Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd

      Alan Bradley
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Hailed as “a combination of Eloise and Sherlock Holmes” by The Boston Globe, Flavia de Luce returns in a much anticipated new Christmas mystery from award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Alan Bradley. In spite of being ejected from Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in Canada, twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is excited to be sailing home to England. But instead of a joyous homecoming, she is greeted on the docks with unfortunate news: Her father has fallen ill, and a hospital visit will have to wait while he rests. But with Flavia’s blasted sisters and insufferable cousin underfoot, Buckshaw now seems both too empty—and not empty enough. Only too eager to run an errand for the vicar’s wife, Flavia hops on her trusty bicycle, Gladys, to deliver a message to a reclusive wood-carver. Finding the front door ajar, Flavia enters and stumbles upon the poor man’s body hanging upside down on the back of his bedroom door. The only living creature in the house is a feline that shows little interest in the disturbing scene. Curiosity may not kill this cat, but Flavia is energized at the prospect of a new investigation. It’s amazing what the discovery of a corpse can do for one’s spirits. But what awaits Flavia will shake her to the very core. Acclaim for Alan Bradley’s beloved Flavia de Luce novels, winners of the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award, Barry Award, Agatha Award, Macavity Award, Dilys Award, and Arthur Ellis Award

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    A Good Man in Africa

      William Boyd
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In the small African republic of Kinjanja, British diplomat Morgan Leafy bumbles heavily through his job. His love of women, his fondness for drink, and his loathing for the country prove formidable obstacles on his road to any kind of success. But when he becomes an operative in Operation Kingpin and is charged with monitoring the front runner in Kinjanja’s national elections, Morgan senses an opportunity to achieve real professional recognition and, more importantly, reassignment. After he finds himself being blackmailed, diagnosed with a venereal disease, attempting bribery, and confounded with a dead body, Morgan realizes that very little is going according to plan.

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    The Secret of the Forgotten City

      Carolyn Keene
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Rumors of a treasure hidden long ago in a city now buried under the Nevada desert lead Nancy, Bess and George to join a college sponsored archaeological dig in search of this priceless gold. Clues from an ancient stone with petroglyphs lead Nancy to the hidden treasure. Danger from a clever thief wanting this cache almost causes Nancy and Ned to lose their lives! This book is the original text. A revised text does not exist.

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  • 801

    The Thanksgiving Surprise

      Carolyn Keene
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The turkey's roasting, the pies are baking -- and Nancy smells a rat! The Morgans have come all the way from England to spend thanksgiving with the Drews. But Nancy's not having a happy holiday. SHe just can't get along with eight-year-old Pamela, and pamela's older brother, Derrick, is acting like...an older brother. But the real trouble starts when a gold ring disappears. Nancy decides to investigate and finds out something very unexpected -- about gold rings, about her house guests, and about having fun on the holidays.

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  • 801

    The Deportees

      Roddy Doyle
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For the past few years Roddy Doyle has been writing stories for Metro Eireann, a newspaper started by, and aimed at, immigrants to Ireland. Each of the stories took a new slant on the immigrant experience, something of increasing relevance and importance in today's Ireland. The stories range from 'Guess Who's Coming to the Dinner', where a father who prides himself on his open-mindedness when his daughters talk about sex, is forced to confront his feelings when one of them brings home a black fella, to a terrifying ghost story, 'The Pram', in which a Polish nanny grows impatient with her charge's older sisters and decides - in a phrase she has learnt - to 'scare them shitless'.

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    Eating the Dinosaur

      Chuck Klosterman
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Chuck Klosterman has chronicled rock music, film, and sports for almost fifteen years. He's covered extreme metal, extreme nostalgia, disposable art, disposable heroes, life on the road, life through the television, urban uncertainty and small-town weirdness. Through a variety of mediums and with a multitude of motives, he's written about everything he can think of (and a lot that he's forgotten). The world keeps accelerating, but the pop ideas keep coming. In Eating the Dinosaur, Klosterman is more entertaining and incisive than ever. Whether he's dissecting the boredom of voyeurism, the reason why music fans inevitably hate their favorite band's latest album, or why we love watching can't-miss superstars fail spectacularly, Klosterman remains obsessed with the relationship between expectation, reality, and living history. It's amateur anthropology for the present tense, and sometimes it's incredibly funny.

