Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

      Helen Simonson
     Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family. Among them is Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), the unlikely hero of Helen Simonson's wondrous debut. Wry, courtly, opinionated, and completely endearing, Major Pettigrew is one of the most indelible characters in contemporary fiction, and from the very first page of this remarkable novel he will steal your heart. The Major leads a quiet life valuing the proper things that Englishmen have lived by for generations: honor, duty, decorum, and a properly brewed cup of tea. But then his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as the permanent foreigner. Can their relationship survive the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of culture and tradition?

Read online

  • 1 254

    Returning to Earth

      Jim Harrison
     Returning to Earth

Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as “a master … who makes the ordinary extraordinary, the unnamable unforgettable,” beloved author Jim Harrison returns with a masterpiece—a tender, profound, and magnificent novel about life, death, and finding redemption in unlikely places.  Slowly dying of Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Donald, a middle-aged Chippewa-Finnish man, begins dictating family stories he has never shared with anyone, hoping to preserve history for his children. The dignity of Donald’s death and his legacy encourages his loved ones to find a way to redeem—and let go of—the past, whether through his daughter’s emersion in Chippewa religious ideas or his mourning wife’s attempt to escape the malevolent influence of her own father. A deeply moving book about origins and endings, and how to live with honor for the dead, Returning to Earth is one of the finest novels of Harrison’s long, storied career, and will confirm his standing as one of the most important American writers now working.

Read online

  • 1 254

    Rock Addiction

      Nalini Singh
     Rock Addiction

**A bad boy wrapped in a sexy, muscled, grown-up package might be worth a little risk… ** Molly Webster has always followed the rules. After an ugly scandal tore apart her childhood and made her the focus of the media’s harsh spotlight, she vowed to live an ordinary life. No fame. No impropriety. No pain. Then she meets Zachary Fox, a tattooed bad boy rocker with a voice like whiskey and sin, and a touch that could become an addiction. **A one-night stand with the hottest rock star on the planet, that’s all it was meant to be…** Fox promises scorching heat and dangerous pleasure, coaxing Molly to extend their one-night stand into a one-month fling. After that, he’ll be gone forever, his life never again intersecting with her own. Sex and sin and sensual indulgence, all with an expiration date. No ties, no regrets. Too late, Molly realizes it isn’t only her body that’s become addicted to Fox, but her heart…

Read online

  • 1 253

    While the Light Lasts

      Agatha Christie
     While the Light Lasts

These early short stories showcase Christie's talents across a range of styles from romance to the supernatural. Though these are not all crime stories, they reflect Christie's ability to deliver an unexpected twist in the tale. The House of Dreams The Actress The Edge Christmas Adventure The Lonely God Manx Gold Within a Wall The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest While the Light Lasts

Read online

  • 1 253

    Too Complicated

      Bethany Lopez
     Too Complicated

Reardon Lewis is a small-town lawyer in Cherry Springs, the place where he and his cousins grew up. With the body of a Viking and the heart of a geek, Reardon is loyal to his family and indispensable to his community. The only thing missing in his life is love, and it just so happens that the one woman he has always wanted but could never have has just moved to Cherry Springs. Chloe Zahn is a successful businesswoman, a city girl, and a single mom. The last thing she ever planned to do was move to a small town, but that’s the choice she’s made to bring her son closer to his dad. The only problem? The Lewis family and the obvious disdain they have for her. The more time Reardon and Chloe spend together, the harder it is to fight their growing feelings for each other. Things between them have always been Too Complicated, but Reardon knows this may be his last chance to win over the woman he's always dreamed of, complications be damned. Too Complicated is the second in an all-new small-town romance series by Bethany Lopez. Follow the Lewis cousins as they learn about love and loss in Cherry Springs, the kind of place where there are festivals for every occasion and everyone knows your business.

