Former Washington Post reporter Jason Martin knows there's something secretive going on in the high echelons of politics, and he's determined to find a way to prove it. Beautiful and naïve Dorothy Curtis becomes the key to Jason's plan, which he hopes will put them both back on track. Can he give the sextet of the most powerful men in Washington an expiration date on their greedy endeavors? When Dorothy's body is found at the bottom of the Duke Ellington Memorial Bridge, everyone assumes it was suicide over a lover. But Fiona Fitzgerald, a top Metropolitan Police Department detective, has her doubts. Fiona knows that in this town, power and money come before love. Unfortunately, this death hits a little too close to home, and Fiona wrestles with her own feelings about love as she finds herself empathizing with Dorothy. When Fiona and Jason collide, the power lies in the truths they reveal, truths that will bring down the sextet and help them both come to terms with their own demons. American Sextet is the second book in the Fiona Fitzgerald Mystery series.

"Ruth Bussey knows what it means to be in the wrong - and to be wronged. She once did something she regrets, and was punished excessively for it. Now Ruth is trying to rebuild her life and has found a love she doesn't believe she deserves. Aidan Seed is a passionate, intense man who has also been damaged by his past. Desperate to connect with the woman he loves, he confides his secret: he killed a woman called Mary Trelease. Through her shock, Ruth recognises the name. And when she's realised why it's familiar, her fear and revulsion deepen. The Mary Trelease that Ruth knows is very much alive..."--Publisher description.

In Ariosto's epic 16th-century poem Orlando Furioso, the beautiful Angelica, chained, naked, to a rock and menaced by a sea monster is rescued by the valiant Ruggiero, riding a 'hippogriff', the offspring of a griffin and a mare - an entirely imaginary winged creature (as readers of Harry Potter know). Volatore, as this hippogriff calls himself, has escaped the poem in which he has been confined for centuries and is determined to find his Angelica, even if it takes him to the 21st century and involves some shape-shifting. He lands in contemporary San Francisco and the first person he sets eyes on is Angelica Greenberg, the Jewish owner of a San Franciscan art gallery, who has just dumped her fiance. Volatore rises to her window and they hit it off big-time. But no sooner have they met and fallen in love than events conspire to separate the two so that Volatore must not only seek Angelica but also find the perfect form in which to consummate his undying love. The first is too masculine, the second not enough so, but will the third be just right, and how will Angelica reconcile the imaginary and the real in the perfect lover?

This novel by Nobel Prize–winning author Patrick Modiano is one of the most seductive and accessible in his oeuvre: the story of a man’s memories of fleeing responsibility, finding love, and searching for meaning in an uncertain world The narrator of Villa Triste , an anxious, roving, stateless young man of eighteen, arrives in a small French lakeside town near Switzerland in the early 1960s. He is fleeing the atmosphere of menace he feels around him and the fear that grips him. Fear of war? Of imminent catastrophe? Of others? Whatever it may be, the proximity of Switzerland, to which he plans to run at the first sign of danger, gives him temporary reassurance. The young man hides among the other summer visitors until he meets a beautiful young actress named Yvonne Jacquet, and a strange doctor, René Meinthe. These two invite him into their world of soirees and late-night debauchery. But when real life beckons once again, he finds no sympathy from his new companions. Modiano has written a haunting novel that captures lost youth, the search for identity, and ultimately, the fleetingness of time.

A splendid, violent spring suddenly grips Bucharest in the 1980s after a brutal winter. Tolea, a defiant and eccentric middle-aged intellectual who has been dismissed from his job as a high-school teacher on "moral grounds", is attempting to clear up the mystery of his father's death forty years after the fact. He is gradually and irresistibly drawn into a web of suspicion in which images of an underground world linger obsessively: the organization of deaf-mutes whose nightmarish presence recalls the Single Party itself; the polite and timid informer, with his modest, homely reports; the black dog who has the same name as, and seems to be a metamorphosis of, the man pursued by Tolea - an elusive photographer who has left an astonishing photo archive of Communist society. Shot through with black humor and poetry, The Black Envelope is a thoroughly modern exploration of love and guilt, vulnerability and death, estrangement, hope, and human solidarity.