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  • 801

    The Left Hand of God

      Paul Hoffman
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“Listen. The Sanctuary of the Redeemers on Shotover Scarp is named after a damned lie for there is no redemption that goes on there and less sanctuary.” The Sanctuary of the Redeemers is a vast and desolate place—a place without joy or hope. Most of its occupants were taken there as boys and for years have endured the brutal regime of the Lord Redeemers whose cruelty and violence have one singular purpose—to serve in the name of the One True Faith. In one of the Sanctuary’s vast and twisting maze of corridors stands a boy. He is perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old—he is not sure and neither is anyone else. He has long-forgotten his real name, but now they call him Thomas Cale. He is strange and secretive, witty and charming, violent and profoundly bloody-minded. He is so used to the cruelty that he seems immune, but soon he will open the wrong door at the wrong time and witness an act so terrible that he will have to leave this place, or die. His only hope of survival is to escape across the arid Scablands to Memphis, a city the opposite of the Sanctuary in every way: breathtakingly beautiful, infinitely Godless, and deeply corrupt. But the Redeemers want Cale back at any price... not because of the secret he now knows but because of a much more terrifying secret he does not.

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    Empress of the Seven Hills

      Kate Quinn
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From the national bestselling author of "Daughters of Rome" and "Mistress of Rome" comes a tale of love, power, and intrigue spanning the wilds of the Empire to the seven hills of Rome. Powerful, prosperous, and expanding ever farther into the untamed world, the Roman Empire has reached its zenith under the rule of the beloved Emperor Trajan. But neither Trajan nor his reign can last forever... Brash and headstrong, Vix is a celebrated ex-gladiator returned to Rome to make his fortune. The sinuous, elusive Sabina is a senator's daughter who craves adventure. Sometimes lovers, sometimes enemies, Vix and Sabina are united by their devotion to Trajan. But others are already maneuvering in the shadows. Trajan's ambitious Empress has her own plans for Sabina. And the aristocratic Hadrian-the Empress's ruthless protege and Vix's mortal enemy-has ambitions he confesses to no one, ambitions rooted in a secret prophecy. When Trajan falls, the hardened soldier, the enigmatic empress, the adventurous girl, and the scheming politician will all be caught in a deadly whirlwind of desire and death that may seal their fates, and that of the entire Roman Empire...

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    Kristy and the Walking Disaster

      Ann M. Martin
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They're lean, they're mean, they're the pride of Stoneybrook. Who are they? They're Kristy's Krushers! When Kristy sees how much her little brothers and sister want to play softball, she starts a rag-tag team of her own. Maybe Kristy's Krushers aren't world champions (how could they be, with Jackie Rodowsky, walking disaster, playing for them?), but nobody beats them when it comes to team spirit. Now Bart's Bashers have challenged the Krushers to a real live game. It's bad enough that the Bashers truly are lean and mean-but what's worse is that Kristy has a crush on the Bashers' coach. A crush with a capital C!

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    Rapunzel Untangled

      Cindy C. Bennett
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Rapunzel is not your average teenager. For one thing, she has a serious illness that keeps her inside the mysterious Gothel Mansion. And for another, her hair is 15 feet long. Not to mention that she’s also the key to ultimately saving the world from certain destruction. But then she meets a boy named Fane, who changes all she has ever known, and she decides to risk everything familiar to find out who she really is. Filled with romance, adventure, and mystery, Rapunzel Untangled is one story you won’t want to put down. Discover the true meaning of love and friendship in this modern twist to the classic fairytale.

