *<br>  <br> “Randall, I tell you,” says Emaline, “if God ordered wine on<br> Sunday you’d bring it a week later Monday.”<br>  <br> “Now, Emaline,” says the muleteer. His beard hangs to his<br> waist and the tobacco stain blooming about his lips is the<br> only way she can locate exactly where the whiskers end and<br> his mouth begins. “You know I can’t make the wagon come.<br> Sacramento ain’t no closer now than it were a year ago – ’less<br> you want me to come without the molasses and the mail.”<br>  <br> Preacher John moans at her feet. She nudges him with her<br> toe for no other reason than to remind him she’s here. Sober<br> on Sundays, he’d said. At least he’s that, sober on Sundays.<br> She shakes her head and is happy to let Randall believe this<br> gesture is meant for him. She heaves herself from the steps<br> and Randall stumbles back, regains himself. The mule behind<br> haws its pleasure, or displeasure – hard to tell with mules –<br> and the sound ricochets off the ravine walls and falls below<br> the squawk of the scrub jays.<br>  <br> “Dangerous work I’m doing,” says Randall. He rubs his<br> toe in the dirt. He spits. The mule brays again, louder this<br> time. “Man’s – A man’s gotta be careful, take his time.”<br>  <br> “Careful? How much time you lose playing five-card<br> between Sac’ town and Grass Valley?” She’s yelling now above<br> the mule and she can see its ears rotating, its neck straining<br> to look behind.<br>  <br> “Ah hell, Emaline.”<br>  <br> “Ah hell, nothin’ . . .” Her voice trails off. She pinches her<br> eyes to slits, thrusts her neck forward to see what the mule sees.<br>  <br> “Who are you?” Emaline says. The mule goes quiet.<br>  <br> The stranger shifts under his load, pulls his duster hat low<br> as if he could hide there beneath it, as if my piss-poor eyes<br> can see anything but his shape anyway, she thinks. She can<br> see that he’s small. Narrow shoulders, his pack just about as<br> wide as his whole back, his trousers and flannel draping over<br> him like they have only bone to cling to. She’s known too<br> many men to judge this one’s threat by his size.<br>  <br> “Randall?” she asks.<br>  <br> “Hell if I know.” He shrugs, but seems content that he is<br> no longer her focus.<br>  <br> The mule’s ears rotate as if it too is waiting for a response,<br> and the stranger seems to shrink down inside of himself in<br> a way that raises the hairs on the back of Emaline’s neck.<br> The mule shifts its weight foot to foot, shakes its halter.<br>  <br> “I’m talking to you! Who are you?” Emaline charges<br> forward and the mule rears its ornery self, eyes wild as if<br> she’d struck the damn thing. Packages jar from the animal’s<br> back and slap the ground. Some burst open and precious<br> flour thickens the air and powders the red mud of the road.<br> Randall’s beard trails behind him as he hustles after the frenzied<br> animal, tripping in a wake of pinto beans and hollering,<br> “Goddamn you, Contrary Julie!” Red-speckled hens poke<br> their heads round the side of the inn, pick up their skirts and<br> run toward the mess of oats and beans. Scrub jays descend<br> in blue streaks to scold and scratch. Emaline bustles about<br> the muddy road, shooing chickens, flailing at jays, salvaging<br> what she can: a sack of potatoes, a side of salt pork. By the<br> time she charges back to the stranger she’s sweated clean<br> through her dress. At least, she thinks, catching her breath,<br> at least he’s seen fit to pick up a sack of flour. He holds it<br> there like a shield between them.<br>  <br> “I suppose you can pay for these goods?” No response.<br> Up the road, beyond the grove of manzanita, the echoes of<br> a braying mule and a swearing man do battle. “I don’t take<br> credit nor scrip, and – Look at me.” Small black eyes peek<br> out beneath the duster hat. “And I ain’t here to nursemaid<br> no runaway mamma’s boy. Your name, if you got one?”<br>  <br> But his mouth pops closed. Flour sifts from his shoulders<br> as he rummages in a small pouch at his waist.<br>  <br> “Alex?” he says, but it sounds like a question, a question<br> she forgets when he holds out what looks to be a gold coin,<br> San Francisco mint – double eagle, no less. The potatoes thump<br> to the ground. She snatches the coin. Such a pleasing weight,<br> twenty dollars. She gives it a bite, finds herself softening.