fiction; prose

In the seventh tale of the highly acclaimed Drinkwater series, Captain Drinkwater's frigate, HMS ANTIGONE, is ordered to the Baltic Sea in the Spring of 1807 as Napoleon's grip has begun to reach across Europe to the borders of Holy Russia. As country after country falls under the weight of French domination, Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater is faced with the challenges brought about by military disaster and diplomatic intrigue. On board the ANTIGONE, Drinkwater is threatened by the seething discontent of his crew and the instability of his drunken first lieutenant. Drinkwater's task is to cooperate with his country's allies and intelligence agents. When a coded message is intercepted, his mission suddenly becomes one of extreme personal danger. As the fate of Europe is being decided, Drinkwater must carry out his mission in the face of his old enemy. This final confrontation brings him to the brink of death.**

The 1987 publication of You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town won Zoë Wicomb an international readership and wide critical acclaim. As richly imagined and stylistically innovative as Wicomb's debut work, David's Story is a mesmerizing novel, multilayered and multivoiced, at times elegiac, wry, and expansive.Unfolding in South Africa at the moment of Nelson Mandela's release from prison in 1991, the novel explores the life and vision of David Dirkse, part of the underground world of activists, spies, and saboteurs in the liberation movement—a world seldom revealed to outsiders. With "time to think" after the unbanning of the movement, David is researching his roots in the history of the mixed-race "Coloured" people of South Africa and of their antecedents among the indigenous people and early colonial settlers.But David soon learns that he is on a hit list, and, caught in a web of betrayal and surveillance, he is forced to rethink his role in the...

A team of explorers and a National Geographic photographer unearth the remains of 500 year old Dominican monk. Etched on his cross is a strange message. His secret tells of something wondrous and terrifying waiting to be unearthed. High in the Andes, Dr. Henry Conklin discovers a 500-year-old mummy that should not be there. While deep in the South American jungle, Conklin's nephew, Sam, stumbles upon a remarkable site nestled between two towering peaks, a place hidden from human eyes for thousands of years. Ingenious traps have been laid to ensnare the careless and unsuspecting, and wealth beyond imagining could be the reward for those with the courage to face the terrible unknown. But where the perilous journey inward ends--in the cold, shrouded heart of a breathtaking necropolis--something else is waiting for Sam Conklin and his exploratory party. A thing created by Man, yet not humanly possible. Something wondrous . . . something terrifying.

God's other son, Colin, who was edited out of the Bible when Jesus got artistic control, is a bit pissed off. Well wouldn't you be, with your brother stealing the lime-light like that? But now God's been murdered, and there's no way Colin's gonna let the meek inherit the Earth. He's in charge now.

Who was William Smith? And why was Mavis Jones so horrified to see him? For seven years William had worked as a woodcarver for the local toyshop, ignorant of his true identity. The war had robbed him of his memory, and no one expected him ever to find the answer. So when he took his work to Eversleys Ltd, why was his life so instantly in danger? William makes the frightening discovery that there are people who will stop at nothing to ensure his memory does not return. And without knowing anything of his own past, how can he and Miss Silver stop them striking again?

Reminiscent of the novels of Nora Ephron, this brilliantly-written, hilariously touching tale explores a contemporary woman's quirky love life.Katinka O'Toole has discovered that a degree from Harvard does not always lead to fame and fortune. Divorced and struggling to make a living as a writer, the highlight of her day has become the arrival of the mail. Or, more precisely, the mailman. Yes, she hopes for an acceptance letter, but she also has a fierce crush on Louie Capetti, her gorgeous postal carrier, who she hopes will carry her away to romantic bliss. So while she has taken to receiving her mail in "discount Dior", she also has to deal with her pretentious ex-husband (a noted Joycean scholar), her class-conscious mother, the unwanted affections of a corporate lawyer, and various other roadblocks to true love that plague smart women in today's society.

The debut novel by the author of American Housewife. Eating the Cheshire Cat lures us into a world of perfectly planned parties and steep social ladders, where traditional rites of passage take unpredictable and horrifying turns as three girls and their overbearing mothers collide.In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, beauty is as beauty does, with axes and knives and killer smiles. Sarina Summers and her mother will stop at nothing to have it all. Nicole Hicks harbors a fierce obsession with Sarina, which repeatedly undermines Mrs. Hicks's ambitious goals. Bitty Jack Carlson, a nice girl from the wrong side of the tracks, is caught in the crossfire but struggles to succeed outside the confines of this outrageous yet eerily familiar Southern community. It's survival of the fittest. Which girl will come out on top? Covering everything from summer camp to the University of Alabama's Homecoming game, this fast-paced and unforgettable novel will keep...

