In this third self-contained volume of her autobiography,which began with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angeloumoves into the adult world. Maya struggles to support herself andher son through a series of odd jobs and weathers a failed marriageto a white man before landing a gig singing in one of the mostpopular nightclubs on the San Francisco coast. From there, she iscalled to New York to join the cast of Porgy and Bess. Maya soonfinds herself on a joyous and dramatic adventure, touring abroadthrough Italy, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Egypt with spiritedcast members, and performing for large, enthusiastic audiences. Theexciting experience is dampened only by Maya’s nagging guilt thatshe has abandoned the person she loves most in life, her son, whosereentrance into her world reveals to Maya the healing power ofdevotion and love. Charged with Maya Angelou’s remarkable sense of life and love,Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas is a uniquecelebration of the hum

Welcome to Rome. It is the summer of 1978, and the Krasnanskyfamily, bickering, tired and confused, are supposed to be passingthrough. Alongside thousands of other Soviet Jewish refugees -among them criminals, dissidents and refuseniks - they awaitpassage to their new homes in the West. But escaping Communism isnot so easy, especially when some of the Krasnanskys insist onbringing it with them, and even more so when their sponsor in theUSA lets them down and they find that they're no longer passingthrough at all. On the contrary, they're stuck. Welcome, then, tothe waiting room of your life, and to a tragic yet comic tale ofreckless brothers and long-suffering sisters, ailing parents andinnocent children, of love affairs and criminal liaisons, of awonderfully troubled family and a perpetually wandering people, andtheir epic search for a home: somewhere, anywhere - or Canada, asit turns out.

A snappy, random,remarkable memoir - the first of its kind to give readers an honestflaws-n-all perspective of what it's like to be...ordinary.Initially inspired by the 'bizarre, haphazard arrangement' of ThePillow Book of Sei Shonagon, Rosenthal has collected a lifetime ofthoughts, observations and decisions, and created an alphabetisedpersonal encyclopaedia, complete with cross-referenced entries andillustrations. Whether you are laughing aloud or nodding along,reading Encyclopaedia of an Ordinary Life is like being introducedto a new friend.

A novel of startling scope and ambition, Prague depicts anintentionally lost Lost Generation as it follows five Americanexpats who come to Budapest in the early 1990s to seek theirfortune. They harbor the vague suspicion that their counterparts inPrague have it better, but still they hope to find adventure,inspiration, a gold rush, or history in the making.

Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens's sudden deathreaches his struggling American publisher, James Osgood sends histrusted clerk, Daniel Sand, to await the arrival of Dickens'sunfinished final manu*. But Daniel never returns, and when hisbody is discovered by the docks, Osgood must embark on a quest tofind the missing end to the novel and unmask the killer. WithDaniel's sister Rebecca at his side, Osgood races the clock througha dangerous web of opium dens, sadistic thugs, and literary lionsto solve a genius's last mystery and save his own-andRebecca's-lives.

West From Singapore is a second collection of two-fistedadventure stores set in the Pacific at the outbreak of World WarII, by the author of the recent New York Times bestseller NightOver The Solomons and the #1 bestselling Last Of The Breed.

In the stillness of a golden September afternoon, deep in thewilderness of the Rockies, a solitary craftsman, Grady Adams, andhis magnificent Irish wolfhound, Merlin, step from shadow intolight...and into an encounter with mystery. That night, a pair ofsingular animals will watch Grady's isolated home, waiting to maketheir approach. A few miles away, Camillia Rivers, a local veterinarian, beginsto unravel the threads of a puzzle that will bring to her door allthe forces of a government in peril. At a nearby farm, long-estranged identical twins come togetherto begin a descent into darkness...In Las Vegas, a specialist inchaos theory probes the boundaries of the unknowable...On a Seattlegolf course, two men make matter-of-fact arrangements formurder...Along a highway by the sea, a vagrant scarred by the pastbegins a trek toward his destiny. In a novel that is at once wholly of our time and timeless,fearless and funny, Dean Koontz takes readers into the momentbetween one turn of the world and the next, acros

Precious Ramotswe is the eminently sensible and cunningproprietor of the only ladies’ detective agency in Botswana. In Tears of the Giraffe she tracks a wayward wife, uncovers anunscrupulous maid, and searches for an American man who disappearedinto the plains many years ago. In the midst of resolvinguncertainties, pondering her impending marriage to a good, kindman, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, and the promotion of her talentedsecretary (a graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College, with amark of 97 per cent), she also finds her family suddenly andunexpectedly increased by two.

