戏剧与现实交错的杰作在雷格纳·希尔部推理小说《喜欢交际的女人》里，他创造的一对独特的侦探搭档也首度登场。一位是心宽体胖、好色贪怀、爱斗嘴耍活宝的刑事主任达尔齐尔，另一位则是教养优雅、学识丰富的警官帕斯科。 自从柯南·道尔创造了华生医生作为神探福尔摩斯的搭档之后，推理小说家就经常使用这种对比手法，用一位“次要而平凡”的角色来衬托神探的不凡。这些二号人物有时候是侦探的朋友，有时候是记者，有时候是助手或忠仆，但多半不脱烘托主角的功能。但雷格纳·希尔采取了另外一种途径：他让侦探的搭档有能力也有作用，甚至是重要的互补，没有对方彼此都不是完整的；他又让两人的文化特质与思考形态南辕北辙，比较与冲突的趣味因而源源不绝。仅此一项，就是希尔对推理小说的重大贡献。 希尔的小说结构复杂紧凑，在我们
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The three classic novelspublished here in one volume are rich with the crisp prose, subtlecharacters, and intricate plots that made Dashiell Hammett one ofthe most admired writers of the twentieth century. A one-timedetective and a master of deft understatement, Hammett virtuallyinvented the hard-boiled crime novel. In "The Maltese Falcon," SamSpade, a private eye with his own solitary code of ethics, tangleswith a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at thedrop of a dime. "The Thin Man" introduces Hammett's wittiestcreations, Nick and Nora Charles, who solve homicides in betweenwisecracks and martinis. And in "Red Harvest," Hammett's anonymoustough-guy detective, the Continental Op, takes on the entire townof Poisonville in a deadly war against corruption. "DashiellHammett is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hellof a writer."--"Boston Globe" "Hammett was spare, hard-boiled, buthe did over and over what only the best writers can ever do.
GAME OF THRONES: A NEW ORIGINAL SERIES, NOWON HBO. Dubbed "the American Tolkien" by "Time" magazine, George R.R. Martin has earned international acclaim for his monumental cycleof epic fantasy. Now the #1 "New York Times" bestselling authordelivers the fifth book in his landmark series--as both familiarfaces and surprising new forces vie for a foothold in a fragmentedempire. A DANCE WITH DRAGONSA SONG OF ICE AND FIRE: BOOK FIVE Inthe aftermath of a colossal battle, the future of the SevenKingdoms hangs in the balance--beset by newly emerging threats fromevery direction. In the east, Daenerys Targaryen, the last scion ofHouse Targaryen, rules with her three dragons as queen of a citybuilt on dust and death. But Daenerys has thousands of enemies, andmany have set out to find her. As they gather, one young manembarks upon his own quest for the queen, with an entirelydifferent goal in mind. Fleeing from Westeros with a price on hishead, Tyrion Lannister, too, is making his way to Daenerys. But hisnewest alli
Every day we produce loads of data about ourselves simply byliving in the modern world: we click web pages, shop with creditcards, and make cell phone calls. Companies like Yahoo and Googleare harvesting an average of 2,500 details about each of us everymonth. Who is looking at this data and what are they doing with it?Journalist Stephen Baker explores these questions and provides uswith a fascinating guide to the world we're entering--and to thepeople controlling that world. The Numerati have infiltrated everyrealm of human affairs, profiling us as workers, shoppers, voters,potential terrorists--and lovers. The implications are vast.Privacy evaporates. Our bosses can monitor our every move.Retailers can better tempt us to make impulse buys. But theNumerati can also work on our behalf, diagnosing an illness beforewe're aware of the symptoms, or even helping us find our soul mate.Entertaining and enlightening, "The Numerati" shows how a powerfulnew endeavor--the mathematical modeling of humanity--will t
Kate Daniels cleans up the paranormal problems no one else wantsto deal with-especially if they involve Atlanta's shapeshiftingcommunity. And now there's a new player in town-a foe that may be too much foreven Kate and Curran, the Lord of the Beasts, to handle. Becausethis time, Kate will be taking on family.
When Angel is discovered by a model agent, her life changes for ever. Young, beautiful and sexy, she seems destined for a successful career and, very quickly, the glitzy world of celebrity fame and riches becomes her new home. But then she meets Mickey, the lead singer of a boy band, who is as irresistible as he is dangerous,and Angel reatises that a rising star can just as quickly fall ……
Oliver Twist was Dickens's second novel and one of his darkest, dealing with burglary, kidnapping, child abuse, prostitution, and murder. Alongside this gallery of horrors are the corrupt and incompetent institutions of 19th-century England set up to address social problems and instead making them worse. The author's moral indignation drives the creation of some of his most memorably grotesque characters: squirming, vile Fagin; brutal Bill Sykes; the brooding, sickly Monks; and Bumble, the pompous and incorrigibly dense beadle. Clearly, a reading of this work must carry the author's passionate narrative voice while being flexible and broad enough to define the wide range of character voices suggested by the text. John Wells's capable but bland reading only suggests the rich possibilities of the material. Restraint and Dickens simply don't go together. The abridgment deftly and seamlessly manages to deliver all major characters and plot lines, but there are many superior audiobook versions of this material, bo
Do you believe in synchronicity? Can one breath of wind changemany lives across space and time? A prisoner spins a playing cardinto a somersault, stirring a wind that becomes a tornado thattakes off the roof of a church in nearby Normal, Illinois.Elizabeth Wildhack is born in that church and someday she will meetthat prisoner, a man named Diablo, on the streets of NewOrleans--where a hurricane-like Great White Spot hovers off thecoast. But how is it all interconnected? And what does it have todo with a time-traveling serf and a secret society whose motto is"Walk away"?
