The bestselling historical novel that exposes the less than honorable side of our Founding Fathers by the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. In this gripping and timely work, William Safire unveils the story behind the nation's first great political scandals. James Thomson Callender, the "scandalmonger" of the title, is an ambitious gossip-peddling editor secretly hired by Thomas Jefferson as a political weapon. After carefully damaging Alexander Hamilton's reputation, thereby paving the way for Jefferson's success, Callender is shunned by the very politicians on whose behalf he was jailed for sedition. Broke and betrayed, Callender seeks revenge by exposing an illicit affair between Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemmings, an accusation that ultimately cost Callender his career and would not be authenticated for two centuries. By using actual letters, records, and notes to re-create dialogue and events, Scandalmonger embodies historical fiction at its best, politics at its most intriguing, and our Founding Fathers at their most notorious. For those who think that Washington sex scandals and lurid journalism are recent developments, this novel will be a revelation, for Safire shows how media intrusiveness into private lives-and politicians' cool manipulation of the press-are practices as old as the Constitution.

Ready to follow Nick Hornsby and Helen Fielding as the next big thing from Cool Britannia to hit America is Ben Elton. Already known to a wide public television audience as the funnyman behind Blackadder, The Young Ones, and The Thin Blue Line, Elton, author of Popcorn , lights up the literary sky with Blast from the Past . Part noir thriller, part hilarious send-up of the politics of extremism, Blast from the Past is the new novel from English comedy phenomenon (stand-up, playwright, television writer, and author) Ben Elton--a name soon to be known in all circles once Joel Schumacher's film of his book Popcorn reaches the silver screen. In the early 80s, when Polly was a seventeen-year-old ideological peace protestor and Jack was a U.S. Army captain stationed at England's Greenham Common, the two had a secret and very unlikely affair. No two people could have had more to argue about, save that they couldn't live without each other, yet one day Jack came to the conclusion that he loved soldiering more than Polly and sacrificed their love to be a career army man. Now, sixteen years later, Polly is a lonely thirty-something social services employee and Jack is a four-star general who has returned to Britain to find her, his only true love. With only one night to resolve their differences, and a knife-wielding stalker lurking in the shadows, for everyone concerned this will be a night like no other. From the Hardcover edition.

The second novel from GG finalist and international award winner Kenneth Bonert, who brought Jewish Johannesburg to explosive life in his 2013 debut, The Lion Seeker . As the 1980s draw to a close, apartheid is in its death throes and South Africa is a maelstrom of political violence. Young Martin Helger has problems of his own. Out of place at an elite private school, he is the son of a rough-handed scrap dealer and lives in the shadow of his enigmatic brother, a neighbourhood legend. When an irresistible young American boards at the Helger home, a transfixed Martin soon finds himself wrenched out of the isolated bubble of his white privilege and thrust into the raw heart of South Africa's racial struggle. At the same time, secrets from the past begin to emerge and old sins long-buried return in terrifying new ways, tearing at the Helgers, a second-generation Jewish family, even as the larger forces of history and politics tear apart the country. Migration, terrorism, revolution, identity and memory--these are just some of the bold themes brilliantly and honestly explored in this powerful novel. At once a riveting literary thriller, a moving coming-of-age tale, and an unforgettable journey through a fascinating world , The Mandela Plot entertains and terrifies in equal measure, and resonates profoundly in light of current affairs.

An "intelligent and entertaining" tale. (Kirkus Reviews): Priya is thrilled when she's recruited to serve in the spaceborne military. But she's soon forced to volunteer for a dangerous mission - and finds her life at stake... "For nail-biting science fiction thrillers, look no further than one of Rothman's stories" (New York Times bestselling author Larry Correia). ------ Aliens exist... and, as it turns out, most of them are fairly harmless. It's the humans you need to watch out for. Priya Radcliffe wasn't even born yet when the first set of terrorists struck. She was seventeen when they struck again, but this time her parents paid the ultimate price. That was seven years ago, and since then, the United Nations finally agreed to field its first spaceborne military. Serving aboard one of the first true starships had been a dream of hers. All of her years of education and training had been geared for entering the service. However, just before Priya's graduation, she's approached by an officer from a military branch she'd never heard of and given a choice: volunteer for a risky mission to an outpost she knows nothing about or be excluded from serving. She had no choice.

