A Christmas Visitor

A Christmas Visitor

Anne Perry

Literature & Fiction / Mystery & Thrillers / Science Fiction & Fantasy

ReviewPraise for Anne Perry’s A Christmas Journey“A Christmas Journey is that rarest of seasonal thrillers: one that exemplifies the message and spirit of the holiday. . . . This brief work has an almost Jamesian subtlety, and with its powerful message of responsibility and redemption–‘We need both to forgive and to be forgiven’–it conveys a moral force in keeping with the season.”–The Wall Street Journal“A doozy of a Christmas mystery.”–The Dallas Morning NewsFrom the Hardcover edition.Product DescriptionRenowned for her acclaimed Victorian novels as well as a stunning new series set in World War I, Anne Perry consistently dazzles us with stories rife with emotion, intrigue, and psychological depth. She recently expanded her talents with the delightfully rendered novella, A Christmas Journey, which USA Today called “one of the best books to brighten the joyous season.” Now she has given readers another gift–a yuletide offering full of holiday magic . . . and murder.The Dreghorn family is gathering for an anticipated reunion in the Lake District of England. The blissful tranquility of the snowbound estate, however, is soon shattered by what appears to be an accidental death. The victim’s distraught wife, Antonia, summons her godfather, distinguished mathematician and inventor Henry Rathbone–one of the most beloved characters from Perry’s bestselling William Monk series. But questions about the tragic event turn into whispers of murder, sending shock waves among members of the Dreghorn clan, who haven’t seen each other in ten years.Now Rathbone must put his analytical and creative capacities to the test as he assumes the role of an amateur investigator. But while searching for clues and mulling over potential motives, he cannot help but wonder: Will another poor soul meet the same untimely end–and be silenced like the night?In this Christmas novella, featuring a colorful, somewhat eccentric cast of characters and an irresistible plot as twisty as a ribbon, Rathbone rescues the holiday with a grace that would impress William Monk himself.From the Hardcover edition.
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Sunset Pass

Sunset Pass

Zane Grey

Literature & Fiction / Westerns

Trueman Rock is a daring young cowboy and rider. Six years ago he had to leave the cowtown of Wagontongue because of a history of gunfights and run-ins with bad hombres. Since then, he's become a man who only uses his gun when he needs to, on rustlers and crooks. Now, he's returning to his hometown. But things have changed. The town and its people aren't what they used to be. He expects to find some of his enemies there to welcome him, but instead finds they're all dead. In their place is the Preston family.The Prestons have just about taken over the town of Sunset Pass and reign supreme. But Trueman discovers that there's a brooding mystery surrounding the Preston clan, centered on Ash, the eldest son. Ash is a cold, vicious, and slippery man. Unfortunately for Trueman, he finds himself falling in love with Thiry Preston, Ash's sister. Ash holds a jealous love for her and she'll do just about anything he says, and he's ruined more than one love-struck cowboy before Trueman...
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Suspicious River

Suspicious River

Laura Kasischke

Literature & Fiction / Poetry

"The first time I had sex with a man for money, it was September —still like summer, but the heat in the motel room was on and it seemed to coat my throat with dust. The man was dull, small-eyed, no taller than myself, but he seemed afraid. He wouldn't look at me. When I asked him what he wanted me to do, he said, 'That's your job.'" So begins the poet Laura Kasischke's mesmerizing and unforgettable first novel. Leila Murray is the novel's narrator - young, married, living in a small town, and working in a motel as a receptionist, then as a prostitute. Leila slowly discloses the details of her childhood, her mother's murder, and the numb promiscuity of her adolescence, while contemporary events unfold and lead her to the dark turn her life will take one October weekend when she meets a man named Gary Jensen.
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The Coming of the Night

The Coming of the Night

John Rechy

Literature & Fiction / Gay and Lesbian

John Rechy's new novel is a return to the themes and scenes of his classic, best-selling City of Night and a bittersweet memorial to a lost world -- gay Los Angeles in the moment before AIDS. It is 1981, a summer night, and an unscripted ritual is about to take place. Young, beautiful Jesse is celebrating one year on the dazzling gay scene and plans to lose himself completely in its transient pleasures. He is joined by Dave, a leatherman bent on testing limits. A young hustler, an opera lover lost in fantasies of youth, a gang of teenagers looking for trouble -- as the Santa Ana winds breathe fire down the hills of Los Angeles, stirring up desires and violence, these men circle ever closer to a confrontation as devastating as it is inevitable. Lyrical, humorous, and compassionate, The Coming of the Night proves again that as a novelist and chronicler of gay life John Rechy has no equal. "The question Rechy asks is still potent: Would you die for sex? Rechy's sizzling literary...
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The Jester