<br>  <br> “Well, Alex,” she says, placing the coin in her dress pocket,<br> patting it twice, “you got the voice of a choirboy.”<br>  <br>  <br> “Haven’t got a sign up yet,” says the woman, closing the<br> door firmly behind her. Her voice fills every inch of space<br> her body leaves open and she moves with an agility surprising<br> and a little frightening in such a large woman. “But that’s<br> what I call her – the Victoria Inn.”<br>  <br> She thumps the pork and potatoes on a plank table, or<br> rather a series of tables held as one by a grubby cloth. Alex<br> follows suit with the sack of flour and a puff of white escapes.<br>  <br> “Victoria, like the Queen,” the woman says. She dusts her<br> hands on her apron and motions with her head to the waterstained<br> portrait of a crowned woman on the opposite wall.<br>  <br> Two windows of distorting mason glass offer the only light<br> in the room and the painting’s features are indistinct. The<br> face of a youthful older woman, Alex thinks, or an aged<br> young woman, with round cheeks to match her chin.<br>  <br> A ramshackle bar traverses one corner and three-legged<br> stools are scattered about. It smells of alcohol, yeast and<br> strong burned coffee, and Alex’s stomach grumbles with<br> hunger, clearly not the response the woman is waiting for.<br>  <br> Emaline puffs a curl from her eyes. It catches in the frizzy<br> halo framing her angular face. She turns on her heel and<br> charges up the stairwell into a shaft of hallway light without<br> pausing to see if Alex follows. She stops by one of eight<br> doors in the narrow corridor, her hand on the latch, and<br> squints in the same probing manner she used on the muleteer,<br> the scowl on her face made deeper by crease lines like<br> poorly healed scars.<br>  <br> Alex pulls the duster hat low, makes an effort to look aloof,<br> would have spit as the muleteer had done if they hadn’t been<br> inside.<br>  <br> No one, yet, has taken her for a girl. No one, yet, has<br> looked this closely.<br>  <br> “You’re from where, you say?”<br>  <br> Alex hadn’t said, and is so relieved by the question she<br> fails to answer.<br>  <br> “That’s a question,” says the woman.<br>  <br> “Pennsylvania.”<br>  <br> “Don’t talk much, do you?”<br>  <br>  <br> Alone in the room, the darkness is complete and endless,<br> even as Alex feels the closeness of the walls, the low ceiling.<br> Little by little her eyes adjust and the corners of the room<br> take shape. The bed smells sharply of cedar. The only other<br> furniture is a three-legged stool resting at a slant on the<br> uneven floorboards. There is no window, no need for<br> curtains; a single candle burned nearly to the nub sits on<br> the floor by the bed. The woman’s heavy steps descend the<br> stairs. Victoria, like the Queen, Alex thinks, and sees again<br> the whitewash peeling down the inn’s face, the unpainted<br> balusters, the ornamental balcony propped precariously over<br> the porch. She eases down to draw a line in the dust with<br> her finger. A few days is all she needs, to rest, to think.<br>  <br> How far had she come since stepping off the steamer into<br> the frenzied chaos of the Marysville docks? Was it only three<br> days ago that she’d stood there on the river bank amid that<br> sea of canvas sacks, barrels and boxes? Delicate chairs, end<br> tables and bookshelves looked out of place perched alongside<br> kegs of black powder, stacks of picks and shovels, piles<br> of hydraulic tubing coiled like earthworms. Alex pulled her<br> duster hat low, avoiding the eyes of the men scurrying back<br> and forth, hauling skeins of fabric and barrels of whiskey.<br> She wanted to be back on the boat, surrounded by the hissing<br> blast of steam and the clank of pistons, away from cursing<br> muleteers and braying donkeys and important-looking men<br> dressed in black. But after Marysville the river split in two,<br> the Feather shooting north, the Yuba branching east, both<br> too rough for riverboats.