Maestro

      John Gardner
     Maestro

Kruger guards the life of a famous conductor with a shocking secret past The Soviet Union barely outlasts Herbie Kruger. By the time the Berlin Wall comes crashing down—and the KGB security apparatus along with it—London’s shabbiest spy is living in happy retirement. Not even the prospect of wreaking havoc in a fractured Eastern Europe could lure Big Herbie back to the Secret Intelligence Service. But he’s willing to accept one more assignment—not for Her Majesty, not for his country, but for his love of classical music. The finest conductor the world has ever seen, Louis Passau is a ninety-year-old German Jew who, rumor has it, spent World War II working for the Nazis. Kruger has just begun investigating this wild accusation when an assassin targets the maestro. To keep Passau alive while he searches for the truth, Kruger takes him into hiding—and ultimately learns that, though he may conduct like an angel, Passau has got the devil inside.

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    Flirting With Danger

      Carolyn Keene
     Flirting With Danger

Nancy and Ned are off to Southern California to visit Josh Kline and his younger sister, Rachel. But when Rachel disappears from her high school commencement, Nancy learns that the girl has graduated into a world of trouble. She's fallen into an ultra-rich, ultra-chic, ultra-dangerous LA scene. One of the guys Rachel's been hanging out with has a taste for hot cars and a distaste for all the rules. He's a prime suspect in a wave of burglaries in the Hollywood hills, but a secret society calling itself the Kats warns Nancy off the case. Rachel's playing with fire, and Nancy knows she has to find out what makes the Kat clique tick before Josh's little sister gets burned.

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    Kill and Tell

      Linda Howard
     Kill and Tell

Still reeling from her mother's recent death, Karen Whitlaw is stunned when she receives a package containing a mysterious notebook from the father she has barely seen since his return from the Viet Nam War over twenty years ago. Unwilling to deal with her overwhelming emotions, Karen packs the notebook away, putting it - and her father - out of her mind, until she receives a shocking phone call. Her father has been murdered on the gritty streets of New Orleans. Homicide detective Marc Chastain considers the murder nothing more than street violence against a homeless man, and Karen accepts his judgment - at first. But she changes her mind when her home is burglarized and "accidents" begin to happen. All at once, she faces a chilling realization: whoever killed her father is now after her. Desperate for answers, Karen retrieves the only thing that links her to her father - the notebook he had sent months before. Inside its worn pages, she makes an unsettling discovery: her father had been a sniper in Vietnam and the notebook contains a detailed account of each one of his kills. Now running for her life, Karen entrusts the book and its secrets to Marc Chastain. Together they unravel a disturbing story of politics, power, and murder - and face a killer who will stop at nothing to get his hands on the kill book....

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    The Compendium of Srem

      F. Paul Wilson
     The Compendium of Srem

The most evil book ever conceived falls into the hands of the leader of the Spanish Inquisition in this ingenious bibliomystery from the bestselling creator of Repairman Jack. In the fifteenth century, the Spanish Inquisition spreads terror throughout the land, with Prior Tomás de Torquemada serving as the ultimate judge of who will live and who will be consigned to the purifying flames. Never has Torquemada questioned his own faith or his sacred duty to rid the world of heretics, blasphemers, and nonbelievers. Now, however, an extraordinary volume has come into his possession—an ancient book that radiates pure evil. The prior realizes this abomination must be destroyed along with anyone who has come into contact with it, for it is surely the devil’s work, corrupting and possessing all those who touch it. But whom can Torquemada trust to help him achieve his mission now that The Compendium of Srem has passed through numerous hands . . . including his own? F. Paul Wilson is a writer who is at home working in many different genres, from medical thriller to science fiction to mystery to urban fantasy to horror. Now he travels back centuries in time to explore the secret history of a book of great and terrible power, an ancient volume of eldritch lore that plays a substantial role in the author’s popular Repairman Jack series of novels: The Compendium of Srem. The Bibliomysteries are a series of short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors.

