'The world has teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. Trisha McFarland discovered this when she was nine years old. Lost in the woods.' Trisha has only veered a little way off the trail. But in her panic to get back to the path, Trisha takes a turning that leads into the tangled undergrowth. Deeper and deeper in the terrifying woods. At first it's just the bugs, midges and mosquitoes. Then comes the hunger. For comfort she tunes her Walkman into broadcasts of the Red Sox baseball games and the performances of her hero Tom Gordon. As darkness begins to fall, Trisha realises that she is not alone. There's something else in the woods - watching. Waiting ...
The Fortress of Solitude is the story of Dylan Ebdus growingup white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. It's aneighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along withgames of stoopball. In that world, Dylan has one friend, a blackteenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. As Lethem follows theknitting and unraveling of their friendship, he creates anoverwhelmingly rich and emotionally gripping canvas of race andclass, superheros, gentrification, funk, hip-hop, graffiti tagging,loyalty, and memory. The Fortress of Solitude" "is the first greaturban coming of age novel to appear in years.
Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is a divorced, depressed historyteacher. To lift his spirits, a colleague suggests he rent acertain video. Tertuliano watches the film, unimpressed. But duringthe night, when he is awakened by noises in his apartment, he goesinto the living room to find that the VCR is replaying the video.He watches in astonishment as a man who looks exactly like him-or,more specifically, exactly like he did five years before,mustachioed and fuller in the face-appears on the screen. He sleepsbadly. Against his better judgment, Tertuliano decides to pursuehis double. As he roots out the man's identity, what begins as awhimsical story becomes a "wonderfully twisted meditation onidentity and individuality" (The Boston Globe). Saramago displayshis remarkable talent in this haunting tale of appearance versusreality.
Book De*ion About Dean Koontz's Frankenstein Dean Koontz's Frankenstein is the collective title of a series ofnovels co-written by Dean Koontz. Though technically of the mysteryor thriller genres, the novels also feature the trappings ofhorror, fantasy, and science fiction. From the celebrated imagination of Dean Koontz comes a powerfulreworking of one of the classic stories of all time. If you thinkyou know the legend, you know only half the truth. Here is themystery, the myth, the terror, and the magic of… Dean Koontz's City of the Night They are stronger, heal better, and think faster than any humansever created—and they must be destroyed. But not even VictorHelios—once Frankenstein—can stop the engineered killers he’s setloose on a reign of terror through modern-day New Orleans. Now theonly hope rests in a one-time “monster” and his all-too-humanpartners, Detectives Carson O’Connor and Michael Maddison.Deucalion’s centuries-old hi
Sixteen-year-old Katya Spivak is out for a walk on thegracious streets of Bayhead Harbor with her two summer babysittingcharges when she's approached by silver-haired, elegant MarcusKidder. At first his interest in her seems harmless, even pleasant;like his name, a sort of gentle joke. His beautiful home, thechildren's books he's written, his classical music, the marvelousart in his study, his lavish presents to her -- Mr. Kidder's lifecouldn't be more different from Katya's drab working-classexistence back home in South Jersey, or more enticing. But bydegrees, almost imperceptibly, something changes, and posing forMr. Kidder's new painting isn't the lighthearted endeavor it oncewas. What does he really want from her? And how far will he go toget it? In the tradition of Oates's classic story "Where Are YouGoing, Where Have You Been?" "A Fair Maiden "is an unsettling,ambiguous tale of desire and control.
One of the greatest French novelists, Balzac was also anaccomplished writer of shorter fiction. This volume includes twelveof his finest short stories many of which feature characters fromhis epic series of novels the Comedie Humaine. Compelling tales ofacute social and psychological insight, they fully demonstrate themastery of suspense and revelation that were the hallmarks ofBalzac's genius. In The Atheist's Mass, we learn the true reasonfor a distinguished atheist surgeon's attendance at religiousservices; La Grande Breteche describes the horrific truth behindthe locked doors of a decaying country mansion, while The Red Innrelates a brutal tale of murder and betrayal. A fascinatingcounterpoint to the renowned novels, all the stories collected herestand by themselves as mesmerizing works by one of the finestwriters of nineteenth-century France.
Cipriano Algor, an elderly potter, lives with his daughterMarta and her husband Marcal in a small village on the outskirts ofThe Center, an imposing complex of shops, apartments, and officesto which Cipriano delivers his pots and jugs every month. On onesuch trip, he is told not to make any more deliveries. Unwilling togive up his craft, Cipriano tries his hand at making ceramic dolls.Astonishingly, The Center places an order for hundreds, andCipriano and Marta set to work-until the order is cancelled and thethree have to move from the village into The Center. Whenmysterious sounds of digging emerge from beneath their apartment,Cipriano and Marcal investigate, and what they find transforms thefamily's life. Filled with the depth, humor, and the extraordinaryphilosophical richness that marks each of Saramago's novels, TheCave is one of the essential books of our time.
Nine strokes from an old country church toll out the death ofan unknown man and call Lord Peter Wimsey to one of his mostbaffling cases. Set in the strange, flat fen-country of EastAnglia, this is a classic tale of suspense by a master ofmystery.
