- Table View
- List View
The Christmas Kid: And Other Brooklyn Stories
by Pete HamillNever before collected in one volume, here are Pete Hamill's stories about Brooklyn, the borough in which he was born and grew up, and the one closest to his heart.A young boy with a mysterious past forever transforms the lives of the neighborhood toughs. A man returns to his old haunts to avenge the death of his brother. A couple chooses to embrace their memories of a bygone era rather than live in a diminished future.These are stories of a New York almost lost but not forgotten. They read like messages from a vanished age, brimming over with nostalgia (which Hamill has called the most common New York emotion), for the world after the war, the city before heroin and crack, the days of the Dodgers and Giants, even, for some, the world of the Depression.Full of pieces that have been unavailable for years, this collection is classic Hamill -- a must-read for his fans, for those who love New York, and for anyone who seeks to understand the world today through the lens of the world that once was.
The Liars' Gospel: A Novel
by Naomi AldermanAn award-winning writer re-imagines the life of Jesus, from the points of view of four people closest to him before his death. This is the story of Yehoshuah, who wandered Roman-occupied Judea giving sermons and healing the sick. Now, a year after his death, four people tell their stories. His mother grieves, his friend Iehuda loses his faith, the High Priest of the Temple tries to keep the peace, and a rebel named Bar-Avo strives to bring that peace tumbling down. It was a time of political power-play and brutal tyranny. Men and women took to the streets to protest. Dictators put them down with iron force. In the midst of it all, one inconsequential preacher died. And either something miraculous happened, or someone lied.Viscerally powerful in its depictions of the period - massacres and riots, animal sacrifice and human betrayal - The Liars' Gospel makes the oldest story entirely new.
The Last Unicorn: A Search for One of Earth's Rarest Creatures
by William DebuysAn award-winning author's stirring quest to find and understand an elusive and exceptionally rare species in the heart of Southeast Asia's jungles.In 1992, in a remote mountain range, a team of scientists discovered the remains of an unusual animal with beautiful long horns. It turned out to be a living species new to western science -- a saola, the first large land mammal discovered in 50 years.Rare then and rarer now, no westerner had glimpsed a live saola in the wild before Pulitzer Prize finalist and nature writer William deBuys and conservation biologist William Robichaud set off to search for it in the wilds of central Laos. The team endured a punishing trek, up and down whitewater rivers and through mountainous terrain ribboned with the snare lines of armed poachers.In the tradition of Bruce Chatwin, Colin Thubron, and Peter Matthiessen, THE LAST UNICORN is deBuys's look deep into one of the world's most remote places. As in the pursuit of the unicorn, the journey ultimately becomes a quest for the essence of wildness in nature, and an encounter with beauty.
A Thousand Hills to Heaven
by Josh RuxinOne couple's inspiring memoir of healing a Rwandan village, raising a family near the old killing fields, and building a restaurant named Heaven. Newlyweds Josh and Alissa were at a party and received a challenge that shook them to the core: do you think you can really make a difference? Especially in a place like Rwanda, where the scars of genocide linger and poverty is rampant?While Josh worked hard bringing food and health care to the country's rural villages, Alissa was determined to put their foodie expertise to work. The couple opened Heaven, a gourmet restaurant overlooking Kigali, which became an instant success. Remarkably, they found that between helping youth marry their own local ingredients with gourmet recipes (and mix up "the best guacamole in Africa") and teaching them how to help themselves, they created much-needed jobs while showing that genocide's survivors really could work together. While first a memoir of love, adventure, and family, A THOUSAND HILLS TO HEAVEN also provides a remarkable view of how, through health, jobs, and economic growth, our foreign aid programs can be quickly remodeled and work to end poverty worldwide.
Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal (The Land of Stories)
by Chris ColferStruck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal follows the story of outcast high school senior Carson Phillips who blackmails the most popular students in his school into contributing to his literary journal to bolster his college application; his goal in life is to get into Northwestern and eventually become the editor of The New Yorker.At once laugh-out-loud funny, deliciously dark, and remarkably smart, Struck By Lightning unearths the dirt that lies just below the surface of high school.
