Through five intense years in the 1970s, Steinn and Solrunn had a happy life together, then they suddenly parted ways, for reasons that are unclear to both. In the summer of 2007 they meet again on a balcony of an old wooden hotel by a fjord in western Norway. It is a place they both have fond memories from, and their meeting turns out to be fateful. But is it purely coincidental that they meet at that particular spot at that particular time? Over a couple of weeks that summer they write emails to each other, and it becomes clear that they have been living with very different interpretations of their shared past. This intimate love story of rediscovery explores the question: can science explain everything, or does some invisible force influence our lives?
Laura Chase's older sister Iris, married at eighteen to a politically prominent industrialist but now poor and eighty-two, is living in Port Ticonderoga, a town dominated by their once-prosperous family before the First War. While coping with her unreliable body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, in particular the events surrounding her sister's tragic death. Chief among these was the publication of The Blind Assassin, a novel which earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety but also a devoted cult following. Sexually explicit for its time, The Blind Assassin describes a risky affair in the turbulent thirties between a wealthy young woman and a man on the run. During their secret meetings in rented rooms, the lovers concoct a pulp fantasy set on Planet Zycron. As the invented story twists through love and sacrifice and betrayal, so does the real one; while events in both move closer to war and catastrophe. By turns lyrical, outrageous, formidable, compelling and funny, this is a novel fi
In a darkened room a young man sits telling the macabre and eerie story of his life - the story of a vampire, gifted with eternal life, cursed with an exquisite craving for human blood. Anne Rice's compulsively readable novel is arguably the most celebrated work of vampire fiction since Bram Stoker's Dracula was published in 1897. As the Washington Post said on its first publication, it is a 'thrilling, strikingly original work of the imagination ...sometimes horrible, sometimes beautiful, always unforgettable'.
When a dying millionaire hires Philip Marlowe to handle theblackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, Marlowe findshimself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography,seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he getscaught up in. "Chandler writes like a slumming angel and invest sthe sun-blinded streets of Los Angelos with a romanticpresence."--Ross Macdonald
A #1 "New York Times" bestseller, this anthology by master of horror Stephen King includes the short story R1408, S the basis for a major motion picture from The Weinstein Company and Dimension Films, opening in theaters on May 18 and starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson.
Captain Gault has decided that his family must leave Lahardane. They are after all Protestants living in the big house in rural Cork, and the country is in turmoil. It is 1921. But 8-year-old Lucy can't bear to leave the seashore, the old house, the woods - so she hatches a plan. It is then that the calamity happens - an accident almost, but so vicious in its consequences that it blights the lives of the Gaults for years to come. Trevor's new novel beautifully evokes rural Ireland and the tensions existing there, but also is Hardy-like in its portrayal of the impact of mere chance on a life.
The second book in Robert Jordan's internationally bestsellingepic fantasy series, THE WHEEL OF TIME, now reissued with astunning new cover design. The Forsaken are loose, the Horn ofValere has been found and the Dead are rising from their dreamlesssleep. The Prophecies are being fulfilled - but Rand al' Thor, theshepherd the Aes Sedai have proclaimed as the Dragon Reborn,desperately seeks to escape his destiny. Rand cannot run forever.With every passing day the Dark One grows in strength and strivesto shatter his ancient prison, to break the Wheel, to bring an endto Time and sunder the weave of the Pattern. And the Patterndemands the Dragon. Look out for more information on this title andothers at www.orbitbooks.co.uk
millennium 90's, makes a return appearance in a thoughtful novel offering an alternative to the government's "official" position on what really happened to TWA Flight 800, which crashed off the Long Island coast in the summer of 1996. Accompanying his wife Kate to a memorial marking the five-year anniversary of the crash, Corey's curiosity is aroused by what appears to be a concerted effort by Kate's fellow federal agents to keep him--and her--from investigating a case that appears to be closed. Corey's detecting skills lead him to two witnesses to the crash, who were enjoying an adulterous interlude on the beach at the time the plane went down--and videotaping their sexual escapades while what appears to be a terrorist missile attack takes place in the background. What ratchets up the tension in this capably written thriller is what the reader knows but Corey doesn't as he heads for a showdown with those responsible for the official cover-up as the clock ticks down to the morning of September 11, 2001. DeMil
YA?The events in this book are horribly off-putting, which, paradoxically, is why they must be remembered. Chang tells of the Sino-Japanese War atrocities perpetrated by the invading Japanese army in Nanking in December 1937, in which roughly 350,000 soldiers and civilians were slaughtered in an eight-week period, many of them having been raped and/or tortured first. Not only are readers given many of the gory details?with pictures?but they are also told of the heroism of some members of a small foreign contingent, particularly of a Nazi businessman who resided in China for 30 years. The story of his bravery lends the ironic touch of someone with evil credentials doing good. Once the author finishes with the atrocities, she proceeds with the equally absorbing and much easier-to-take story of what happened to the Nazi businessman when he returned to Germany and the war ended. This by itself is material for a movie. The author tells why the Japanese government not only allowed the atrocities to occur but also r