Hailed as a masterpiece by Jean Genet, Marguerite Duras, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Tropisms is considered one of the defining texts of the nouveau roman movement. Nathalie Sarraute has defined her work as the "movements that are hidden under the commonplace, harmless instances of our everyday lives." Like figures in a grainy photograph, Sarraute's characters are blurred and shadowy, while her narrative never develops beyond a stressed moment. Instead, Sarraute brilliantly finds and elaborates subtle details--when a relationship changes, when we fall slightly deeper into love, or when something innocent tilts to the smallest degree toward suspicion.

This long-lost novel recounts a passionate triangle of love and loss among three of the most daring women of belle époque Paris. In this barely disguised roman à clef, the legendary American heiress, writer, and arts patron Natalie Clifford Barney, the dashing Italian baroness Mimi Franchetti, and the beautiful French courtesan Liane de Pougy share erotic liaisons that break all taboos and end in devastation as one unexpectedly becomes the “third woman.” Never before published in English, and only recently published in French, this modernist, experimental work has been brought to light by Chelsea Ray’s research and translation.

Capturing the voice of an Australia you haven't heard in fiction before ... Meet Zeke togan, a small-time crim in big-time trouble. A quintessential Australian larrikin - whose biggest problem is that he isn't actually Australian. 19 year old Zeke was born in the Old Country but has been in Australia since he was six months old and considers himself as Aussie Aussie Aussie oi oi oi as the next bloke. But due to a mix-up at the naturalisation ceremony (Zeke was in the pub when the rest of his family were getting their certificates and sprigs of wattle) and some unfortunate brushes with the law, Zeke finds himself awaiting deportation from Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre. So Zeke finds himself locked up with the other crims, asylum seekers, sex slaves, illegal workers and visa overstayers. He loves Marlena, She Who Loves, Honours and Obeys Most a the time Anyway, but he's having a hell of a time proving it from the wrong side of a double fence. His new friends the 'asylums' aren't doing so well either. Hamid loves Angel but she needs more than love. April thinks she loves Azad, but Azad thinks he loves April's daughter Marley. thomas loves anyplace but where he is. Everyone loves freedom. Not everyone gets it. Everyone wants to survive. Not everyone will.

Sun. Sin. Sex. Scandal - St. Tropez! For the rich and famous, it's not always fun in the sun... Having recently ended an abusive marriage, the beautiful and filthy rich Contessa Carlotta di Ponti looks to find true love on the beautiful French beaches of the Côte d'Azur. And what better place to find love than the playground of the wealthy and beautiful, the exquisite enclave of St. Tropez. With the annual party season kicking into high gear at billionaire Harry Silver's palatial mansion, tragedy soon strikes paradise. Among the high fashion, nude sunbathing and heavy drinking a bad oyster, a fatal wasp sting, and a faulty cliff railway have changed the mood of the party-goers. Death is in the air and these appear to be no accidents. Is there something far more sinister coming down upon the wealthy party-goers of the usually festive St. Tropez? The gorgeous detective Gabrielle Poulpe makes it her mission to save the day, as well as the financial security of the town, and find the murderer in their midst. Otherwise, life in this sanctified corner of France could change forever. Can Gabrielle find the suspect before they strike again? St. Tropez is known as the ultimate playground of the rich and famous and thrives on the mega-money spent here, but now, it's riddled with threats from within which is scaring everyone away...

"No Room at the Morgue came out after Jean-Patrick Manchette had transformed French crime fiction with such brilliantly plotted, politically charged, unrelentingly violent tales as Nada and The Mad and the Bad. Here, inspired by his love of Dashiell Hammett, Manchette introduces Eugene Tarpon, private eye, a sometime cop who has set up shop after being kicked off the force for accidentally killing a political demonstrator. Months have passed, and Tarpon desultorily tries to keep in shape while drinking all the time. No one has shown up at the door of his office in the midst of the market district of Les Halles. Then the bell rings and a beautiful woman bursts in, her hands dripping blood. It's Memphis Charles, her roommate's throat has been cut, and Memphis can't go to the police because they'll only suspect her. Can Tarpon help? Well, somehow he can't help trying. Soon bodies mount, and the craziness only grows"--

