**New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh kicks off her new Hard Play contemporary romance series with a sizzling story that’ll leave you smiling…** Sailor Bishop has only one goal for his future – to create a successful landscaping business. No distractions allowed. Then he comes face-to-face and lips-to-lips with a woman who blushes like an innocent… and kisses like pure sin. Ísa Rain craves a man who will cherish her, aches to create a loving family of her own. Trading steamy kisses with a hot gardener in a parking lot? Not the way to true love. Then a deal with the devil (aka her CEO-mother) makes Ísa a corporate VP for the summer. Her main task? Working closely with a certain hot gardener. And Sailor Bishop has wickedness on his mind. As Ísa starts to fall for a man who makes her want to throttle and pounce on him at the same time, she knows she has to choose – play it safe and steady, or risk all her dreams and hope Sailor doesn’t destroy her heart.

Hercule Poirot must solve a perplexing case of midair murder in Death in the Clouds when he discovers that the woman in seat two of the airborne aeroplane he’s traveling on is quite unexpectedly—and unnaturally—deceased. From seat No. 9, Hercule Poirot was ideally placed to observe his fellow air passengers on the short flight from Paris to London. Over to his right sat a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite; ahead, in seat No. 13, sat a countess with a poorly concealed cocaine habit; across the gangway in seat No. 8, a writer of detective fiction was being troubled by an aggressive wasp. Yes, Poirot is almost ideally placed to take it all in, except what he did not yet realize was that behind him, in seat No. 2, sat the slumped, lifeless body of a woman. Murdered, and likely by someone in Poirot’s immediate proximity. 

Forbidden fruit... Reed, Noelle, and former Billings Girls Kiran and Taylor have been living it up on St. Barths over winter break. The tropical sun has melted away all the tensions of last semester, and for the first time in months, Reed is happy. She's got her best friends by her side, she has a palatial suite with an ocean view, and she's landed Upton, the most sought-after guy on the island. Reed is falling in love. But dating Upton makes Reed St. Barths' highest-profile guest -- and not in a good way. Upton has a dark past, and he's broken a lot of hearts. One of his exes still wants him. And she'll do whatever it takes to get Reed out of the picture.

Professor Dr. von Igelfeld Entertainment – Book 2 **The Professor Dr. von Igelfeld Entertainment series slyly skewers academia, chronicling the comic misadventures of the endearingly awkward Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, and his long-suffering colleagues at the Institute of Romantic Philology in Germany. **Readers who fell in love with Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, now have new cause for celebration in the protagonist of these three light-footed comic novels by Alexander McCall Smith. Welcome to the insane and rarified world of Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of Romance Philology. Von Igelfeld is engaged in a never-ending quest to win the respect he feels certain he is due–a quest which has the tendency to go hilariously astray. In The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, Professor Dr. Von Igelfeld is mistaken for a veterinarian and not wanting to call attention to the faux pas, begins practicing veterinary medicine without a license. He ends up operating on a friend’s dachshund to dramatic and unfortunate effect. He also transports relics for a schismatically challenged Coptic prelate, and is pursued by marriage-minded widows on board a Mediterranean cruise ship. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Some people have dreams that are so magnificent that if they were to achieve them, their place in history would be guaranteed.  People like Christopher Columbus, Isaac Newton, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Edison, Nancy Astor, Charles Lindbergh, Amy Johnson, Edmund Hilary and Neil Armstrong—their unparalleled success has made their stories into legend. But what if one man had such a dream, and once he’d achieved it, there was no proof that he had fulfilled his ambition? Jeffrey Archer’s new novel, Paths of Glory, is the story of such a man—George Mallory. Born in 1886, he was a brilliant student who became part of the Bloomsbury Group at Cambridge in the early twentieth century and served in the Royal Garrison Artillery during World War I. After the war, he married, had three children, and would have spent the rest of his life as a schoolteacher, but for his love of mountain climbing. Mallory once told a reporter that he wanted to climb Mt. Everest, “because it is there.” On his third try in 1924, at age thirty-seven, he was last seen four hundred feet from the top. His body was found in 1999, and it remains a mystery whether he and his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, ever reached the summit. In fact, not until you’ve turned the last page of Archer’s extraordinary novel will you be able to decide if George Mallory should be added to that list of legends, while another name would have to be removed.  Paths of Glory is truly a triumph.

Jaybee Corbell awoke after more than 200 years as a corpsicle -- in someone else's body, and under sentence of instant annihilation if he made a wrong move while they were training him for a one-way mission to the stars. But Corbell picked his time and made his own move. Once he was outbound, where the Society that ruled Earth could not reach him, he headed his starship toward the galactic core, where the unimaginable energies of the Universe wrenched the fabric of time and space and promised final escape from his captors. Then he returned to an Earth eons older than the one he'd left...a planet that had had 3,000,000 years to develop perils he had never dreamed of -- perils that became nightmares that he had to escape...somehow!

