(INCLUDES DELICIOUS RECIPES AND TEA TIME TIPS)
The opening of the aquarium is a major Charleston event, and Theodosia has been hired to cater tea, scones, and sandwiches for the private party to honor dignitaries and big buck donors. Things are going swimmingly, until Theodosia escapes the party for a momentary rest, only to discover the body of a man entangled in a net, drowned in one of the aquarium's state-of-the-art tanks.
To make matters worse, the victim is Theodosia's former boyfriend Parker Scully. The EMTs on the scene think Parker's drowning was an accident, but when Theodosia notices what look like defense wounds on his hands, she realizes that someone wanted Parker dead. The local police aren't keen on hearing her theory-especially because of her ties to the victim-so Theodosia knows that if she wants Parker's killer brought to justice, she'll have to jump into the deep end and start her own investigation...
When Joel Litvinoff is felled by a stroke, his wife, Audrey, uncovers a secret that forces her to re-examine her ideas about their forty-year marriage. Joel’s children will soon have to come to terms with this unsettling discovery themselves, but for the time being, they are grappling with their own dilemmas. Rosa is being pressed to make a commitment to religion. Karla is falling in love with the owner of a newspaper concession and Lenny is back on drugs.
In the course of battling their own demons and each other, every member of the family is called upon to re-examine long-held articles of faith and to decide what – if anything – they still believe in.
The year is 1881. The United States of America ends at the Mississippi River. Beyond lies the Indian nations, where the magic of powerful Medicine Men has halted the advance of the Americans east of the river.
An American government desperate to expand its territory sends Thomas Alva Edison out West to the town of Tombstone, Arizona, on a mission to discover a scientific means of counteracting magic. Hired to protect this great genius, Wyatt Earp and his brothers.
But there are plenty who would like to see the Earps and Edison dead. Riding to their aid are old friends Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson. Against them stand the Apache wizard Geronimo and the Clanton gang. Battle lines are drawn, and the Clanton gang, which has its own reasons for wanting Edison dead, sends for Johnny Ringo, the one man who might be Doc Holliday's equal in a gunfight. But what shows up instead is The Thing That Was Once Johnny Ringo, returned from the dead and come to Tombstone looking for a fight.
Welcome to a West like you've never seen before, where "Bat Masterson" hails from the ranks of the undead, where electric lights shine down on the streets of Tombstone, while horseless stagecoaches carry passengers to and fro, and where death is no obstacle to The Thing That Was Once Johnny Ringo. Think you know the story of the O.K. Corral? Think again, as five-time Hugo winner Mike Resnick takes on his first steampunk western tale, and the West will never be the same.
Patty and David Monroe have flown to Moscow to repair a business deal which has gone bad—when it suddenly turns nightmarish. Shooting David and kidnapping Patty, their Russian business partners drive her to a ramshackle dacha twenty miles east of Moscow. There, her captors—along with brutal Islamic terrorists—will attempt to ransom her. Patty will face the most frightening ordeal imaginable.
For the first time in history, FBI agents must work with Russian security forces. In an atmosphere of violent mistrust and political hatred, only their burning desire to rescue Patty Monroe will hold the operation together.
Burned is inspired by the horrifying ordeal of Yvonne Bornstein. Kidnapped in Russia in the 1990s by Islamic terrorists, Yvonne and her husband were held for ransom. During her captivity she was tortured, starved, and abused. Her captors were affiliated with early al Qaeda partisans. While this book is fiction, Burned captures the spirit of Yvonne’s resistance and ultimate triumph.
Growing up, the only place tomboy Thayer Wentworth felt at home was at her summer camp - Camp Sherwood Forest in the North Carolina Mountains. It was there that she came alive and where she met Nick Abrams, her first love...and first heartbreak.
