Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams—not just inthe figurative sense, not just because he was one of the lastpeople to see him alive, and not just because he is rumored to havegiven Hank the final morphine dose that killed him. In 1963, ten years after Hank's death, Doc himself is wracked byaddiction. Having lost his license to practice medicine, hismorphine habit isn't as easy to support as it used to be. So helives in a rented room in the red-light district on the south sideof San Antonio, performing abortions and patching up the odd knifeor gunshot wound. But when Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant,appears in the neighborhood in search of Doc's services, miraculousthings begin to happen. Graciela sustains a wound on her wrist thatnever heals, yet she heals others with the touch of her hand.Everyone she meets is transformed for the better, except, maybe,for Hank's angry ghost—who isn't at all pleased to see Doc doingwell. A brilliant excavation of an obscure piece of m
Book De*ion Remember when flying was glamorous and sexy, even fun? Whenairline food was gourmet, everyone dressed up for a flight, andstewardesses catered to our every need-at least in ourimaginations? This classic memoir by two audaciously outspokenyoung ladies, who lived and loved the free-spirited stewardesslife, jets you back to those golden days of air travel-from thecaptain who's as subtle as a 747 when he's on the make to thepassenger who mistakes the overhead luggage rack for an upperberth; from the names of celebrities who were a pleasure to serve(and some surprising notables on the "bad guy" list) to the originsof some naughty stereotypes-Spaniards "are" the best lovers, actorsthe most foul-mouthed. This huge bestseller, a First Class jet-agejournal, offers a hilarious gold mine of outrageous anecdotes fromthe high-flying and amorous lives of those busty, lusty,adventuresome young women of the swinging '60s known as"stews." About Author Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones were name
Despondent over the futility of life in the South, black tenantfarmer Grange Copeland leaves his wife and son in Georgia to headNorth. After meeting an equally humiliating existence there, hereturns to Georgia, years later, to find his son, Brownfield,imprisoned for the murder of his wife. As the guardian of thecouple's youngest daughter, Grange Copeland is looking at his third-- and final -- chance to free himself from spiritual and socialenslavement.
WHEN GOD WAS A RABBIT is an incredibly exciting debut from anextraordinary new voice in fiction. Spanning four decades, from1968 onwards, this is the story of a fabulous but flawed family andthe slew of ordinary and extraordinary incidents that shape theireveryday lives. It is a story about childhood and growing up, lossof innocence, eccentricity, familial ties and friendships, love andlife. Stripped down to its bare bones, it's about the unbreakablebond between a brother and sister.
This is a unique tribute to Florence, combining history,artistic de*ion, and social observation. A memorable portraitof the Florentine spirit and of those figures who exemplify thisspirit, such as Dante, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Donatello, andMachiavelli.
FBI Special Agent Pendergast is taking a break from work to takeConstance on a whirlwind Grand Tour, hoping to give her closure anda sense of the world that she's missed. They head to Tibet, wherePendergast intensively trained in martial arts and spiritualstudies. At a remote monastery, they learn that a rare anddangerous artifact the monks have been guarding for generations hasbeen mysteriously stolen. As a favor, Pendergast agrees to trackand recover the relic. A twisting trail of bloodshed leadsPendergast and Constance to the maiden voyage of the Britannia , the world's largest and most luxurious oceanliner---and to an Atlantic crossing fraught with terror.
This unusual fictional account, in good part autobiographical,narrates without self-pity and often with humor the adventures of apenniless British writer among the down-and-out of two greatcities. In the tales of both cities we learn some soberingOrwellian truths about poverty and society.
Gilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, abeautiful and secretive young woman who has moved into nearbyWildfell Hall with her young son. He is quick to offer Helen hisfriendship, but when her reclusive behavior becomes the subject oflocal gossip and speculation, Gilbert begins to wonder whether histrust in her has been misplaced. It is only when she allows Gilbertto read her diary that the truth is revealed and the shockingdetails of the disastrous marriage she has left behindemerge...Told with great immediacy, combined with wit and irony,"The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" is a powerfully involving read.
" Roberts] is at her best here" ("Publishers Weekly," starredreview) in the first book in her enchanting trilogy set in Ardmore,Ireland.
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.
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.
For Dr. David Beck, the loss was shattering. And every day forthe past eight years, he has relived the horror of what happened.The gleaming lake. The pale moonlight. The piercing screams. Thenight his wife was taken. The last night he saw her alive. Everyone tells him it’s time to move on, to forget the pastonce and for all. But for David Beck, there can be no closure. Amessage has appeared on his computer, a phrase only he and his deadwife know. Suddenly Beck is taunted with the impossible–thatsomewhere, somehow, Elizabeth is alive. Beck has been warned to tell no one. And he doesn’t. Instead,he runs from the people he trusts the most, plunging headlong intoa search for the shadowy figure whose messages hold out a desperatehope. But already Beck is being hunted down. He’s headed straightinto the heart of a dark and deadly secret–and someone intends tostop him before he gets there.