In 1955, New York Times bestselling novelist Harold Robbins shocked the world by pulling back the bedroom curtain to expose America's complicated and controversial relationship with the power of female sexuality. The concept was stunning, salacious... and breathtaking--a story not only built entirely upon the premise of illicit sex, but from a woman's point of view, as she uses it to rise to a position of power and wealth in a man's world. It was a seminal moment, and the literary world would never be the same. Fate, love, power, and sex collide in the halls of justice in New York City as ADA Mike Keyes comes face-to-face with his lifelong love, MaryAnn Flood, the city's most notorious--to say nothing of dangerous--madame. Before she was a tabloid celebrity with a little black book full of the names, though, Marja Fluudjincki was a shy young girl who captured his heart and never let it go. In the years since, she's parlayed her beauty into power and position as the head of 79 Park Avenue, an escort service catering to the rich and powerful under the guise of an upscale modeling agency. Now, with Marja on trial and Mike the prosecutor assigned to her case, they both face the biggest challenge of their lives. Is she still capable of love after sacrificing everything to claw her way up from the mean streets to the penthouse? Can he--should he--set aside his personal feelings for the sake of justice? 79 Park Avenue is a story of unanswered, perhaps unanswerable, questions, for society as much as its brilliantly nuanced characters. Why is the promiscuous man celebrated while his female counterpart is shamed? How can we revel in the sexualization of women, yet respect them so little? How much progress have we really made in the battle of the sexes? More than 60 years after its original release, the story of MaryAnn Flood remains just as relevant today, and this, more than anything demonstrates the genius and talent of Harold Robbins.

The nightmare of fascism is something we would all rather forget, yet the horrors of the last war and the men who combated the evils of fascism must never be forgotten. Those heroes whose exploits for various reasons were unknown until recently must also be accorded their rightful place in history. Yulian Semyonov’s new novel Seventeen Moments of Spring brings us the largely documentary story of one of those heroes, Maxim Isaev, alias SS Standartenfuhrer Stirlitz, known as Justas to those in charge of Soviet Intelligence. He has access to top military and political secrets and ejoyed the confidence of Schellenberg, Martin Bormann and Himmler. The action of the novel is set in 1945, by which time Maxim Isaev has behind him many years’ experience of harrowing intelligence work, involving a constant gamble with death. He is almost at the end of his tether, and is planning to leave the fray after successfully completing a mission from Center when he goes back into the enemy’s lair once again, ready to face risks greater than ever, knowing that there he can best serve his people... In answer to countless readers’ questions as to whether Maxim Isaev was a fictitious character Semyonov replies: “No, this particular Soviet agent combines traits of several heroic men now living, to whom I should like to express my gratitude for their brave, noble and inspiring lives...”

Captain David Garrison had fought countless combat missions with the Special Forces in Vietnam. Now, to pay a curious kind of debt, he was off on his toughest assignment yet.His to go into the Soviet Union and bring out a very special fourteen-year-old orphan girl - illegally. There would be no "official" help. It would be just Garrison and a couple of his wartime budies against the world's most powerful police state.With a net of Cold War intrigue closing around him, Garrison carried out his daring plan. To get the girl, he would have to kidnap a prominent Russian and arrange a SWAP.Librarian's the ISBN for this book was reused on a completely different book - ISBN 10: 0671783351

A convention-defying novel by bestselling writer Walter Mosley, John Woman recounts the transformation of an unassuming boy named Cornelius Jones into John Woman, an unconventional history professor--while the legacy of a hideous crime lurks in the shadows. At twelve years old, Cornelius, the son of an Italian-American woman and an older black man from Mississippi named Herman, secretly takes over his father's job at a silent film theater in New York's East Village. Five years later, as Herman lives out his last days, he shares his wisdom with his son, explaining that the person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate. After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets about reinventing himself--as Professor John Woman, a man who will spread Herman's teachings into the classrooms of his unorthodox southwestern university and beyond. But there are other individuals who are attempting to influence the narrative of John Woman, and who might know something about the facts of his hidden past. Engaging with some of the most provocative ideas of recent intellectual history, John Woman is a compulsively readable, deliciously unexpected novel about the way we tell stories, and whether the stories we tell have the power to change the world.