Years later, Thayer marries Aengus, an Irish professor, and they move into her deceased grandmother's house in Atlanta, only miles from Camp Edgewood on Burnt Mountain where her father died years ago in a car accident. There, Aengus and Thayer lead quiet and happy lives until Aengus is invited up to the camp to tell old Irish tales to the campers. As Aengus spends less time at home and becomes more distant, Thayer must confront dark secrets-about her mother, her first love, and, most devastating of all, her husband.
Heather O'Grainne is the Assistant Secretary in the Office of Future Threat Assessment, investigating rumors surrounding something called "Daybreak." The group is diverse and radical, and its members have only one thing in common-their hatred for the "Big System" and their desire to take it down.
Now, seemingly random events simultaneously occurring around the world are in fact connected as part of Daybreak's plan to destroy modern civilization-a plan that will eliminate America's top government personnel, leaving the nation no choice but to implement its emergency contingency program...Directive 51.
Downpour by Kat Richardson (Greywalker Series #6)
After being shot in the back and dying-again- Greywalker Harper Blaine's only respite from the chaos is her work. But while conducting a pre-trial investigation in the Olympic Peninsula, she sees a ghostly car accident whose victim insists that he was murdered and that the nearby community of Sunset Lakes is to blame.
Harper soon learns that the icy waters of the lake hide a terrible power, and a host of hellish beings under the thrall of a sinister cabal that will use the darkest of arts to achieve their fiendish ends...
He never wanted to tell Joe Pickett about it, but Nate Romanowski always knew trouble was coming out of his past. Now it's here, and it may not only be the battle of his life-but of Joe's.
In 1995, Nate was in a secret Special Forces unit abroad when a colleague did something terrible. Now high up in the government, the man is determined to eliminate anyone who knows about it, and Nate knows exactly how he'll do it-by striking at Nate's friends to draw him out. The entire Pickett family will be a target, and the only way to fight back is outside the law. Nate knows he can do it, but he isn't sure about his straight-arrow friend-and all their lives could depend on it.
Ever since the death of his shellan, Tohrment is a heartbroken shadow of the vampire leader he once was. Brought back to the Brotherhood by a self-serving fallen angel, he fights again with ruthless vengeance- and is unprepared for a new tragedy. Seeing his beloved in dreams—trapped in a cold, desolate netherworld—he turns to the angel to save his former mate, only to despair at the path he himself must take to set her free.
As war with the lessers rages, and a new clan of vampires vies for the Blind King’s throne, Tohr struggles between an unforgettable past, and a future that he doesn’t know he can live with… but can’t seem to turn away from.
Lucy Marinn is a glass artist living in mystical, beautiful, Friday Harbor, Washington, with a boyfriend, Kevin, who she believes is her soul mate. She has always had a magical side - a gift that finds its way into the breathtaking glasswork she creates - and she struggles to keep it contained. But when Lucy is blindsided by the most bitter kind of betrayal, she questions many of her choices. Her boyfriend leaves her and his new lover is none other than Lucy's own sister. Lucy's bitterness over this devastation is multiplied buy the fact that she has constantly made the wrong choices in her romantic life.
Meanwhile, facing the severe disapproval of Lucy's family, Kevin asks his friend Sam Nolan, a local vineyard owner on the San Juan Island, to "romance" Lucy so that she can more easily move on. But when Sam and Lucy begin to feel real sparks between them, Lucy must ask herself if she can easily risk her heart again.
As Lucy questions her beliefs about love, loyalty, and old patterns, mistakes, and new beginnings, she explores the possibility that some things in life - even after are being broken - can be re-made into something beautiful. And that is the only by discovering who you really are that you can find the one who truly deserves you.
When tragedy leaves her life in shambles, Nance flees her Wisconsin hometown and its reminders of grief, creating a new life in the West. She is a scientist, specializing in rattlesnakes and attrition rates in dens, believing that "you can overcome fear, control the level of risk by being prepared, by knowing your subject." Now with a home in Lewiston, Idaho, overlooking the Snake River, and her marriage to Ned Able, a grade school principal, Nance finally feels at peace.
