Crescent City

      Belva Plain
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She was the exquisite daughter of a wealthy Jewish merchant. From a charmed girlhood in opulent New Orleans, she would be swept into the cataclysm of the Civil War. Forced to choose between her duties as a Southern wife and mother and her love for a forbidden man, a forbidden cause, Miriam Raphael is at the center of the whirlwind in a spellbinding novel of divided loyalties and divided hearts.From the Paperback edition.

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    Dead As Dutch

      Rich Docherty
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A dysfunctional student film crew stumbles upon the long, lost buried treasure of legendary gangster Dutch Schultz, but can't escape the decades-old curse their discovery unleashes in this comedy of terrors.Stan Heberling is having a rotten day. Of course, zombies and a demented hermit with an itchy trigger finger can ruin any guy’s day. All he wants to do is finish his senior film project "Letter 13", but stumbling upon the long, lost buried treasure of legendary gangster Dutch Schultz has messed up his plans big time. Not to mention his frustrations with prima donna actor Bryce and the constant complaints of his teenage sister Dana helping out on second camera. Fortunately, Stan’s smokin’ hot female lead Keisha is as easy going as she is easy on the eyes and brainiac sound man Irv a supportive ally. But Stan is feeling the pressure as he only has the weekend to get his movie in the can and, so far, his well-honed plan has imploded into a comedy of errors. And that’s before the squirrel stew and an ax named Bad D and finding out about a curse that unleashed the undead mobsters. Who said being a director was easy?

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    Aseptic Technique (A Short Story)

      JJ Holden
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Following a near-fatal stroll in his neighborhood in the dead of winter, the fanatically germophobic Eugene Sinclair devises his plan for revenge.Through iconic and oft-reproduced works, American realist Edward Hopper (1882-1967) gained widespread recognition as the artist who gave visual form to the anonymity, isolation and (perhaps) boredom, loneliness and stagnation of twentieth century American life. This collection of short fiction takes nine Hopper canvases and imagines a narrative beyond the frame of each ‘still life’ presented therein. Just as filmmakers like Sam Mendes or Wim Wenders were energised by Hopper’s tableux to introduce temporal and spatial motion to moments frozen in time, so too will this suite of stories take the reader on a journey through the interwar and later years of Hopper’s women. Their lives anything but still, with experiences transcending the cultural and historical constraints of their all-too-human condition, these works of painterly prose invite the reader to enter and explore the worlds conjured by Hopper’s art in text.

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    The Miserable Planet #3

      Jacob Lindaman
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Tuck wakes up in a foreboding environment. Who are his captors and how will they handle him? What happened at the crash site? Issue #3 Across The Waters takes you for a trip under the sea and across the waters to a new world with new characters. Follow Tuck as he negotiates his way.Nick is your regular high school sophomore - curious, inquisitive and with a thing for the uncanny. And, like most teenagers do, he too has a crush on a girl that he never catches up with. While the girl appears to be quite normal, she has a hard time showing up anywhere but the stairwell.Oh and by the way, you know that there are things that you should not get into, especially when you can't explain it to others (or yourself).

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    Secluded Worlds

      Tag Cavello
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24 short poems by Tag CavelloA collection of short poems by author Tag Cavello, written over the past five years or so. Read for a journey through snow and ice, solitude and remembrance. Close your eyes. Let the wind blow and the snow fall. These poems were written for escape to cooler places.A collection of short poems by author Tag Cavello, written over the past five years or so. Read for a journey through snow and ice, solitude and remembrance. Close your eyes. Let the wind blow and the snow fall. These poems were written for escape to cooler places.