<br>  <br> Alex followed the Yuba because it sounded foreign and far<br> away from San Francisco, because those men she had seen<br> on the boat – lawmen, perhaps, with their trimmed mustaches,<br> their pressed black trousers – were heading north. She’d joined<br> the line of wagons rolling east, kept her head low, spoken to<br> no one, and stopped briefly at a shanty store on the edge of<br> town. It was here she’d learned of her need for boots.<br>  <br> “Best there is,” the merchant claimed, stroking the blackened<br> leather with an arm that ended in a rounded stump of<br> flesh. As he spoke, he gestured with the arm, as if forgetting<br> his fingers were gone. “Made special for a colonel. Small<br> man – they all are. Killed by Comanche, ’fending women and<br> children. For you, forty dollars. Boy don’t deserve boots like<br> this. A man’s boots. War hero’s . . .”<br>  <br> Gaps in the wall behind him let in streamers of light and<br> the roof shuddered with every gust of wind.<br>  <br> “The hell kinda shoes are those? You steal ’em off your<br> mama’s feet? Won’t last the week. Not half a week,” said the<br> merchant. His cackle turned to a cough. Alex stepped back.<br>  <br> “Wait now, thirty dollars then,” said the man. “Can’t<br> believe I’m saying it – three kids and a wife back home . . .”<br> He bowed his head, rubbed his salt-and-pepper beard with<br> his good hand. “Should just save ’em for my son, but with<br> his one leg, won’t do much good, see.”<br>  <br> Alex said nothing, fearing the high pitch of her voice. She<br> shook her head no, turned to leave.<br>  <br> “Goddamn! Goddamn, twenty dollars,” said the merchant,<br> dangling the boots from his stump by the laces.<br>  <br>  <br> She had rested in thickets, when she rested at all, and<br> followed the twisted path of the Yuba to Rough and Ready,<br> a town whose citizens had looked both rough and ready for<br> all manner of mischief, staring openly at any passers-by as<br> if assessing their worth. Here she bought a loaf of bread<br> and a gold pan from what could have been the same grizzled<br> merchant, apart from the missing arm. She put the<br> bread in her pack and the pan under her arm as if it strengthened<br> her disguise, as if gold had been the reason she’d come<br> to California, as if, when she turned off on to a narrow<br> road to the northeast, she was confident of a destination.<br>  <br> The land became steeper, the earth darkened to an iron<br> red. Lonely scrub oaks in tall grass had long since given way<br> to ferns and evergreens; the towering pines pinched off the<br> sky and on the crest of every hill she found the gleaming<br> teeth of the Sierra Nevadas growing larger, more menacing.<br> By the time the trail split again – one tail coiling its way<br> toward those mountains, the other dipping down into a<br> valley – her legs were quivering protest with every step, her<br> feet throbbed, her shoulders ached. All of her bread was eaten,<br> her canteen empty, and the coil of smoke snaking its way<br> from the valley floor called to her above the distant murmur<br> of running water and the coughing protest of a donkey.<br>  <br>  <br> The gold pan in her pack clangs against the floor as she sits.<br> She frees herself from the straps, rolls her shoulders front to<br> back. Her leg muscles have already begun to tighten, but her<br> body feels numb, distant – as foreign as the river she’d<br> followed. She pulls her shirtsleeves to her elbows, straightens<br> her arms in front of her to find the bruises there mere smudges<br> in the dim light. As if a bit of soap and water could wash<br> them clean, she thinks, but she doesn’t touch them. She doesn’t<br> touch the knots on her lower back or just below her collarbone.<br> She can feel her heartbeat pounding in the blisters on<br> her feet. She loosens her bootlaces, peels away the woolen<br> sock. The skin of her heel is pregnant with white fluid, but<br> disappointingly intact. She wants blood, proof of pain.<br>  <br> Below, a door opens and closes, and male voices seep<br> through the floorboards.<br>  <br> “Alex,” she says to herself. The voice of a choirboy. She<br> pulls her chin into her neck, scrunching her vocal cords.<br> “Alex,” she says again, and is still practicing when a black<br> man sticks his head through the door.<br>  <br> “You don’t come now, it’ll be gone. They ain’t fixin’ to<br> wait for you.”