An enthralling literary mystery that connects some of the world's most famous authors--from Norman Mailer and Truman Capote to B. Traven and J. D. Salinger -- to a sinister collector in Chicago Adam Langer, the narrator of this deft and wide-ranging novel by the author of the same name, tells the intertwining tales of two writers navigating a plot neither one of them could have ever imagined. There may be no other escape than to write their way out of it. Adam is a writer and stay-at-home dad in Bloomington, Indiana, drawn into an uneasy friendship with the charismatic and bestselling thriller author Conner Joyce. Conner is having trouble writing his next book, and when a menacing stranger approaches him with an odd--and lucrative--proposal, events quickly begin to spiral out of control. A novel of literary crimes and misdemeanors, The Salinger Contract will delight anyone who loves a fast-paced story told with humor, wit, and intrigue.

Zes studenten aan de Harvard Medical School hebben er in de jaren zestig alles voor over om hun doel te bereiken.

With her three children, beautiful home, and loving husband, Margaret Crane is a woman others would envy. Adam's job has cushioned them nicely over the years, and it should be a time of contentment, rewards, of new challenges together. But lately Adam has been working too late, too hard, at the office. Margaret is sure it's just the rumored takeover of his company--until she meets Randi, The Other Woman... Meanwhile, Nina, the orphaned cousin the Cranes raised as their own daughter, is reveling in New York. She thinks she's found Mr. Right in Keith, a brilliant investment banker. But Keith has a secret he has not shared with Nina. All he asks for is time...and patience. And as Nina clings to stolen weekends with Keith, Margaret plays dutiful wife, trying to ignore warning signs of her own failing marriage. A rift has developed between the two women who have loved each other as mother, daughter, friends. Keith is not welcome in Margaret's home. And Nina herself is the other woman...

The explosive debut novel - about family, power and privilege - from the creator of the award-winning Mad Men. Named a Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Year Mark and Karen Breakstone have constructed the idyllic life of wealth and status they always wanted, made complete by their beautiful and extraordinary daughter Heather. But they are still not quite at the top. When the new owners of the penthouse above them begin construction, an unstable stranger penetrates the security of their comfortable lives and threatens to destroy everything they've created.

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.

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.

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.

An Indie Next PickA BOMC SelectionIt is summer, 2012. Charlie, a wealthy banker with an uneasy conscience, invites his troubled cousin Matthew to visit him and his wife in their idyllic mountaintop house. As the days grow hotter, the friendship between the three begins to reveal its fault lines, and with the arrival of a fourth character, the household finds itself suddenly in the grip of uncontrollable passions. As readers of James Lasdun's acclaimed fiction can expect, The Fall Guy is a complex moral tale as well as a gripping suspense story, probing questions of guilt and betrayal with ruthless incisiveness."A taut and cerebral literary thriller. . . . Matthew delights the couple with his culinary talents but tension soon boils over in this exquisitely paced, unbearably suspenseful morality tale. Lasdun's elegant prose serves up an unsettling dish of obsessions and jealousy seasoned with keen social observations of class and privilege while simmering with plots of revenge. For fans of Ian McEwan and Herman Koch." -- Bill's Bookshelf Selector, Bill Kelly

"Henry Mulcahy, a literature instructor at progressive Jocelyn College, is informed that his appointment will not be continued. Convinced he is disliked by the president of Jocelyn because of his abilities as a teacher and his independence of mass opinion, Mulcahy believes he is being made the victim of a witch-hunt. Plotting vengeance, Mulcahy battles to fight for justice and, in the process, reveals his true ethical nature." -- Publisher provided description.

Lucas Baird is on the lam. He accidentally killed a man in LA. Totally defensible, but he chose to run, as he has done most of his aimless twenty-four years of life. This time Luke ends up in New York, making love to Daisy on a beach on Long Island. A sudden storm traps him under debris in a rain sewer where he is held captive by a gang of kids under the sway and prod of a fiendish twelve-year-old town bully. The kids, in dreadful fear of their tyrannical master, turn savage, heaping hideous acts of torment and cruelty upon poor Luke. P> How he manages to free himself becomes a redemptive tale woven into the fabric of a fraught, bizarre love story reminiscent of THE BEACH and LORD OF THE FLIES.