"Completed in the last year of his life, From Bondage is perhaps Roth's most profound work, for like Tolstoy in The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Roth examines his own imminent passing in the most plaintive of ways, telling the story of the old man, Ira Stigman, who, in spite of his physical frailties, finds solace in re-creating the lost love affair of his youth. Capturing the bohemian downtown world of Manhattan in the 1920s, Roth has set the stage for one of the most memorable of literary romances." "At its heart, From Bondage is the mesmerizing love triangle involving young Ira, an impressionable neophyte from Jewish Harlem, and Edith Welles, a sophisticated professor of English, a muse to starving poets and lovelorn men, who sweeps Ira into her world of soigne parties and literary debaucheries. Edith, as the old man Ira relays the story, is still physically involved with her former student Larry Gordon when she finds herself attracted to Ira, who is Larry's best friend. To complicate the matter even more, Edith is also carrying on a simultaneous affair with Lewlyn, the separated husband of the aspiring anthropologist Marcia Meede." "Fictionalizing the lives of the celebrities of the 1920s, including such burgeoning literary figures as Hart Crane, Louise Bogan, Leonie Adams, and Margaret Mead, Roth creates an unforgettable portrait of New York where "the lights of Manhattan twisted toward him across the rippling water like a gimlet." Perhaps the last witness to this age, Roth paints a gentile and genteel world that contrasts so vividly with the seemingly coarse, abject slums of the Pushcart District from which he had sprung. Ira, then a young man, is the observant witness to the spectacle that unfolds, seeking desperately to ingratiate himself into this world of sophisticates, yet hopelessly tethered to the tenement roots he cannot escape."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Art investigator Madison Dupre knows a fake when she sees it. When the mysterious Dr. Kaseem offers to pay her a handsome sum to “ransom” a scarab stolen from the tomb of King Tut, her gut tells her to walk away. Since she still needs to pay the rent, Madison throws caution to wind and prepares to search for the Heart of Egypt. Before she can pack a suitcase, she finds herself framed for murder and on the run. Her leads take her to Stonehenge, England, where a Druid sex cult worships a “goddess of love,” a woman with enough personal wealth to buy a host of admirers. Madison finds an admirer of her own in Rafi al-Din, an Egyptian antiquities investigator she knows she can’t trust, but who arouses her passions. Drawn to Egypt in search of the scarab, Madison is trapped in the land of the Pharaohs when her passport is seized at the airport. She knows she is being played by Kaseem, who believes the Heart has the power to galvanize the masses to support his secret cause. From the famed Khan marketplace, to the Valley of the Kings and the incredible colossi at Abu Simbel, Madison treads a careful path among tomb robbers, assassins, and political fanatics. She must dodge curses both ancient and modern to stay alive. The wild and epic stories of Harold Robbins live on in this sweeping series by Junius Podrug.

[Read by Mark Peckham] A jealous widow won't rest until she gets back everything that is rightfully hers in this exciting tale by Ellery Queen. hen Barney Street, the fixer, was in Holland in World War II, his life had been saved by a German soldier. Now Barney is dead and his two million dollar estate is left entirely to the soldier who saved him, Milo Hacha. But that fortune comes with a death sentence, for Barney's widow, Estelle, won't rest until she gets back everything that is rightfully hers. She sends Steve Longacre, once one of Barney's boys, to Europe to find Hacha, trailing him from Holland to Switzerland, to Vienna, and finally to Prague. Longacre has Hacha is on the run, fleeing love, money, and a velvet-lined coffin . . .

From the author of Billy and Girl, this collection of stories explores the emptiness at the center of the characters' lives and their attempts to fill this lack. In "Cave Girl" Cass goes through a sex change, not to become a man, but rather to become "less of a real girl and more of a pretend woman." Her surgery transforms her into a woman desired by all men--including her brother. "Conversations with Famous Artists I Have Known" relates an afternoon discussion between two women, one who chose motherhood and a routine life at the expense of her creativity, the other a world famous, self-centered artist. In these stories about friendship, motherhood, and the search for enduring love, rules about decency and kindness are broken and repaired as men and women attempt to achieve an elusive sense of fulfillment.