Read online

  • 1 253

    Secrets & Lies: The Ferro Family

      H. M. Ward
     Secrets & Lies: The Ferro Family

They say the best way to get over a broken heart is a random hook-up. So my new BFF is dragging me to a bar. All I have to do is wear a slutty dress, choose a dude, and do the deed, right? The thing is, this isn't me. I'm the good girl -- the one who has sex for love. But, since the love of my life is shacked up with someone else, I guess it's time to move on. One night, one time. That's all. I'll have a clean slate. A guy with a sketch pad, sitting alone, catches my eye. I'm a sucker for the artistic type with dark hair and bright blue eyes. Soon we're in his hotel room doing things I've never done. His smoldering body, perfectly toned with hot skin and a firm touch, has my mind reeling with the things to come. We're both naked and glistening with sweat, breathless. And then he darts, right before doing the deed, abandoning me in his room. He doesn't return. A week later I see him again, and realize that he wasn't just a random guy. My heart clenches at the massive mistake, and I still don't grasp the extent of it. I should have run and never looked back. Genre: NA Type: Serial, 1 of 7 Series: Ferro

Read online

  • 1 253

    My Brother's Keeper

      Abigail Roux
     My Brother's Keeper

Someone is playing games in the wealthy suburbs of Miami, using the people of Coral Gables as their chess pieces and murder as their checkmate. When Reggie Bainbridge, the owner and director of The Country Club of Coral Gables, dies unexpectedly, his sons are left to deal with the aftermath: the daily operation of the Club and an unwelcome police investigation into his death. When the brothers realize that someone will be going down for old Reggie's murder, they find themselves playing the game, wondering who to trust and trying to stay out of danger, even if it means playing the game to the end.

Read online

  • 1 253

    Hermit in Paris: Autobiographical Writings

      Italo Calvino
     Hermit in Paris: Autobiographical Writings

From one of modern literature’s most captivating and elusive masters comes a posthumous volume of thoughtful, elegant, and quick-witted autobiographical writings, all previously unpublished in English. Here is Italo Calvino paying homage to his literary influences and tracing the evolution of his signature style. Here are his reminiscences of Italy’s antifascist resistance and the frenzy of politics and ideas of the postwar era. The longest and most delightfully revealing section of the book is Calvino’s diary of his travels in the United States in 1959 and 1960, which show him marveling at color TV, wrinkling his nose at the Beats, and reeling at the outpouring of racial hatred attending a civil rights demonstration in Alabama. Overflowing with insight and amusement, Hermit in Paris is an invaluable addition to the Calvino legacy. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Read online

  • 1 253

    The Charming Quirks of Others

      Alexander McCall Smith
     The Charming Quirks of Others

**ISABEL DALHOUSIE - Book 7 Nothing captures the charm of Edinburgh like the bestselling Isabel Dalhousie series of novels featuring the insatiably curious philosopher and woman detective.  Whether investigating a case or a problem of philosophy, the indefatigable Isabel Dalhousie, one of fiction’s most richly developed amateur detectives, is always ready to pursue the answers to all of life’s questions, large and small. ** Isabel has been asked for her help in a rather tricky situation: A successor is being sought for the headmaster at a local boys’ school. The board has three final candidates but has received an anonymous letter alleging that one of them has a very serious skeleton in the closet. Could Isabel discreetly look into it? And so she does. What she discovers about all the candidates is surprising, but what she discovers about herself and about Jamie, the father of her young son, turns out to be equally revealing. Isabel’s investigation will have her exploring issues of ambition, as well as of charity, forgiveness, and humility, as she moves nearer and nearer to some of the most hidden precincts of the heart. Here is Isabel Dalhousie at her beguiling best: intelligent, insightful, and with a unique understanding of the quirks of human nature. From the Hardcover edition.

Read online

  • 1 253

    A Suspension of Mercy

      Patricia Highsmith
     A Suspension of Mercy

With the acclaim for The Talented Mr. Ripley, more film projects in production, and two biographies forthcoming, expatriate legend Patricia Highsmith would be shocked to see that she has finally arrived in her homeland. Throughout her career, Highsmith brought a keen literary eye and a genius for plumbing the psychopathic mind to more than thirty works of fiction, unparalleled in their placid deviousness and sardonic humor. With deadpan accuracy, she delighted in creating true sociopaths in the guise of the everyday man or woman. Now, one of her finest works is again in print: A Suspension of Mercy, a masterpiece of noir fantasy. With this novel, Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life. "For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there's no one like Patricia Highsmith."—Time "Highsmith's novels are peerlessly disturbing ....bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night."—The New Yorker

