When a gunman takes the hosts of a morning show hostage, we find the love and darkness behind the cheery banter. Two additional short stories.When a gunman takes the hosts of a morning show hostage, we find the love and darkness behind the cheery banter. Maggie tosses cigarettes in the same spot on her way to work every morning. She imagines the pile growing until her monument to misery is complete. Long before it is complete though, she will end it all. The only ones that can save her are the Blister Sisters, but they are busy running their beer tent at the town festival. Then there is the spring breaker on the make with the winner of a wet T-shirt contest. He has only known her since she took the stage and yet he has fallen in love with her.

From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India’s gross domestic product. Capitalism: A Ghost Story examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India, and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism has subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation.

This is a New Adult Title - Meant for Readers 18 & Older. Roni’s dreams of becoming a contemporary dancer were smashed under the brutal rage of her ex-husband's fists. Getting divorced and starting over at the age of twenty-two was never her plan, but maybe in Texas, she'll find her path. When the town's local player, Rich, opens a Rec Center, she sees a way to rekindle her dancing dreams...and maybe have a little fun with her sexy new boss. Rich never expected to fulfill his dreams in the town he planned to leave behind, but that's just what he's doing. His reputation as a noncommittal ladies' man might make it challenging to earn respect in the business world, but he's willing to prove that he's serious. In fact, when it comes to pursuing Roni, he's more than willing. But she's taking a page out of his book, not wanting to risk another relationship. Can he convince her that his playboy days are over and that she can trust him with her heart? Trust in Me is the third novella in the Friends & Lovers Trilogy. You can read all three books, plus a bonus ending for each couple, in the Friends & Lovers omnibus. Series Reading Order: Make it Last I Choose You Trust in Me

All her life, Della's secret powers have made her feel separated from her human family. Now, she's where she belongs, at Shadow Falls. With the help of her best friends Kylie and Miranda, she’ll try to prove herself in the paranormal world as an investigator—all the while trying to figure out her own heart. Should she chose Chase, a powerful vampire with whom she shares a special bond? Or Steve, the hot shapeshifter whose kisses make her weak in the knees? When a person with dark connection to her past shows up, it’ll help her decide which guy to choose–and make her question everything she knows about herself. From bestselling author C.C. Hunter comes Eternal—a must-read for fans of the Shadow Falls series—and the sequel to Reborn.

It is said that a picture may be worth a thousand words but an old photograph can inspire many more. In this beguiling book, Alexander McCall Smith casts his eye over five chanced-upon photographs from the era of black-and-white photography and imagines the stories behind them. Who were those people, what were their stories, why are they smiling, what made them sad? What emerges are surprising and poignant tales of love and friendship in a variety of settings - an estate in the Highlands of Scotland, a travelling circus in Canada, an Australian gold-mining town, a village in Ireland, and the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. Some will find joy and fulfilment - others would prefer happier endings. Each of them, though, will find love, and that is ultimately what matters.

Andy's not your average resident of exclusive Foxmeadow -- whenever he sits down to draw something, it turns out to be a dragon. And he wants to be a detective when he grows up -- not just an ordinary, everyday police detective, but a tough, cool, famous detective like the ones he reads about in mystery novels. Everyone knows a famous detective needs a sidekick, but Mrs. Edie Yakots, a lonely new bride who's just moved into Foxmeadow, isn't exactly what Andy had in mind -- he sometimes has a hard time just figuring out what's she's talking about. But she's the only volunteer for the job, and before he knows it, she's led him right into the middle of his first real crime -- in an inner-city neighborhood a short drive, and light years away, from Foxmeadow.