The enthralling international bestseller. We are in the centerof Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeoisfamilies. RenA(c)e, the concierge, is witness to the lavish butvacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms toevery stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted totelevision. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, RenA(c)e is acultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japaneseculture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives ofthe buildingas tenants, who for their part are barely aware of herexistence. Then thereas Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She isthe daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented andstartlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on thesixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she willcontinue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocrepre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not anoutstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter. Paloma andRenA(c
Creating George Stark was easy. Getting rid of him won't be ...The sparrows are flying again. The idea - unbidden, inexplicable - haunts the edge of Thad Beaumont's mind. Thad should be happy. For years now it is his secret persona 'George Stark', author of super-violent pulp thrillers, who has paid the family bills. But now, Thad is writing seriously again under his own name, and his menacing pseudonym has been buried forever. And yet ...the sparrows are flying again, and something is terribly wrong in Thad Beaumont's world.
With one glance, wealthy Crystal Falls, Oregon rancher, RyanKendrick falls hard -- and fast -- for lovely Bethany Coulter. Abeguiling mix of sass and shyness, naivete and maturity, she shareshis passion for horses, has a great sense of humor and can light upa room with her beautiful smile. She is absolutely perfect -- inevery way but one. A long ago barrel-racing accident has leftBethany confined to a wheelchair. In the years since, she has knownboth betrayal and heartbreak -- and vowed never to open her heartto a man again. She has even accepted the possibility that she'llnever be able to enjoy a healthy intimate relationship or havechildren of her own. But there's something about handsome RyanKendrick. Something that makes her believe she can overcome everyobstacle. Something that makes her believe in lifelong, lastinglove . . .
From the moment these two legendary players took the court onopposing sides, they engaged in a fierce physical and psychologicalbattle. In Celtic green was Larry Bird, the hick from French Lick,with laser-beam focus, relentless determination, and a deadly jumpshot, a player who demanded excellence from everyone around him andwhose caustic wit left opponents quaking in their high-tops. MagicJohnson was Mr. Showtime, a magnetic personality with all the rightmoves. Young, indomitable, he was a pied piper in purple and gold.And he burned with an inextinguishable desire to win. Their uncommonly competitive relationship came to symbolize themost thrilling rivalry in the NBA—East vs. West, physical vs.finesse, old school vs. Showtime, even white vs. black. Each pushedthe other to greatness, and together Bird and Johnson collectedeight NBA Championships and six MVP awards, helping to save afloundering NBA. At the start they were bitter rivals, but alongthe way they became lifelong friends.
WHAT IF you could go back in time and change the course of history? WHAT IF the watershed moment you could change was the JFK assassination? 11.22.63, the date that Kennedy was shot - unless ...King takes his protagonist Jake Epping, a high school English teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, 2011, on a fascinating journey back to 1958 - from a world of mobile phones and iPods to a new world of Elvis and JFK, of Plymouth Fury cars and Lindy Hopping, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life - a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time. With extraordinary imaginative power, King weaves the social, political and popular culture of his baby-boom American generation into a devastating exercise in escalating suspense.
“Philip Roth has become an American Master,a writercertainlyin出e upper rank of artistic achievement．1ikeJohn Coltrane in musicor Jackson Pollock in artThe prolific Roth is athe height of hisconsiderablepowers，and his work transcends much of hiscontem—poraries’output in psychological insight，pure intelli—genceand even readability,”
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.
When Maggie was published, society was unprepared for its grimand stark tale of a pretty young girl's fall in New York's Bowery,and its criticism of the irresponsibility of men toward women.Stephen Crane also exhibits his stunning genius in the five otherstories of this collection, from the local color of small-town lifeto the bustle of the city to war stories full of the irony ofheroism. The six make up an enduring testimony to one of America'sfinest writers.
For over fifty years, Eudora Welty and William Maxwell, two ofour most admired writers, penned letters to each other. They sharedtheir worries about work and family, literary opinions andscuttlebutt, moments of despair and hilarity. Living half acontinent apart, their friendship was nourished and maintained bytheir correspondence. "What There Is to Say We Have Said" bearswitness to Welty and Maxwell's editorial relationships - both inhis capacity as New Yorker editor and in their collegial back-andforth on their work. It's also a chronicle of the literary world ofthe time; read talk of James Thurber, William Shawn, Katherine AnnePorter, J. D. Salinger, Isak Dinesen, William Faulkner, JohnUpdike, Virginia Woolf, Walker Percy, Ford Madox Ford, JohnCheever, and many more. It is a treasure trove of readingrecommendations.
When Mike Noonan's wife dies unexpectedly, the bestselling author suffers from writer's block. Until he is drawn to his summer home, the beautiful lakeside retreat called Sara Laughs. Here Mike finds the once familiar town in the tyrannical grip of millionaire Max Devore. Devore is hell-bent on getting custody of his deceased son's daughter and is twisting the fabric of the community to this purpose. Three year old Kyra and her young mother turn to Mike for help. And Mike finds them increasingly irresistible. But there are other more sinister forces at Sara Laughs - and Kyra can feel them too....