Let's Call It "The Turn of the Phillips-Head Screw" I was happily working on a novel titled What the Night Knows, thepremise of which was already described on various web-sitepostings, when an idea for a ghost story slammed into me with asmuch force as an exuberant 60-pound golden retriever playingbowl-dad-off-his-feet. When I picked myself up from my officefloor, I didn't need a sticky roller to remove the dog hair from myclothes, but the story I had been working on was entirely Swifferedout of my head to make room for the ghost story. After alerting myeditor and my publisher of my intentions, I put aside What theNight Knows and set to work enthusiastically on the new idea. Over the next few months, as the manu* pages piled up, Ioccasionally sent lists of possible titles to my editor and mypublisher, and they sent lists of titles to me. None of us likedthe same title. We didn't argue. We just quietly declined to beenthusiastic about one another's suggestions. We are a genteelbunch. The only one of us to wa
In this collection of five Christmas-themed stories, belovedauthor Mary Balogh brings together tales of love, marriage,friendship, loneliness, and healing. Includes four Balogh holidayclassics, "The Star of Bethlehem," "The Best Gift," "PlayingHouse," and "No Room At the Inn," as well as "A Family Christmas,"which is only available in this anthology.
A game. A husband and wife game. Gerald's Game. But this time Jesse didn't want to play. Lying there, spreadeagled and handcuffed to the bedstead while he'd loomed and drooled over her, she felt angry and humiliated. So she'd kicked out hard. Aimed to hit him where it hurt. He wasn't meant to die, leaving Jesse alone and helpless in a lakeside holiday cabin. Miles from anywhere. No-one to hear her screams. Alone. Except for the voices in her head that had begun to chatter and argue and sneer ...
From America's most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comesthis compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel.Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed HumanFreakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark,count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways.Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, heworks for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cumdetective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King ofBrooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he setsthem are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatallystabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other twovie for his position, and the victim's widow skips town. Lionel'sworld is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has troubleeven conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case whiletrying to keep the words straight in his head. Motherless Brooklynis a brilliantly original homage to the classic detective novel b
Straight from the heart of #1 New YorkTimes bestselling author Nora Roberts--a trade paperback collectionof three of her favorite novels. With over 85 million copies of her books inprint, #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts is one ofthe most prolific and popular writers of our time. Now, three ofher favorite novels--Tonight and Always, A Matter of Choice, andEndings and Beginnings--are collected in a beautiful new tradepaperback edition that will find a special place in the hearts ofreaders everywhere. "There's no mystery about why Roberts is abestselling author...she delivers the goods with panache and wit."--Publishers Weekly "Aconsistently entertaining writer." --USAToday "Roberts has a warm feel for her charactersand an eye for the evocative detail." --ChicagoTribune "Roberts is indeed a word artist, paintingher story and her characters
The ultimate battle between good and evil
★Mandy Pajeck had a tough childhood. Now 28,she feelsresponsible for the accident that took her younger brother's sight.But his complete reliance on her care is making them bothmiserable.When she meets handsome Zach Harrigan and his mini guidehorse,she thinks she's found the ticket to her brother'shappiness-and maybe her own
When confronted by raging fires or deadly accidents, volunteerfireman Taylor McAden feels compelled to take terrifying risks tosave lives. But there is one leap of faith Taylor can't bringhimself to make: he can't fall in love. For all his adult years,Taylor has sought out women who need to be rescued, women he leavesas soon as their crisis is over and the relationship starts tobecome truly intimate. When a raging storm hits his small Southerntown, single mother Denise Holton's car skids off the road. Theyoung mom is with her four-year-old son, Kyle, a boy with severelearning disabilities and for whom she has sacrificed everything.Taylor McAden finds her unconscious and bleeding, but does not findKyle. When Denise wakes, the chilling truth becomes clear to bothof them: Kyle is gone. During the search for Kyle, the connectionbetween Taylor and Denise takes root. Taylor doesn't know that thisrescue will be different from all the others, demanding far morethan raw physical courage. It will lead him to the
“A superb collection, a splendid and much-needed book. Andersonhas cleared away the dross and shown us the golden roots of fantasybefore it became a genre.” –Michael Moorcock, author of The EternalChampion Many of today’s top names in fantasy acknowledgeJ.R.R. Tolkien as the author whose work inspired them to createtheir own epics. But which writers influenced Tolkien himself? In acollection destined to become a classic in its own right,internationally recognized Tolkien expert Douglas A. Anderson,editor of The Annotated Hobbit, has gathered the fiction of themany gifted authors who sparked Tolkien’s imagination. Included areAndrew Lang’s romantic swashbuckler “The Story of Sigurd,” whichfeatures magic rings and a ferocious dragon; an excerpt from E. A.Wyke-Smith’s The Marvelous Land of Snergs, about creatures who wereprecursors to Tolkien’s hobbits; and a never-before-published gemby David Lindsay, author of A Voyage to Arcturus, a novel thatTolkien praised highly both as a thril
