The Secrets of a Fire King

      Kim Edwards
     The Secrets of a Fire King

In each of these elegant and mesmerizing stories, Kim Edwards explores the lives of those who exist on the fringes of society--a fire-eater, an American and his Korean war bride, a juggler and a trapeze artist. Spanning several generations and transporting us to exotic locations in Europe, Asia, and America, this wise and exquisite story collection marks the debut of a gifted new voice in literature.

Read online

  • 1 248

    Someone to Love

      Melissa de la Cruz
     Someone to Love

Constantly in the spotlight thanks to her politician father's rising star, Olivia Blakely feels the pressure to be perfect. As the youngest girl in her class, she tries hard to keep up and to seem mature to the older boy she's crushing on, even as she catches his eye. But the need to look good on camera and at school soon grows into an all-consuming struggle with bulimia. As Liv works toward her goal of gaining early admission to art school, including taking part in an upcoming student show, her life spirals out of control. Swept up in demands to do more than she's ready for, to always look perfect and to succeed, Liv doesn't know who she is anymore. It will take nearly losing her best friend and even her life for Liv to learn that loving herself is far more important than earning the world's approval.

Read online

  • 1 248

    Scandal in Seattle

      Nicole Williams
     Scandal in Seattle

Revenge isn’t what the Eves are about. Justice is. But when Sienna Stevens leaves Miami for her Errand in Seattle as Ally Andrews, revenge is the only thing on her mind. A woman scorned is one thing, but Ally is something else altogether. She will not rest until the man who upended her world is brought to his personal and financial knees. She won’t settle for just upending his world in return. She’s going for full-blown annihilation. Ally’s barely in Seattle a day before complications arise. She begins making slips. She’s one error away from being pulled from the biggest Errand of her career when she comes face to face with Henry Callahan. Former lover. Current Target. Things just went from complicated to catastrophic.

Read online

  • 1 248

    Conan the Conqueror

      Robert E. Howard
     Conan the Conqueror

Of the 21 Conan the Barbarian tales that Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) completed in his all-too-brief lifetime, Hour of the Dragon was the only novel-length story. It may also be the very best of the series, crafted when the legendary pulp writer was working at the height of his powers. Conan is a huge swordsman fighting both natural and supernatural foes in a time-lost world known as the Hyborian Age. At this point in his bloody career, Conan is the middle-aged king of the ancient kingdom of Aquilonia. He must fight one final battle to save the known world from a resurrected sorcerer named Xaltotun. Only the fabled Heart of Ahriman can destroy Xaltotun, and Conan must embark on an epic quest to retrieve the Heart. Howard hammered out every word as if he had actually lived through it himself, and in doing so forged a crimson masterpiece of heroic fantasy. (This novel has also been published as part of the formal Conan series as Conan the Conqueror.) --Stanley Wiater

Read online

  • 1 248

    Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me

      Javier Marías
     Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me

Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me is a riveting novel of infidelity and a man trapped by a terrible secret. Marta has only just met Victor when she invites him to dinner at her Madrid apartment while her husband is away on business. When her two-year-old son finally falls asleep, Marta and Victor retreat to the bedroom. Undressing, she feels suddenly ill; and in his arms, inexplicably, she dies. What should Victor do? Remove the compromising tape from the answering machine? Leave food for the child for breakfast? These are just his first steps, but he soon takes matters further; unable to bear the shadows and the unknowing, Victor plunges into dark waters. And Javier Marías, Europe's master of secrets, of what lies reveal and truth may conceal, is on sure ground in this profound, quirky, and marvelous novel.

Read online

  • 1 248

    A Hundred Pieces of Me

      Lucy Dillon
     A Hundred Pieces of Me

WINNER OF THE ROMANTIC NOVELISTS' ASSOCIATION CONTEMPORARY ROMANTIC NOVEL AWARD, 2015. As heart wrenching and life-affirming as One Day or Me Before You, A HUNDRED PIECES OF ME is a story about what it means to finally live life to the full. Letters from the only man she's ever truly loved. A keepsake of the father she never really knew. A blue glass vase that catches the light on a grey day. Gina Bellamy is starting again, after a few years she'd rather forget. But the belongings she's treasured for so long don't seem to fit who she is now. So Gina makes a resolution. She'll keep just a hundred special items - the rest can go. But that means coming to terms with her past and learning to embrace the future, whatever it might bring...