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    One Tuesday Morning

      Karen Kingsbury
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I’m a firefighter, God, so I know I’ve been in some tough places before. But this . . . this not knowing the people I love . . . this is the hardest thing I can imagine. The last thing Jake Bryan knew was the roar of the World Trade Center collapsing on top of him and his fellow firefighters. The man in the hospital bed remembers nothing. Not rushing with his teammates up the stairway of the south tower to help trapped victims. Not being blasted from the building. And not the woman sitting by his bedside who says she is his wife. Jamie Bryan will do anything to help her beloved husband regain his memory, and with it their storybook family life with their small daughter, Sierra. But that means helping Jake rediscover the one thing Jamie has never shared with him: his deep faith in God. Jake’s fondest prayer for his wife is about to have an impact beyond anything he could possibly have conceived. One Tuesday Morning is a love story like none you have ever read: tender, poignant, commemorating the tragedy and heroism of September 11 and portraying the far-reaching power of God’s faithfulness and a good man’s love.

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    How Firm a Foundation

      David Weber
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The Charisian Empire, born in war, has always known it must fight for its very survival. What most of its subjects don't know even now, however, is how much more it's fighting for. Emperor Cayleb, Empress Sharleyan, Merlin Athrawes, and their innermost circle of most trusted advisers do know. And because they do, they know the penalty if they lose will be far worse than their own deaths and the destruction of all they know and love. For five years, Charis has survived all the Church of God Awaiting and the corrupt men who control it have thrown at the island empire. The price has been high and paid in blood. Despite its chain of hard-fought naval victories, Charis is still on the defensive. It can hold its own at sea, but if it is to survive, it must defeat the Church upon its own ground. Yet how does it invade the mainland and take the war to a foe whose population outnumbers its own fifteen to one? How does it prevent that massive opponent from rebuilding its fleets and attacking yet again? Charis has no answer to those questions, but needs to find one… quickly. The Inquisition's brutal torture and hideous executions are claiming more and more innocent lives. Its agents are fomenting rebellion against the only mainland realms sympathetic to Charis. Religious terrorists have been dispatched to wreak havoc against the Empire's subjects. Assassins stalk the Emperor and Empress, their allies and advisers, and an innocent young boy, not yet eleven years old, whose father has already been murdered. And Merlin Athrawes, the cybernetic avatar of a young woman a thousand years dead, has finally learned what sleeps beneath the far-off Temple in the Church of God Awaiting's city of Zion. The men and women fighting for human freedom and tolerance have built a foundation for their struggle in the Empire of Charis with their own blood, but will that foundation be firm enough to survive?

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    The Perdition Score

      Richard Kadrey
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Sandman Slim returns in a stunning, high-octane thriller filled with the intense kick-ass action and inventive fantasy that are the hallmarks of New York Times bestselling author Richard Kadrey. The request from Thomas Abbot, the Augur of the Sub Rosa council, couldn’t come at a better time for James Stark, aka Sandman Slim. For a man who’s most recently met Death—and death’s killer—a few months of normal life is more than he can handle. He needs a little action, and now Abbott wants Stark and Candy to investigate the disappearance of a young boy—and help uncover council members who might be tied to Wormwood’s power brokers. Stark’s plans change when he meets a dying angel who gives him a vial of a mysterious black liquid that could be a secret weapon in the ongoing war between angels who want to allow human souls into Heaven and rebel angels willing to die to keep them out. When one of Stark’s closest friends is poisoned with the black liquid, Stark and Candy have to go to the only place where they might find a cure: Hell. But standing in their way are the damned souls who, even after death, still work for Wormwood. The secret deal they’ve struck with the rebel angels is darker than anything Stark has encountered. Not only does the fate of the world hang in the balance, but also the souls of everyone in it. Stark has to find a way to break the stalemate in the angel war, score the Perdition cure for the black poison, and make it back to LA in one piece—where an old enemy waits to finish him once and for all.

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  • 801

    Down a Dark Road--A Kate Burkholder Novel

      Linda Castillo
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In this electrifying new thriller in the New York Times bestselling series, a convicted murderer is on the run and Chief of Police Kate Burkholder must catch him before he strikes again."Murder in Amish country has a certain added frisson, and Castillo's the master of the genre." —People magazine"Castillo weaves the particularities of the Amish mindset into a complex mystery that will leave you crying with pity or seething with rage." —Kirkus Reviews (starred) Two years ago, Joseph King was convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to life in prison. Now King, a "fallen" Amish man known as a drug user with a violent temper, has escaped, and he's headed for Painters Mill. News of a murderer on the loose travels like wildfire, putting Chief of Police Kate Burkholder and her team of officers on edge. But this is personal for Kate. She grew up with Joseph King. As a thirteen year...