<br>  <br>  <br> Downstairs, she finds herself trapped by the eyes of eight men<br> hunched around the plank table, their expressions masked by<br> facial hair and layers of dirt. The black man sits down opposite<br> the head, but no one seems the least surprised by his boldness.<br> The only sound is heavy breathing and the silence pricks<br> the hairs on her arms. She tries to sit and finds a muddy boot<br> planted on the only unoccupied stool. The owner’s beard is<br> yellow and a twisted smirk reveals teeth of the same color.<br>  <br> A giant oak of a man to Muddy Boots’s right lets out a<br> long curving whistle that rises upward to the low-beam ceiling<br> and spills in a puddle on the floor. The kitchen door bangs<br> open and the woman bustles through with a large iron pot.<br>  <br> “Look out,” she says, brushing Alex aside, and slams the<br> pot on the table. Muddy Boots moves his feet.<br>  <br> “You need an invitation?” she asks. Alex sits, feels her cheeks<br> flush hot.<br>  <br> “All right, Preacher,” says the woman.<br>  <br> “Dearly Beloved,” says a dark-haired man with just a hint<br> of whiskey in his voice. He stands, as if it just occurred to<br> him to do so, and runs his hands up and down his flannel.<br> His eyeballs search for words beneath his lids and his hands<br> clasp so tightly his knuckles show white. “We are gathered<br> here today, Lord, to thank you for your wondrous bounty.”<br>  <br> “’Cept when it comes to gold,” says a baritone to Alex’s<br> right; the whistler, she thinks. A low chuckle catches, then<br> dies. She bows her head, but lets her eyes dart to the pot<br> mid-table. A large round loaf of bread sweats under a cloth<br> and she begs her stomach silent.<br>  <br> “And lead us not into temptation, Lord. No, lead us far<br> from temptation, our Father who art in heaven. We hallow<br> thy name, giving glory, Lord. Thanks for health, we ask for<br> wealth. Hallelujah, let’s eat.”<br>  <br> Preacher’s plate is half empty before Alex is allowed to<br> scrape the bottom of the iron pot for the last chunks of<br> rabbit stew. What bread there was has already been<br> snatched.<br>  <br> “Don’t get used to it, boys,” says Emaline. Her tone is<br> thick with disappointment, and men pause mid-chew to listen.<br> “Be cinching our belts by the end of the week, thanks to our<br> new friend here.”<br>  <br> The serving spoon and nine faces point in Alex’s direction.<br> Alex looks down at her plate. Alex chews. She has to tell<br> herself to do these things.<br>  <br> “But damned if he ain’t offered to buy drinks all round to<br> make up for it!”<br>  <br> “Attaboy, son,” says the baritone and slaps her on the<br> back, propelling the chunk of rabbit meat across the table<br> and into the bowl of a beardless man with expressionless<br> gray eyes. A drooping auburn mustache curtains his thin lips<br> and frames his cleft chin.<br>  <br> “No forgiveness like whiskey. Ain’t that right, Preacher?”<br> The baritone stands, nearly brushing his head on the crossbeam.<br> A grin fills his face. Alex flinches, afraid there’s another<br> slap coming, good natured though the first one seemed. The<br> mustache man fishes with both fingers for Alex’s meat in his<br> stew. His eyes flit to Alex and away.<br>  <br> “Don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” the baritone<br> says. “Mighty hard to be polite on an empty stomach,<br> you know. No excuse, mind you, but the truth. I ’spect you<br> met Preacher John yonder, but don’t ask him to remember<br> it. The one-eyed fella next to you is Micah Daniels, also a<br> resident here at the Victoria. Owns a sore excuse for a general<br> store and assay office just down the walk. Claims he can<br> figure fine, but you watch him careful when he’s weighing<br> your gold. Been known to lighten the load some, yah know<br> what I mean, and grows his fingernails long enough to get<br> two dollars in one pinch of gold dust.<br>  <br> “Harry Reynolds there lives in the first cabin as you come<br> into town, along with good Mr. Fred Henderson, selfproclaimed<br> expert on rocks, animals, plants and all things<br> natural. Next to him is our German friend Klein, master<br> builder and jack-of-all-trades – when he feels like doing ’em.