Then an unexpected visit from her wayward sister Meredith revives old family conflicts, and resurrects a secret life that has long lain dormant in Ned. While Nance and Meredith mend their relationship, Ned's other nature begins to emerge, transforming him in ways that Nance denies, until, with the help of her sister, she is made to see what lies beneath the skin. But neither can predict how far Ned will go to hide his past, or where his frightening memories will lead him as he searches out an object for his obsession.
My name is Ariella Montero, and I know a secret. Telling it will change everything.
Half-human and half-vampire, Ari confronts the darker sides of vampirism, and herself, as the sects deploy new technologies to battle for influence and power.
But beyond these challenges lie greater risks: Ari's relationship with Neil Cameron, the first vampire to run for the U.S. presidency, must be kept under wraps from even those she trusts most. When scandal inevitably erupts, Ari is forced to face the consequences of her actions, learning the hard way that love demands delicate negotiations between memory and desire.
Megan is a suburban soccer mom who once upon a time walked on the wild side. Now she’s got two kids, a perfect husband, a picket fence, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction. Ray used to be a talented documentary photographer, but at age forty he finds himself in a dead-end job posing as a paparazzo pandering to celebrity-obsessed rich kids. Jack is a detective who can’t let go of a cold case—a local husband and father disappeared seventeen years ago, and Jack spends the anniversary every year visiting a house frozen in time, the missing man’s family still waiting, his slippers left by the recliner as if he might show up any moment to step into them. Three people living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past doesn’t recede.
Even as the terrible consequences of long-ago events crash together in the present and threaten to ruin lives, they will come to the startling realization that they may not want to forget the past at all. And as each confronts the dark side of the American Dream—the boredom of a nice suburban life, the excitement of temptation, the desperation and hunger that can lurk behind even the prettiest facades—they will discover the hard truth that the line between one kind of life and another can be as whisper-thin as a heartbeat.
On the ocean liner Mauretania, two European scientists with a dramatic new invention are barely rescued from abduction by the Van Dorn Detective Agency's intrepid chief investigator, Isaac Bell. Unfortunately, they are not so lucky the second time. The thugs attack again-and this time one of the scientists dies. What are they holding that is so precious? Only something that will revolutionize business and popular culture-and perhaps something more.
For war clouds are looming, and a ruthless espionage agent has spotted a priceless opportunity to give the Germans an edge. It is up to Isaac Bell to figure out who he is, what he is up to, and stop him. But he may already be too late . . . and the future of the world may just hang in the balance.
On December 21, 2012, the Mayan calendar will end. Many see it as an apocalyptic sign.
But is it?
In The Twelfth Insight, the long-awaited fourth book in the beloved Celestine Series, we again follow our Hero and his close friend Wil. They have just received a portion of another ancient and mysterious manuscript that describes a secret approach to spirituality that is silently arriving in the second decade of the 21st Century. But the manuscript is only available in fragments.
To understand its full meaning for mankind, our Hero and Wil begin an urgent search to find the message in its entirety. As they embrace the power of Synchronicity and begin their search, they are confronted by powerful political forces and religious extremists that stand in the way of these spiritual revelations.
Utilizing what he calls the "parable effect," and based on his own sources, James Redfield explores the similarities and differences that exist among the world religions, revealing the essential messages contained within them that can energize our experience of spirituality-- and produce a new wave of integrity and reform that can transform our lives and our world.
Unraveling the madness behind L.A.’s most baffling and brutal homicides is what sleuthing psychologist Alex Delaware does best. And putting the good doctor through his thrilling paces is what mystery fiction’s #1 bestselling master of psychological suspense Jonathan Kellerman does with incomparable brilliance. Kellerman’s universally acclaimed novels blend the addictive rhythms of the classic police procedural with chilling glimpses into the darkest depths of the human condition. For the compelling proof, look no further than Victims—Kellerman at his razor-sharp, harrowing finest.