The Golden Age is the concluding volume in Gore Vidal's celebrated and bestselling Narratives of Empire series-a unique pageant of the national experience from the United States' entry into World War Two to the end of the Korean War. The historical novel is once again in vogue, and Gore Vidal stands as its undisputed American master. In his six previous narratives of the American empire-Burr, Lincoln, 1876, Empire, Hollywood, and Washington, D.C.-he has created a fictional portrait of our nation from its founding that is unmatched in our literature for its scope, intimacy, political intelligence, and eloquence. Each has been a major bestseller, and some have stirred controversy for their decidedly ironic and unillusioned view of the realities of American power and of the men and women who have exercised that power. The Golden Age is Vidal's crowning achievement, a vibrant tapestry of American political and cultural life from 1939 to 1954, when the epochal events of World War Two and the Cold War transformed America, once and for all, for good or ill, from a republic into an empire. The sharp-eyed and sympathetic witnesses to these events are Caroline Sanford, Washington, D.C., newspaper publisher turned Hollywood pioneer producer-star, and Peter Sanford, her nephew and publisher of the independent intellectual journal The American Idea. They experience at first hand the masterful maneuvers of Franklin Roosevelt to bring a reluctant nation into World War Two, and later, the actions of Harry Truman that commit the nation to a decades-long twilight struggle against Communism-developments they regard with a marked skepticism, even though they end in an American global empire. The locus of these events is Washington, D.C., yet the Hollywood film industry and the cultural centers of New York also play significant parts. In addition to presidents, the actual characters who appear so vividly in the pages of The Golden Age include Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, Wendell Willkie, William Randolph Hearst, Dean Acheson, Tennessee Williams, Joseph Alsop, Dawn Powell-and Gore Vidal himself. The Golden Age offers up United States history as only Gore Vidal can, with unrivaled penetration, wit, and high drama, allied to a classical view of human fate. It is a supreme entertainment that will also change readers' understanding of American history and power.

ORIGINAL TRADE PAPERBACK. SEQUEL TO COBRA SLAVE. New York Times #1 best-selling author Timothy Zahn continues his Cobra SF adventure series with book #2 of a new Cobra saga, Cobra Rebellion. Cobra warriors: technologically enhanced and implanted with an arsenal of covert weaponry fight against alien foes and evil humans. Cobra warriors: technologically enhanced human warriors designed to combat an implacable alien menace. Now, and not for the first time, the Cobras are facing trouble from their own kind. The Broom clan of Cobra warriors finds itself pressed between two star empires headed for war. On the planet Aventine, the Broom's homeworld, pater familia Paul Broom has been taken prisoner by Commodore Santeros, an implacable operative of the Dominion of Man. Paul is due to have his memories sifted through by the dreaded and often destructive Dominion MindsEye in order to root out the location of legendary Qasamaa planet where huge advances in military hardware, particularly a svelte powered armor, might give the Dominion of Man an edge in a coming war with the alien Troft. Santeros hopes to strike a deal with Qasama and, if a deal cannot be struck, then Santores and the Dominion are prepared to take what they want. Elsewhere on Aventine and in the galaxy beyond, rebellion is brewing against Dominion atrocities and Dominion scheming, with outlaw Cobra warriors Lorne and Jody Broom in the vanguard. Meanwhile, Cobra Jason Broom poses as an escaped slave on a secret Troft prison planet where humans are sent to gladiatorial combat to the death for Troft amusement and wagering. He is seeking information on Troft factions, for not every Troft wants war with humankind, and if he can identify moderate elements, he may save the Cobra worlds, and head off a massive interstellar war in the bargain. The stage is set for adventure with one family of Cobra heroes once again fighting for freedom and peace in a galaxy on the edge of war. About Timothy Zahn: “Zahn keeps the story moving at a breakneck pace, maintaining excitement.”—Publishers Weekly "[Y]ou can count on Timothy Zahn for three things: clean, sparse prose; good pacing; and great action scenes. The first book in the Cobra War series hits all those marks in admirable style and makes for a quick, entertaining sci-fi novel." —Blogcritics “[Conqueror’s Heritage] is another finely wrought space adventure . . . [with] social, political and emotional complications, all of which Zahn treats with his usual skill.”—Booklist “Zahn paints every detail [in Angelmass] with gleamy realism . . . scientific dialogue that streams with starship hardware and military trooper talk . . . immensely appealing.”—Kirkus Review