The Jester

James Patterson

Literature & Fiction / Mystery Thriller / Young Adult

Arriving home disillusioned from the Crusades, Hugh discovers that his village has been ransacked and his wife abducted by knights in search of a relic worth more than any throne in Europe. Only by taking on the role of a jester is he able to infiltrate his enemy's castle, where he thinks his wife is captive. With the unstoppable pace and plot of a page-turning Alex Cross novel, THE JESTER is a breathtakingly romantic, pulse-pounding adventure-one that could only be conjured by the mind of James Patterson. Everyone who has ever hoped for good to defeat evil or for love to conquer all will not be able to stop turning the pages of this masterful novel of virtue, laughter-yes, laughter-and suspense.
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Amerikan Eagle

Amerikan Eagle

Alan Glenn

Nonfiction / Literature & Fiction / Poetry

A good cop. A bad choice. Let history be the judge.In 1943, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Sam Miller is a cop supporting a family and trying to stay on the right side of his boss, the law, and his conscience. Then a body is found by the railroad tracks, a number tattooed on the victim’s wrist. It is a case Sam could walk away from. It is a case he will be ordered to drop. And it is case that leads him into a lethal vortex of politics, espionage, rebellion, and international intrigue.As war rages in Europe, a new power rises in America. And the people Sam thinks he knows best—his wife, his brother, his colleagues—reveal new identities. In a formerly close-knit city by the sea, where no one is above suspicion and no one is safe, a global summit is about to take place. On that day, history will be changed. And millions of people will live or die, all because Sam Miller has been a very good cop—faced with a very bad choice.From the Paperback edition.
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The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty: A Novel

The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty: A Novel

Amanda Filipacchi

Literature & Fiction

In the heart of New York City, a group of artistic friends struggles with society's standards of beauty. At the center are Barb and Lily, two women at opposite ends of the beauty spectrum, but with the same problem: each fears she will never find a love that can overcome her looks. Barb, a stunningly beautiful costume designer, makes herself ugly in hopes of finding true love. Meanwhile, her friend Lily, a brilliantly talented but plain-looking musician, goes to fantastic lengths to attract the man who has rejected her—with results that are as touching as they are transformative.To complicate matters, Barb and Lily discover that they may have a murderer in their midst, that Barb’s calm disposition is more dangerously provocative than her beauty ever was, and that Lily's musical talents are more powerful than anyone could have imagined. Part literary whodunit, part surrealist farce, The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty serves as a smart, modern-day fairy tale. With biting wit and offbeat charm, Amanda Filipacchi illuminates the labyrinthine relationship between beauty, desire, and identity, asking at every turn: what does it truly mean to allow oneself to be seen?Review"Filipacchi's fourth novel blithely upends the social constructs of beauty, desire, and art in her signature brisk, darkly comic style... with sharp surreal turns and layers of subversive meaning... While looks can kill, they're no match for Filipacchi's rapier wit." --Publishers Weekly"Amanda Filipacchi's untamed imagination makes the world a little more fun to live in. This witty novel shines a blacklight on beauty, to reveal its dark side, and the author's irrepressibly zany one." --Roxana Robinson“[A] sure comic touch… smart and sweet… a tribute to the pleasures of friendship.” (The New Yorker) “Amanda Filipacchi is the funniest novelist you’ve never heard of… Few comic novelists get characters talking so naturally, and amusingly… There is a high art in this kind of ungentle entertainment, and in The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty Filipacchi proves she hasn’t lost her touch, not even a little.” (John Freeman - Boston Globe) “Readers who’d like to spend a little time at the corner where a brisker Haruki Murakami meets a drier ‘30 Rock’ would do well to seek out Filipacchi’s radiantly intelligent and very funny novel.” (Ellis Avery - San Francisco Chronicle) “A surreal and utterly compelling triumph.” (Buzzfeed) “[A] farcical novel… riveting to read.” (Nathan Reese - T Magazine) “[A] zanily satirical, spot-on novel.” (O, The Oprah Magazine) “Magic spills from the pores of Filipacchi’s story… The resulting romp is a witty and honest rendering of the unknowable distance between perception and reality, exploring the possibility that beauty is literally in the eyes of the beholder.” (Alexandra Coakley - Slate) “Filipacchi's lively story reflects on the unearned power that beauty confers on its recipients… breezy with a bite.” (Maureen Corrigan - NPR Books) “An astute, piercing look at the value society and individuals place on appearance… impossible to put down and utterly dead-on in its assessment of human nature.” (Booklist, starred review) “An ingeniously crafted fictional meditation on power and freedom, essence and appearance that takes the form of a philosophical farce. A delight for the mind that penetrates the heart.” (Walter Kirn) “Amanda Filipacchi writes with a deceptive ease, creating magic out of thin air. She makes the ordinary come alive with possibility and stuffs her pages full of laughter, sadness and characters that are unforgettable…Filipacchi is one of our best satirists.” (Neil La Bute) “Amanda Filipacchi is one of the most original storytelling minds I know. Here, she has written a seductively powerful fable about the ugly powers of beauty, the redemptive powers of creativity, and the nature of true love. Every page abounds in mystery, delight and surprise.” (Sheila Heti) “Amanda Filipacchi’s untamed imagination makes the world a little more fun to live in. This witty novel shines a blacklight on beauty, to reveal its dark side, and the author’s irrepressibly zany one.” (Roxana Robinson) “The best comic novelist writing today.” (Ed Park) “Amanda Filipacchi has crafted a delightful gem, an unusual mixture of laughter and suspense. One never knows what's going to happen next in this odd and charming universe. This is a wonderfully absurd and comedic novel that also reads like a page-turning whodunit.” (Jonathan Ames) About the AuthorAmanda Filipacchi is the author of three previous novels: Nude Men, Vapor, and Love Creeps. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Humor and elsewhere. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic. She earned an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University. She lives in New York. 
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The Foretelling