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    Short Funny Shorts

      Steve B Howard
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A young tough tries to entice a girl and fails, God directs a holographic universe movie and runs into some major snags, and two boys in Mexico set off on a journey to destroy a killer rooster. Humorous tales written to bring a smile to your face.SOVEREIGN: THE FIRST CHAPTER includes three separate flash fiction stories. "New Beginnings," "The Keepers," and "Family First" are fictional stories that look to captivate you and draw you in. "New Beginnings," describes one man's journey as he must guide his family through tough times and a daring escape from his home city. Can they outrun the army, or will they die for freedom? "The Keepers," is about Faith Valentine and her fight for survival. She's stuck in her closet as ravenous beasts emerge from the forest and terrorize her neighborhood. Hope has kept her alive for now, but time is running out. "Family First," takes a deeper look into the life of Christopher Hall, the president of a pharmaceutical company. He grieves for the loss of his wife and children as he's met with hostility from his boss. As the two clash, it becomes apparent that Chris will do anything for his family.

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    The Wild Swans

      Hans Christian Andersen
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From the Golden Book archives comes a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, gloriously illustrated by Gordon Laite in the late 1960s but never published until now! Gordon Laite's breathtaking artwork for a Little Golden Book edition of the Andersen fairy tale was found recently in the Golden Books archive. Planned for a 1970 release but never published, this Little Golden Book is finally making its debut for today's fairy tale fans! And it couldn't be a lovelier retelling of the story of a determined princess whose loyalty saves her brothers from being turned into swans by an evil queen.

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    Law of Similars

      Chris Bohjalian
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The Law of Similars is fast-paced and absorbing. Few writers can manipulate a plot with Bohjalian's grace and power.-The New York Times Book Review From the number one bestselling author of Midwives comes this riveting medical thriller about a lawyer, a homeopath, and a tragic death. When one of homeopath Carissa Lake's patients falls into an allergy-induced coma, possibly due to her prescribed remedy, Leland Fowler's office starts investigating the case. But Leland is also one of Carissa's patients, and he is begining to realize that he has fallen in love with her. As love and legal obligations collide, Leland comes face-to-face with an ethical dilemma of enormous proportions. Graceful, intelligent, and suspenseful, The Law of Similars is a powerful examination of the links between hope and hubris, love and deception. From the Trade Paperback edition.

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    Dragon's Lair

      Sharon Kay Penman
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July 1193. King Richard Lionheart lies in a German prison, held for ransom by the emperor. His mother, Dowager Queen Eleanor, ransacks England for gold to buy his freedom, while his younger brother, John, plots with King Philippe of France to ensure that he rots and dies in chains. When a ransom payment vanishes, Eleanor hastily dispatches young Justin de Quincy to investigate. In wild, beautiful Wales, his devotion to the queen will be supremely tested–as an arrogant border earl, a cocky Welsh prince, an enchanting lady, and a traitor of the deepest dye welcome him with false smiles and deadly conspiracies. The queen’s treasure is nowhere to be found, but assassins are everywhere . . . and blood runs red in the dragon’s lair.

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    Terrorist

      John Updike
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The terrorist of John Updike’s title is eighteen-year-old Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, the son of an Irish American mother and an Egyptian father who disappeared when he was three. Devoted to Allah and to the Qur’an as expounded by the imam of his neighborhood mosque, Ahmad feels his faith threatened by the materialistic, hedonistic society he sees around him in the slumping New Jersey factory town of New Prospect. Neither Jack Levy, his life-weary guidance counselor at Central High, nor Joryleen Grant, his seductive black classmate, succeeds in diverting Ahmad from what the Qur’an calls the Straight Path. Now driving a truck for a local Lebanese furniture store—a job arranged through his imam—Ahmad thinks he has discovered God’s purpose for him. But to quote the Qur’an: Of those who plot, God is the best.

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    The Heretic Queen

      Michelle Moran
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In ancient Egypt, a forgotten princess must overcome her family’s past and remake history. The winds of change are blowing through Thebes. A devastating palace fire has killed the Eighteenth Dynasty’s royal family—all with the exception of Nefertari, the niece of the reviled former queen, Nefertiti. The girl’s deceased family has been branded as heretical, and no one in Egypt will speak their names. A relic of a previous reign, Nefertari is pushed aside, an unimportant princess left to run wild in the palace. But this changes when she is taken under the wing of the Pharaoh’s aunt, then brought to the Temple of Hathor, where she is educated in a manner befitting a future queen. Soon Nefertari catches the eye of the Crown Prince, and despite her family’s history, they fall in love and wish to marry. Yet all of Egypt opposes this union between the rising star of a new dynasty and the fading star of an old, heretical one. While political adversity sets the country on edge, Nefertari becomes the wife of Ramesses the Great. Destined to be the most powerful Pharaoh in Egypt, he is also the man who must confront the most famous exodus in history. Sweeping in scope and meticulous in detail, The Heretic Queen is a novel of passion and power, heartbreak and redemption. From the Hardcover edition.

