Seventeen-year-old Veronica 'Ronnie' Miller's life was turnedupside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from NewYork City to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, sheremains angry and alienated from her parents, especially her father...until her mother decides it would be in everyone's best interestif she spent the summer in Wilmington with him. Ronnie's father, aformer concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in thebeach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become thecenterpiece of a local church. The tale that unfolds is anunforgettable story about love in its myriad forms - first love,the love between parents and children - that demonstrates, as onlya Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that deeply feltrelationships can break our hearts ...and heal them.

Hard to believe, but there was a time when the word "lawyer" wasn't synonymous with "criminal," and the idea of a law firm controlled by the Mafia was an outlandish proposition. This intelligent, ensnaring story came out of nowhere--Oxford, Mississippi, where Grisham was a small-town lawyer--and quickly catapulted to the top of the bestseller list, with good reason. Mitch McDeere, the appealing hero, is a poor kid whose only assets are a first-class mind, a Harvard law degree, and a beautiful, loving wife. When a Memphis law firm makes him an offer he really can't refuse, he trades his old Nissan for a new BMW, his cramped apartment for a house in the best part of town, and puts in long hours finding tax shelters for Texans who'd rather pay a lawyer than the IRS. Nothing criminal about that. He'd be set for life, if only associates at the firm didn't have a funny habit of dying, and the FBI wasn't trying to get Mitch to turn his colleagues in. The tempo and pacing are brilliant, the thrills keep coming, and t

After the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina, and the manmade horror of the explosion at the vampire summit, Sookie Stackhouse is safe but dazed, yearning for things to get back to normal. But her boyfriend Quinn is among the missing. And things are changing, whether the weres and vamps in her corner of Louisiana like it or not. In the ensuing battles, Sookie faces danger, death…and once more, betrayal by someone she loves. And when the fur has finished flying and the cold blood ceases flowing, her world will be forever altered.

Originally subtitled "An Adventurous Education, 1935-1946",this book is a key volume in Kerouac's lifework, the series ofautobiographical novels he referred to as The Legend of Duluoz. Awonderfully unassuming look back at the origins of his career--aprehistory of the Beat era, written from the perspective of thepsychedelic '60s.

Sookie comes to the rescue of a naked, amnesiac vampire - and ends up in the middle of a war between witches, werewolves and vampires! Sookie Stackhouse is a small-town cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's pretty. She does her job well. She keeps to herself - she has only a few close friends, because not everyone appreciates Sookie's gift: she can read minds. That's not exactly every man's idea of date bait - unless they're undead - vampires and the like can be tough to read. And that's just the kind of guy Sookie's been looking for. Maybe that's why, when she comes across a naked vampire on the way home from work, she doesn't just drive on by. He hasn't got a clue who he is, but Sookie has: Eric looks just as scary and sexy - and dead - as the day she met him. But now he has amnesia, he's sweet, vulnerable, and in need of Sookie's help - because whoever took his memory now wants his life. Sookie's investigation into what's going on leads her straight into a dangerous battle between witches, vampi

Ripley's ultra-mega-hyped sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind spent 28 weeks on PW 's bestseller list while receiving uniformly dismal notices from the critics. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. In the sequel to Margaret Mitchell's classic novel, the reader returns to Tara, and to the legendary love affair of Scarlett and Rhett. Reprint.

Jill Taylor was a 37-year-old Harvard-trained brain scientistwhen a blood vessel exploded in her brain. Through the eyes of acurious scientist, she watched her mind deteriorate whereby shecould not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life.Because of her understanding of the brain, her respect for thecells in her body, and an amazing mother, Jill completelyrecovered. In My Stroke of Insight, she shares her recommendationsfor recovery and the insight she gained into the unique functionsof the two halves of her brain. When she lost the skills of herleft brain, her consciousness shifted away from normal realitywhere she felt "at one with the universe." Taylor helps others notonly rebuild their brains from trauma, but helps those of us withnormal brains better understand how we can consciously influencethe neural circuitry underlying what we think, how we feel and howwe react to life's circumstances.

Sookie's got just a month, before the next full moon, to find out who wants her brother dead - and to stop the fiend! Sookie Stackhouse enjoys her life, mostly. She's a great cocktail waitress in a fun bar; she has a love life, albeit a bit complicated, and most people have come to terms with her telepathy. The problem is, Sookie wants a quiet life - but things just seem to happen to her and her friends. Now her brother Jason's eyes are starting to change: he's about to turn into a were-panther for the first time. She can deal with that, but her normal sisterly concern turns to cold fear when a sniper sets his deadly sights on the local changeling population. She afraid not just because Jason's at risk, but because his new were-brethren suspect Jason may be the shooter. Sookie has until the next full moon to find out who's behind the attacks - unless the killer decides to find her first. The Sookie Stackhouse books are delightful Southern Gothic supernatural mysteries, starring Sookie, the telepathic cocktail

Caryl Phillips’ ambitious and powerful novel spans two hundred and fifty years of the African Diaspora. It tracks two brothers and a sister on their separate journeys through different epochs and continents: one as a missionary to Liberia in the 1830s.one a pioneer on a wagon trail to the American west later that century, and one a Gl posted to a Yorkshire village in the Second World War. Crossing the River won the James Tait Black Memorial Award in 1994, and was shortlist for the 1993Booker Prize. Caryl Phillips exploration of the relations between black and white is nuanced, humane,and sympathetic ,And his deep awareness of the historical proess is combined with an exceptionally inteligent prose style-clear,unecumbered,and compassionate'New Statesman& Society.