"I suppose I ought to warn you at the outset that my present circumstances are puzzling, even to me. Nevertheless, I am sure of this much: My little story has become your history. You won't really understand your times until you understand mine." So begins the account of Agnes Shanklin, the charmingly diffident narrator of Mary Doria Russell’s compelling new novel, Dreamers of the Day. And what is Miss Shanklin's "little story?" Nothing less than the creation of the modern Middle East at the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, where Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell met to decide the fate of the Arab world-and of our own. A forty-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, Agnes has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as the Peace Conference convenes, Agnes, with her plainspoken American opinions - and a small, noisy dachshund named Rosie – enters into the company of the historic luminaries who will, in the space of a few days at a hotel in Cairo, invent the nations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. Neither a pawn nor a participant at the conference, Agnes is ostensibly insignificant, and that makes her a welcome sounding board for Churchill, Lawrence, and Bell. It also makes her unexpectedly attractive to the charismatic German spy Karl Weilbacher. As Agnes observes the tumultuous inner workings of nation-building, she is drawn more and more deeply into geopolitical intrigue and toward a personal awakening. With prose as graceful and effortless as a seductive float down the Nile, Mary Doria Russell illuminates the long, rich history of the Middle East with a story that brilliantly elucidates today's headlines. As enlightening as it is entertaining, Dreamers of the Day is a memorable, passionate, gorgeously written novel.

The riveting #1 international bestselling novel about the quest across centuries by two intrepid women in different eras to reunite the pieces of a powerful, ancient chess set  A fabulous, bejeweled chess set that belonged to Charlemagne has been buried in a Pyrenees abbey for a thousand years. As the bloody French Revolution rages in Paris, the nuns dig it up and scatter its pieces across the globe because, when united, the set contains a secret power that could topple civilizations. To keep the set from falling into the wrong hands, two novices, Valentine and Mireille, embark on an adventure that begins in the streets of Paris and leads to Russia, Egypt, Corsica, and into the heart of the Algerian Sahara. Two hundred years later, while on assignment in Algeria, computer expert Catherine Velis finds herself drawn unwillingly into the deadly “Game” still swirling around the legendary chess set—a game that will require her to risk her life and match wits with diabolical forces. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Katherine Neville including rare images from her life and travels.

Lionel is a wild boy, who doesn’t much like to be around other people. He’d rather be a purring cat or a wolf stalking the woods. Marybeth is a nice girl. She doesn’t need to be told to comb her hair or brush her teeth, and she’s kind to everyone at the orphanage... Lionel most of all. Different though they are, Lionel and Marybeth are best friends in a world that has forgotten about them. So when a mysterious blue spirit possesses Marybeth — and starts to take control— they know they must stop it before the real Marybeth fades away forever.

Beasts Royal is the second book written by Patrick O’Brian – made available, at last, for the first time since the 1930s and elegantly repackaged. On the indigo waters of the South Sea, the crew of a schooner are attacked by a man-eating tiger-shark. In the humid depths of the African jungle, a thirty-foot python plots to rid himself of his rival, a wily old crocodile. Amid the heat and dust of the Punjab, the snake-charmer Hussein escapes into the forest on the elephant that he trained when a mahout in his youth. With the dry wit and unsentimental precision O’Brian would come to be loved for, we see the drama and tragedies of the natural world unfold for these, as well as other birds and beasts, in these twelve tales of animal adventure that would appear together in 1934 as the author’s second book. O’Brian’s debut, Caesar, had been published in 1930 and became an instant success, seeing him hailed as the ‘boy-Thoreau’. His second novel, Hussein, would expand upon one of the stories included in this collection and has been praised by Martin Booth of The Daily Telegraph as being ‘…as fresh today as when it was written.…so rich in detail, it is breathtaking.’ As with Caesar and Hussein, Beasts Royal sheds fascinating light on the formation of the literary genius behind the Aubrey-Maturin series of historical adventure tales, for which he is deservedly famous.

After her center-court split with Aiden, Tessa put the SOS behind her. After all, cheaters never prosper! Now she?s busy working on her faux-relationship with Aiden and negotiating the unfamiliar waters of ?technically single and pseudo-dating.? Life can?t get any more dismal for a one-guy kind of girl until an imposter hijacks the SOS, and it?s up to Tessa to save her squad from slander. But with her best boy hot and cold, what?s a kitten to do? Even worse, Tessa doesn?t realize how much she?s up against?because this copykitten is far more naughty than nice.

She’s smart, seductive, and in way over her head. He’s her only way out. An undercover DEA agent has gone off the radar. Suspecting an internal mole, the government needs Luke Dubois and his elite team of operatives to recover their man, and the New Orleans native thinks he’s found his way inside the dark underbelly of Manhattan: Olivia Taylor, the girlfriend of a mob boss and the sexiest woman he’s ever laid eyes on. His new mission objective? Get past Olivia’s defenses and convince her to take a chance—on him. All Olivia wanted was to finish law school and live a normal life, but that dream was shattered when one dangerous night put her deeply in a mobster’s debt. Now Luke and his team will help her escape—in exchange for intel on the missing agent. But Olivia doesn’t anticipate her intense attraction to the reckless Louisiana charmer or that she’ll be forced to risk everything—including her heart.