Not since Jack the Ripper terrorized the London slums has there been such a gruesome crime scene. By all accounts, acid-tongued Vita Berlin hadn’t a friend in the world, but whom did she cross so badly as to end up arranged in such a grotesque tableau? One look at her apartment–turned–charnel house prompts hard-bitten LAPD detective Milo Sturgis to summon his go-to expert in hunting homicidal maniacs, Alex Delaware. But despite his finely honed skills, even Alex is stymied when more slayings occur in the same ghastly fashion . . . yet with no apparent connection among the victims. And the only clue left behind—a blank page bearing a question mark—seems to be both a menacing taunt and a cry for help from a killer baffled by his own lethal urges.
Under pressure to end the bloody spree and prevent a citywide panic, Milo redoubles his efforts to discover a link between the disparate victims. Meanwhile, Alex navigates the secretive world of mental health treatment, from the sleek office of a Beverly Hills therapist to a shuttered mental institution where he once honed his craft—and where an unholy alliance between the mad and the monstrous may have been sealed in blood. As each jagged piece of the puzzle fits into place, an ever more horrific portrait emerges of a sinister mind at its most unimaginable—and an evil soul at its most unspeakable.
It has been twelve years since a dark, murderous figure stalked the alleys and courts of Whitechapel. And yet, in the summer of 1900, East London is still poor, still brutal, still a shadow city to its western twin. Among the reformers is an idealistic young woman named India Selwyn-Jones, recently graduated from medical school. With the help of her influential fiance--Freddie Lytton, an up-and-coming Liberal MP--she works to shut down the area's opium dens that destroy both body and soul. Her selfless activities better her patients' lives and bring her immense gratification, but unfortunately, they also bring her into direct conflict with East London's ruling crime lord--Sid Malone.
India is not good for business and at first, Malone wants her out. But against all odds, India and Sid fall in love. Different in nearly every way, they share one thing in common--they're both wounded souls. Their love is impossible and they know it, yet they cling to it desperately. Lytton, India's fiance, will stop at nothing to marry India and gain her family's fortune.
Fractious criminal underlings and rivals conspire against Sid. When Sid is finally betrayed by one of his own, he must flee London to save his life. Mistakenly thinking him dead, India, pregnant and desperate, marries Freddie to provide a father for hers and Sid's child. India and Sid must each make a terrible sacrifice--a sacrifice that will change them both forever. One that will lead them to other lives, and other places...and perhaps--one distant, bittersweet day--back to each other.
At once a powerful love story and an intricately plotted mystery, Winterton Blue is the breathtaking new novel from the Booker Prize finalist and national best-selling author of The Hiding Place and Remember Me. Trezza Azzopardi's third book is a moving and often amusing testament to the tenacious staying power of family and memory, and the pull toward unlikely but destined romance. For the last twenty years, Lewis has been baunted by his brother's death. He's tried hiding from it, running from it, erasing it from his memory, but the ghost of Wayne confronts him at every turn. Then he meets Anna, who is haunted by her mother, Rita--who happens to be very much alive. Rita is the exact opposite of her daughter: loud, carefree, and a daredevil.
At seventy-six, she still runs a guesthouse on the coast and has a boyfriend, Vernon, a retired actor and bon vivant. Together they make a formidable pair, living life as if every day might be their last. Anna would be happy for them, if not for the memory of her late father, a reserved and careful man. Into this environment of carousing, music hall turns, and cocktails, stumbles Lewis, on a quest to find the person he believes responsible for the death of his brother. He recognizes a kindred spirit in Anna, and she in him, but at first both are too headstrong to admit that they are susceptible to love.
Against the backdrop of the Norfolk coast, with its massive skies and relentless seas, they finally learn to trust each other, and accept that an uncertain future can be as wild and alluring as the landscape they have grown to love.