Grailblazers
by Tom HoltFifteen hundred years have passed and the Holy Grail is still missing, presumed ineffable. The knights have dumped the quest and now deliver pizzas, while the sinister financial services of the lost kingdom of Atlantis threatens the universe with fiscal Armageddon.
My Hero
by Tom HoltThis is the story of Jane who finds the novel she is working on starts to write back. She's already realized novel writing isn't such a piece of cake after all, and the world of fiction is a far more complicated place than she ever imagined.
Overtime
by Tom HoltGuy is a Mosquito pilot in World War II. He is surprised when his dead co-pilot apparently starts speaking to him as they are flying over Northern France. And before you can say "Bomber Harris", Guy finds himself caught up in time and travel, a search for Richard the Lionheart and a damsel.
Who's Afraid of Beowulf
by Tom HoltDigging up the remains of an ancient band of Vikings, archaeologist Hildy is astounded when they rise from the dead, bearing an appetite for seagulls, a twelve-thousand-year-old grudge, and a thirst for war.
Colours in the Steel (Fencer Trilogy #1)
by K. J. Parker*SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE*An epic novel of blood, betrayal, and intrigue. . . Perimadeia is the famed Triple City and the mercantile capital of the known world. Behind its allegedly impregnable walls, everything is available-including information that will allow its enemies to plan one of the most devastating sieges of all time. The man called upon to defend Perimadeia is Bardas Loredan, a fencer-at-law, weary of his work and the world. For Loredan is one of the surviving members of Maxen's Pitchfork, the legendary band of soldiers who waged war on the Plains tribes, rendering an attack on Perimadeia impossible. Until now, that is. But Loredan has problems of his own. In a city where court cases are settled by lawyers arguing with swords not words, enemies are all too easily made. And by winning one particular case, Loredan has unwittingly become the target of a young woman bent on revenge. The last thing he needs is the responsibility of saving a city.
Shadow (The Scavenger Trilogy, Book #1)
by K. J. ParkerA man wakes in the wilderness, amid scattered corpses and inquisitive crows. He has no memory of who he is or how he came to be there. The only clues to his former existence lie in his apparent skill with a sword and the fragmented dreams that permeate his sleep. Alone in a hostile world, he moves from village to village, masquerading as a god to obtain food and shelter. But the shadow of his past pursues him relentlessly. It whispers to him a riddle far more complex than he could ever have imagined-and a truth he may not wish to believe.
Memory (Scavenger Trilogy #3)
by K. J. ParkerPoldarn went home and felt his life would come back together again but it did not. Betrayals by friends and enemies alike occur in this final book of the trilogy, things must come together, perhaps?
The Better Mousetrap
by Tom HoltIt touches all our lives-our triumphs and tragedies, our proudest achievements, our most traumatic disasters. Alloyed of love and fear, death and fire, and the inscrutable acts of the gods, insurance is indeed the force that binds the universe together. Hardly surprising, therefore, that Frank Carpenter, one of the foremost magical practitioners of our age, felt himself irresistibly drawn to it. Until, that is, he met Jane, a high-flying corporate heroine with an annoying habit of falling out of trees and getting killed. Repeatedly. It's not long before Frank and Jane find themselves face to face with the greatest enigma of our times: When is a door not a door? When it's a mousetrap.
Djinn Rummy
by Tom HoltWhen Kayaguchiya Integrated Circuits III, a genie, is released from the aspirin bottle he's been stuck in for 14 years, there's bound to be trouble. Jane had wanted to end her life in peace, but now she's got a genie, things look up - until the apocalypse rears its ugly head.
Here Comes the Sun
by Tom HoltAll is not well with the universe - cutbacks have taken their toll, and the sun is dirty and late, thanks to being 30 billion miles overdue on its next service. None of the committees can agree on anything, and extreme measures seem called for.
Flying Dutch
by Tom HoltMild-mannered accountant Jane Doland must track down Vanderdecker, a magically immortal Dutch sea captain who, along with his crew, has been circling the globe for four hundred years.
