fierce

 

spanish fly

 

glass castle

 

new york

 

 

 

 

power of small

 

 

 

House of Scorta

 

New releases

In stores this week:

many deaths ofThe Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers: A Novel by Thomas Mullen

"Late one night in August 1934, following a yearlong spree of bank robberies across the Midwest, the Firefly Brothers are forced into a police shootout and die . . . for the first time."

In award-winning author Thomas Mullen's evocative new novel, the highly anticipated follow-up to his acclaimed debut, The Last Town on Earth, we follow the Depression-era adventures of Jason and Whit Fireson--bank robbers known as the Firefly Brothers by the press, the authorities, and an adoring public that worships their acts as heroic counterpunches thrown at a broken system.

Now it appears they have at last met their end in a hail of bullets. Jason and Whit's lovers--Darcy, a wealthy socialite, and Veronica, a hardened survivor--struggle between grief and an unyielding belief that the Fireson’s have survived. While they and the Fireson’s stunned mother and straight-arrow third son wade through conflicting police reports and press accounts, wild rumors spread that the bandits are still at large. Through it all, the Firefly Brothers remain as charismatic, unflappable, and as mythical as the American Dream itself, racing to find the women they love and make sense of a world in which all has come unmoored.

Complete with kidnappings and gangsters, heiresses and speakeasies, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers is an imaginative and spirited saga about what happens when you are hopelessly outgunned--and a masterly tale of hardship, redemption, and love that transcends death.

 

blood tiesBlood Ties: A Bishop Special Crimes Unit Novel by Kay Hooper

"New York Times" bestselling author Kay Hooper takes us to the outer reaches of fear in her latest thriller, as the Special Crimes Unit finds itself targeted by a monster intent on destroying both Noah Bishop and his people.

The elite Special Crimes Unit, the FBI's most controversial and effective team, is a group of mavericks and misfits trained to use their unique psychic abilities to hunt the worst monsters imaginable--human ones. Led by the enigmatic Noah Bishop, the SCU has earned a reputation for pitting their skills and cunning against killers that other cops fear. But this time Bishop and his agents face an enemy who has them in his sights, a trained sniper with a deadly plan--and more than one ace up his sleeve.
It starts with an unspeakable series of grisly murders across three states, a trail of blood leading, finally, to the small Tennessee town of Serenade. There, two more brutal killings lure the SCU into what may be the ultimate trap.

One of the first investigators on the scene, Special Agent Hollis Templeton, is willing to push herself as hard and as far as necessary. Risking more than her life to help and protect her SCU colleagues, Hollis must cope with her own psychic abilities, which are evolving in unprecedented ways, an attraction to the most complex man she's ever known, and a serial murder investigation that turns very, very personal.

In her time with the SCU, Hollis has shown an uncanny ability to survive even the deadliest attacks. But what she can't know is that this killer intends to destroy the team from within.

The clock is ticking. The body count is rising. And as Bishop and his agents race to uncover the true identity of their enemy, not even their special senses can warn them just how bloody, and how terrifyingly close, the truth will be.

See all new releases this week...


new york times bestsellers fiction

THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett. (Amy Einhorn/Putnam, $24.95.) A young white woman and two black maids in 1960s ­Mississippi.

KISSER, by Stuart Woods. (Putnam, $25.95.) Stone Barrington, the New York cop turned lawyer, pursues a case of financial fraud on the Upper East Side.

THE LOST SYMBOL, by Dan Brown. (Doubleday, $29.95.) Robert Langdon among the Masons

THE BURNING LAND, by Bernard Cornwell. (Harper/HarperCollins, $25.99.) In the fifth of the Saxon Tales, the ninth-century Saxon warrior Uhtred breaks with King Alfred, but eventually returns to help fight the Danes.

THE FIRST RULE, by Robert Crais. (Putnam, $26.95.) Elvis Cole and his partner, Joe Pike, set out to clear the reputation of a former military contractor who has been murdered.

THE LAST SONG, by Nicholas Sparks. (Grand Central, $24.99.) A 17-year-old girl spends the summer with her divorced father in North Carolina and finds many kinds of love.

THE SWAN THIEVES, by Elizabeth Kostova. (Little, Brown, $26.99.) A psychiatrist who treats a man who slashed a canvas in the National Gallery is drawn into the world of French Impressionism; from the author of “The Historian.”


This weeks fast pick

red snowRed Snow - Michael Slade The 2010 Winter Olympics are coming to Vancouver, and Mephisto is ready to strike.

Of all the villains lawyer Michael Slade has created based on his experience in more than one hundred real-life murder cases, Mephisto is the maddest. ("Slade knows psychos inside out."— Toronto Star)

A raging winter storm and a team of mercenaries have cut Whistler Mountain off from the rest of the world. Bent on bloody revenge, Mephisto attacks the members of Special X—the psycho hunters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—and that's just the start of his horrific plan. Red Snow is a three-ring circus of mystery, horror, and suspense. It has everything: whodunits and impossible crimes, psychological terror and police procedure. Let the games begin!    more....