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    The Accident

      Linwood Barclay
     The Accident

In this mesmerizing thriller by acclaimed author Linwood Barclay, a typical American community descends into darkness, as an ordinary man is swept into one of the most violent mysteries of modern life.   It’s the new normal at the Garber household in Connecticut: Glen, a contractor, has seen his business shaken by the housing crisis, and now his wife, Sheila, is taking a business course at night to increase her chances of landing a good-paying job. But she should have been home by now. Waiting for Sheila’s return, with their eight-year-old daughter sleeping soundly, Glen soon finds his worst fears confirmed: Sheila and two others have been killed in a car accident. Adding to the tragedy, the police claim Sheila was responsible. Glen knows it’s impossible; he knew his wife and she would never do such a thing. When he investigates, Glen begins to uncover layers of lawlessness beneath the placid surface of their suburb, secret after dangerous secret behind the closed doors. Propelled into a vortex of corruption and illegal activity, pursued by mysterious killers, and confronted by threats from neighbors he thought he knew, Glen must take his own desperate measures and go to terrifying new places in himself to avenge his wife and protect his child. Bold and timely, with the shocking twists and startling insights that have become trademarks of this new master of domestic suspense, The Accident is a riveting triumph, a book that moves at a breathless pace to a climax no one will see coming. From the Trade Paperback edition.

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    The Islanders

      Christopher Priest
     The Islanders

Reality is illusory and magical in the stunning new literary SF novel from the multiple award-winning author of The Prestige—for fans of Haruki Murakami and David Mitchell A tale of murder, artistic rivalry, and literary trickery; a Chinese puzzle of a novel where nothing is quite what it seems; a narrator whose agenda is artful and subtle; a narrative that pulls you in and plays an elegant game with you. The Dream Archipelago is a vast network of islands. The names of the islands are different depending on who you talk to, their very locations seem to twist and shift. Some islands have been sculpted into vast musical instruments, others are home to lethal creatures, others the playground for high society. Hot winds blow across the archipelago and a war fought between two distant continents is played out across its waters. The Islanders serves both as an untrustworthy but enticing guide to the islands; an intriguing, multi-layered tale of a murder; and the suspect legacy of its appealing but definitely untrustworthy narrator. It shows Christopher Priest at the height of his powers and illustrates his undiminished power to dazzle.

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    The Union Jack

      Imre Kertész
     The Union Jack

"It was...unnecessary for me to fret about who the murderer was: Everybody was." A haunting, never-before-translated, autobiographical novella by the 2002 Nobel Prize winner. An unnamed narrator recounts a simple anecdote, his sighting of the Union Jack—the British Flag—during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, in the few days preceding the uprising's brutal repression by the Soviet army. In the telling, partly a digressive meditation on "the absurd order of chance," he recalls his youthful self, and the epiphanies of his intellectual and spiritual awakening—an awakening to a kind of radical subjectivity. In his Nobel address Kertesz remembered: "I, on a lovely spring day in 1955, suddenly came to the realization that there exists only one reality, and that is me, my own life, this fragile gift bestowed for an uncertain time, which had been seized, expropriated by alien forces, and circumscribed, marked up, branded—and which I had to take back from 'History', this dreadful Moloch, because it was mine and mine alone..." The Contemporary Art of the Novella series is designed to highlight work by major authors from around the world. In most instances, as with Imre Kertész, it showcases work never before published; in others, books are reprised that should never have gone out of print. It is intended that the series feature many well-known authors and some exciting new discoveries. And as with the original series, The Art of the Novella, each book is a beautifully packaged and inexpensive volume meant to celebrate the form and its practitioners.