The Foretelling

Alice Hoffman

Literature & Fiction / Young Adult / Magical Realism

The Foretelling is a transformative story that asks many profound questions, for which there are many answers. Rain is girl of the Amazon tribe of women warriors, born in a time of blood and fear. As the future leader of her people, she must seek and hold fast to her inner warrior. What she encounters along her poignant and harrowing path toward her destiny-a kind young man, a strange, recurrent prophecy, and a condemned baby brother-lead her, against odds, to forge mercy, love, and peace.
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Practical Magic

Practical Magic

Alice Hoffman

Literature & Fiction / Young Adult / Magical Realism

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women had been blamed for everything that went wrong in their Massachusetts town. And Gillian and Sally endured that fate as well; as children, the sisters were outsiders. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, but all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One would do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they shared brought them back-almost as if by magic...
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Tiny Beautiful Things

Tiny Beautiful Things

Cheryl Strayed

Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction

Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you can't pay the bills--and it can be great: you've had the hottest sex of your life; you get that plum job; you muster the courage to write your novel. Sugar--the once-anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus, now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of the bestselling memoir Wild--is the person thousands turn to for advice. Tiny Beautiful Things brings the best of Dear Sugar in one place and includes never-before-published columns and a new introduction by Steve Almond. Rich with humor, insight, compassion--and absolute honesty--this book is a balm for everything life throws our way.
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The Collected Stories

The Collected Stories

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Science

Review"Sparkling and triumphant, Isaac Bashevis Singer's stories are filled with wonder, gratitude, humor, irony and a wry eroticism that manages to exalt the pleasures of the flesh and the soul at the same time."—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World "There are whole fistfuls of masterpieces in this one volume: a cornucopia of invention . . . When all is said and done, [it] is an American master's 'Book of Creation.'"—Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times Book Review Product DescriptionThe forty-seven stories in this collection, selected by Singer himself out of nearly one hundred and fifty, range from the publication of his now-classic first collection, Gimpel the Fool, in 1957, until 1981. They include supernatural tales, slices of life from Warsaw and the shtetls of Eastern Europe, and stories of the Jews displaced from that world to the New World, from the East Side of New York to California and Miami.
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