<br> Got no other name, so don’t go asking him. Just Klein. You<br> met Jed –” he nods to the black man – “and Emaline; Miss<br> Emaline, if you know what’s good for you.<br>  <br> “My name is Samson Limpkin, but most call me Limpy<br> on account of, well, let’s say a crooked limb. And the man<br> you so graciously shared your stew with –” he nods to the<br> mustache man – “is my cousin, David Trellona, fresh out of<br> Cornwall and thinkin’ he knows more about mining than<br> those Empire folks over in Grass Valley. Why work like a<br> dog for some other man? Aye, Dave. Why indeed?”<br>  <br> Limpy takes a swig from his cup, wipes his mouth with<br> the back of his hand, and with the same hand points at<br> Muddy Boots, still bent over his bowl as if intent on<br> ignoring him.<br>  <br> “And that there is John Thomas. Not much on manners,<br> but . . . well, not much on anything.”<br>  <br> “Damn you, Limpy,” says Muddy Boots, his mouth full of<br> food.<br>  <br> Alex can feel the big man’s breath down her neck. He pulls<br> a gold pouch from his pocket, holds it like an egg in the palm<br> of his hand.<br>  <br> “And you are . . . ?” Limpy asks.<br>  <br> The curve of Emaline’s brow, the curl of her lips, tells Alex<br> these men know very well the name she gave.<br>  <br> “A simple question, son,” says Limpy. “Name?”<br>  <br> Men lean forward, listening, and names and faces swim as<br> mismatched pairs through Alex’s mind. She pulls her head<br> into her neck, says as deeply as she can manage:<br>  <br> “Alex.”<br>  <br> “Hah!” says Limpy, his paw slamming down again, this<br> time square on her back, forcing all the air from her chest.<br> “Eighteen, my ass. Who said eighteen? John Thomas, trying<br> to hide? Alex what?”<br>  <br> “Shee-it,” says Micah, thumping a small pouch of gold on<br> the table and giving Alex a close look at the concave indention<br> of skin where his left eye should be.<br>  <br> “Why thank you, Micah. Alex what?” Limpy asks again.<br> Outside, a scrub jay screams the sun down.<br>  <br> “Ford?” Alex says, hearing the doubt in her own voice.<br> Emaline’s arms cross before her and her eyes narrow to slits,<br> but Limpy doesn’t seem to notice.<br>  <br> “Alex Ford,” he says. “Solid name. No more than sixteen,<br> if that. Pay up.” Leather pouches thump on the table. “Pay<br> up, John Thomas,” says Limpy.<br>  <br> “Now just hold on a goddamn minute,” John Thomas says,<br> his fair skin turning the red of Micah’s empty eye socket. “I’ll<br> pay you later.”<br>  <br> “My ass.”<br>  <br> “Hell yes, your ass – you calling me a liar?”<br>  <br> “Both of you better sit yourselves right back down,” says<br> Emaline, barely raising her voice. “Y’all know I don’t permit<br> no gambling at the dinner table. And you, Alex –” the serving<br> spoon again jabs her direction – “finish up so I can get to<br> getting done with dinner.”<br>  <br>  <br> With the plank tables separated, the room feels smaller,<br> cluttered. The ramshackle bar at the far end of the room<br> now dominates, the counter lined with tin cups and a few<br> glass canning jars, and now the elbows of Limpy and the<br> one-eyed Micah. Bloated whiskey jugs on shelves behind<br> the bar are blurred in the orange lamplight and look, to<br> Alex, like a row of rotund women. Several card games<br> are already in progress when Alex eases her way up the<br> stairs.<br>  <br> “Hey,” says Emaline, pushing through the kitchen door.<br> She thumps a stool down next to her own. “Stick a while.”<br>  <br> And something, the weight of her filling that doorway,<br> or the calm authority in her voice, triggers an old habit of<br> obedience. Alex sits, but remains above on the stairwell with<br> her chin tucked into her knees. She hadn’t liked the suspicious<br> glances the woman had been casting through dinner.<br> She prays the woman’s eyes are as poor as they seem.<br>  <br> “Whatever suits you,” says Emaline, dismissing her with<br> a wave of the hand.<br>  <br> “’Scuse me, gents, Emaline . . .” Limpy’s voice and body<br> rise as one from the bar and the saloon goes silent. “A toast.<br> To Alex and his gentle way with mules. May his way with<br> women be less costly, but just as exciting!”