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  • 801

    Ever My Love

      Lynn Kurland
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Two people are caught up in love—and in time—in the latest novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Stars in Your Eyes. In search of a fresh start, Emma Barton has traveled to Scotland to try to forget her rocky love life. Luckily, the gorgeous Highlander who owns the house up the path from her rental cottage might be exactly the kind of distraction she needs. But there's more to his intriguing qualities than she can explain—and she certainly isn't buying into the local legends of Highland magic. Nathaniel MacLeod is a man adrift, all thanks to the unwanted gift that forces him to continually jump between centuries. He never knows if he'll wind up in the present day or the fourteenth century, but when Emma follows him back through time, he suddenly has more to worry about than keeping his separate lives straight... Someone has started to notice Nathaniel's travels and now, no time period is safe, for him...

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  • 801

    Necroscope: Invaders

      Brian Lumley
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Three great vampires--two Lords and a Lady--arrive on an unsuspecting Earth that teems with defenseless humans, easy prey for the marauding vampires. But humanity has defenders. Though the necroscope is gone, the psychically gifted men and women of E-Branch move swiftly against the vampire infestation. Jake Cutter is running for his life through the streets of Turin when he vanishes, appearing moments later inside the triply locked "Harry's room" in E-Branch's London HQ. Jake's dreams are very strange, filled with the voices of the dead--the Great majority, the Necroscope, Harry Keogh, even a dead vampire. He hears them all, but he doesn't truly understand. If Jake is the new Necroscope, he has to learn--fast!--how to control his powers and speak to the dead. E-Branch, with the reluctant Jake along for the ride, is about to go head-to-head with Malinari the Mind, a vampire Lord who psychic abilities are second to none. But the dead don't trust Jake, not like they trusted Harry. Jake's got personal revenge on his mind, and he's spending too much time talking that dead vampire. He's got to start thinking about the future--or he won't have one!

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  • 800

    Ullr Uprising

      H. Beam Piper
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Terra has a problem. The Uller are Uprising and the uprising must be put down at any cost. A brilliant retelling of Sepoy Mutiny set against an interstellar empire. H. Beam piper was one of the best writers of Space Opera that science fiction ever produced. Well written, insightful, and reviling.

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    Unclean Spirits

      M. L. N. Hanover
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Denver is lousy with monsters and mayhem in this urban fantasy series launch by epic fantasist Daniel Abraham (The Long Price Quartet series), his first venture under the Hanover pen name. Stereotypically plucky heroine Jayné Heller stumbles into a world of dangerous magic when she inherits a distant uncles fortune and his difficulties with a clan of malicious supernatural beings. Jayné likewise gains her uncles loose conglomerate of useful friends, all of whom have about one character trait apiece (the chef, the Frenchman, the ex-Jesuit), and she plots with them to destroy her uncles murderer, the sinister Randolph Coin. When trouble threatens, Jayné displays startling monster-fighting abilities, belatedly attributed to her uncle's blessing. Abrahams smooth prose and zippy action sequences sag under the weight of clichés. (Dec. )

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    Caliban

      Roger MacBride Allen
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In a universe protected by the Three Laws of Robotics, humans are safe. The First Law states, A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. When an experiment with a new type of robot brain goes awry, the unthinkable happens. Caliban is created. . . A robot without guilt or conscience. A robot with no knowledge of or compassion for humanity. A robot without the Three Laws. Caliban is a searing examination of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, a challenge welcomed and sanctioned by Isaac Asimov, the late beloved genius of science fiction, and written with his cooperation by one of today's hottest talents, Roger MacBride Allen, New York Times bestselling author of Ambush at Corella, The Modular Man, and The Ring of Charon.

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