The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza

      Lawrence Block
     The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza

From Library Journal In this classic Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery, long out of print, sneaky thief Bernie turns up a 1913 V-nickel that gets his Spinoza-reading fence, Abel, murdered. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. Product Description Bookselling burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr doesn't generally get philosophical about his criminal career. He's good at it, it's addictively exciting—and it pays a whole lot better than pushing old tomes. He steals therefore he is, period. He might well ponder, however, the deeper meaning of events at the luxurious Chelsea brownstone of Herb and Wanda Colcannon, which is apparently burgled three times on the night Bernie breaks in: once before his visit and once after. Fortunately he still manages to lift some fair jewelry and an extremely valuable coin. Unfortunately burglar or burglars number three leave Herb unconscious and Wanda dead . . . and the cops think Rhodenbarr dunnit. There's no time to get all existential about it—especially after the coin vanishes and the fence fencing it meets with a most severe end. But Bernie is going to have to do some deep thinking to find a way out of this homicidal conundrum.

Read online

  • 133

    A Diet of Treacle

      Lawrence Block
     A Diet of Treacle

SEX, DRUGS, AND MURDER INTHE LAND OF THE LOTUS EATERSAnita Carbone was a good girl-and it bored her. That's why she took the long subway ride down to Greenwich Village, home of the Beats and the stoners, home to every kind of misfit and dropout and free spirit you could imagine. It was where she met Joe Milani, the troubled young war veteran with the gentle touch. But it was also where she met his drug-dealing roommate-a man whose unnatural appetites led to murder...

Read online

  • 133

    Challenge for the Pacific

      Robert Leckie
     Challenge for the Pacific

From Robert Leckie, the World War II veteran and * New York Times * bestselling author of Helmet for My Pillow, whose experiences were featured in the HBO miniseries * The Pacific *, comes this vivid narrative of the astonishing six-month campaign for Guadalcanal. From the Japanese soldiers’ carefully calculated—and ultimately foiled—attempt to build a series of impregnable island forts on the ground to the tireless efforts of the Americans who struggled against a tenacious adversary and the temperature and terrain of the island itself, Robert Leckie captures the loneliness, the agony, and the heat of twenty-four-hour-a-day fighting on Guadalcanal. Combatants from both sides are brought to life: General Archer Vandegrift, who first assembled an amphibious strike force; Isoroku Yamamoto, the naval general whose innovative strategy was tested; the island-born Allied scout Jacob Vouza, who survived hideous torture to uncover the enemy’s plans; and Saburo Sakai, the ace flier who shot down American planes with astonishing ease. Propelling the Allies to eventual victory, Guadalcanal was truly the turning point of the war. Challenge for the Pacific is an unparalleled, authoritative account of this great fight that forever changed our world. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Read online

  • 133

    Spooky Little Girl

      Laurie Notaro
     Spooky Little Girl

SUMMARY: Death is what happens while you're busy making other plans. Coming home from a Hawaiian vacation with her best girlfriends, Lucy Fisher is stunned to find everything she owns tossed out on her front lawn, the locks changed, and her fiancée's phone disconnected-plus she's just lost her job. With her world spinning wildly out of her control, Lucy decides to make a new start and moves upstate to live with her sister and nephew. But then things take an even more dramatic turn: A fatal encounter with public transportation lands Lucy not in the hereafter but in the nearly hereafter. She's back in school, learning the parameters of spooking and how to become a successful spirit in order to complete a ghostly assignment. If Lucy succeeds, she's guaranteed a spot in the next level of the afterlife-but until then, she's stuck as a ghost in the last place she would ever want to be. Trying to avoid being trapped on earth for all eternity, Lucy crosses the line between life and death and back again when she returns home. Navigating the perilous channels of the paranormal, she's determined to find out why her life crumbled and why, despite her ghastly death, no one seems to have noticed she's gone. But urgency on the spectral plane-in the departed person of her feisty grandmother, who is risking both their eternal lives-requires attention, and Lucy realizes that you get only one chance to be spectacular in death.

Read online

  • 133

    Perfectly Matched

      Heather Webber
     Perfectly Matched

When Boston psychic Lucy Valentine finds herself involved with a group of eccentric mediums trying to fine tune their abilities, she is convinced a rare spring heat wave has flushed all the local crazies out of hiding.Adding to her theory is her newest client in the Lost Loves division of Valentine, Inc., her family’s lucrative matchmaking firm. He’s an animal whisperer who hires Lucy to locate his soul mate—because his cat told him so. Finding his purrfect match, however, isn't as easy as it seems.But craziest of all is the Beantown Burner, a serial arsonist who is targeting private eye Sam Donahue, brother of Lucy’s boyfriend, Sean. With the help of her kooky psychic group, Lucy must tap into hidden abilities to catch the firebug before the fires turn deadly. She never expected to discover that the motive behind the flames hits a little too close to home...and dangerously close to her heart.

Read online

  • 133

    Now Is the Hour

      Tom Spanbauer
     Now Is the Hour

1967. Rigby John Kluesener stands in the moonlight, a flower in his hair, his thumb out trying to hitch a ride on the road to San Francisco. The story of how he came to be there - of an adolescence spent on his parents' farm in Nowheresville, Idaho, of his father's misanthropy, his mother's strict Catholicism - is utterly real and totally unforgettable.

Read online

  • 132