"If Graham Greene's thrillers fascinate you, if Brighton Rock gives you mental fever blisters, don't miss this book. In a desolate underworld setting, Kabbalah generates continuous suspense and a haunting religious intensity. Like Greene, David Scott Milton uses people in danger to illuminate the interior drama of souls in jeopardy. And he goes further than Greene in one way. He ends the book with a vision of redemption which may be uniquely Jewish and is surely ecstatic."- West Coast Review of Books "Will be read by a devoted audience long after other novels have been discarded!"- Chronicles of Culture

The best kind of mystery, the kind that never stops haunting you. Entertainment Weekly A work of melancholic beauty . . . Sincere, shattering, magnificent. L Express In the stillness of his Paris apartment, Jean Daragane has built a life of total solitude. Then a surprising phone call shatters the silence of an unusually hot September, and the threatening voice on the other end of the line leaves Daragane wary but irresistibly curious. Almost at once, he finds himself entangled with a shady gambler and a beautiful, fragile young woman, who draw Daragane into the mystery of a decades-old murder. The investigation will force him to confront the memory of a trauma he had all but buried. This masterly novel penetrates the deepest enigmas of identity and compels us to ask whether we ever know who we truly are. Moody . . . Lyrical . . . A pleasure. Kirkus Reviews A writer unlike any other and a worthy recipient of the Nobel. Wall Street Journal Patrick Modiano is the author of more than twenty novels, including several bestsellers. He has won the Prix Goncourt, the Grand Prix National des Lettres, and many other honors. In 2014 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. He lives in Paris. "

The Story Of A Man's Bondage To Passion And Prejudice.

Lucy Derrick is a young woman of good breeding and poor finances. After the death of her beloved father, she is forced to maintain a shabby dignity as the unwanted boarder of her tyrannical uncle, fending off marriage to a local mill owner. But just as she is on the cusp of accepting a life of misery, events take a stunning turn when a handsome stranger--the poet and notorious rake Lord Byron--arrives at her house, stricken by what seems to be a curse, and with a cryptic message for Lucy. Suddenly her unfortunate circumstances are transformed in ways at once astonishing and seemingly impossible. With the world undergoing an industrial transformation, and with England on the cusp of revolution, Lucy is drawn into a dangerous conspiracy in which her life, and her country's future, are in the balance. Inexplicably finding herself at the center of cataclysmic events, Lucy is awakened to a world once unknown to her: where magic and mortals collide, and the forces of ancient nature and modern progress are at war for the soul of England . . . and the world. The key to victory may be connected to a cryptic volume whose powers of enchantment are unbounded. Now, challenged by ruthless enemies with ancient powers at their command, Lucy must harness newfound mystical skills to prevent catastrophe and preserve humanity's future. And enthralled by two exceptional men with designs on her heart, she must master her own desires to claim the destiny she deserves. " The Twelfth Enchantment" is the most captivating work to date of a master literary conjurer. "From the Hardcover edition."

Grace Sorentino has never known the good life: from childhood hardships, to a marriage that began with lofty dreams and ended with all hopes shattered. Dealt bad hand after bad hand. Grace and Jackie, her rebellious teenage daughter, are now stuck in Florida, on the verge of poverty. Grace is underpaid and under appreciated cosmetician at Saks Fifth Avenue, and Jackie-when she is not spending her time with questionable boys-balances school and two jobs. Just when Grace things couldn't get any worse, Grace is fired after accidentally insulting a snobby customer. However, it is a blessing in disguise. As she walks out the door, her boss offers her an invaluable piece of advice: don't look for a new job, but a vulnerable old rich widower who has just lost his wife; comfort him, and once his guard is down, seduce him. The keys to success and fortune are not a name tag and uniform, but a new last name and a ring on your finger. Marriage should be the number-one priority. At first Grace is appalled by the idea, but as rent, car payments, and credit card bills pile up, her despair turns to desperation. She begins looking through the obituaries for her last chance at a good life-after all, isn't that something everyone deserves?

Written in the tradition of the classic American noir of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, In Praise of Lies is a brilliantly clever, fiendishly funny crime novel about a woman who raises poisonous snakes and the man who loves her enough to attempt murder.... Jose Guber is in love with a deadly woman. While writing his next crime novel, he is in search of a unique murder weapon, which is how he meets Melissa, a serologist who specializes in venomous snakes. Melissa becomes rather too interested in Jose's dastardly plots--unashamedly plagiarized from the classics: Chesterton, Poe, Dostoevsky, his editor none the wiser--and she especially likes the ones where diabolical women seduce and corrupt weak men. Melissa makes it clear that she would like to adapt one of the plots to dispose of her present husband, enabling Jose and Melissa to be together. But the course of true love and homicide does not always run smoothly, certainly not when the accomplice rattlesnake gets depressed and everything that can go wrong does go hilariously haywire. With sharp wit and impressive agility, Patricia Melo leads the reader into a teasing world of deviousness. Literary puzzles and comic swipes at book publishing trends are added pleasures in what is, above all, a glorious page-turner.

Ray Tompkins is the kind of person you never get to know. He's the security guard, the factory worker, the man working the midnight shift. Nobody really understands Ray - not his coworkers, not his family, and certainly not the women in his life. There is a rage building inside Ray Tompkins and Los Angeles is the fuel - the sick obsession with celebrity mixed with the vacuousness of everyday life. Against this backdrop, Ray Tompkins finds a way to vent his anger. He, too, will be known.