The Step Between

The Step Between

Penny Mickelbury

Penny Mickelbury

No matter how hard she tries to live the quiet life, trouble has a way of grabbing Carole Ann Gibson by the throat — and this time all her famous intuition and raw courage might not be enough to save her. In the heartbreaking aftermath of her husband's death, Carole Ann, widely known as "the best damn trial lawyer in D.C.," left her criminal-law practice for what she hoped was a safer, saner life as a partner in her friend Jake's security firm. But when the richest man in Washington, D.C., hires her to find his daughter, she is caught up in a tangle of family relationships in which the stakes are not only money but life itself. Add to that a routine surveillance job that turns up three corpses and the kidnapping of her partner's beloved wife, Grace, and Carole Anne is — once again — in over her head in the kind of trouble that launches an all-out attack on her survival skills. Showcasing her rare talent for mixing the subtlety and complexity of...
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Marian Babson - To Catch A Cat

Marian Babson - To Catch A Cat

Marian Babson

Marian Babson

The last thing 11-year-old Robin wants to hear is that his mother and her new husband are extending their honeymoon indefinitely. Not that staying with his Aunt Mags is so bad, but there's her boyfriend to contend with, and the members of the school gang are insisting that he complete a dare before they let him join the group. They want Robin to kidnap Mrs. Nordling's prize-winning cat when no one is home.Getting into the Nordling's house is easy, and Robin manages to find the cat and put him in his bag. As Robin is leaving, however, he stumbles upon a terrifying scene—Mr. Nordling leaving the master bedroom with blood all over his body. Robin is momentarily paralyzed and then flees down the stairs. He can't be sure whether or not he has been seen, but realizes that in order to stay safe, he will have to hide the unusual-looking cat.Meanwhile, Mr. Nordling is getting desperate. He knows that if he can find the unmistakable cat, he will also find the witness to his brutal crime. He begins a frantic search for the young boy, but his infuriating neighbor won't leave him alone. She is beginning to understand what happened that night, and he decides that he will have to deal with her too.
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City of God

City of God

E. L. Doctorow

Literature & Fiction

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER With brilliant and audacious strokes, E. L. Doctorow creates a breathtaking collage of memories, events, visions, and provocative thought, all centered on an idea of the modern reality of God. At the heart of this stylistically daring tour de force is a detective story about a cross that vanishes from a rundown Episcopal church in lower Manhattan only to reappear on the roof of an Upper West Side synagogue. Intrigued by the mystery—and by the maverick rector and the young rabbi investigating the strange act of desecration—is a well-known novelist, whose capacious brain is a virtual repository for the ideas and disasters of the age. Daringly poised at the junction of the sacred and the profane, filled with the sights and sounds of New York, and encompassing a large cast of vividly drawn characters including theologians, scientists, Holocaust survivors, and war veterans, City of God is a monumental work of spiritual reflection, philosophy, and history by America’s preeminent novelist and chronicler of our time.   Praise for *City of God  * “A grander perspective on the universe . . . a novel that sets its sights on God.”—The Wall Street Journal “Dazzling . . . The true miracle of City of God is the way its disparate parts fuse into a consistently enthralling and suspenseful whole.”—Time “Blooms with humor, and a humanity that carries triumphant as intelligent a novel as one might hope to find these days.”—Los Angeles Times   “Radiates [with] panoramic ambition and spiritual incandescence.”—Chicago Tribune   “One of the greatest American novels of the past fifty years . . . Reading City of God *restores one’s faith in literature.”—The Houston Chronicle* From the Hardcover edition.
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Every Little Breath