This thoughtful if less than suspenseful thriller frombestseller Patterson ( Eclipse ) charts the impact of thebrutal murder of black coed Angela Hall at Caldwell College inWayne, Ohio, on gifted athlete Mark Darrow, who discovered the bodyand later became a nationally renowned lawyer. Mark's best friendwas convicted of the crime, but many aspects of the trial troubledMark. Lionel Farr, Caldwell's provost and Mark's former mentor,offers Mark the post of college president 16 years after Angela'smurder. Mark agrees to return to Caldwell, now struggling with thesuspected embezzlement of $900,000 from its endowment by itscurrent president. With Lionel's support, Mark investigates boththe embezzlement and the old murder. Patterson evokes the quietschism between town and gown in Wayne as well as the fragilerelationship between blacks and whites, while Mark's probing hitsexposed nerves with fatal results. (Sept.) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of ReedElsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This t

The true, declassified account of CIA operative Tony Mendez'sdaring rescue of American hostages from Iran that inspired thecritically-acclaimed film directed by and starring Ben Affleck, andco-starring John Goodman, Alan Arkin, and Bryan Cranston. On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the Americanembassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages,sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics stillreverberating today. But there is a little-known drama connected tothe crisis: six Americans escaped. And a top-level CIA officernamed Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet incredibly risky planto rescue them before they were detected. Disguising himself as a Hollywood producer, and supported by acast of expert forgers, deep cover CIA operatives, foreign agents,and Hollywood special effects artists, Mendez traveled to Tehranunder the guise of scouting locations for a fake science fictionfilm called Argo. While pretending to find the perfect filmbackdrops, Mendez and a

Michael Brock is billing the hours, making the money, rushing relentlessly to the top of Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm. One step away from partnership, Michael has it all. Then, in an instant, it all comes undone. A homeless man takes nine lawyers hostage in the firm's plush offices. When it is all over, the man's blood is splattered on Michael's face--and suddenly Michael is willing to do the unthinkable. Rediscovering a conscience he lost long ago, Michael is leaving the big time for the streets where his attacker once lived--and where society's powerless need an advocate for justice. But there's one break Michael can't make: from a secret that has floated up from the depths of Drake & Sweeney, from a confidential file that is now in Michael's hands, and from a conspiracy that has already taken lives. Now Michael's former partners are about to become his bitter enemies. Because to them, Michael Brock is the most dangerous man on the streets.

Narrated by a fifteen-year-old girl with a ruthless regard fortruth, The Last Life is a beautifully told novel of lies andghosts, love and honor. Set in colonial Algeria, and in the southof France and New England, it is the tale of the LaBasse family,whose quiet integrity is shattered by the shots from agrandfather's rifle. As their world suddenly begins to crumble,long-hidden shame emerges: a son abandoned by the family before hewas even born, a mother whose identity is not what she has claimed,a father whose act of defiance brings Hotel Bellevue-the familybusiness-to its knees. Messud skillfully and inexorably describeshow the stories we tell ourselves, and the lies to which we cling,can turn on us in a moment. It is a work of stunning power from awriter to watch.

Oprah Book Club Selection, February 1999: Originally published in Switzerland, and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past, and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable.... Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?" The Reader, which won the Boston Book Review's Fisk Fiction Prize, wrestles with many more demons in its few, re

Then one day Lenny vanishes,his yacht discovered abandoned far out at sea.The police believe his death was no accident;that his involvement in a spectaculay financial fraud was about to be exposed to the world.But Grace can't accept the terrible allegations now coming to light,and she will learn the truth...even if that truth destroys her.

The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather inDublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam．It wasn't thedrink that killed him- although that certainly helped-itwas whathappened tO him as a boy in his grandmother's house.in the winterof 1968．

A treasury of Lewis’s thought, gathered from all of his morethan forty books and his uncollected essays, on subjects as variedas sin, hell and heaven, the Trinity, and love and sex. Edited andwith a Preface by Clyde S. Kilby.

'Every family is a ghost story ...' As a child, CharleyBenetto was told by his father, 'You can be a mama's boy or adaddy's boy, but you can't be both.' So he chooses his father, onlyto see him disappear when Charley is on the verge of adolescence.Decades later, Charley is a broken man. His life has been destroyedby alcohol and regret. He loses his job. He leaves his family. Hehits rock bottom after discovering he won't be invited to his onlydaughter's wedding. And he decides to take his own life. Charleymakes a midnight ride to his small hometown: his final journey. Butas he staggers into his old house, he makes an astonishingdiscovery. His mother - who died eight years earlier - is there,and welcomes Charley home as if nothing had ever happened. Whatfollows is the one seemingly ordinary day so many of us yearn for:a chance to make good with a lost parent, to explain the familysecrets and to seek forgiveness.

"While a single short story may have a difficult time raisingenough noise on its own to be heard over the din of civilization,short stories in bulk can have the effect of swarming bees,blocking out sound and sun and becoming the only thing you canthink about," writes Ann Patchett in her introduction to The BestAmerican Short Stories 2006. This vibrant, varied sampler of theAmerican literary scene revels in life's little absurdities,captures timely personal and cultural challenges, and ultimatelyshares subtle insight and compassion. In "The View from CastleRock," the short story master Alice Munro imagines a fictionalaccount of her Scottish ancestors' emigration to Canada in 1818.Nathan Englander's cast of young characters in "How We Avenged theBlums" confronts a bully dubbed "The Anti-Semite" to both comic andtragic ends. In "Refresh, Refresh," Benjamin Percy gives aforceful, heart-wrenching look at a young man's choices when hisfather -- along with most of the men in his small town -- isdeployed to Ir