<br>  <br> He tips his glass, leads a collective swallow, motions to<br> Jed to fill his cup again. “Now don’t you dare smile there,<br> Alex, don’t.” Alex does not feel like smiling, makes no<br> attempt to smile. Six coins left, she thinks. She’d felt so rich<br> with twelve.<br>  <br> “And speaking of costly,” says Limpy, downing the next<br> glass, “how ’bout it Emaline? Nearly hit it today. Sho’ ’nough<br> pay dirt. Pay you double price. I say I’ll pay you double,<br> tomorrow –”<br>  <br> “Now hold on there, Limp. You know the woman doesn’t<br> take credit, and I’m a hell of a lot prettier than you anyway –<br> and richer,” says Micah, winking his one eye.<br>  <br> “The hell –”<br>  <br> “And I can hold my liquor.”<br>  <br> Alex is only vaguely aware of what they’re saying. The rest<br> of their banter is lost beneath the groan of the accordion in<br> the corner – a tune that just might be “The Old Oaken<br> Bucket” or “Clementine,” or a wobbly combination of the<br> two – and as if called by this racket, miners begin to trickle<br> into the saloon. No less than thirty, if she had a head to<br> count, and she doubts whether some of those mud-stained<br> canvas pants and holey flannels had ever been, or would ever<br> be washed. It would certainly ease the competing stench of<br> rotting canvas, stale tobacco, whiskey. The men lean on the<br> bar and against the walls and against each other. They swear<br> and laugh with their mouths wide open, chew plugs of<br> tobacco, smoke cob pipes, and soon the air is thick and yellow.<br> Their hands stroke leather pouches of gold dust, arrange and<br> rearrange dog-eared playing cards, fiddle with the worn visors<br> of discolored hats and punctuate speech with herky-jerky<br> movements in the air. To Alex they are a collection of parts,<br> of hands, feet and hats, interchangeable with a few exceptions:<br> John Thomas; the big man, Limpy; the black man, Jed;<br> one-eyed Micah; the mustache man, David, whose broadangled<br> shoulders give him a stocky compact appearance next<br> to Limpy, even as he tops Micah by inches.<br>  <br> And there, sitting apart from the rest by the kitchen door,<br> is Emaline. In her lap, a pair of trousers, needle, thread. Her<br> fingers are busy, but she glances down only so often at her<br> work.<br>  <br> Her weight is not so much the round softness of other<br> women Alex has known, or the wire sinew of her gran.<br> Emaline is solid, with wide, square shoulders and thick veintracked<br> forearms. A fringe of dark hair feathers her upper<br> lip. Her only softness appears to be her generous bosom that<br> strains the front of her dress like mounds of rising sourdough.<br> Emaline’s hands work the cloth. Deft, confident movements,<br> and Alex finds her fingers moving of their own accord, with<br> life and memory of their own.<br>  <br> She forces her hands to fists, stuffs them in her pockets.<br> Gran, too, could sew by feel alone, her fingers unconscious<br> of themselves and of the bent-wire body to which they were<br> attached. Gran was never so patient with Alex as she was<br> with cloth. “After three boys,” she liked to say, “three foolish,<br> foolish boys, God at least could have given me a proper<br> granddaughter.”<br>  <br> Proper, Alex thinks. What would Gran think of her now,<br> after all she’s seen? After what she’s done? She rises unnoticed,<br> climbs the stairs. Thigh muscles catch and pull with<br> every step. She slips across the hallway and closes the door<br> of the dark little room behind her.</p><br><br><br><i>From the Trade Paperback edition.</i> <BR><BR><i>Continues...</i> <!-- copyright notice --> <br></pre> <blockquote><hr noshade size='1'><font size='-2'> Excerpted from <b>Crown of Dust</b> by <b>Mary Volmer</b> Copyright © 2010 by Mary Volmer. Excerpted by permission of Soho Press, a division of Random House, Inc.<br> All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.<br>Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Two bodies are discovered at an address on the Bloody Angle, Chinatown's historic Tong battleground. NYPD Detective Jack Yu's investigation takes him across the country to another Chinatown, this one in Seattle, in pursuit of a cold-blooded Chinese American gangster and a mysterious Hong Kong femme fatale.From the Hardcover edition.