 

devil in the white city

The Devil in The White City by Erik Larson  Purchase - secure Amazon

Relentlessly fuses history and entertainment to give this nonfiction book the dramatic effect of a novel. . . . A dynamic, enveloping book. . . . It doesn't hurt that this truth is stranger than fiction." --The New York Times

This book came to me last year, it had been highly recommended by a few people who love books.  I was at a conference and an Exec at Random House spoke about the fact that it was his favorite book of all time.  Devil in The White City is fascinating, it is two stories in one, the first an account of a serial killer living and killing in the vicinity of the Chicago Worlds Fair, the second and for me the most interesting the story of how the 1893 worlds fair came about and its impact on North American culture and construction.  This is a book that is hard to put down and reads like fiction but more riveting because its not. If you pay close attention, you also get a clue as to why Disneyland ever came to be many years later.  - Dagny  more....re

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AWARDS

Christopher Reid Wins 2009 Costa Book of The Year

Poet Christopher Reid has won the 2009 Costa Book of the Year award for his collection, A Scattering, a tribute to his wife Lucinda Gane following her death in 2005. The announcement was made this evening (Tuesday 26th January) at an awards ceremony held at Quaglino's in central London.  more....

Costa Awards Category Winners Announced

One winner is selected in each of the five categories - Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's Book. Each category-winning author receives £5,000.  Winners....

Finalists for the 9th CHARLES TAYLOR PRIZE For Literary NON-FICTION

AT A NEWS CONFERENCE HELD AT Le Meridien King Edward Hotel in downtown Toronto on January 5, 2010, prize juror and author Andrew Cohen announced the finalists for the 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction Those finalists are:  more...

last weeks releases

the good son

The Good Son: A Novel by Russel D McLean

“The Good Son is the most exciting, and gripping, Scottish crime fiction debut of recent years. Stylish and atmospheric, it marks the arrival of a exceptional talent." — John Connolly

McLean has all the merits of this brilliant writer [Jean-Patrick Manchette] with the added bonus of a Scottish sense of wit that is like no other. — Ken Bruen

"Scottish crime fiction is entering a new era and Russel McLean is at the vanguard. A thrilling new writer, a brilliant debut...The Good Son is very good indeed." — Tony Black

There is something rotten behind the apparent suicide of Daniel Robertson and it’s about to come bursting into the life of J. McNee, a Scottish private investigator with a near-crushing level of personal baggage. James Robertson, a local farmer, finds his estranged brother’s corpse hanging from a tree. The police claim suicide. But McNee is about to uncover the disturbing truth behind the death.

With a pair of vicious London thugs on the move in the Scottish countryside, it’s only a matter of time before people start dying. As the body count rises, McNee finds himself on a collision course with his own demons and an increasing array of brutal killers in a violent, bloody showdown that threatens to leave none involved alive.

Plumbing the depths of love, loss, betrayal, and one broken man’s attempt to come to terms with his past, The Good Son successfully blends the classic style of the gumshoe era with the outer edges of modern noir.

top 10 picks

   Atlas Shrugged
   Pillars Of The Earth
   The Great Gatsby
   The Caine Mutiny
   The Time Travelers Wife
   The Curious Incident... dog Night-Time
   Water for Elephants
   Spanish Fly
   Valley of the Dolls
   The Navigator of New York

pick of the week

linchpinLinchpin by Seth Godin

The bestselling author of Tribes and The Dip returns with his most powerful book yet.

Who is Seth Godin?   "It's easy to see why people pay to hear what he has to say. Godin is a marketer, but in the broadest sense of the word. He's interested in not simply how products are marketed, but also how people sell themselves and their ideas, and how new technology can be a game-changer." - Time.com

"Thousands of authors write business books every year but only a handful reach star status and the A-list lecture circuit. Fewer still - one, to be exact - can boast his own action figure. In the nearly ten years since his first bestseller, Godin has become a marketing phenomenon with a string of titles, including Purple Cow, Unleashing the Ideavirus, and his newest, Tribes. Across all media, Godin delivers his combination of counterintuitive thinking and a great sense of fun." -BusinessWeek.com

"The marketing expert is a demigod on the Web, a bestselling author, highly sought after lecturer, successful entrepreneur, respected pundit and high-profile blogger. He is uniquely respected for his understanding of the Internet, and his essays and opinions are widely read and quoted online and off." -Forbes.com

the 4 hour work weekThe 4-hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, with Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-edge Content by Timothy Ferriss

Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan-there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.

•How Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month and 4 hours per week
•How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want
•How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs
•How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist
•How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent "mini-retirements"


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