Linzi Birrell and Rhian Douglas: murdered. Angela McCabe and Josh Norbury: murdered. A killer the police have dubbed Billy Dead Mates is killing pairs of best friends, one by one. Just before each murder, he sends his victim a small white book...Three regional police forces are working together to identify and catch Billy. For five months, they've been failing. Then a fifth victim, scared by what she's seen and heard on the news, comes forward to seek help. Unlike Billy's first four victims, she isn't dead. Yet.Stand-up comedian Kim Tribbeck has one of Billy's peculiar white books. A stranger gave it to her after a gig she did a year ago. Was he Billy? Now Kim's life depends on working out why she - a woman who has no close friends because she trusts no one - should attract the attention of the Best Friends Killer... And, if Billy has her in his sights, why has he waited so long to strike?

In what Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of The New York Times called "the plot of plots," Robert Littell has created the CIA "legends" Francis and Carroll, dubbed "The Sisters Death and Night" by their cohorts. But few know what these enigmatic and extremely dangerous operatives do. They plot-and they're plotting the perfect crime. They've located the perfect pawn-the Potter, the exiled ex-head of the KGB sleeper school-and, with artful deception, the Sisters coerce him into betraying his last and best sleeper, the man he considers his son. Once awakened, this sleeper, an assassin living secretly in the U.S., will launch a mission of death-unless the Potter, in a desperate race against time, can stop his protege from committing the Sisters' perfect and world-shattering crime.

Master of chilling suspense R. L. Stine proves that you never outgrow a good scare. If he frightened you then, he'll terrify you now. . . . Ellie Saks is dying to escape the city. She's sick of dead-end jobs, her mother's disapproval, her loser ex-boyfriend, Clay, who won't take a hint, and the memories of a terrible incident that occurred years ago. When her best friend suggests a summer in the Hamptons, full of glitzy parties, cool cocktails, and hot dates, Ellie's on the first Jitney out. To fund all this glamour, Ellie takes a job as a nanny. From the outside, the family's beachfront home is perfect. But then Ellie meets four-year-old Brandon, who hasn't spoken for months. The boy's icy stare and demonic laughter make clear to Ellie that he is troubled, haunted by something too horrible for words. She begins to receive threatening messages and disturbing gifts. But it's not until she barely escapes a harrowing experience that she realizes her life may depend on figuring out who's behind it: Clay? Brandon? And why? And every once in a while, in a crowd, she sees a face she hasn't seen in seven years--the face of a boy who died long ago. It would seem that Ellie's summer of fun has turned into a summer of horror--one she'll never forget . . . if she survives it at all. "From the Trade Paperback edition."

By the author of the critically acclaimed international hits The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon and The Warsaw Anagrams , this novel proves Richard Zimler's mastery of the "riveting literary murder mystery" ( Independent on Sunday ). It's Berlin, 1932. Sophie is a smart and sexually precocious fourteen-year-old coming of age during Hitler's rise to power. Forced to lead a double life when her father and boyfriend become Nazi collaborators, she reserves her dreams of becoming an actress for her beloved elderly neighbor, Isaac Zarco, and his friends, most of whom are Jews working against the government in a secret group called the Ring. When a member is sent to Dachau, she realizes there must be a Nazi traitor in the group. But who? Through successive mysteries, reversals, and surprises --and a race against time --The Seventh Gate builds to a shattering end. In its chilling but sensuous evocation of the time and place, Richard Zimler's novel is a love story and a tale of ferocious heroism

Dr. Morgan Snow is a well-known sex therapist with a prestigious clinic devoted to the psychology of sex. One of her patients, Cleo, is a beautiful, cultured prostitute who runs her own call-girl business. Cleo has been coming to Dr. Snow because she's fallen in love, but is unable to have a healthy sexual relationship. One day, Cleo arrives with a manuscript for a tell-all book....and then disappears. A serial killer has been at work in the city, and Detective Noah Jordan turns to Morgan Snow to find out more about the psychology of a sexual murderer. Both Morgan and Noah suspect there is a link between the serial killer and Cleo's sudden disappearance, and work together to find her - before it is too late.

As one of New York's top sex therapists, Dr. Morgan Snow sees everything from the abused to the depraved. The Butterfield Institute is the sanctuary where she tries to heal these battered souls. The Scarlet Society is a secret club of twelve powerful and sexually adventurous women. But when a photograph of the body of one of the men they're recruited to dominate -- strapped to a gurney, the number 1 inked on the sole of his foot -- is sent to the New York Times, they are shocked and frightened. Unable to cope with the tragedy, the women turn to Dr. Morgan Snow. But what starts out as grief counseling quickly becomes a murder investigation, with any one of the twelve women a potential suspect. The case leads Detective Noah Jordan -- a man with whom Morgan has shared a brief, intense connection -- to her office. He fears the number on the man's foot hints that the killings have just begun. With her hands tied by her professional duty, Morgan is dangerously close to the demons in her own mind -- and the flesh-and-blood killer.