Read online

  • 1 248

    Symphony for the City of the Dead

      M. T. Anderson
     Symphony for the City of the Dead

National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson delivers an account of the Siege of Leningrad and the role played by Russian composer Shostakovich and his Leningrad Symphony. In September 1941, Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad in what was to become one of the longest and most destructive sieges in Western history—almost three years of bombardment and starvation that culminated in the harsh winter of 1943–1944. More than a million citizens perished. Survivors recall corpses littering the frozen streets, their relatives having neither the means nor the strength to bury them. Residents burned books, furniture, and floorboards to keep warm; they ate family pets and—eventually—one another to stay alive. Trapped between the Nazi invading force and the Soviet government itself was composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who would write a symphony that roused, rallied, eulogized, and commemorated his fellow citizens—the Leningrad Symphony, which came to occupy a surprising place of prominence in the eventual Allied victory. This is the true story of a city under siege: the triumph of bravery and defiance in the face of terrifying odds. It is also a look at the power—and layered meaning—of music in beleaguered lives.

Read online

  • 1 248

    Biplane

      Richard Bach
     Biplane

"Finding Ourselves is Like Flying An Ancient Biplane Coast To Coast: There Are Storms Ahead, But Oonce We've Started, It's Too Late To turn Back." To discover that time is not a straight line aimed toward infinity, Richard Bach undertook a magnificent journey. "Biplane" is the story of that solo flight into the American skies -- a flight that became a personal quest to discover everything that lies beyond the ordinary.

Read online

  • 1 247

    Three Guineas

      Virginia Woolf
     Three Guineas

The author received three separate requests for a gift of one guinea-one for a women’s college building fund, one for a society promoting the employment of professional women, and one to help prevent war and “protect culture, and intellectual liberty.” This book is a threefold answer to these requests-and a statement of feminine purpose.

Read online

  • 1 247

    Lost

      Braxton Tucker
     Lost

The purpose of this book to inform the readers about the process of dealing and overcoming adversity, helping athletes deal with their injury and readers who aren’t familiar with college sports to be informed or for those who would like to learn more about the effects of injury and the recovery process.The purpose of this book to inform the readers about the process of dealing and overcoming adversity, helping athletes deal with their injury and readers who aren’t familiar with college sports to be informed or for those who would like to learn more about the effects of injury and the recovery process. I will assume the role of the hypothetical basketball player who encounters an knee injury during one of his matches. Through this hypothetical player I will explain the problems, challenges and obstacles that the player has to overcome in order to play once again without the fear of being injured again.

Read online

  • 1 247

    Silas

      C. L. Stone
     Silas

From the USA TODAY bestselling The Academy: Ghost Bird series, comes a different look at the very beginning. Read Introductions with a whole new perspective—the boys'.Silas Korba's days are filled with working for the Academy and dealing with the realities of bringing his family from Greece to America. Only today is a little different; he meets a girl—a mysterious girl—who needs his help and maybe the help of the Academy.He doesn't know her, but he wants to. There’s something different and special about her and he has a feeling she’s going to change his life forever.

Read online

  • 1 247

    Corkscrew and Other Stories

      Dashiell Hammett
     Corkscrew and Other Stories

From the sands of Arizona to the alleys of the Tenderloin, the Continental Op deals out *rough* justice, in this collection of short stories from master of noir fiction Dashiell Hammett In the Arizona desert, the sun’s high, the heat’s relentless, and there’s murder in the air. Across this long stretch of sunbaked hell, one town stands out as the worst of all. Someone is killing the cowboys of Corkscrew, and Continental Op has been hired to stop the slaughter. From the moment he rides into town, he tastes dust on his teeth and blood in the wind. The locals have no respect for this hardboiled San Francisco detective, so it’s up to the Op to show them he deserves his badge. But before peace can come to Corkscrew, more men will die. A portrait of a tough man in a rough town, “Corkscrew” offers a taste of Dashiell Hammett’s first novel, the legendary epic of hardboiled violence Red Harvest. Along with the other stories in this volume—“Dead Yellow Women” and “The Gutting of Couffignal”—it shows Hammett and his infamous Continental Op at the top of their forms.

Read online

  • 1 247

    American Decameron

      Mark Dunn
     American Decameron

From the award-winning and highly acclaimed author of Ella Minnow Pea comes Mark Dunn's most ambitious novel to date. American Decameron tells one hundred stories, each taking place in a different year of the 20th century. A girl in Galveston is born on the eve of a great storm and the dawn of the 20th century. Survivors of the Lusitania are accidentally reunited in the North Atlantic. A member of the Bonus Army find himself face to face with General MacArthur. A failed writer attempts to end his life on the Golden Gate Bridge until an unexpected heroine comes to his rescue, and on the doorstep of a new millennium, as the clock strikes twelve, the stage is set for a stunning denouement as the American century converges upon itself in a Greenwich nursing home, tying together all of the previous tales and the last one hundred years. Zany and affecting, deeply moving and wildly hilarious, American Decameron is one America's most powerful voices at the top its game.

Read online

  • 1 247