Andrew's Brain

      E. L. Doctorow
     Andrew's Brain

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, SLATE, AND* THE THELEGRAPH* This brilliant new novel by an American master, the author of Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, Billy Bathgate, and The March, takes us on a radical trip into the mind of a man who, more than once in his life, has been the inadvertent agent of disaster. Speaking from an unknown place and to an unknown interlocutor, Andrew is thinking, Andrew is talking, Andrew is telling the story of his life, his loves, and the tragedies that have led him to this place and point in time. And as he confesses, peeling back the layers of his strange story, we are led to question what we know about truth and memory, brain and mind, personality and fate, about one another and ourselves. Written with psychological depth and great lyrical precision, this suspenseful and groundbreaking novel delivers a voice for our times—funny, probing, skeptical, mischievous, profound. Andrew’s Brain is a surprising turn and a singular achievement in the canon of a writer whose prose has the power to create its own landscape, and whose great topic, in the words of Don DeLillo, is “the reach of American possibility, in which plain lives take on the cadences of history.” Praise for *Andrew’s Brain  * “Too compelling to put down . . . fascinating, sometimes funny, often profound . . . Andrew is a provocatively interesting and even sympathetic character. . . . The novel seamlessly combines Doctorow’s remarkable prowess as a literary stylist with deep psychological storytelling pitting truth against delusion, memory and perception, consciousness and craziness. . . . [Doctorow] takes huge creative risks—the best kind.”—USA Today  * “Cunning [and] sly . . . This babbling Andrew is a casualty of his times, binding his wounds with thick wrappings of words, ideas, bits of story, whatever his spinning mind can unspool for him. One of the things that makes [Andrew] such a terrific comic creation is that he’s both maddeningly self-delusive and scarily self-aware: He’s a fool, but he’s no innocent.”—The New York Times Book Review  * “A tantalising tour de force . . . a journey worth taking . . . With exhilarating brio, the book plays off . . . two contrasting takes on mind and brain. . . . [Andrew’s Brain encompasses] an astonishing range of modes: vaudeville humour, tragic romance, philosophical speculation. . . . It fizzes with intellectual energy, verbal pyrotechnics and satiric flair.”—The Sunday Times (London)   “Dramatic . . . cunning and beautiful . . . strange and oddly fascinating, this book: a musing, a conjecture, a frivolity, a deep interrogatory, a hymn.”—*San Francisco Chronicle* “Provocative . . . a story aswirl in a whirlpool of neuroscience, human relations, loss, guilt and recent American history . . . Doctorow reveals his mastery in the sheen of a text that is both window and mirror. Reading his work is akin to soaring in a glider. Buoyed by invisible breath, readers encounter stunning vistas stretching to horizons they’ve never imagined.”*—The Plain Dealer “Andrew’s ruminations can be funny, and his descriptions gorgeous.”—Associated Press “[An] evocative, suspenseful novel about the deceptive nature of human consciousness.”—*More  * “A quick and acutely intelligent read.”—Entertainment Weekly** From the Hardcover edition.

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    Don't Look Down

      Jennifer Crusie
     Don't Look Down

SHE is a director of dog food commercials who's just been recruited to finish a four-day movie shoot. But as soon as Lucy Armstrong arrives on set, she discovers that the staff is in chaos, the make-up artist is suicidal, and the stunt director just happens to be her ex-husband. That, and the temperamental lead actor has just acquired as an advisor a Green Beret who has the aggravating habit of always being right. HE thought that hiring on as a military consultant for a movie star was a to-die-for deal: easy work, easy money, easier starlets. But his first day on the job, Captain J.T. Wilder ends up babysitting a bumbling comedian, dodging low-flying helicopters, and trying to find out who's taking "shooting a movie" much too literally.

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    The Good Terrorist

      Doris Lessing
     The Good Terrorist

The Good Terrorist follows Alice Mellings, a woman who transforms her home into a headquarters for a group of radicals who plan to join the IRA. As Alice struggles to bridge her ideology and her bourgeois upbringing, her companions encounter unexpected challenges in their quest to incite social change against complacency and capitalism. With a nuanced sense of the intersections between the personal and the political, Nobel laureate Doris Lessing creates in The Good Terrorist a compelling portrait of domesticity and rebellion. From the Trade Paperback edition.

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    Ghost 05 - Fairytale Come Alive

      Kristen Ashley
     Ghost 05 - Fairytale Come Alive

In Isabella’s life miracles never happen. She’s destined to be the princess who’s stuck in the middle of a fairytale with no happy ending. Once upon a time, Prentice loved Isabella but he discovered she was a rich girl who spent her summers toying with his heart. Isabella comes back and Prentice finds out her soul destroying secrets, secrets that explain why she left him so many years ago.

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    Forever Black

      Sandi Lynn
     Forever Black

When Ellery moved to New York with her boyfriend, she thought they’d live happily ever after in their small New York apartment. She never thought he’d pack his bags and leave because he “needed space.” With her newfound single status and fear of being alone, Ellery buries herself in her artwork and paintings until one night she helps a mysterious intoxicated stranger get home safely. Little did she know the mysterious stranger is none other than CEO and millionaire Connor Black. After finding Ellery in his kitchen the next morning and assuming she broke his #1 rule about sleepovers, he becomes intrigued, not only by her stubbornness and defiance, but by her kindness. Connor Black, emotionally dead and damaged, that stemmed from a personal tragedy, made a vow to never love or fall in love with a woman, until Ellery Lane walked into his life by accident. After she opens up and shows him her world, Connor starts to feel emotions and feelings he never knew existed. Despite the rumors and warnings regarding Connor Black and his use and misuse of women, Ellery finds herself being drawn into his world. Ellery knows they can never be together because she is harboring a deep secret that could destroy Connor emotionally forever. Join Connor and Ellery as they embark on a journey of courage, love and strength. Will it be enough to save them?