For nearly thirty years, Bill Pronzini has been writing Western stories and novels, yet this is the first time fourteen of his finest short stories are being brought together in book form. Pronzini offers rich variety in every element of his writing. Joining the familiar figures of lawmen, cowhands, and the like, are some seldom featured characters such as bartenders, saddle makers, traveling dentists and tramp printers. His settings run the gamut from a small, mythical town in Montana to the very real Death Valley, and his stories show a similar range: from grim character studies to action, mystery, and farcical humors.

John Crowley's powerfully mysterious Dæmonomania adds flesh to the world he imagined in Ægypt and Love and Sleep. In this book, as in all his books, Crowley transports faithful readers to a place where time, place, and meaning come unstuck. It is in some ways the story of the end of the world as it might be, or might have been, a novel of history, eschatology, and faith with unforgettable characters and hauntingly lovely sentences. If the world's end is neither bang nor whimper but "like the shivers that pass over a horse's skin," how is it perceived by the people living through it? Historian Pierce Moffett finds his key to understanding in New York state's Faraway Hills, as do his lover, Rose Ryder, and single mom Rosie Rasmussen, whose daughter seems to suffer from dæmonomania--spiritual possession by Renaissance magician John Dee. Each character must pick a careful path between the colliding juggernauts of past and present, magic and mundane. The wind of apocalypse is blowing: "Scary wind.... What if it's the one?" she said. "What one?" he said.... He in fact knew what one, for it was from him that she had heard mythologies of wind, how it bloweth where it listeth, one part of Nature not under God's thumb and therefore perhaps at the disposal of our Enemy; she had heard his stories about changer winds, how one had once blown away the Spanish Armada and thus saved England from Catholic conquest, a famous wind which if you went to look for it in the records of the time wasn't there. In typical Crowley style, magic is seamlessly woven into the narrative. Pierce is writing the story of the end of the world while it happens, Rose joins a cult that promises salvation, and Rosie inherits a spooky legacy that might hold the secret to saving her daughter. All are involved in deep exchanges of power, and all must yield to what Crowley calls the "queasy pressure of Fate." Crowley describes Dæmonomania best when he writes about Pierce's book: "The book... was about magic, secret histories, and the End of the World, an event that Pierce would suggest was under way undetectably even as he wrote, as the reader read." This is a complex, disturbing, and beautiful book, one that will bear rereading. Crowley's writing is gorgeous in places, frustrating in others, but always irresistible. --Therese Littleton

**In this heart-pounding but touchingly romantic thriller, Detective Alex Cross pursues the most complex and brilliant killer he's ever confronted - mysterious criminal who calls himself the Mastermind. In a series of crimes that has stunned Washington, D.C., bank robbers have been laying out precise demands when they enter the building - and then killing the bank employees and their families if those instructions are not followed to the letter. Detective Alex Cross takes on the case, certain that this is no ordinary bank robber at work - the pathological need for control and perfection is too great. Cross is in the midst of a personal crisis at home, but the case becomes all-consuming as he learns that the Mastermind is plotting one huge, last, perfect crime.**

Martin Amis is one of the most gifted and innovative writers of our time. With Experience, he discloses a private life every bit as unique and fascinating as his bestselling novels. He explores his relationship with his beloved father, novelist Kingsley Amis, and examines the life and legacy of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who was abducted and murdered by one of Britain's most notorious serial killers. Experience also dissects the literary scene, and includes Amis'portraits of Saul Bellow, Salman Rushdie, Allan Bloom, Philip Larkin, Robert Graves, and Ian McEwan, among others. Not since Nabokov's Speak, Memory has such an implausible life been recorded by such an inimitable talent. From the Trade Paperback edition.

BONUS: This edition contains a Strength in What Remains discussion guide. In Strength in What Remains, Tracy Kidder gives us the story of one man’s inspiring American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him, providing brilliant testament to the power of second chances. Deo arrives in the United States from Burundi in search of a new life. Having survived a civil war and genocide, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing. Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as he travels with Deo back over a turbulent life and shows us what it means to be fully human.

Baby sitters club book for young teens