Book De*ion "Moves like a roller coaster without brakes...Koontz is America'sNo.1 author of thrillers. One of his finest novels." -------Denver Pos We have your wife. You can get her back for two millioncash. On an ordinary afternoon, an ordinary man, a gardener of modestmeans, gets a phone call out of his worst nightmare. the caller isdead serious. He doesn't care that Mitch can't raise that kind ofmoney. He's confident that Mitch will find a way, If he loves hiswife enough... Mitch does love her enough. He loves her more than life itself.He's got sixty hours to prove it. He has to find the two million bythen. But he'll pay a lot more. He'll pay anything. From its tense opening to its shattering climax, The Husband is athriller that will hold you in its relentless grip for every twist,every shock, every revelation. This is a Dean Koontz novel, afterall. And there's no other experience quite like it. Book Dimension length: (cm)17.4 width:(cm)10.6

"Good riddance", is the response of every Pecan Springsresident to the murder of local real estate shark Edgar Coleman. itdoesn't take long for China to learn that Coleman was havingnumerous affairs -- and was blackmailing City Council members fortheir votes on a bad land development deal. With her fianceimmersed in the murder investigation -- and the suspect listgrowing longer by the minute -- China can forget about a honeymoon,unless she can find the killer...

Every so often a character so captures the hearts andimaginations of readers that he seems to take on a life of his ownlong after the final page is turned. For such a character, one bookis not enough--readers must know what happens next. Now Dean Koontzreturns with the novel his fans have been demanding. With theemotional power and sheer storytelling artistry that are histrademarks, Koontz takes up once more the story of a unique younghero and an eccentric little town in a tale that is equal partssuspense and terror, adventure and mystery--and altogetherirresistibly odd. We're all a little odd beneath the surface. He'sthe most unlikely hero you'll ever meet--an ordinary guy with amodest job you might never look at twice. But there's so much moreto any of us than meets the eye--and that goes triple for OddThomas. For Odd lives always between two worlds in the small deserttown of Pico Mundo, where the heroic and the harrowing are everydayevents. Odd never asked to communicate with the dead--it'ssomething

Second in the new paranormal Circle Trilogy. With one vampire determined to rule the earth, the Circle ofSix prepares to battle for their lives-and their hearts.

Deepest night, Montana. An eerie light proclaims the arrival ofa mysterious watcher in the woods. And one solitary man begins adesperate battle against something unknown -- and unknowable. Broad daylight, Los Angeles. An ordinary morningerupts in cataclysmic violence. A young family is shattered in aheartbeat. Fate will lead this family to an isolatedMontana ranch, but their sanctuary will become their worstnightmare. For there they will face a chillingly ruthless enemy,from which no one -- living or dead -- is safe.

The true story of one of America's greatestphilanthropists This is Jane Addams's graphic account of her famed settlementhouse in Chicago's West Side slums. Covering the years 1889 to1909, a time when America was fired with fear of subversives andsuspicion of foreigners, this book stands as the immortal testamentof a woman who lived and worked among the immigrant settlers, thesweatshop toilers, the unwed mothers, the hungry, the aged, thesick, to show them the true concept of American Democracy. * Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition ofher philanthropic work * This new edition features an afterword by Manhattan BoroughPresident Ruth Messinger which examines the current state ofsettlement houses in America

Who will be with you in the darkesthour? Amy Redwing has devoted her life to rescuing dogs. But the uniquebond she shares with Nickie, a golden retriever she saves in themost dangerous encounter of her life, is deeper than any she hasever known. In one night, their loyalty will be put to the test,and each will prove to the other how far they will go – when thestakes turn deadly serious.

She's smart, beautiful, and she doesn't need a man to look afterher. But sports agent Myron Bolitar has come into her life--bigtime. Now Myron's next move may be his last-- Brenda Slaughter is no damsel in distress. Myron Bolitar is nobodyguard. But Myron has agreed to protect the bright, strong,beautiful basketball star. And he's about to find out if he's manenough to unravel the tragic riddle of her life. Twenty years before, Brenda's mother deserted her. And just asBrenda is making it to the top of the women's pro basketball world,her father disappears too. A big-time New York sports agent with afoundering love life, Myron has a professional interest in Brenda.Then a personal one. But between them isn't just the difference intheir backgrounds or the color of their skin. Between them is achasm of corruption and lies, a vicious young mafioso on the make,and one secret that some people are dying to keep--and others arekilling to protect....

Edgar Award-winner Harlan Coben brings us his mostastonishing--and deeply personal--novel yet. And it all begins whenMyron Bolitar's ex tells him he's a father ... of a dyingthirteen-year-old boy. Myron never saw it coming. A surprise visitfrom an ex-girlfriend is unsettling enough. But Emily Downing'snews brings him to his knees. Her son Jeremy is dying and needs abone-marrow transplant--from a donor who has vanished without atrace. Then comes the real shocker: The boy is Myron's son,conceived the night before her wedding to another man. Staggered bythe news, Myron plunges into a search for the missing donor. Butfinding him means cracking open a dark mystery that involves abroken family, a brutal kidnapping spree, and the FBI. Somewhere inthe sordid mess is the donor who disappeared. And as doubts emergeabout Jeremy's true paternity, a child vanishes, igniting a chainreaction of heartbreaking truth and chilling revelation.