Cerise Mar and her clan are cash poor but land rich, claiminga large swathe of the Mire, the Edge swamplands. When her parentsvanish, her clan's long-time rivals are suspect. But all is not asit seems. Two nations of the Weird are waging a cold war fought by feintand espionage, and their conflict is about to spill over into theEdge-and Cerise's life.
From award-winning author Tami Hoag comes a warm, movingstory of two cultures in conflict and two hearts in love. Matt Thorne had come to his sister's rural inn to recover from aninjury far from the city and his fast-paced life as an emergencyroom physician. Drifting between sleep and waking, Matt didn'ttrust his eyes when he saw the young woman who sat at his bedsidein her plain cotton dress and apron, her chestnut hair tuckeddemurely beneath a white bonnet, like a beautiful vision from thepast century. Sarah Troyer had been warned about the womanizing Dr. Throne, butnothing prepared her for the shiver of desire that shook her to hercore when she gazed at him. Though her life was bound by the simpleAmish way, Sarah had always longed for the world outside. Her jobat the inn already branded her as a rebel in her community, andfalling in love with a stranger would mean the loss of her familyand the only life she knew. Yet something sparked within her withevery touch of his hand, each glance fr
From America’s #1 bestselling crime writers comes the extraordinary new Kay Scarpetta novel. Leaving behind her private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina, Kay Scarpetta accepts an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured man on Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric prison ward. The handcuffed and chained patient, Oscar Bane, has specifically asked for her, and when she literally has her gloved hands on him, he begins to talk—and the story he has to tell turns out to be one of the most bizarre she has ever heard. The injuries, he says, were sustained in the course of a murder . . . that he did not commit. Is Bane a criminally insane stalker who has fixed on Scarpetta? Or is his paranoid tale true, and it is he who is being spied on, followed and stalked by the actual killer? The one thing Scarpetta knows for certain is that a woman has been tortured and murdered—and more violent deaths will follow. Gradually, an inexplicable and horrifying truth
The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Romanemperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity,Julian" "is widely regarded as one of Gore Vidal's finesthistorical novels. Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine theGreat, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the historyof the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of JuliusCaesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist,and a philosopher devoted to worshipping the gods of Hellenism, hebecame embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianitythat provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four yearsinto his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign. A marvelouslyimaginative and insightful novel of classical antiquity, Julian""captures the religious and political ferment of a desperate ageand restores with blazing wit and vigor the legacy of animpassioned ruler.
Thalassa was a paradise above the earth. Its beauty and vastresources seduce its inhabitants into a feeling of perfection. Butthen the Magellan arrives, carrying with it one million refugeesfrom the last mad days of earth. Paradise looks indeed lost....
An aging but formidable strip club owner, Claudiu "Manco"Kapak, is robbed as he places his cash receipts in a bank’snight-deposit box. Enraged, he sends his henchmen out to find asuspect who is spending lots of cash and is too new to Los Angelesto realize he’s stolen from a gangster. Their search leads to JoeCarver, an innocent who evades capture and sets out to make Kapakwish he’d chosen someone else. Meanwhile, the real culprit,Jefferson Davis Falkins, and his girlfriend Carrie seem to believethey’ve found a whole new profession: robbing Manco Kapak. Lieutenant Nick Slosser, the detective in charge of the puzzlingand increasingly violent case, has his own troubles, includingworries about how he’s going to afford to send the oldest child ofeach of his two bigamous marriages to college without making theirmothers suspicious. As this odd series of difficulties explodesinto a triple killing, Carver finds himself in the middle of a gangwar over Kapak’s empire, while Falkins and Carrie jo
With more than 500,000 copies of her books in print in theUnited States, Donna Leon continues to find new fans for herriveting Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries. In "Death andJudgment," a truck crashes and spills its dangerous cargo on atreacherous road in the Italian Dolomite mountains. Meanwhile, inSanta Lucia, a prominent international lawyer is found dead aboardan intercity train. Suspecting a connection between the twotragedies, Brunetti digs deep for an answer, stumbling upon a seedyVenetian bar that holds the key to a crime network that reaches farbeyond the laguna. But it will take another violent death in Venicebefore Brunetti and his colleagues begin to understand what isreally going on.