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    Never Coming Home

      A.R. Wise
     Never Coming Home

Lincoln Pierce always wanted to be a private detective, but his life didn't end up the way he expected. His daughter's debilitating disease forced him to make some questionable decisions, and he's been paying for them ever since. He's started looking into a case that could change his entire career, if he doesn't get killed in the processTen years ago two children went missing and were presumed to be victims of a satanic ritual. Police charged the antisocial brother of one of the victims with the crime, but the real culprit's still on the loose. The approaching anniversary prompts the killer to strike again, but there's a private investigator who's beginning to ask the right questions about what happened a decade earlier. The killer discovers that he's being hunted, and decides to do whatever it takes to stay hidden. Lincoln Pierce always wanted to be a private detective, but his life didn't end up the way he expected. His daughter's debilitating disease forced him to make some questionable decisions, and he's been paying for them ever since. He's determined to make the most of a bad situation, and has started looking into a case that could change his entire career, if he doesn't get killed in the process.

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    The Sheriff of Tesco

      Roger Busby
     The Sheriff of Tesco

A chance encounter in a supermarket coffee shop opens old wounds for the ex-Marine and the war widow. Soon they are reliving horrors of death and murder in the Afghan desert, duty and deceit blowing in the wind. Can an icon of crime fiction save them from themselves, or will it be just another case for the Sheriff of Tesco?A chance encounter in a supermarket coffee shop opens old wounds for the ex-Marine and the war widow. Soon they are reliving horrors of death and murder in the Afghan desert, duty and deceit blowing in the wind. Can an icon of crime fiction save them from themselves, or will it be just another case for the Sheriff of Tesco?He walked over to where she was sitting alone in the corner of the supermarket coffee shop sipping a cappuccino. Noticed, close up, that her brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail, was dashed with blonde highlights, her face young looking, probably mid thirties.“Mind if I join you?” he asked, pulling out a plastic chair.“Be my guest,” She looked up, saw this raw boned man, the angular planes of his face weather tanned, his eyes the palest blue.Although the store was busy with the usual throng of mid-week shoppers there were plenty of empty tables in the cafe. She raised a quizzical eyebrow and met his steady gaze.“Nice morning,” he began his gambit, his eyes not leaving hers. Hazel with flecks of white, like a snow-shower. He made a mental note.“That depends,” she said, “On how you define nice.” She read the ID tag clipped to the breast pocket of his dark blue shirt. John Russell. “I like this spot,” she said, nodding towards the trolley park, ”easy to keep an eye on my shopping from here,” the merest shrug, “you never know, do you.”“That’s for sure,” he replied, biding his time as he sized her up. “Always pays to be careful.”“Not that there’s much worth stealing,” she said, “Since my husband died I don’t do much in the way of fancy cooking anymore. Just convenience stuff, mostly, sort of lost my appetite.”He made another mental note: Widow.“So do you work here, John Russell?”He tilted the ID tag and she read the words under the stylised eye motif: Pinkerton Security.“Oh,” she smiled and the smile widened into a grin, “the dudes who tamed the West, railroad dicks, Dashiell Hammett.” He looked nonplussed“The Pinkertons...we never sleep!”“You’ve lost me,” he said“Don’t tell me you’ve never read Hammett, Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key?”He shook his head.“Great detective writer, oh, I’ve read ‘em all.” She smiled at the puzzled expression he was trying to disguise. “You don’t get it, do you?”“Get what?” This wasn’t the way he had intended to play it; she had thrown him off balance and he felt suddenly unsure of himself.“Why Dashiell Hammett. He was a Pinkerton agent, just like you. The immortal legend handed down from the railroads and the banks of the Wild West...” she glanced around the store, “...to Tesco’s Old Kent Road. Who would have thought it...the legend lives on.”No he didn’t get it. He’d become a 12-hour shift security guard when he left the Royal Marines. It was the only steady job he could get and legends didn’t come into it.She began quoting passages of Hammett from memory. The Maltese Falcon...The Thin Man, telling him they all celebrated the lone detective risking all in the quest for the truth. “And you’re carrying the torch now, John Russell, the Sheriff of Tesco,” she laughed, “ Or do your friends call you Jack?”“Jane, actually,” he smiled, harking back to Lima Company, “they called me Jane.”She laughed. “Jane Russell?”“A bootneck joke,” he said, slightly abashed, “but mostly they called me Colours...short for Colour Sergeant Russell.”"Royal Marines?”He nodded, wondering now if she was putting him on and the familiar stabbing ache started up in his leg. He was about to reply when the pager on his belt cheeped. Russell glanced down thankfully and read the message; looked up again, saw her watching him, and said: “Don’t go away...I’ll be right back.”