Every Little Breath

Keri Beevis

Keri Beevis

A serial killer calls up a late-night radio DJ with a gruesome request in this psychological thriller by the author of Dying to Tell.How much could one phone call change your life?"Only you can save her. If she dies, it is your fault."When radio presenter Casey Fallon answers a call, she assumes it is a prank. But when a woman's body is discovered, she finds herself up against a calculating killer who wants her to find his victims before they take their last breath . . . Fifteen years ago, Casey was a key witness in the trial of serial killer Steve Noakes, and her evidence helped put him behind bars for the murders of five women.Someone remembers what happened that summer. Someone who is desperate for revenge. Someone who won't stop until Casey has been punished . . . The perfect read for fans of authors like Clare Mackintosh, Cara Hunter, and Paula Hawkins.
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Lethal Measures

Lethal Measures

Leonard Goldberg

Crime / Thriller

It's a quiet evening in Los Angeles when an explosion rips through a residential neighborhood, leveling half a suburban block, and leaving twenty people dead...  Forensic pathologist Joanna Blalock is called to the scene, expected to make sense of the senseless violence, which appears to be the handiwork of incompetent terrorists, who blew themselves up along with so many innocent lives. But when Joanna uncovers a link in the evidence to an unsolved homicide, a more sinister picture emerges; and when the only potential witness to the bomb blast is killed, a case of accidental death suddenly looks like an incredibly daring and diabolical plot of cold-blooded murder.
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Field of Dishonor

Field of Dishonor

David Weber

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Alternate History

HONOR BETRAYEDThe People's Republic of Haven's sneak attack on the Kingdom of Manticore has failed. The Peeps are in disarray, their leaders fighting for power in bloody revolution, and the Royal Manticoran Navy stands victorious.But Manticore has domestic problems of its own, and success can be more treacherous than defeat for Honor Harrington. Now, trapped at the core of a political crisis she never sought, betrayed by an old and vicious enemy she'd thought vanquished forever, she stands alone.She must fight for justice on a battlefield she never trained for in a private war that offers just two choices: death . . . or a "victory" that can end only in dishonor and the loss of all she loves.***David Weber is the new Big Name in science fiction, and his dauntless Honor Harrington has conquered not only the enemy but the hearts of thousands of readers everywhere, who have been relentlessly demanding Honor's exploits in a more permanent form. And we're happy to oblige.
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The Peppermint Lodge

The Peppermint Lodge

Jean Oram

Jean Oram

When life hands you a hunky, rich hockey player...say yes. But Cassandra isn't used to accepting help—and especially not from a sweet-talking, hunky man with more cash than she's seen in her lifetime. And anyway, she's got problems that are bigger than his bank account... Single dad Landon isn't used to hearing no. Especially when he knows the only thing holding Cass back from agreeing to be his nanny is her pride and unfounded fears. How can he convince her that he's worth counting on when it comes to helping her sick son, and that she's the best thing for his headstrong young daughter? It's hard to keep saying no. Especially when love starts to grow... Too bad they agreed to live together out of convenience, and not out of love. Is it too late to change their deal? Find out in The Peppermint Lodge, a standalone sweet romance set in the small town of Sweetheart Creek, Texas. Enjoy hockey players,...
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Cocktails for Three

Cocktails for Three

Sophie Kinsella

Chick Lit / Romance / Fiction

Madeleine Wickham, who writes the internationally bestselling Shopaholic series as Sophie Kinsella, has penned an irresistibly dishy and entertaining novel about three savvy young women and the secrets they share over monthly drinks. Roxanne: glamorous, self-confident, with a secret lover -- a married man Maggie: capable and high-achieving, until she finds the one thing she can't cope with -- motherhood Candice: honest, decent, or so she believes -- until a ghost from her past turns up At the first of every month, when the office has reached its pinnacle of hysteria, Maggie, Roxanne, and Candice meet at London's swankiest bar for an evening of cocktails and gossip. Here, they chat about what's new at The Londoner, the glossy fashion magazine where they all work, and everything else that's going on in their lives. Or almost everything. Beneath the girl talk and the laughter, each of the three has a secret. And when a chance encounter at the cocktail bar sets in motion an extraordinary chain of events, each one will find their biggest secret revealed. In Cocktails for Three, Madeleine Wickham combines her trademark humor with remarkable insight to create an edgy, romantic tale of secrets, strangers, and a splash of scandal.
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Lincoln: A Novel