Read online

  • 1 253

    The Motorcycle Diaries

      Ernesto Che Guevara
     The Motorcycle Diaries

The book of the popular movie STARRING GAEL GARCIA BERNAL NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The young Che Guevara's lively and highly entertaining travel diary, now a popular movie and a New York Times" bestseller. This new, expanded edition features exclusive, unpublished photos taken by the 23-year-old Ernesto on his journey across a continent, and a tender preface by Aleida Guevara, offering an insightful perspective on the man and the icon. "A journey, a number of journeys. Ernesto Guevara in search of adventure, Ernesto Guevara in search of America, Ernesto Guevara in search of Che. On this journey of journeys, solitude found solidarity, 'I' turned into 'we'."--Eduardo Galeano "When I read these notes for the first time, I was quite young myself and I immediately identified with this man who narrated his adventures in such a spontaneous manner... To tell you the truth, the more I read, the more I was in love with the boy my father had been."--Aleida Guevara "Our film is about a young man, Che, falling in love with a continent and finding his place in it." --Walter Salles, director of "The Motorcycle Diaries." "As his journey progresses, Guevara's voice seems to deepen, to darken, colored by what he witnesses in his travels. He is still poetic, but now he comments on what he sees, though still poetically, with a new awareness of the social and political ramifications of what's going on around him."--"January Magazine" Also available in Spanish: DIARIOS DE MOTOCICLETA (978-1-920888-11-4) Features of this edition include: --A preface by Che Guevara's daughter Aleida--Introduction by Cintio Vintier, well-known Latin American poet--Photos & maps from the original journey--Che's personal reflections on his formative years: "A child of my environment." Published in association with the Che Guevara Studies Center, Havana

Read online

  • 1 253

    The Kindly Ones

      Anthony Powell
     The Kindly Ones

A Dance to the Music of Time – his brilliant 12-novel sequence, which chronicles the lives of over three hundred characters, is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England. The novels follow Nicholas Jenkins, Kenneth Widmerpool and others, as they negotiate the intellectual, cultural and social hurdles that stand between them and the “Acceptance World.”

Read online

  • 1 252

    A Thread of Grace

      Mary Doria Russell
     A Thread of Grace

Set in Italy during the dramatic finale of World War II, this new novel is the first in seven years by the bestselling author of "The Sparrow" and "Children ofGod." It is September 8, 1943, and fourteen-year-old Claudette Blum is learning Italian with a suitcase in her hand. She and her father are among the thousands of Jewishrefugees scrambling over the Alps toward Italy, where they hope to be safe at last, now that the Italians have broken with Germany and made a separate peace with the Allies. The Blums will soon discover that Italy isanything but peaceful, as it becomes overnight an open battleground among the Nazis, the Allies, resistance fighters, Jews in hiding, and ordinary Italian civilians trying to survive. Mary Doria Russellsets her first historical novel against this dramatic background, tracing the lives of a handful of fascinating characters. Through them, she tells the little-known but true story of the network of Italian citizens whosaved the lives of forty-three thousand Jews during the war's final phase. The result of five years of meticulous research, "A Thread of Grace" is an ambitious, engrossing novel of ideas, history, and marvelous characters that will please Russell's many fans and earn her even more. "From the Hardcover edition."

Read online

  • 1 252

    The Instructions

      Adam Levin
     The Instructions

Beginning with a chance encounter with the beautiful Eliza June Watermark and ending, four days and 900 pages later, with the Events of November 17, this is the story of Gurion Maccabee, age ten: a lover, a fighter, a scholar, and a truly spectacular talker. Expelled from three Jewish day-schools for acts of violence and messianic tendencies, Gurion ends up in the Cage, a special lockdown program for the most hopeless cases of Aptakisic Junior High. Separated from his scholarly followers, Gurion becomes a leader of a very different sort, with righteous aims building to a revolution of troubling intensity. The Instructions is an absolutely singular work of fiction by an important new talent. Combining the crackling voice of Philip Roth with the encyclopedic mind of David Foster Wallace, Adam Levin has shaped a world driven equally by moral fervor and slapstick comedy—a novel that is muscular and exuberant, troubling and empathetic, monumental, breakneck, romantic, and unforgettable.

Read online

  • 1 252