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    The Seer of Shadows

      Avi
     The Seer of Shadows

Newbery Medalist Avi weaves one of his most suspenseful and scary tales—about a ghost who has to be seen to be believed and must be kept from carrying out a horrifying revenge. The time is 1872. The place is New York City. Horace Carpetine has been raised to believe in science and rationality. So as apprentice to Enoch Middleditch, a society photographer, he thinks of his trade as a scientific art. But when wealthy society matron Mrs. Frederick Von Macht orders a photographic portrait, strange things begin to happen. Horace's first real photographs reveal a frightful likeness: it's the image of the Von Machts' dead daughter, Eleanora. Pegg, the Von Machts' black servant girl, then leads him to the truth about who Eleanora really was and how she actually died. Joined in friendship, Pegg and Horace soon realize that his photographs are evoking both Eleanora's image and her ghost. Eleanora returns, a vengeful wraith intent on punishing those who abused her. Rich in detail, full of the magic of early photography, here is a story about the shadows, visible and invisible, that are always lurking near.

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    The Twilight Watch:

      Sergei Lukyanenko
     The Twilight Watch:

Walking the streets of Moscow, indistinguishable from the rest of its population, are the Others. Possessors of supernatural powers and capable of entering the Twilight, a shadowy world that exists in parallel to our own, each owes allegiance either to the Dark or the Light. Night Watch Agent Anton Gorodetsky's holiday is abruptly shortened when an urgent call from Gesar - his boss and Night Watch head - forces him to return to work. Gesar has received an anonymous note, stating that an Other has revealed the full truth about their kind to a human, and intends to convert the human in an Other. The note has also been sent to the Day Watch, and to the Inquisition - but only the very highest-level Others know the addresses. So the Inquisition orders the cooperation of Night and Day Watch in an effort to unmask the culprit...

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    What the Lady Wants

      Jennifer Crusie
     What the Lady Wants

Mitch Peatwick is a private detective who's about to go out of business if he doesn't land a new client. He's ready to quit, when Mae Sullivan strolls into his office. The gorgeous, smart-mouthed woman has a family straight out of Goodfellas -- and a case he can't afford to turn down. Mae wants Mitch to find her uncle's killer, his diary and the missing family fortune. He accepts the case, but soon finds himself involved with Mae in more ways than just the investigation.

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    The Return of the Graveyard Ghost

      Gertrude Chandler Warner
     The Return of the Graveyard Ghost

One stormy afternoon, the Aldens take a shortcut through the Greenfield Cemetery and discover a strange local superstition! According to legend, it's good luck to leave presents in a certain spot in the cemetery--and bad luck to anyone who doesn't. But since there's no such thing as ghosts, there must be a reason for this weird tradition. The Boxcar Children are determined to find out what it is.

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    Tahoe Deathfall

      Todd Borg
     Tahoe Deathfall

Disaster struck when twin sisters Jennifer and Melissa Salazar went hiking with their grandmother on their sixth birthday. Melissa fell off a cliff above Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe and died. Eight years later, 14-year-old Jennifer asks Detective Owen McKenna to investigate. McKenna uncovers a long-buried secret that is still causing murders, and he realizes that Jennifer is to be the next victim...The "HVZA: Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse" novels have created a terrifying world where a mysterious parasite has turned ordinary people into killers and cannibals. This short story begins at the onset of the infection, at the region's largest shopping mall, the Palisades Center in West Nyack, NY. Follow the lives of several people as they attend the sale, only to come face to face with their worst nightmares. Some will survive, and some will die, but no one will ever be the same.

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