Lincoln: A Novel

Gore Vidal

Biography / Fiction / Historical Fiction

Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series spans the history of the United States from the Revolution to the post-World War II years. With their broad canvas and large cast of fictional and historical characters, the novels in this series present a panorama of the American political and imperial experience as interpreted by one of its most worldly, knowing, and ironic observers.To most Americans, Abraham Lincoln is a monolithic figure, the Great Emancipator and Savior of the Union, beloved by all. In Gore Vidal's Lincoln we meet Lincoln the man and Lincoln the political animal, the president who entered a besieged capital where most of the population supported the South and where even those favoring the Union had serious doubts that the man from Illinois could save it. Far from steadfast in his abhorrence of slavery, Lincoln agonizes over the best course of action and comes to his great decision only when all else seems to fail. As the Civil War ravages his nation, Lincoln must face deep personal turmoil, the loss of his dearest son, and the harangues of a wife seen as a traitor for her Southern connections. Brilliantly conceived, masterfully executed, Gore Vidal's Lincoln allows the man to breathe again.Amazon.com ReviewLincoln is a masterwork of historical fiction, in which Gore Vidal combines a comprehensive knowledge of Civil War America with 20th-century literary technique, probing the minds and motives of the men surrounding Abraham Lincoln, including personal secretary John Hay and scheming cabinet members William Seward and Salmon P. Chase, as well as his wife, Mary Todd. It is a book monumental in scope that never loses sight of the intimate and personal in its depiction of the power struggles that accompanied Lincoln's efforts to preserve the Union at all costs--efforts in which the eradication of slavery was far from the president's main objective. As usual, there's plenty of room for Vidal's wickedly humorous deflation of American icons, including a comic interlude in a Washington bordello in which Lincoln's former law partner informs Hay that Lincoln had contracted syphilis as a young man and had, just before marrying Mary Todd, suffered what can only be described as a nervous breakdown. (Protestors should note that Vidal is only passing along what that former partner had written in his own biography of Lincoln.) Don't be intimidated by the size of Lincoln; if you like historical fiction, you should read this book at the first opportunity. --Ron HoganReview"Superb . . . a grand entertainment. . . . A plausible and human Lincoln, of us and yet beyond us." --Harold Bloom"A portrait of America's great president that is at once intimate and public, stark and complex, and that will become for future generations the living Lincoln, the definitive Lincoln. . . . Richly entertaining . . . history lessons with the blood still hot." --The Washington Post"[Lincoln] is in Vidal's version at once more complex, mysterious and enigmatic, more implacably courageous and, finally, more tragic than the conventional images, the marble man of the memorial. He is honored in the book." --Chicago Tribune
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Lost Years: A Memoir 1945 - 1951

Lost Years: A Memoir 1945 - 1951

Christopher Isherwood

Fiction / Gay and Lesbian / Religion

The English writer Christopher Isherwood settled in California in 1939 and spent the war years working in Hollywood film studios, teaching English to European refugees, and converting to Hinduism. By the time the war ended, he realized he was not cut out to be a monk. With his self-imposed wartime vigil behind him, he careened into a life of frantic socializing, increasing dissipation, anxiety, and, eventually, despair.For nearly a half decade he all but ceased to write fiction and even abandoned his lifelong habit of keeping a diary. This is Isherwood's own account, reconstructed from datebooks, letters, and memory nearly thirty years later, of his experience during those missing years: his activities in Santa Monica, and also in New York and London, just after the war.Begun in 1971, in a postsixties atmosphere of liberation, "Lost Years" includes explicit details of his romantic and sexual relationships during the 1940s and unveils a hidden and sometimes shocking way of life shared with friends and acquaintances--many of whom were well-known artists, actors, and film-makers. Not until the 1951 Broadway success of "I Am a Camera, " adapted from his Berlin stories, did Isherwood begin to reclaim control of his talents and of his future. Isherwood never prepared "Lost years" for publication because he rapidly became caught up in writing the book that established him as a hero of gay liberation, "Christopher and His Kind." With unpolished directness, and with insight and wit, "Lost Years" shows how Isherwood developed his private recollections into the unique mixture of personal mythology and social history that characterizes much of his best work. This surprising and important memoir also highlights his determination to track down even the most elusive and unappealing aspects of his past in order to understand and honestly portray himself, both as a writer and as a human being.
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What the Body Remembers