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    The Raven

      Patrick Carman
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Part text, part video, all spine-tingling mystery. Patrick Carman's Skeleton Creek returns to thrill. Strange things happen in Skeleton Creek - and when they do, Ryan writes them down and Sarah captures them on video. They've solved old mysteries. They've followed clues all over the country and underground. They've investigated secret societies. They've found their answers. Or so they thought. Because there are still some secrets that Ryan and Sarah haven't uncovered yet. And there's still a shadowy figure standing in their path...someone who doesn't want Ryan and Sarah digging up any more of the past.

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    The Golden Country

      Shusaku Endo
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The events described in this exciting and provocative three-act play, a companion piece to Endo's highly acclaimed novel Silence, take place in 1633, nearly a hundred years after Christianity was introduced into Japan. By this time, Japanese Christians were being cruelly persecuted by the government; every Christian searched out was made to apostatize or suffer a slow, agonizing death. The central character of The Golden Country is Father Christopher Ferreira, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary. Given shelter by a Christian farming community, everyone looks to him for help, including one of his chief persecutors. When, after cruel torture, Father Ferriera apostatizes to the disbelief of his Japanese converts, the play reaches a climax that is later capped only by the courage, nobility and love of the martyrs. Father Francis Mathy's detailed introduction to this tightly constructed drama, which poses basic questions about the meaning of faith, love and fate, provides valuable historical background.

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    This One Is Mine

      Maria Semple
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Violet Parry is living the quintessential life of luxury in the Hollywood Hills with David, her rock-and-roll manager husband, and her darling toddler, Dot. She has the perfect life--except that she's deeply unhappy. David expects the world of Violet but gives little of himself in return. When she meets Teddy, a roguish small-time bass player, Violet comes alive, and soon she's risking everything for the chance to find herself again. Also in the picture are David's hilariously high-strung sister, Sally, on the prowl for a successful husband, and Jeremy, the ESPN sportscaster savant who falls into her trap. For all their recklessness, Violet and Sally will discover that David and Jeremy have a few surprises of their own. THIS ONE IS MINE is a compassionate and wickedly funny satire about our need for more--and the often disastrous choices we make in the name of happiness.

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    The She

      Carol Plum-Ucci
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On a rainy night eight years ago, Evan Barrett's parents were lost at sea. In horror, he listened to their frantic Mayday calls on the ship-to-shore radio, to his mother's cries for mercy--and to the deafening shrieks that answered her back. Now seventeen, Evan has gone in search of answers to his parents' strange disappearance. The only explanation that makes any sense to him is that they were swallowed up by The She, a legendary sea creature that devours ships. But when Evan's quest for the truth uncovers shocking allegations against his parents, he must deal with the possibility that everything he knows about his family is a lie. Includes a reader's guide.

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    North of Nowhere

      Liz Kessler
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From the New York Times bestselling author of the Emily Windsnap series comes a captivating adventure about family, friendship, and the bonds that bridge time. The sleepy seaside village of Porthaven hides a mystery: Mia’s grandad has vanished, and nobody knows why. When Mia and her mom rush to Porthaven to help her grandmother, Mia imagines long dreary days with no one to talk to except for the old-time fisherman at her grandparents’ pub. But that’s before Mia finds a diary on an empty, docked fishing boat and starts exchanging notes with a local girl named Dee, a girl who seems much like her. Mia is excited about having a new friend, but why do their plans to meet each other never materialize? And why does Dee claim to be stuck at home due to violent storms when Mia sees only sunny skies? Will Mia be able to solve the mystery of where — and when — her grandfather and friend might be before time and tide forever wash away their futures?

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