Kyle West is a wanted man. Having fled the U.S. to escape the chareges of unauthorized surveillance filed against himself and his former boss, billionaire government contractor Christopher Chandler, Kyle's hiding in Cambodia, living on borrowed time. When a mysterious stranger named Julian Robinson walks into Kyle's favorite café and offers to swap passports with Kyle, Kyle can't believe his luck. Robinson looks so much like him. The swap seems almost too good to be true. Unfortunately for Kyle, it is. This fateful decision opens a Pandora's Box of intrigue and suspense. Kyle quickly he finds himself being pursued by Russian oligarchs, Chinese operatives, the CIA, and a beautiful woman trained to kill; because Robinson isn't who he seemed. And time is running out for Kyle to discover who he is.

They are two sworn enemies with a single obsession: a woman on the run from them both. Scott Weiss is a private detective. John Foy is a professional killer. The woman is Julie Wyant, a hooker with the face of an angel. Julie spent one night with Foy--a night of psychopathic cruelty that Foy called love. Desperate to get away from him, she vanished without a trace. And Foy wants her back. There's only one man who can find her: Weiss, the best locate operative in the business. She's begged him not to look for her, fearing he'll bring the killer in his wake. But Weiss can't stay away. Now, from a town called Paradise, through a wilderness that feels like hell, Weiss searches for Julie--and the killer follows, waiting for his chance. They are two expert hunters matching move for move--until it ends on Damnation Street.

As one of New York's top sex therapists, Dr. Morgan Snow sees everything from the abused to the depraved. From high-profile clients with twisted obsessions to courageous survivors, the Butterfield Institute is the sanctuary to heal battered souls. Morgan Snow's newest patient is a powerful, influential man -- secretly addicted to watching Internet Web cam pornography. He's not alone in his desires. She's also working with a group of high school teenagers equally and dangerously obsessed with these real-time fantasies. Fantasies that are all too accessible. Then the women start dying online, right in front of their eyes. Now it's all about murder.

Frank Clevenger is a forensic psychiatrist with an injured psyche that enables him to understand the deranged behavior of the mental and emotional outcasts who cross his professional path. When a young woman is found murdered, and a schizophrenic homeless man is the prime suspect. Frank realizes he could not have committed the crime. As evidence of more shocking murders begins to mount, Frank is forced to confront his own demons in the race to stop the horrific crimes.

Howard Gordon—the longtime executive producer of the hit TV series 24 —makes his fiction debut with a tale of political intrigue and international terrorism. Gideon Davis has just 48 hours to bring his rogue agent brother in—before a twisted global conspiracy turns deadly. GIDEON DAVIS, whose behind-the-scenes negotiating skills have earned him the role of peacemaker in conflicts around the globe, knows more about hush-hush discussions in Capitol corridors than he does about hand-to-hand combat. But his more practical, tactical skills come into play when he’s called on by family friend and government bigwig Earl Parker to chaperone a rogue agent from Southeast Asia to D.C. The agent, Tillman Davis, has promised to turn himself in— but only to his brother, Gideon. Although the two brothers have been estranged for years, Gideon cannot fathom how his brother could have turned into so ruthless a man. But when the plan for Tillman’s surrender goes awry and Earl Parker is taken hostage, Gideon is forced to embrace his dark side in order to evade hostile locals in war-torn Mohan to make his way to the Obelisk—the multimillion-dollar, state-of-the-art oil rig that has been seized by terrorists led by Tillman himself. It is with the help of oil rig manager Kate Murphy that Gideon launches an unlikely one-man rescue.

Cal Bradley's marriage is the stuff of romance. For fifteen year,, he has shared his life with Marie, a woman he passionately adores. In an idyllic corner of New England that has been home to his family for generations, Cal has become one of the most respected men in town: a father, churchgoer and a talented psychiatrist who runs a family clinic. Life is good. Then one night, a nineteen-year-old boy named Peter Blue sets a local church on fire and is sent to Cal for treatment For the patient, it's a last chance at redemption. For Cal, it's a journey into fear, deception, and murder. Because somehow Peter Blue's inner life is connected to Cal', reality...and to his wife's hidden past. And before Cal can hunt down the truth he is going to have to choose between everything he believes is right, and everything he loves.