Once again blending multiple story strands that transcend time and place, Grasshopper Jungle author Andrew Smith tells the story of 15-year-old Ariel, a refugee from the Middle East who is the sole survivor of an attack on his small village. Now living with an adoptive family in Sunday, West Virginia, Ariel's story of his summer at a boys' camp for tech detox is juxtaposed against those of a schizophrenic bomber and the diaries of a failed arctic expedition from the late nineteenth century. Oh, and there’s also a depressed bionic reincarnated crow.

contemporary adult romance explicit scenes and language You have the right to remain cherished. Anything you read or scream out in ecstasy can and will be used against you in the bedroom of Willow DeVane. You have the right to enjoy a big, sexy cop. If you can’t find your own, one by the name of Raith Malloy will be provided for you to enjoy and explore thoroughly within these pages. Tempers flare from the first moment divorce lawyer Willow DeVane crosses paths with sheriff deputy Raith Malloy. Both too stubborn and controlling for their own good, Willow and Raith butt heads until anger turns to passion, and they begin an affair despite their brewing hostilities. But more than one force works against them when they learn Willow’s being targeted by a dangerous stalker.

The thrilling new novel in the #1 New York Times–bestselling series. In Southeast Minnesota, down on the Mississippi, a school board meeting is coming to an end. The board chairman announces that the rest of the meeting will be closed, due to personnel issues. “Issues” is correct. The proposal up for a vote before them is whether to authorize the killing of a local reporter. The vote is four to one in favor. Meanwhile, not far away, Virgil Flowers is helping out a friend by looking into a dognapping, which seems to be turning into something much bigger and uglier—a team of dognappers supplying medical labs—when he gets a call from Lucas Davenport. A murdered body has been found—and the victim is a local reporter. . . .

This collection features a brilliant new translation of the Japanese master's stories, from the source for the movie Rashōmon to his later, more autobiographical writings. Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) is one of Japan’s foremost stylists - a modernist master whose short stories are marked by highly original imagery, cynicism, beauty and wild humour. ‘Rashōmon’ and ‘In a Bamboo Grove’ inspired Kurosawa’s magnificent film and depict a past in which morality is turned upside down, while tales such as ‘The Nose’, ‘O-Gin’ and ‘Loyalty’ paint a rich and imaginative picture of a medieval Japan peopled by Shoguns and priests, vagrants and peasants. And in later works such as ‘Death Register’, ‘The Life of a Stupid Man’ and ‘Spinning Gears’, Akutagawa drew from his own life to devastating effect, revealing his intense melancholy and terror of madness in exquisitely moving impressionistic stories. A WORLD IN DECAY - Rashōmon - In a Bamboo Grove - The Nose - Dragon: The Old Potter's Tale - The Spider Thread - Hell Screen UNDER THE SWORD - Dr. Ogata Ryōsai: Memorandum - O-Gin - Loyalty MODERN TRAGICOMEDY - The Story of a Head That Fell Off - Green Onions - Horse Legs AKUTAGAWA'S OWN STORY - Daidōji Shinsuke: The Early Years - The Writer's Craft - The Baby's Sickness - Death Register - The Life of a Stupid Man - Spinning Gears

He won his fame--and his freedom--in the gory pits of Rome's Colosseum. Yet the greatest challenge for once-legendary gladiator Caros Viriathos comes to him through a slave. His slave, the beautiful and mysterious Pelonia Valeria. Her secret brings danger to his household but offers Caros a love like he's never known.... Should anyone learn she is a Christian, Pelonia will be executed. Her faith threatens not only herself, but her master. Can she convince a man who found fame through unforgiving brutality to show mercy? And when she's ultimately given the choice, will Pelonia choose freedom or the love of a gladiator?

Antarctica is the last unconquered continent, a murderous expanse of howling winds, blinding whiteouts and deadly crevasses. On one edge of Antarctica is Wilkes Station. Beneath Wilkes Station is the gate to hell itself... A team of U.S. divers, exploring three thousand feet beneath the ice shelf has vanished. Sending out an SOS, Wilkes draws a rapid deployment team of Marines-and someone else... First comes a horrific firefight. Then comes a plunge into a drowning pool filled with killer whales. Next comes the hard part, as a handful of survivors begin an electrifying, red-hot, non-stop battle of survival across the continent and against wave after wave of elite military assassins-who've all come for one thing: a secret buried deep beneath the ice...

A novel of love and intrigue in the grandeur of Medieval England. Dirick of Derkland, man of the king, sets off on a mission of revenge after his father's brutal murder. His mind is bent solely on vengeance until he meets the beautiful, spirited Maris of Langumont. Maris of Langumont has vowed never to wed...but her father must do his duty to protect her, and he promises her to Victor d'Arcy - a man who makes her blood run cold. Bon de Savrille rests his eyes on Maris only once and decides she must be his. He whisks her away just before her betrothal, determined to force her into marriage. When Dirick appears at the castle where Maris is held captive, she believes he is part of the plot ... and it's nearly his death she causes during her plan to escape.