James and Katherine are at a wedding in London. They spend a while watching and waiting. Speak. Exchange phone numbers. Meet up the following week... From then on not everything goes to plan. It is the 1990s, the end of the money-for-nothing years. James is a man with a varied past - entrepreneur, gambler, film producer, former dot com millionaire - now living alone in Bloomsbury. Katherine is married, but separated, working at an interim job in a city hotel. The relationship is beset with difficulties from the beginning, both external and of their own making. They are distracted- James with the latest in a long line of schemes, drawing him into the world of gambling and horse racing, Katherine by her husband, a photographer and paparazzo, who has suddenly reappeared. Narrated from different perspectives and at different times by both James and Katherine, and by a series of peripheral characters, March is a kaleidoscopic and complex portrait of a relationship, of contemporary England, and of the ebb and flow of money.Instantly recognisable and unbearably real, it is a love story unlike any you will have read.

Jed and Martha agree to raise orphaned Daniel to Jed's delight. Martha lets her grief for her two lost daughters ruin her joy of having Daniel to love until Christmas Eve and love wins out.

A Nick Hoffman / Academic Mystery, Book 3 - Mayhem at the State University of Michigan: Is it murder...or another faculty meeting? Filled with caustic humor about university life and written with literate style and grace, The Death of a Constant Lover escalates Nick Hoffman's involvement with mayhem and faculty meetings. When the son of a professor is murdered on a campus bridge, Nick's presence at the scene puts him right where he can't afford to be: in the middle of trouble. With his tenure review coming up, he's been warned by his department chair to avoid bad publicity. But Nick is forced to wade in deeper anyway, inexorably drawn into yet another risky investigation in the surprisingly cutthroat world of academia. He may be surrounded by academics with deadly agendas, but he's armed with the hope that his wit and insight will be enough to avert the death of his career... and maybe his own as well. A Lambda Literary Awards Finalist, this new edition contains a 2020 foreword by Brad Shreve (Mitch O'Reilly series) as well as a new introduction by the author.

Hailed as one of the "top ten women who write superior crime fiction" by the Los Angeles Times, award-winning author Rochelle Krich adds another superb novel of mystery, murder, and icy suspense to her outstanding collection. Dead Air stars Krich's popular LAPD Homicide Detective Jessie Drake in a case that begins with a surprise visit from an old friend and quickly turns into a heart-wrenching, life and death drama that rocks the city. Jessie is astonished when her closest high school confidant, who hasn't been in touch for almost two years, shows up at her door with an alarming tale of being harassed by an unseen stalker. Jessie's friend is now "Dr. Renee," a popular radio talk show therapist who doles out quick-fix no-nonsense advice to troubled callers on everything from lackluster marriages to steamy illicit affairs. Now Renee is desperately frightened and convinced Jessie can help her. Skeptical, and with little to go on, Jessie agrees to investigate---just as a favor. But Jessie's interest quickly turns professional when Renee's six-year-old daughter Molly is kidnapped---and the child's nanny murdered. Renee and her estranged husband Barry, already in a fierce battle over custody, trade angry charges of blame and suspicion while Jessie tracks a bizarre series of events that began a few weeks earlier when a battered wife phoned Dr. Renee for help. Now the woman's crazed husband blames the radio therapist for handing out advice that has ruined his marriage. And---on the air for all to hear---he threatens revenge. With a child as a pawn, a killer plays a chilling game where he holds all the cards---and he's chosen Jessie to be LAPD's top player. As the hours tick by, he uses the radio talk show to up the ante, sending shocking waves of horror and disbelief through the city and terror into the hearts of loved ones. And under the hot glare of media scrutiny, Jessie works feverishly against the clock to beat him at his own game.Hailed as one of the "top ten women who write superior crime fiction" by the Los Angeles Times, award-winning author Rochelle Krich adds another superb novel of mystery, murder, and icy suspense to her outstanding collection. DEAD AIR stars Krich's popular LAPD Homicide Detective Jessie Drake in a case that begins with a surprise visit from an old friend and quickly turns into a heart-wrenching, life and death drama that rocks the city. Jessie is astonished when her closest high school confidant, who hasn't been in touch for almost two years, shows up at her door with an alarming tale of being harassed by an unseen stalker. Jessie's friend is now "Dr. Renee," a popular radio talk show therapist who doles out quick-fix no-nonsense advice to troubled callers on everything from lackluster marriages to steamy illicit affairs. Now Renee is desperately frightened and convinced Jessie can help her. Skeptical, and with little to go on, Jessie agrees to investigate---just as a favor. But Jessie's interest quickly turns professional when Renee's six-year-old daughter Molly is kidnapped---and the child's nanny murdered. Renee and her estranged husband Barry, already in a fierce battle over custody, trade angry charges of blame and suspicion while Jessie tracks a bizarre series of events that began a few weeks earlier when a battered wife phoned Dr. Renee for help. Now the woman's crazed husband blames the radio therapist for handing out advice that has ruined his marriage. And---on the air for all to hear---he threatens revenge. With a child as a pawn, a killer plays a chilling game where he holds all the cards---and he's chosen Jessie to be LAPD's top player. As the hours tick by, he uses the radio talk show to up the ante, sending shocking waves of horror and disbelief through the city and terror into the hearts of loved ones. And under the hot glare of media scrutiny, Jessie works feverishly against the clock to beat him at his own game. BHailed as one of the "top ten women who write superior crime fiction" by the Los Angeles Times, award-winning author Rochelle Krich adds another superb novel of mystery, murder, and icy suspense to her outstanding collection. DEAD AIR stars Krich's popular LAPD Homicide Detective Jessie Drake in a case that begins with a surprise visit from an old friend and quickly turns into a heart-wrenching, life and death drama that rocks the city. Jessie is astonished when her closest high school confidant, who hasn't been in touch for almost two years, shows up at her door with an alarming tale of being harassed by an unseen stalker. Jessie's friend is now "Dr. Renee," a popular radio talk show therapist who doles out quick-fix no-nonsense advice to troubled callers on everything from lackluster marriages to steamy illicit affairs. Now Renee is desperately frightened and convinced Jessie can help her. Skeptical, and with little to go on, Jessie agrees to investigate---just as a favor. But Jessie's interest quickly turns professional when Renee's six-year-old daughter Molly is kidnapped---and the child's nanny murdered. Renee and her estranged husband Barry, already in a fierce battle over custody, trade angry charges of blame and suspicion while Jessie tracks a bizarre series of events that began a few weeks earlier when a battered wife phoned Dr. Renee for help. Now the woman's crazed husband blames the radio therapist for handing out advice that has ruined his marriage. And---on the air for all to hear---he threatens revenge. With a child as a pawn, a killer plays a chilling game where he holds all the cards---and he's chosen Jessie to be LAPD's top player. As the hours tick by, he uses the radio talk show to up the ante, sending shocking waves of horror and disbelief through the city and terror into the hearts of loved ones. And under the hot glare of media scrutiny, Jessie works feverishly against the clock to beat him at his own game. B

