Precious and Grace

Precious and Grace

Alexander McCall Smith

Mystery & Thrillers / Literature & Fiction / Children's Books

In this latest installment of the beloved and best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, Precious Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi help a young woman on a quest to find someone from her past.Changes are afoot at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, where Mma Makutsi, who has recently been promoted to co-director, has been encouraging Mma Ramotswe to update to more modern office practices. However, an unusual case will require both of them to turn their attention firmly to the past. A young Canadian woman who spent her early childhood in Botswana requests the agency's help in recovering important pieces of her life there. With only a faded photograph—and, of course, some good old-fashioned detective skills—to guide them, Precious and Grace set out to locate the house that the woman used to live in and the caretaker who looked after her many years ago. But when the journey takes an unexpected turn, they are forced to consider whether some lost things may be better...
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Cutting for Stone

Cutting for Stone

Abraham Verghese

Literature & Fiction

A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel - an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home. Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother's death in childbirth and their father's disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics - their passion for the same woman - that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him - nearly destroying him - Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him. An unforgettable journey into one man's remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.
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The Glass Butterfly

The Glass Butterfly

Louise Marley

Historical Fiction / Literature & Fiction / Short Stories

The only way therapist Victoria Lake can think to protect her estranged son, Jack, from a case turned deadly is to make a complete break from the past. As painful as it is, it's safer for him if he - and her enemies - think she's dead. Jack never wanted to believe in his mother's psychic abilities. Yet he can't deny his own conviction that she's alive, despite the meticulous police investigation and the somber funeral. To survive, Victoria knows she has to reinvent herself completely. She can't even listen to her beloved Puccini. But without the music in her ears, eerie dreams invade her sleep. Lush with the sounds and sights of 19th-century Tuscany, they're also loaded with a present-day warning she can't afford to ignore...ReviewRomantic Times: Marley's latest is a poetic blend of historical fiction and suspense. Readers are kept waiting anxiously in the dark for details behind Tory's escape . . . Marley also awards readers with a book-within-a-book, a glimpse into the life of the composer Puccini. Beautifully written and intimate . . .--Sarah Eisenbraun"SciFi Magazine: Louise Marley's latest is a slipstream offering . . . The tone is literary, the language rich, and the feelings wrapped up in Tory's intense love of music--and her unresolved relationship with the estranged son.--Adam-Troy CastroNocturne Romance Reads: Marley's novel could be classified as a mystery; however such a perspective would minimize the intensity of the emotional elements. . . Marley excels at setting rich and colorful scenes. The tension and suspense surrounds Tory, Jack and their friends, as well as the antagonist.The Seattle Times: Seattle-based opera singer/novelist Louise Marley knits together two related plot lines -- a contemporary story about a therapist in deadly peril from a patient, and a domestic drama in the life of opera composer Giacomo Puccini -- into a gripping novel about obsession and its consequences.--Melinda Bargreen From the AuthorShopping once in an antiques store--in Cannon Beach, Oregon, in fact, where this novel is set--it struck me that it would be possible to construct a whole new life out of the things in that store. Old photos, old linens and glassware, books and papers and keepsakes, all turn up for sale. What became of the people who once treasured them? It's impossible to know.The story within a story of this novel concerns a young girl who worked for the Puccini family in Italy. History tells us one side of her story. The Glass Butterfly explores a different interpretation, and proposes that a keepsake of hers connects her story to that of Tory Lake. It is both a comfort and a warning, an omen of the threat that hangs over her and her son.
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A Horse Walks into a Bar

A Horse Walks into a Bar

David Grossman

Nonfiction / Children's Books / Literature & Fiction

The acclaimed author of To the End of the Land now gives us a searing short novel about the life of a standup comic as revealed in the course of one evening's performance—comedy that will lean inexorably toward tragedy. In a little dive in a small Israeli city, Dov Greenstein, a comedian a bit past his prime, is doing a night of standup. In the audience is a district court justice, Avishai Lazar, whom Dov knew as a boy, along with a few others who remember Dov as the awkward, scrawny kid who walked on his hands to confound the neighborhood bullies. Gradually, teetering between hilarity and hysteria, Dov's patter becomes a kind of memoir, taking us back into the terrors of his childhood—his beautiful flower of a mother, a Holocaust survivor in need of constant monitoring; his punishing father, a striver who had little understanding of his creative son. Finally, recalling his week at a military camp for youth—where Lazar witnessed what became the...
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Revenge of the Rose

Revenge of the Rose

Michael Moorcock

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Historical Fiction / Literature & Fiction

The Revenge of the Rose is Michael Moorcock's newest, most captivating novel of Elric, the mad albino warrior with the vampire Black Sword. Now, Elric returns on the winds of a dragon to the ruined place of his birth, the Dreaming City. There, in the catacombs of his ancestors, he hears the tortured voice of his dead father. But to save his father's soul from eternal suffering, Elric must battle the princes of Hell itself - and put his faith in the hands of a woman. A woman called the Rose... Moorcock's newest, most captivating novel of Elric--the mad albino warrior with the vampiric Black Sword. Elric returns on the wings of a dragon to the ruined place of his birth, the Dreaming City, where he must battle the princes of Hell itself to save his father's soul from eternal suffering. 
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Sacrificed in Shadow

Sacrificed in Shadow

SM Reine

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Young Adult / Literature & Fiction

Due to violence, language, and sexual content, this book is recommended for mature readers.Lincoln Marshall is a small-town deputy with a very big problem. Six members of his church have been found dead, killed by a rogue werewolf. He'll have to make a deal with the Devil to save victims that have gone missing -- maybe literally.Elise Kavanagh, preternatural investigator and exorcist, is the expert when it comes to violent deaths at the jaws of evil. She's also the demon known as the Godslayer. Elise jumps at Lincoln's case, and it's not just because of his down-home charm. Someone's laid a trap for her in Northgate, and she wants to find out who.She'll have to team up with Rylie Gresham, Alpha of the last surviving werewolf pack, to figure out who's trying to blame the murders on werewolves. Only together can they stop the killings -- and uncover the secrets buried in Northgate.From the AuthorThis book follows the events of The Descent Series and The Cain Chronicles, but you don't need to read both (or either!) to read it. It's the beginning a whole new series. :)I had so much fun writing Elise and Rylie together that I'm working on the sequel right now. If you want to know when Oaths of Blood comes out, make sure to sign up for my new release email alerts - smarturl.it/armyofevil
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Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

Chuck Palahniuk

Literature & Fiction

Author's Note: This book is written in the style of an oral history, a form which requires interviewing a wide variety of witnesses and compiling their testimony. Anytime multiple sources are questioned about a shared experience, it's inevitable for them occasionally to contradict each other. For additional biographies written in this style, please see Capote by George Plimpton, Edie by Jean Stein, and Lexicon Devil by Brendan Mullen.
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