When 7 foster kids get snowed in without their houseparent one night, they all begin to discover that the world isn't what they've been taught, and that life is much more unique and puzzle-like than they thought.Charlotte Jones is moved to the Willow Hill Group Home, located in the heart of Bozeman, Montana. She locks herself in a room with 5 other foster children and her brother, Clark. They quickly begin to learn more about each other, and the lies that reside within the group home.

Nobel winner Pearl S. Buck’s classic debut novel, about one Chinese woman’s coming of age as she’s torn between Eastern and Western cultures Kwei-lan is a traditional Chinese girl—taught by her mother to submit in all things, “as a flower submits to sun and rain alike.” Her marriage was arranged before she was born. As she approaches her wedding day, she’s surprised by one aspect of her anticipated life: Her husband-to-be has been educated abroad and follows many Western ideas that Kwei-lan was raised to reject. When circumstances push the couple out of the family home, Kwei-lan finds her assumptions about tradition and modernity tested even further.  East Wind: West Wind is a sensitive, early exploration of the cross-cultural themes that went on to become a hallmark of Buck’s acclaimed novels. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Pearl S. Buck including rare images from the author’s estate.

A female computer expert at the world’s largest bank plans the perfect heist in this New York Times Notable Book from the #1 international bestselling author of *The Eight* Verity Banks is the one of the most powerful women in finance, but she still reports to a man. Her boss not only refuses to implement her security plan to safeguard customers’ deposits, he also sabotages her shot at becoming director of security at the Federal Reserve. Outraged, Verity decides to take revenge by hitting her boss where it will hurt the most: right in his company’s balance sheet. She is about to begin her assault when she hears from the last person she ever expected to see again, Zoltan Tor. A brilliant computer scientist who taught Verity everything she knows, Zoltan will help her if she agrees to an outlandish wager: Which of them can steal $1 billion, invest it to make $30 million in three months, and return it before anyone notices? Verity can use a computer; Zoltan will do it the old-fashioned way. To beat Zoltan at his own game, Verity will risk her fortune, her professional reputation—and her life. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Katherine Neville including rare images from her life and travels.

Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. In A Garden of Earthly Delights, Oates presents one of her most memorable heroines, Clara Walpole, the beautiful daughter of Kentucky-born migrant farmworkers. Desperate to rise above her haphazard existence of violence and poverty, determined not to repeat her mother’s life, Clara struggles for independence by way of her relationships with four very different men: her father, a family man turned itinerant laborer, smoldering with resentment; the mysterious Lowry, who rescues Clara as a teenager and offers her the possibility of love; Revere, a wealthy landowner who provides Clara with stability; and Swan, Clara’s son, who bears the psychological and spiritual burden of his mother’s ambition. A masterly work from a writer with “the uncanny ability to give us a cinemascopic vision of her America” (National Review), A Garden of Earthly Delights is the opening stanza in what would become one of the most powerful and engrossing story arcs in literature. A Garden of Earthly Delights is the first novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, Expensive People, them, and Wonderland, are also available from the Modern Library. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Once a respected landowner, Abd el-Aziz Gaafar fell into penury and moved his family to Cairo, where he was forced into menial work at the Automobile Club—a refuge of colonial luxury for its European members. There, Alku, the lifelong Nubian retainer of Egypt's corrupt and dissolute king, lords it over the staff, a squabbling but tight-knit group, who live in perpetual fear, as they are thrashed for their mistakes, their wages dependent on Alku's whims. When, one day, Abd el-Aziz stands up for himself, he is beaten. Soon afterward, he dies, as much from shame as from his injuries, leaving his widow and four children further impoverished. The family's loss propels them down different paths: the responsible son, Kamel, takes over his late father’s post in the Club's storeroom, even as his law school friends seduce him into revolutionary politics; Mahmud joins his brother working at the Club but spends his free time sleeping with older women — for a fee, which he splits with his partner in crime, his devil-may-care workout buddy and neighbor, Fawzy; their greedy brother Said breaks away to follow ambitions of his own; and their only sister, Saleha, is torn between her dream of studying mathematics and the security of settling down as a wife and saving her family. It is at the Club, too, that Kamel's dangerous politics will find the favor and patronage of the king's seditious cousin, an unlikely revolutionary plotter–cum–bon vivant. Soon, both servants and masters will be subsumed by the brewing social upheaval. And the Egyptians of the Automobile Club will face a stark choice: to live safely, but without dignity, or to fight for their rights and risk everything. Full of absorbing incident, and marvelously drawn characters, Alaa Al Aswany's novel gives us Egypt on the brink of changes that resonate to this day. It is an irresistible confirmation of Al Aswany's reputation as one of the Middle East's most beguiling storytellers and insightful interpreters of the human spirit.

Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine was one of the leading personalities of the Middle Ages, and also one of the most controversial. Having inherited a vast feudal domain stretching from the Loire to the Pyrenees, she was one of the greatest heiresses in history; yet in her own day, she was famous not only for who she was, but also for what she did. In an age when women were treated as mere chattels, she made her own choices, wielded power and won widespread respect. Circumstances, however, dictated that her memory would be sullied by calumny and misunderstanding. Eleanor was no saint. She was beautiful, intelligent and wilful, and in her lifetime there were rumours about her that were not without substance. Her contemporaries were sometimes scandalised by her behaviour. She had been reared in a relaxed and licentious court where the arts of the troubadours flourished, and was even said to have presided over the fabled Courts of Love. Eleanor married in turn Louis VII of France and Henry II of England, and was the mother of Richard the Lionheart and King John. She lived to be 82, but it was only in old age that she triumphed over the adversities and tragedies of her earlier years and became virtual ruler of England. Eleanor has exerted a fascination over writers and biographers for 800 years, but the prevailing myths and legends that attach to her name still tend to obscure the truth. By careful research, Alison Weir has produced a vivid biography with a fresh and provocative perspective on this extraordinary woman.

This remarkable collection of stories, first published in 1872, includes Green Tea, The Familiar, Mr. Justice Harbottle, The Room in the Dragon Volant, and Carmilla. The five stories are purported to be cases by Dr. Hesselius, a 'metaphysical' doctor, who is willing to consider the ghosts both as real and as hallucinatory obsessions. The reader's doubtful anxiety mimics that of the protagonist, and each story thus creates that atmosphere of mystery which is the supernatural experience. This new annotated edition includes an introduction, notes on the text, and explanatory notes. NB: The Familiar is a revision of The Watcher; Mr. Justice Harbottle is a revision of An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street.

This novel, described by the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review as "nothing short of miraculous," is the story of Zebra Wong, a Chinese girl whose pragmatic mind conflicts with her passionate heart; Lion Head, her classmate, whose penchant for romantic intrigue belies his political ambitions, and Katherine, the seductive American with the red lipstick and the wild laugh who teaches them English and other foreign concepts: individualism, sensuality, the Beatles. In Katherine's classroom, repression and rebellion meet head-on-and the consequences are both tragic and liberating.

When God was a Rabbit is an incredibly exciting debut from an extraordinary new voice in fiction. Spanning four decades, from 1968 onwards, this is the story of a fabulous but flawed family and the slew of ordinary and extraordinary incidents that shape their everyday lives. It is a story about childhood and growing up, loss of innocence, eccentricity, familial ties and friendships, love and life. Stripped down to its bare bones, it’s about the unbreakable bond between a brother and sister.

Nothing has ever come easy for Lila Bailey. She’s fought for every good thing in her life during every day of her thirty-one years. Aside from that one night with an impossible to deny stranger a year ago, Lila is the epitome of responsible. Steadfast. Strong. She’s pulled herself out of the train wreck of her childhood, proud to be a professor at Tulane University and laying down roots in a city she’s grown to love. But when some of her female students are viciously murdered, Lila’s shaken to the core and unsure of whom she can trust in New Orleans. When the police detective assigned to the murder case comes to investigate, she’s even more surprised to find herself staring into the eyes of the man that made her toes curl last year. In an attempt to move on from the tragic loss of his wife, Asher Smith moved his daughter and himself to a new city, ready for a fresh start. A damn fine police lieutenant, but new to the New Orleans force, Asher has a lot to prove to his colleagues and himself. With a murderer terrorizing the Tulane University campus, Asher finds himself toe-to-toe with the one woman that haunts his dreams. His hands, his lips, his body know her as intimately as he’s ever known anyone. As he learns her mind and heart as well, Asher wants nothing more than to keep her safe, in his bed, and in his and his daughter’s lives for the long haul. But when Lila becomes the target, can Asher save her in time, or will he lose another woman he loves?

