Here are three great historical novels in one volume.HABITS OF THE HOUSE: Fay Weldon takes us inside an aristocratic household -- upstairs and downstairs -- in the last three months of the nineteenth century. Tea gowns are still laced with diamonds; there are still nine courses at dinner, but bankruptcy, war and social unrest loom.THE SILVER THREAD: London, 1840. A young woman boards a prison ship bound for the other side of the world. Weaving death, love and adventure, The Silver Thread is plotted like a murder mystery, but narrated with the skill and style of a literary storyteller.THE CONDUCTOR: Winter, 1941. The story of how Shostakovich and one valiant, bedraggled orchestra created a defining moment in the siege of Leningrad - the bloodiest seige in history - is a gripping testament to the life-affirming power of music.

A Missing Groom, A Threatening Note, Another Page-Turning AdventureThree months have passed since Cassi Mason and Jared Landine helped the FBI expose a criminal mastermind. Along the way, they fell in love, and now Jared has moved to San Diego to be near Cassi. But four days before their wedding, Jared disappears.Frantic to discover what happened, Cassi plunges into a world of danger and intrigue. Can she find Jared before it's too late?Meanwhile, Laranda Garrettson is safely in a prison hospital, recuperating from a gunshot wound that paralyzed her from the waist down. Her body may be damaged, but her brilliant and devious mind is far from beaten.Big Tommy, an organized crime boss, is also on the move. In a stunning turn of events, his evil plans threaten to turn Cassi's world upside down.In her heart-stopping sequel to A Bid for Love, best-selling novelist Rachel Ann Nunes has created a fast-paced, intensely romantic thriller that will keep you guessing at every turn.A...

First in the Justice Series.Special Crimes Unit investigator Detective Sergeant Rebecca Frye is attempting to solve a series of sexual assaults and running into dead ends at every turn. Finally, she has a break in the case–a witness–one person who may help her bring a madman to justice. But, the witness is a victim herself and Rebecca must convince the injured woman's physician, Dr. Catherine Rawlings, to assist her–a task that will force both women to confront their own darkest fears. Amidst professional conflicts and a growing mutual attraction, the two women become reluctant allies in the battle to stop the perpetrator before he strikes again.

Between the mountains and the sea, between the sea and Fairyland, lay the Free State of Dorimare and its picturesque capital, Lud-in-the-Mist. No Luddite ever had any truck with fairies or Fairyland. Bad business, those fairies. The people of Dorimare had run them out generations ago—and the Duke of Dorimare along with them.Until the spring of his fiftieth year Master Nathaniel Chanticleer, Mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist and High Seneschal of Dorimare, had lived a sleepy life with his only son, Ranulph. But as he grew, Ranulph was more and more fond of talking nonsense about golden cups, and snow-white ladies milking azure cows, and the sound of tinkling bridles at midnight. And when Ranulph was twelve, he got caught up with the fairies, and Nathaniel's life would never be the same.

In an open cart Elspeth Huxley set off with her parents to travel to Thika in Kenya. As pioneering settlers, they built a house of grass, ate off a damask cloth spread over packing cases, and discovered—the hard way—the world of the African. With an extraordinary gift for detail and a keen sense of humor, Huxley recalls her childhood on the small farm at a time when Europeans waged their fortunes on a land that was as harsh as it was beautiful. For a young girl, it was a time of adventure and freedom, and Huxley paints an unforgettable portrait of growing up among the Masai and Kikuyu people, discovering both the beauty and the terrors of the jungle, and enduring the rugged realities of the pioneer life.

Growing up in Kenya in the early twentieth century, the brothers Matu and Muthegi are raised according to customs that, they are told, have existed since the beginning of the world. But when the 'red' strangers come, sunburned Europeans who seek to colonize their homeland, the lives of the two Kikuyu tribesmen begin to change in dramatic new ways. Soon, their people are overwhelmed by unknown diseases that traditional magic seems powerless to control. And as the strangers move across the land, the tribe rapidly finds itself forced to obey foreign laws that seem at best bizarre, and that at worst entirely contradict the Kikuyu's own ancient ways, rituals and beliefs.

The collected works of Adrienne Rich, whose poetry is "distinguished by an unswerving progressive vision and a dazzling, empathic ferocity" (New York Times).Adrienne Rich was the singular voice of her generation and one of our most important American poets. She brought discussions of gender, race, and class to the forefront of poetical discourse, pushing formal boundaries and consistently examining both self and society.This collected volume traces the evolution of her poetry, from her earliest work, which was formally exact and decorous, to her later work, which became increasingly radical in both its free-verse form and feminist and political content. The entire body of her poetry is on display in this vast volume, including the National Book Award–winning Diving Into the Wreck and her prize-winning Atlas of the Difficult World.The Collected Poems of Adrienne Rich gathers and memorializes all of her boldly political, formally ambitious,...

Allie Johnston's secret wish since the day she was twelve is to have her nose done. But she hasn't told anyone—not her parents, or even her best friend, Jen. But when she starts visiting a plastic surgery discussion board on the Web, she finds people who get her, for the first time in her life. Her new friends, including two girls her age with vastly different backgrounds who share her obsession with changing their faces—but for very different reasons. A sharply written, insightful book about learning to be happy with who we are.

Intrigue, chilling suspense and hair-raising horror will freeze you to the bones as you read this novel. In the hellish July heat, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine clean out the house of Leonard's just-dead Uncle Chester. However, as they clear away the filth, they uncover a dirty secret. Beneath the rotting floorboards, Hap and Leonard unearth a small skeleton, wrapped in porno magazines. Thinking white, Hap wants to call the cops. Leonard, versed in the unwritten codes of his black neighborhood, persuades Hap otherwise. Together they're about to clear Chester's name sans outside reinforcement­as they dig up the deepest, ugliest truth of all under the blister of an East Texas sun!

Wanted: four amateur cooks to compete in a supper club contest Rules: four strangers, four weeks, four houses, four dinner parties You might win: a cash prize You might lose: your heart Eve had her world torn apart three years ago, when the love of her life Ethan disappeared - and she never found out why. But now, her life is rosy. With a lovely new boyfriend, Joe, and a café opening on the cards, things finally seem to be falling into place. ... until she agrees to take part in a supper club competition for a local newspaper. Eve is cooking the first dinner and who should turn up on her doorstep expecting a three-course meal, but her long lost love Ethan?

Bad Luck, the third book in the Gibbons and Tozzi thriller series, takes FBI agents Mike Tozzi and Cuthbert Gibbons to Atlantic City to investigate shady dealings between the mob and a celebrity real-estate mogul. Add an oversexed trophy wife, a Mafia boss who pretends to be a mental patient, his sister the nun, a championship prizefight, and Gibbons' reluctant wedding preparations, and Bad Luck serves up a hilarious killer cocktail.