Dawn and Mary Anne are finally stepsisters and also roommates. When they begin to get on each other's nerves, Dawn comes up with a solution which pleases everyone.

As Halloween approaches, the three Malloy sisters find themselves continually trying to get even with the four Hatford brothers, who have been playing tricks on them since the Malloys moved from Ohio to West Virginia.

One of the best-loved comedies ever written, Twelfth Night is perhaps Shakespeare's most lyrical as well as most experimental play. This Penguin Shakespeare edition is edited by M. M. Mahood with an introduction by Michael Dobson. 'If music be the food of love, play on...' Separated from her twin brother Sebastian after a shipwreck, Viola disguises herself as a boy to serve the Duke of Illyria. Wooing a countess on his behalf, she is stunned to find herself the object of his beloved's affections. With the arrival of Viola's brother, and a trick played upon the countess's steward, confusion reigns in this romantic comedy of mistaken identity. This book contains a general introduction to Shakespeare's life and Elizabethan theatre, a separate introduction to Twelfth Night, a chronology, suggestions for further reading, an essay discussing performance options on both stage and screen, and a commentary. William Shakespeare was born some time in late April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon and died in 1616. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. Stanley Wells is Emeritus Professor of the University of Birmingham and Honorary President of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Michael Dobson is Director of the Shakespeare Institute and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham. 'Unrequited love, melancholy, cruelty and joy held together in perfect balance' - Nicholas Hytner **

Dakota Combes’s life of paperwork and boredom was about to come to a sudden and romantic end courtesy of her handsome and wealthy boss, David Dives. He’s the playboy of the floors, a wealthy bachelor with a penchant for female company, but she’s lost in the crowd of beautiful faces that surround her cubicle. All that changes one fateful full-moon night when she stumbles on his hair-raising secret, and stumbles into his dark, sensual world of the paranormal. The Alpha Mated series is an episodic serial where each book contains a conclusive story within an over-arching tale of sensual fun.

Explore the unconventional, otherworldly life of psychic waitress Sookie Stackhouse in this companion to the bestselling series that takes a closer look at Sookie and her family, friends, enemies, adventures, and—of course—the lovers who set her world on fire...  Visit Bon Temps, the small Louisiana town that Sookie calls home, with a detailed map created by Charlaine herself, and learn the characteristics of the supernaturals who live there: vampires, two-natured, and fae. Examine all the branches of Sookie’s family tree. And eavesdrop on the private conversations between rival vampires Eric and Bill. Also, enjoy the compelling novella “Small-Town Wedding,” in which Sookie accompanies her shapeshifting boss, Sam, to his brother’s wedding in Texas, where happily-ever-after seems very far away.... Exclusive interviews with True Blood creator Alan Ball and author Charlaine Harris—compiled from fan questions—will satisfy your craving for all things Sookie, as will trivia questions, recipes (including Caroline Bellefleur’s famous chocolate cake!), and a concordance to the Sookie Stackhouse novels. **Review “Can’t get enough of Sookie Stackhouse? Then grab a copy of this comprehensive guide filled with a complete rundown on her many adventures and so much more.”—Monsters and Critics “Harris has whipped up a companion piece spiced nicely for a variety of palates, sprinkled deliciously with her trademark humor.”—Tulsa World “For the Sookie Stackhouse series fan, this book is an absolute must. It delves deeper into the series and it’s always fun to get the author’s point-of-view about the characters and world she has created. This book can tide fans over until the next book or next season of True Blood.”—The Parkersburg News and Sentinel “A fun read, a satisfying Sookie fix, and a good resource…Consider The Sookie Stackhouse Companion a fun addition to your Sookie library.”—Tor.com “This is a true companion book to a great urban fantasy series!...Edited by Charlaine Harris herself, this book offers the ultimate guide to the ‘Sookieverse’ and it is set out in such a way that it will please even the most hardcore fans out there… I cannot say how thankful I felt for this book and I cannot believe that anyone who has followed the series will not feel the same gratitude and pleasure for this little gift. It is really for the fans and that reflects on the quality of the work: meticulous, funny, and touching! If you praise yourself to be a Sookie Stackhouse avid (or even more moderate) fan then this book should be already devoured by you!”—Love Vampires About the Author Charlaine Harris is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse and Midnight, Texas, fantasy/mystery series and the Aurora Teagarden, Harper Connelly, and Lily Bard mystery series. Her books have inspired HBO’s True Blood, NBC’s Midnight, Texas, and the Aurora Teagarden movies for Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. She has lived in the South her entire life.