What the Body Remembers

Shauna Singh Baldwin

Cultural / India / Fiction

Introducing an eloquent, sensual new Canadian voice that rings out in a first novel that is exquisitely rich and stunningly original.Roop is a sixteen-year-old village girl in the Punjab region of undivided India in 1937 whose family is respectable but poor — her father is deep in debt and her mother is dead. Innocent and lovely, yet afraid she may not marry well, she is elated when she learns she is to become the second wife of a wealthy Sikh landowner, Sardarji, whose first wife, Satya, has failed to bear him any children. Roop trusts that the strong-willed Satya will treat her as a sister, but their relationship becomes far more ominous and complicated than expected.Roop's tale draws the reader immediately into her world, making the exotic familiar and the family's story startlingly universal, but What the Body Remembers is also very much Satya's story. She is mortified and angry when Sardarji takes Roop for a wife, a woman whose low status Satya takes as...
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Longarm and the Golden Goddess

Longarm and the Golden Goddess

Tabor Evans

Tabor Evans

The price of gold just went up, and Longarm’s paying—with his life…Deputy Marshal Custis Long may not like his new assignment—bodyguarding a visiting nobleman—but he’s going to stick to the English mucky-muck like a burr. Especially since Sir Harry Blackstreet has been accosted twice since he crossed the pond—by the same flock of owlhoots…   After being ambushed outside of a Denver museum by a different gang of outlaws, Longarm is riddled with more questions than bullets. He can’t figure out what Blackstreet has that everyone is after—unless you count his niece: a ravishing young woman who is quite a work of art…
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The Legend of the Emerald Lady

The Legend of the Emerald Lady

Carolyn Keene

Children's Books / Mystery & Thrillers / Young Adult

ON THE EXOTIC ISLAND OF ST. ANN, NANCY SEARCHES FOR SECRETS BURIED IN THE PAST! Swimming, sailing, and snorkeling are all that Nancy, Bess, and Ned expect when they visit old friends at their nineteenth-century plantation, Sugar Moon. But when a strange man appears, brandishing a cutlass, and Nancy discovers traces of intruders, her curiosity is aroused. Soon she comes across a faded love letter with clues to the hiding place of a long-dead pirate's precious gift — a fabulous emerald necklace. Many colorful island characters have a serious stake in finding the treasure, and Nancy barely escapes from their traps, on land and at sea. Then, just as Nancy locates the necklace, it's about to slip from her grasp forever!
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A Spy Among the Girls

A Spy Among the Girls

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Children's Books / Young Adult

Valentine’s Day is coming up and love is in the air between Beth Malloy and Josh Hatford. When they are spotted holding hands, Josh tells his teasing brothers that he’s simply spying on the girls to see what they’re plotting next. When Caroline Malloy decides she must know what it’s like to fall in love, too, poor Wally Hatford is in for it! Meanwhile, big sister Eddie couldn’t care less about that mushy stuff. All she cares about is her sixth-grade science fair project. But when she comes up with a great plan, Josh and Jake Hatford horn in on her project. On the day the plan goes into action, little do the boys know that Eddie has a trick up her sleeve. And with daredevil Caroline’s amazing attention-getting stunt, trouble is sure to follow. Get ready, the Malloys and Hatfords are at it again! From the Trade Paperback edition.
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