In Your Dreams
by Tom HoltEver been offered a promotion that seems too good to be true? The kind where you snap their arm off to accept, then wonder why all your long-serving colleagues look secretly relieved, as if they're off some strange and unpleasant hook? It's the kind of trick that deeply sinister companies like J.W. Wells & Co. pull all the time. Especially with employees who are too busy mooning over the office intern to think about what they're getting into. And it's why, right about now, Paul Carpenter is wishing he'd paid much less attention to the gorgeous Melze, and rather more to a little bit of job description small-print referring to "pest" control.
Little People
by Tom Holt"I was eight years old when I saw my first elf." And for unlikely hero Michael it was his last. Cruella, Michael's unfortunately named girlfriend, doesn't approve of his obsession with the little people. But the problem is that they won't leave him alone. And who can blame them when it's Michael's own stepfather who's responsible for causing them so much misery? Oh yes. Daddy George knows that elves can do so much more than gardening.
Odds and Gods
by Tom HoltThis is a comedy set in the Sunnyvoyde Residential Home. Wagner got it wrong. The Twilight of the Gods isn't really that cataclysmic. After all, there's a comfy chair, a welcoming fire and three meals a day.
Only Human
by Tom HoltSomething is about to go wrong. Very wrong. What do you expect if the Supreme Being decides to get away from it all for a few days, leaving his naturally inquisitive son to look after the cosmic balance of things? A minor hiccup with a human soul and a welding machine soon leads to a violent belch, and before you know it the human condition-not to mention the lemming condition-is tumbling down the slippery slope to chaos.
Paint Your Dragon
by Tom HoltSculptress Bianca Wilson is a living legend. St. George is also a legend, but not living. However, when Bianca's sculpture of the patron saint and his scaly chum gets a bit too lifelike, it opens up a new can of wyrms. The dragon knows that in the battle between Good and Evil, Evil got a raw deal and is looking to set the record straight. And George (who cheated) thinks the record's just fine as it is.
The Proof House: The Fencer Trilogy (Fencer Trilogy #3)
by K. J. ParkerAfter years spent in the saps under the defenses of the apparently impregnable city of Ap'Iscatoy, Bardas Loredan, sometimes fencer-at-law and betrayed defender of the famed Triple City, is suddenly hero of the Empire. His reward is a boring administrative job in a backwater, watching armor tested to destruction in the Proof House. But the fall of Ap'Iscatoy has opened up unexpected possibilities for the expansion of the Empire into the land of the Plains people, and Bardas Loredan is the one man Temrai the Great, King of the Plains tribes, fears the most. The Proof House is the gripping, hugely entertaining conclusion of K.J. Parker's Fencer Trilogy.
Barking
by Tom HoltDuncan's boss doesn't think he's cut out to be a lawyer. He isn't a pack animal. He lacks the killer instinct. But when his best friend from school barges his way back into Duncan's life, along with a full supporting cast of lawyers, ex-wives, zombies, and snow-white unicorns, it's not long before things become distinctly unsettling. Hairy, even.
Open Sesame
by Tom HoltThere was something wrong! Just as the boiling water was about to be poured on his head and the man with the red book appeared and his life flashed before his eyes, Akram the Terrible, the most feared thief in Baghdad, knew this had happened before. Many times. And he was damned if he was going to let it happen again. Just because he was a character in a story didn't mean that it always had to end this way. Meanwhile, back in Southampton, it's a bit of a shock for Michelle when she puts on her Aunt Fatima's ring and the computer and the telephone start to bitch at her for past misdemeanors. But that's nothing compared to the story that her kitchen appliances have to tell her.
The Portable Door
by Tom HoltStarting a new job is always stressful, but when Paul Carpenter arrives at the office of H.W. Wells he has no idea what trouble lies in store. Because he is about to discover that the apparently respectable establishment now paying his salary is in fact a front for a deeply sinister organization that has a mighty peculiar agenda. It seems that half the time his bosses are away with the fairies. But they're not, of course. They're away with the goblins.