Guy can't imagine life without his best friend, Buzz. They've been inseparable since second grade, when fate tossed them together with a little help from a bad haircut, green boxer shorts, flying rice cakes, and a couple of hard-earned nicknames. So when an accident threatens to tear them apart, Guy finds himself clinging to precious memories of the friendship he'd wished for all his life. The ups and downs and inevitable complications of friendship have never been more funny, poignant, and sweet than in this fourth installment of the Guy series. Wishes can come true, but sometimes the things we wish for arrive in the most unlikely of packages.

Effie Truelove has just been expelled from magic class and now she can’t even get back to the Otherworld—the place she most loves and where she feels she belongs. If she can find a copy of The Chosen Ones by Laurel Wilde to give her father then she might be able to fix everything. The only problem is that there are suddenly no copies of the book anywhere, because Albion Freake, the richest man in the world, is paying for them to be destroyed so that he can own the single-volume limited edition that publisher Skylurian Midzhar is making for him. Raven Wilde’s witch’s intuition tells her there’s something suspicious about Skykurian’s plan, but she’s not sure what it is. And Maximilian has somehow managed to go missing deep in Napoleonic Europe. Will the five friends from Dragon’s Green—Effie, Raven, Maximilian, Lexy, and Wolf—be able to combine their skills again to save the world from the Diberi? And can they get away from Terrence Deer-Hart, the children’s author who seems a bit too interested in Effie’s life?

Fifteen-year-old Zoe has a secret ability: she can travel back in time twenty-three minutes to relive events she wants to change. But Zoe has learned from experience that this is more curse than gift. Things almost never end well and people just tend to think she’s crazy. But when she steps into a bank to get out of the rain and finds herself in the middle of a robbery gone horrifyingly wrong, Zoe knows she’s the only one who can help. The problem is, she has only a limited number of tries to make things right. Plus, a single mistake could get her killed—and not even time travel could bring her back from that. Zoe has always considered herself a loser, about as far from a heroine as a girl can get. Now she has to dig deep to find a strength she never thought she possessed.

* Celestra Series OPTIONED for FILM by 20th CENTURY FOX * From the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Addison Moore Sixteen year-old, Skyla Messenger is having difficulties with the living and the dead. With Chloe’s diary in her hands, Skyla embarks into the mind of one of Paragon’s most twisted former residents. After accidentally kick-starting the faction war, Skyla finds herself in more danger than ever before. So, when Marshall offers her a taste of the gift of knowing, Skyla attempts to use it to alter the outcome of future prophecies. And now that Skyla’s love life seems to involve one boy too many, she must choose who to be with. If she waits too long, the decision just might be made for her. Books by Addison Moore Ethereal (Celestra Series Book 1) Tremble (Celestra Series Book 2) Burn (Celestra Series Book 3) Wicked (Celestra Series Book 4) Vex (Celestra Series Book 5) Expel (Celestra Series Book 6) Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7) Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 7.5) Ethereal Knights (Celestra Knights) Ephemeral (The Countenance Trilogy 1) Evanescent (The Countenance Trilogy 2) Someone to Love (Someone to Love 1)

BEFORE THE MAN BECAME THE LEGEND. BEFORE THE BOY BECAME THE MAN. MEET BOND. JAMES BOND. Following his adventures in the Scottish Highlands, James Bond is back at Eton, where he has joined the risk-taking Danger Society. Summer vacation is on the horizon and James is looking forward to the school trip to the beautiful Italian island of Sardinia, and the opportunity to spend some time with his reclusive cousin Victor. But all is not as it appears. James soon discovers that the seemingly peaceful island harbors some strange secrets. Before long, Victor’s house has been ransacked and important pieces of artwork have been stolen. James learns that the Millennaria—a ruthless Roman society long thought to be extinguished—is still active. He suspects the impetuous millionaire Count Ugo Carnifex may be behind it. But one of his teachers has been acting strangely as well…. As a young girl’s life hangs in the balance, it’s up to James to uncover an intricate conspiracy that will take him head-to-head with enemies more ruthless than he could have ever imagined. The first five books and companion novel in the series are written by Charlie Higson, with the rest being written by Steve Cole. The series consists of the following titles; 1. SilverFin 2. Blood Fever 3. Double or Die 4. Hurricane Gold 5. By Royal Command 6. Shoot to Kill 7. Heads You Die 8. Strike Lightning 9. Red Nemesis