"An early morning murder in the park of a quiet country town in Australia. Four years later, Marion must find out who killed her brother. The police, the press and ordinary people have lost interest in the case, unable to determine which of two teenage girls was the culprit." "Sandra and Peta met each other while hitchhiking across Australia. They travelled together for a short time. Each accused the other of stabbing the boy in the park; each remains tarnished by suspicion, but free from prosecution.". "To resolve this intolerable state of affairs, Marion seeks the help of Jefferson Shields - she's been told that he solves puzzles. This one is a real challenge."--BOOK JACKET.

Lyon, 1942. Two days before Christmas, a cinema is set on fire and one hundred and eighty-three Frenchmen, women and children die in the blaze. The investigative team of St-Cyr of the Surete and Kohler of the Gestapo is dispatched to catch the arsonist. These two policemen, both decent men, have been paired by their superiors to fight common crime in a time when officially-sanctioned crime on a grand scale is ignored. Kohler, a former Munich detective, carries their guns but is only supposed to let St-Cyr have his when there is immediate danger. St-Cyr, a French patriot, tries to protect his countrymen from the Occupiers while he is investigating "ordinary" crimes, but since the Gestapo is in charge of all police matters, he must tread a fine line. St-Cyr and Kohler must determine whether this act of arson is linked to an earlier series of fires in three German cities. Or might it have resulted from a Resistance plot? Yet several members of the Resistance died in the flames. Then was it a Nazi trap, gone awry? Or is the killer a common pyromaniac who kills for sexual thrills and release? The firebug has been given the name of Salamander. To uncover his (or her) identity, the team must solve several further murders, overcoming obstacles erected not only by Gestapo Headquarters in Berlin but by the Bishop of Lyon, members of the local Establishment, and by the notorious Klaus Barbie.

A haunting, powerful novel about the power of the land and the passions of people trying to make it their own.One spring day in late 1992, when William was halfway between his eighth birthday and his ninth, he looked out from the back verandah of his home and saw, huge in the sky, the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. He stared at it, wondering. The thunderhead was dirty black, streaked with billows of grey. It rolled and boiled as it climbed into the clear blue day, casting a vast shadow upon the hills beyond. But there was no sound, no rumble of an explosion. William was aware of the smell of burning . . . but it was a good smell, a familiar smell. The smell of grass, of wheat, of the farm itself.His father dead by fire and his mother plagued by demons of her own, William is cast upon the charity of his unknown uncle - an embittered old man encamped in the ruins of a once great station homestead, Kuran House. It's a baffling and sinister new world for the boy, a place of decay and secret histories. His uncle is obsessed by a long life of decline and by a dark quest for revival, his mother is desperate for a wealth and security she has never known, and all their hopes it seems come to rest upon William's young shoulders. But as the past and present of Kuran Station unravel and merge together, the price of that inheritance may prove to be the downfall of them all. The White Earth is a haunting, disturbing and cautionary tale.'The novel is beautifully structured, filled with parallels and reverberations which come back to haunt and illuminate the reader as the story unfolds.' - Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser'A great Australian story embracing national themes that should engage us all.' - Lucy Clark, The Sunday Telegraph

Devastated by her lover's death in an explosion--on the same day an indigent student was shot and killed in sleepy Bratislava--Jana Mantiova is transferred to The Hague, headquarters of the international police force Europol. On the flight she encounters a retired magician, the dead student's uncle, who is determined to help Jana investigate his nephew's death. And his help is indeed needed as Jana faces an international criminal conspiracy emanating from Europol itself