If fate suddenly made you more beautiful than you ever dreamed possible, would it be the beginning of a fairy tale, or your worst nightmare? The brutal attack should have killed anybody, but Nell Calder did more than survive. She emerged a woman transformed, with an exquisite beauty found only in fairy tales. Nell Calder deserved a happy ending. Instead, her descent into terror has just begun. Her attacker is still on the hunt, determined to finish what he's started. And Nell, protected by a new face, is just as determined to fight back and take her revenge. But to catch her prey, she will have to expose herself—even if it makes her a killer's prime target.

A magical debut novel for readers of Naomi Novik's Uprooted, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, and Neil Gaiman's myth-rich fantasies, The Bear and the Nightingale spins an irresistible spell as it announces the arrival of a singular talent with a gorgeous voice. At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn't mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse's fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil. After Vasilisa's mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa's new stepmother forbids her family...

No girl in her right mind would say no to a date with Bobby Newkirk. Not with those great looks, that easy charm, and the awesome way he plays the guitar. Of course, some people think he's just a bit conceited. But when it comes to breaking hearts, that hasn't slowed Bobby down one bit. At least, not until the beautiful Wade twins move to Shadyside. And Bobby brags to his friends that they'll both fall for him. And they do. Too bad for Bobby the twins never learned to share. One of them is jealous, murderously jealous. Is it quiet, shy Bree? Or bold, sexy Samantha? Bobby had better figure it out...or his double fun will turn to double terror.

The Great Raptor is a fearsome and deadly creature; and while the Raptor is no one's pet, he is fiercely protective and loving of his family... Carly and Miki have never forgotten the stories that Grim has told them of the Great Raptor, the symbol of their new home world of Luda. Yet, it is the comparison their mother once made of the Great Raptor to Grim that gives them the courage to help the injured bird they find in the garden. Find out what happens when their single act of love, faith, and kindness creates far-reaching consequences that no one, including their mother and Grim, could ever have predicted. **

It was a desperate plan. But Mary Grace Winters knew the only way to save herself and her child from her abusive cop husband was to stage their own death. Now all that remains of their former life is at the bottom of a lake. Armed with a new identity in a new town, she and her son have found refuge hundreds of miles away. As Caroline Stewart, she has almost forgotten the nightmare she left behind nine years ago. She is even taking a chance on love with Max Hunter, a man with wounds of his own. But her past is about to collide with the present when her husband uncovers her trail and threatens her hard-won peace. Step by step, he's closing in on her- and everything and everyone she loves. From Publishers WeeklySince escaping her abusive cop husband and moving to Chicago seven years earlier, Mary Grace Winters has reinvented herself. With the help of a safe house for battered women, she changed her name to Caroline Stewart and her son's to Tom and secured a secretarial position at Carrington College. But unbeknownst to Caroline, her husband is on her trail, determined to reclaim his son and kill anyone who stands in his way. Meanwhile, Caroline struggles to live a normal life and open her heart to the love of a good man, Max Hunter. A handsome history professor and former NBA star, Max still bears physical and emotional scars from a long-ago car crash. But as their whirlwind romance progresses, enhanced by generous doses of steamy sex, Max realizes that Caroline's reluctance to commit stems from her past fears, not repulsion over his injury. Despite one stormy scene, in which Caroline and Max fling insults at each other and compare scars, first-time author Rose handles her subject matter well. She informs without preaching and allows her characters to sort through their emotions in a mature manner. As gripping as a cold hand on the back of one's neck, but tempered by lovable characters and a moving romance, this assured debut bodes well for Rose's future books. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review'Rose delivers the kind of high-wire suspense that keeps you riveted to the edge of your seat' -- Lisa Gardner 'Romantic suspense at its ultimate best' -- Romance Junkies