Police Lieutenant Matt Leahy is surprised to learn that he has been assigned to work with a special branch of the National Security Agency in conducting an investigation at a top-secret base called Apache Point located in the New Mexico desert. He is met at the Albuquerque airport by a beautiful female agent who has been appointed to assist in the case. At Apache Point he learns that an extraterrestrial element known as stellarite, which powers the world's first time transporter, has been sabotaged. Computer models have determined that the only other known source of the element came to Earth in a meteor that struck Egypt in the year 1250 B.C. However, the agent who was sent back in time to recover it has taken the element and vanished into the world of Pharaoh Ramses II. To make matters worse, the suspect must be captured within 20 days, and the stellarite recovered, or hundreds of time agents will be forever stranded in the past. But Leahy soon discovers that there is much more at stake than has been revealed. A closely guarded secret threatens to reach out from man's distant past and ignite World War III. He and his team of experts transport into the era of the pharaohs, unaware of the deadly consequences that await them.

This new gathering of Marge Piercy’s poems—energetic, funny, political, full of vitality—brings us the heart of her mature work, the first selected since Circles on the Water in 1982. Here are poems that chart the milestone events and fierce passions of her middle years: the death of her mother, whom we meet first as a young woman, “awkwardly lovely, her face / pure as a single trill perfectly / prolonged on a violin,” and again as an older woman musing on what the afterlife may hold for her. There is a new marriage which she celebrates not only for romantic beginnings but also for the more intimate details that emerge over time: “love cherishes too the backpockets, / the pencil ends of childhood fears.” Some poems convey her long-held, never-wavering political convictions, which she declares in language unmistakably and colorfully her own, as when she encourages her feminist readers to go to the opera instead of the movies because at least there the heroine is real, “fifty and weighs as much as a ’65 Chevy with fins.” Living out to sea on Cape Cod settles her into the rhythm of seasons and provides poems of planting and harvests, odes to tomatoes and roses, tributes to the power and freedom of whales. And in these years she rediscovers her Jewish heritage, celebrating holidays and making of them something new and original. She begins to examine her own legacy: I have worn the faces, the masks of hieroglyphs, gods and demons, bat faced ghosts, sibyls and thieves, lover, loser, red rose and ragweed, these are the tracks I have left on the white crust of time. From the Hardcover edition.

By the author of *Reasons to Stay Alive* Terence Cave, the intellectual owner of Cave Antiques, has already experienced the tragedies of his mother's suicide and his wife's murder when his teenage son, Reuben, is killed in a grotesque accident. His remaining child, Bryony, has always been the family's golden girl, in love with her cello and her pony, and Terence comes to realise that his one duty in life is to protect her from the world's malign forces, whatever that may take. But as he starts to follow his grieving daughter's movements and enforce a draconian set of rules, his love for Bryony becomes a possessive force that leads to destruction and, ultimately, murder.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Asylum comes the second book in an all-new gothic horror series praised as “darkly delightful.”* In this second book of Madeleine Roux’s expansive gothic horror series, illustrations from artist Iris Compiet and chilling photographs help bring to life a world where the line between monsters and men is ghostly thin. After the frightful events of last autumn, seventeen-year-old Louisa Ditton has settled into her role as a maid at Coldthistle House, but she has not settled into what that means for her humanity. As Louisa struggles to figure out whether she is worthy of redemption, the devilish Mr. Morningside plans a fete— one that will bring new guests to Coldthistle House. From wicked humans to Upworlders, angelic beings who look down upon Mr. Morningside’s monstrous staff, all are armed with their own brand of self-righteous justice. Even a man claiming to be Louisa’s father has a role to play, though what his true motive is, Louisa cannot tell. The conflicts will eventually come to a head on the grounds of Coldthistle House—and the stakes include Louisa’s very soul. *Publishers Weekly