FIRST EDITION The world's most distinguished author of the literature of the fantastic presents his most extraordinary stories of worlds lost and dreams fulfilled... In his illustrious forty-five year career as a novelist and author of short fiction, Robert Silverberg has belonged in the company of the best writers of the 20th century. His writing has been compared to Conrad, Huxley, and Orwell. In this definitive collection Silverberg presents the novellas that have won him multiple Hugo and Nebula Award nominations, including his Nebula Award winning achievement, "Sailing To Byzantium." Here are the virtuoso performances of the third phase of Silverberg's astounding the Nebula Award nominee "Homefaring"; the Hugo Award nominee "The Secret Sharer"; "Thomas The Proclaimer" and "We Are For The Dark." If you are a lover of Silverberg's work or are simply looking for a place to begin a relationship with the literature of science fiction and fantasy, this is the place to start.

Four narrators, a student from a café, a private detective hired by an aggrieved husband, the heroine herself and one of her lovers, construct a portrait of Jacqueline Delanque, otherwise known as Louki. The daughter of a single mother who works in the Moulin Rouge, Louki grows up in poverty in Montmartre. Her one attempt to escape her background fails when she is rejected from the Lycée Jules-Ferry. She meanders on through life, into a cocaine habit, and begins frequenting the Café Condé, whose regulars call her "Louki". She drifts into marriage with a real estate agency director, but finds no satisfaction with him or his friends and so makes the simple decision not to return to him one evening. She turns instead to a young man almost as aimless and adrift as she, but who perhaps loves her all the same. Ever-present through this story is the city of Paris, almost another character in her own right. This is the Paris of 'no-man's-lands', of lonely journeys on the last metro, or nocturnal walks along empty boulevards; of cafés where the lost youth wander in, searching for meaning, and the older generation sift through their memories of their own long-gone adolescence. Translated from the French by Euan Cameron