A romance that stretches across centuries and past livesconstitutes the core of Brashares's varied second adult novel, thefirst in a planned trilogy. The story is primarily that of Daniel,as, in the present, he pursues Lucy (whom he knows as Sophia in aprevious life) and attempts to persuade her of their history anddestiny, but his passion initially and understandably scares heroff. He disappears, presumed dead, but Lucy, unable to forget him,investigates his claims of their history until she discovers thetruth. Meanwhile, Daniel takes readers on a tour of romanticnear-misses, from sixth-century Africa through eighth-centuryTurkey to WWI. The story moves slowly and predictably, though whena plot finally materializes, Brashares ( Sisterhood of theTraveling Pants ) manages some satisfying momentum, even if thestory begins to feel like it's borrowed from a James Pattersonnovel. Brashares's insights into human nature, meanwhile, shouldappeal to readers who enjoyed The Time-Traveler's Wife , butcan appreci
Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins contain Twain’s most overt treatment of the moral and societal implications of slavery in America. This Norton Critical Edition remains the only edition available that is based on completely re-edited texts, accounting for all versions that Twain might have written or influenced. All substantive variants in the two separate "first editions," one printed in Britain and the other in the United States, have been reconciled in this collated edition, with all rejected variants tabulated. Dozens of additional illustrations accompany the text, and all textual variants, accepted or rejected, are included. "Criticism" includes twenty-three reviews and interpretive essays, eight of them new to the Second Edition, including those by Andrew Jay Hoffman, Myra Jehlen, and John Carlos Rowe. A Selected Bibliography is also included.
The Fury: Faced with an ancient evil, Stefan and Damon muststop their feuding and join forces with Elena to confront it. Butin so doing, they are unwittingly sealing her fate ...The Reunion:Elena summons the vampire trio once more to unite and challengetheir fate. Together they will be called to face the mostterrifying evil Fell's Church has ever known.
Brand New Book with Free Worldwide Delivery. This is a storyof heroism, love, honour, loyalty and betrayal, reaching from theoffice of the Hat Creek Cattle Company of the Rio Grande to theheart and the wilderness of the American West. This book won thePulitzer Prize.
Susie Salmon speaks to us from heaven, because she was murdered when she was 14 years old by a man who lived in the same neighbourhood. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love and do the things she has never had the chance to do. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet.
As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto arickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers MostSpectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the greatDepression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world heremembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinarystudent just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring forthe circus menagerie. It was there that he met Marlena, thebeautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic buttwisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephantwho was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. Thebond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust,and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.
'...it is an universal phenomenon of our nature that the mournful, the fearful, even the horrible, allures with irresistible enchantment.' Chaucer Burr, Memoir, 1850 The Wordsworth Book of Horror Stories is a superb collection of some of the greatest tales of the genre, many are classics while others are lesser -known gems unearthed from this vintage era of the supernatural. From time immemorial, man the world over has drawn upon the worst fears of his conscious and subconscious mind to furnish legends of terrror. In this volume authors such as M.R.James, Le Fanu, Henry James, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Bierce, Balzac, Gaskell, and many others invite you to close the curtains, lock the doors, draw the armchair closer to the blazing fire and settle down to a spine-chilling read.
More than four million readers fell in love with Nan, the smart, spirited, and sympathetic heroine of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Nanny Diaries. Now she's back. After living abroad for twelve years, she and her husband, Ryan, aka H.H., have returned to New York to make a life for themselves. In the midst of getting her new business off the ground and fixing up their fixer-upper, Ryan announces his sudden desire to start a family. His timing simply couldn't be worse. To compound the mounting construction and marital chaos, her former charge, Grayer X, now sixteen years old, makes a drunken, late-night visit, wanting to know why she abandoned him all those years ago. But how can she explain to Grayer what she still hasn't come to terms with herself? In an attempt to assuage her guilt, yet against every instinct, Nan tries to help Grayer and his younger brother, Stilton, through their parents' brutal divorce, drawing her back into the ever-bizarre life of Mrs. X and her Upper
For 15-year-old Michael Berg, a chance meeting with an older woman leads to far more than he ever imagined. The woman in question is Hanna, and before long they embark on a passionate, clandestine love affair which leaves Michael both euphoric and confused. For Hanna is not all she seems. Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realize that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman he had loved is a criminal. Much about her behaviour during the trial does not make sense. But then suddenly, and terribly, it does - Hanna is not only obliged to answer for a horrible crime, she is also desperately concealing an even deeper secret. 'A tender, horrifying novel that shows blazingly well how the Holocaust should be dealt with in fiction. A thriller, a love story and a deeply moving examination of a German conscience' INDEPENDENT SATURDAY MAGAZINE