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    Wild Swans

      Jessica Spotswood
     Wild Swans

The summer before Ivy’s senior year is going to be golden; all bonfires, barbeques, and spending time with her best friends. For once, she will just get to be. No summer classes, none of Granddad’s intense expectations to live up to the family name. For generations, the Milbourn women have lead extraordinary lives—and died young and tragically. Granddad calls it a legacy, but Ivy considers it a curse. Why else would her mother have run off and abandoned her as a child? But when her mother unexpectedly returns home with two young daughters in tow, all of the stories Ivy wove to protect her heart start to unravel. The very people she once trusted now speak in lies. And all of Ivy’s ambition and determination cannot defend her against the secrets of the Milbourn past….

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    The Age of Faith

      Will Durant
     The Age of Faith

The Age of Faith surveys the medieval achievements and modern significance of Christian, Islamic, and Judaic life and culture. Like the other volumes in The Story of Civilization, this is a self-contained work, which at the same time fits into a comprehensive history of mankind. It includes the dramatic stories of St. Augustine, Hypatia, Justinian, Mohammed, Harun al-Rashid, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lion-Hearted, Saladin, Maimonides, St. Francis, St. Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, and many others, all in the perspective of integrated history. The greatest love stories in literature—of Héloise and Abélard, of Dante and Beatrice—are here retold with enthralling scholarship.

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    The Second Lost Tale of Mercia: Ethelred the King

      Jayden Woods
     The Second Lost Tale of Mercia: Ethelred the King

"The Lost Tales of Mercia" are ten short tales that can be enjoyed as quick glimpses into the swashbuckling history of ancient England or read alongside the full-length novel, "Eadric the Grasper." Young Ethelred wants little more than to impress his half-brother, Edward. But when a conspiracy develops against Edward's future reign, Ethelred finds himself at the center of its success.This haunting short story illustrates the scandalous circumstances surrounding Ethelred's rise to power at the age of eleven, and shows why the entire reign of so-called "Ethelred the Unready" seems to have been cursed. "The Lost Tales of Mercia" are ten short tales that can be enjoyed as quick glimpses into the swashbuckling history of ancient England or read alongside the full-length novel, "Eadric the Grasper." Most of the characters are real historical figures inspired by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.

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    Before She Met Me

      Julian Barnes
     Before She Met Me

At the start of this fiendishly comic and suspenseful novel, a mild-mannered English academic chuckles as he watches his wife commit adultery. The action takes place before she met him. But lines between film and reality, past and present become terrifyingly blurred in this sad and funny tour de force from the author of Flaubert's Parrot. From the Trade Paperback edition.

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    By the Pricking of My Thumbs

      Agatha Christie
     By the Pricking of My Thumbs

While visiting Tommy's Aunt Ada at Sunny Ridge Nursing Home, Tuppence encounters some odd residents including Mrs. Lancaster who mystifies her with talk about "your poor child" and "something behind the fireplace". When Aunt Ada dies a few weeks later, she leaves Tommy and Tuppence a painting featuring a house, which Tuppence is sure she has seen before. This realization leads her on a dangerous adventure involving a missing tombstone, diamond smuggling and a horrible discovery of what Mrs. Lancaster was talking about.

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    Wringer

      Jerry Spinelli
     Wringer

Palmer LaRue is running out of birthdays. For as long as he can remember, he's dreaded the day he turns ten -- the day he'll take his place beside all the other ten-year-old boys in town, the day he'll be a wringer. But Palmer doesn't want to be a wringer. It's one of the first things he learned about himself and it's one of the biggest things he has to hide. In Palmer's town being a wringer is an honor, a tradition passed down from father to son. Palmer can't stop himself from being a wringer just like he can't stop himself from growing one year older, just like he can't stand up to a whole town -- right? Newbery Medal winner Jerry Spinelli's most powerful novel yet is a gripping tale of how one boy learns how not to be afraid.

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    Do Us Part

      Alessandra Torre
     Do Us Part

*Author's Note: This novella is no longer available. I combined all of the Dumont Diaries novellas into a standalone novel, which was rewritten, expanded, and retitled as Trophy Wife. * I have discovered the witch who started this disaster, and her name is Cecile. She is the lock around my husband's heart; she is the barrier between me and everything I ever wanted. I have decided to fight. For his heart, for my father, for the Jimmy Choos that rest on my perfectly manicured feet. The problem with a fight is that there is ultimately a loser. And in a situation like this, she has the advantage and a clear head start. But I am here, and she is not. And I have not shared everything. I have some secrets and some advantages of my own. I will fight to the death, if not of my body, than of my heart. And if my heart is destroyed in this battle, I will find a way to survive. Poor planning may not be the final chapter in my story. Do Us Part is a novella, 16,000 words in length, and was the final volume of The Dumont Diaries, a 4-part series. *

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