Slough House is a dumping ground for British intelligence agents who’ve screwed up a case in any number of ways—by leaving a secret file on a train or blowing a surveillance. River Carter, one such “slow horse,” is bitter about his failure and about his tedious assignment transcribing cell phone conversations. When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, River sees an opportunity to redeem himself. Is the victim who he first appears to be? And what’s the kidnappers’ connection with a disgraced journalist? As the clock ticks on the execution, River finds that everyone has his own agenda.From Publishers WeeklyBanished to London's Slough House—the junkyard for disgraced MI5 agents—for botching a high-profile training exercise, River Cartwright spends his days sifting through garbage and transcribing phone conversations in Herron's riveting spy thriller. His boss, Jackson Lamb, who governs Slough House as if it's his own kingdom, makes sure the slow horses know they'll never get back to high-profile work at Regent's Park. River, bored with his tedious assignments, discovers that one of his fellow agents has been lifting information from Robert Hobden, a well-known journalist. When a Muslim teenager is kidnapped and a video promising to decapitate him appears online, River wonders if it's connected to Hobden, who has ties to the extremist British Patriotic Party. Herron (Smoke & Whispers) avoids the easy cliché of misfits banding together to right a wrong, instead painting his slow horses as complex characters who are just as fallible as their faster counterparts. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistSlough House is an “administrative oubliette” for British intelligence. Spooks who have screwed up in a big way are assigned there, and no one has ever been returned to real service. In spook speak, the denizens of Slough House are Slow Horses, objects of scorn, “fridge magnets.” River Cartwright, the ostensible protagonist of this crackling good spy thriller-farce, wants to be the first Slow Horse to force his own resurrection to MI5, and he sees his chance when an apparently inept right-wing group kidnaps a Pakistani youth and threatens to behead him on a live webcast. Saying more about the plot might spoil the fun. Herron’s sixth novel is filled with acidic wit and engaging misdirection, and readers will need to adjust to his narrative style; but the rewards are great. Slow Horses is a fine thriller with enough suspense, double-dealing, and mayhem for thriller devotees; but it’s also a wonderfully funny, farcical, deeply cynical skewering of politics, bureaucrats, turf wars, and the Great Game. --Thomas Gaughan

Pauline Gedge. Includes Bibliographical References.

Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc strives to clear the name of a childhood friend, now a policewoman, who's charged with shooting her partner.Aimée Leduc is having a bad day. First, she comes home from work at her Paris detective agency to learn that her boyfriend is leaving her. She goes out for a drink with her friend Laure, a police officer, but Laure’s patrol partner, Jacques, interrupts, saying he needs to talk to Laure urgently. The two leave the bar, and when they don’t return, Aimée follows Laure’s path and finds her sprawled on a snowy rooftop, not far from Jacques, who is bleeding from a fatal gunshot wound.When the police arrive, they arrest Laure for murder. No one is interested in helping Aimée figure out the truth. As she chases down increasingly dangerous leads in the effort to free her friend, Aimée stumbles into a web of Corsican nationalists, separatists, gangsters, and artists. Could Jacques’s murder and Laure’s arrest be part of a much bigger cover-up? From Publishers Weekly Intrepid Aimée Leduc strives to clear the name of a childhood friend, policewoman Laure Rousseau, who's charged with shooting her partner to death, in Black's chilling sixth novel to feature the Paris PI (after 2005's Murder in Clichy). Aimée knows the solution to proving Laure's innocence lies somewhere in the hilltop maze of the seedy Montmartre neighborhood—perhaps with a boy who says he witnessed the murder, or an aging prostitute, or any of a number of toughs or even Corsican separatists. Set in January 1995, the book vividly depicts a gritty, working-class part of Paris where rents don't always get paid and not everyone has a bed for the night. Black succeeds in making the reader feel the damp, the snow, the fear. In the process of helping Laure, Aimée not only resolves a past police scandal involving her dead father but gains in compassion and wisdom. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistBlack continue

Vlado Petric is a homicide investigator in war-torn Sarajevo. When he encounters an unidentified body near “sniper alley,” he realizes that it is the body of Esmir Vitas, chief of the Interior Ministry's special police, and that Vitas has been killed not by any sniper's aim but by a bullet fired at almost pointblank range. Searching for the killer in this “city of murderers,” Petric finds himself drawn into a conspiracy, the scope of which goes beyond anything he could possibly have imagined.Lie in the Dark brilliantly renders the fragmented society and underworld of Sarajevo at war—the freelancing gangsters, guilty bystanders, the drop-in foreign correspondents, and the bureaucrats frightened for their jobs and very lives. It weaves through this torn cityscape the alienation and terror of one man's desperate and deadly pursuit of bad people in an even worse place.