Born to fanatically snobbish Victorian parents, GeorginaWeldon grew up to wreak havoc on almost everyone she met. She wassupposed to marry well and restore the family fortune, but soonproved to have other ideas. Her scandalous affair with a marriedman and her defiant marriage to the less-than-prosperous younghussar officer Harry Weldon were just the first signs that she wasno ordinary girl. In a plot that could have been constructed byDickens himself, Georgina acquired a string of lovers, was stung bycon artists, betrayed by her parents, and narrowly escaped beingcommitted to a mental institution. She rose to the challenge andbecame one of the first Victorian women to represent herself incourt and later helped to overturn England’s infamous Lunacy Laws.Like the best Victorian novels, The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon marriesthe adventures of an intrepid protagonist with delightfullyrevealing glimpses of Victorian society. A tale of sex and scandal,bravado and bravery, Mrs. Weldon’s life is wild, wicked, a

After one troubled college-age student disappears and two are found slashed to death, Lucas Davenport finds himself hunting what appears to be a modern-day Jack the Ripper. But Lucas keeps getting the sneaking suspicion that there is something else involved. Something very bad, very dark, and as elusive as a phantom.

He saw her across the Piazza San Marco and fell in love fromafar. When he sees her again in a Venice café a year later, heknows it is fate. He knows little English; and she, a divorcedAmerican chef, speaks only food-based Italian. Marlena thinks sheis incapable of intimacy, that her heart has lost its capacity forromantic love. But within months of their first meeting, she haspacked up her house in St. Louis to marry Fernando—“the stranger,”as she calls him—and live in that achingly lovely city in whichthey met. Vibrant but vaguely baffled by this bold move, Marlena isoverwhelmed by the sheer foreignness of her new home, its ritualsand customs. But there are delicious moments when Venice opens upits arms to Marlena. She cooks an American feast of Mississippicaviar, cornbread, and fried onions for the locals . . . and takesthe tango she learned in the Poughkeepsie middle school gym to acandlelit trattoría near the Rialto Bridge. All the while, she andFernando, two disparate souls, build

Nick and Nora Charles are Hammett's most enchanting creations, arich, glamorous couple who solve homicides in between wisecracksand martinis. At once knowing and unabashedly romantic, The ThinMan is a murder mystery that doubles as a sophisticated comedy ofmanners.

Past midnight, Chyna Shepherd, twenty- six, gazed out a moonlitwindow, unable to sleep on her first night in the Napa Valley homeof her best friend's family. Instinct proves reliable. A murderoussociopath, Edgler Forman Vess, has entered the house, intent onkilling everyone inside. A self-proclaimed "homicidal adventure,"Vess lives only to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immensehimself in sensation, to live without fear, remorse or limits, tolive with intensity. Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit. Chyna is a survivor, toughened by a lifelong struggle for safetyand self-respect. Now she will be tested as never before. At firsther sole aim is to get out alive-until, by chance, she learns theidentity of Vess's next intended victim, a faraway innocent onlyshe can save. Driven by a newly discovered thirst for meaningbeyond mere self-preservation, Chyna musters every inner resourceshe has to save an endangered girl—as moment by moment, theterrifying threat Edgler Foreman Vess intensifies.

Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty,earlymorning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? Fornearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberatedthroughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks andshaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, andwitty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yetit is a work of nonfiction. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugelyentertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnantof the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of alandmark murder case. It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkablecharacters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman'sCard Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless reclusewho owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man,woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern bellewho is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproariouslyfunny black drag queen; the acerbic and ar

During the grand opening celebration of the new Americanheadquarters of an immense Japanese conglomerate, the dead body ofa beautiful woman is found. The investigation begins, andimmediately becomes a headlong chase through a twisting maze ofindustrial intrigue and a violent business battle that takes noprisoners. During the grand opening celebration of the new Americanheadquarters of an immense Japanese conglomerate, the dead body ofa beautiful woman is found. The investigation begins, andimmediately becomes a headlong chase through a twisting maze ofindustrial intrigue and a violent business battle that takes noprisoners.

Loop me in, odd one. The words, spoken in the deep of night bya sleeping child, chill the young man watching over her. For thiswas a favorite phrase of Stormy Llewellyn, his lost love, andStormy is dead, gone forever from this world. In the haunted hallsof the isolated monastery where he had sought peace, Odd Thomas isstalking spirits of an infinitely darker nature. . . .BrotherOdd. Through two New York Times bestselling novels, Odd Thomas hasestablished himself as one of the most beloved and unique fictionalheroes of our time. Now, wielding all the power and magic of amaster storyteller at the pinnacle of his craft, Dean Koontzfollows Odd into a singular new world where he hopes to make afresh beginning—but where he will meet an adversary as old andinexorable as time itself.