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万本电子书0元读

Death in Provence:A Novel
Death in Provence:A Novel
Kent, Serena
¥153.15
The first entry in a clever, lighthearted mystery series set in modern Provence—a delightful blend of Agatha Christie and Peter Mayle—featuring the irrepressible Penelope Kite, a young-at-heart divorcee with a knack for stumbling across dead bodies.It’s love at first sight when Penelope Kite sees Le Chant d’Eau—The Song of Water—the stone farmhouse tucked high in the hills above the Luberon valley, complete with a garden, swimming pool, and sweeping mountain vistas. For years, Penelope put her unfaithful ex-husband and her ungrateful stepchildren first. Since taking early retirement from her job in forensics at the Home Office in England, she’s been an unpaid babysitter and chauffeur for her grandchildren. Now, she’s going to start living for herself. Though her dream house needs major renovations, Penelope impulsively buys the property and moves to St. Merlot. But Penelope’s daydreams of an adventurous life in Provence didn’t include finding a corpse floating face down in her swimming pool. The discovery of the dead man plunges her headlong into a Provençal stew of intrigue and lingering resentments simmering beneath the deceptively sunny village. Having worked in the forensics office, Penelope knows a thing or two about murder investigations. To find answers, she must carefully navigate between her seemingly ubiquitous, supercilious (and enviably chic) estate agent, the disdainful chief of police, and the devilishly handsome mayor—even as she finds herself tempted by all the delicacies the region has to offer. Thank goodness her old friend Frankie is just a flight away . . . and that Penelope is not quite as naïve as her new neighbors in St. Merlot believe.Set against the exquisite backdrop of Provence, steeped in history, atmosphere, and secrets, Death in Provence introduces an irresistible heroine and a delightful new mystery series.
The House at the End of the Road
The House at the End of the Road
Eubanks, W. Ralph
¥153.15
A powerful story about race and identity told through the lives of one American family across three generations In 1914, in defiance of his middle-class landowning family, a young white man named James Morgan Richardson married a light-skinned black woman named Edna Howell. Over more than twenty years of marriage, they formed a strong family and built a house at the end of a winding sandy road in South Alabama, a place where their safety from the hostile world around them was assured, and where they developed a unique racial and cultural identity. Jim and Edna Richardson were Ralph Eubanks's grandparents.Part personal journey, part cultural biography, The House at the End of the Road examines a little-known piece of this country's past: interracial families that survived and prevailed despite Jim Crow laws, including those prohibiting mixed-race marriage. As he did in his acclaimed 2003 memoir, Ever Is a Long Time, Eubanks uses interviews, oral history, and archival research to tell a story about race in American life that few readers have experienced. Using the Richardson family as a microcosm of American views on race and identity, The House at the End of the Road examines why ideas about racial identity rooted in the eighteenth century persist today. In lyrical, evocative prose, this extraordinary book pierces the heart of issues of race and racial identity, leaving us ultimately hopeful about the world as our children might see it.
An Ideal Wine
An Ideal Wine
Darlington, David
¥153.15
From the author of the acclaimed Angels’ Visits comes an inside look at how a handful of ingenious winemakers has transformed—and been transformed by—the California wine industry over the past four decades.In the 1970s, a group of idealistic baby boomers was attracted to the seemingly romantic world of winemaking. Over the course of nearly forty years, however—as competition from abroad increased, wine eclipsed beer and spirits as American adults’ beverage of choice, critics came to control the marketplace, and corporatization took over the industry—these young aesthetes would learn that wine is an unforgiving business. They would have to be clever to survive in an increasingly cutthroat atmosphere, and no one was more innovative than Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyard—the court jester and bleeding conscience of California wine, its most original and amusing figure. But Grahm is only one of the restless visionaries who, having chosen wine as the vehicle through which to fulfill their dreams, ended up changing the rules of the industry by adapting to its demands. From high technology to hardball entrepreneurship, from handicapping scores to holistic farming, each vintner operates by his or her own definition of an ideal wine. In this lively, sweeping account that spans the early seventies to the present day, David Darlington employs a sharp journalistic eye to profile a group of wine pioneers. A tale of vision and disillusion, brinksmanship and pragmatism, nature and business, politics and culture, An Ideal Wine is a fascinating look at an ever-evolving industry that reflects the values of our society and our civilization.
Horse Housekeeping
Horse Housekeeping
Korda, Margaret
¥152.92
In Horse Housekeeping, Margaret and Michael Korda (she is a successful novice- and training-level eventer and he is the author of Horse People) provide everything you need to know to set up a barn of your own and care for your horse (or horses) at home.Authoritative, inspirational, highly accessible, full of common sense and down-to-earth advice, all of it based on twenty-five years of experience, the Kordas' book is a basic resource for anybody who wants to keep horses in a safe, content, healthy, and cost-effective way at home, from detailed lists of things you need to have on hand to the basic (and not so basic) dos and don'ts of horse care. Divided into such useful chapters as "Fencing and Paddocks," "The Barn Routine," "The Care of the Horse," "People," "Feeding and Caring for the Horse," "Tack," "Horse Clothing," "Equipment," and "Care for the Aging Horse," it is helpfully illustrated and written in a voice that is at once informative, supportive, and full of funny (and not so funny) stories about horse housekeeping. The Kordas offer a unique and reliable guide to horse care that not only will be invaluable to beginner and experienced horse owners alike, but also is astonishingly readable.They take you through the steps of deciding if having a horse barn is practical for you, including helpful suggestions on space-saving barn designs, creating pastures, building fences, sample exercise routines, the right feed, the basics of horse health care, and the equipment needed for both horse care and property maintenance. This detailed, user-friendly compendium of down-home wisdom, entertaining stories, and straightforward horse sense will help you to set up a barn the right way, so you will have time to actually ride your horse.
American Pop:A Novel
American Pop:A Novel
Wright, Snowden
¥151.74
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “Mr. Wright’s imagined history of the rise and fall of the sugary drink empire is so robust and recognizable that you might feel nostalgic for the taste of a soda you’ve never had.” – Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK BY Parade • Cosmopolitan • Town & Country • AARP •  InStyle • Garden & Gun • Vol. 1 BrooklynThe story of a family.The story of an empire. The story of a nation.Moving from Mississippi to Paris to New York and back again, a saga of family, ambition, passion, and tragedy that brings to life one unforgettable Southern dynasty—the Forsters, founders of the world’s first major soft-drink company—against the backdrop of more than a century of American cultural history. The child of immigrants, Houghton Forster has always wanted more—from his time as a young boy in Mississippi, working twelve-hour days at his father’s drugstore; to the moment he first laid eyes on his future wife, Annabelle Teague, a true Southern belle of aristocratic lineage; to his invention of the delicious fizzy drink that would transform him from tiller boy into the founder of an empire, the Panola Cola Company, and entice a youthful, enterprising nation entering a hopeful new age.Now the heads of a preeminent American family spoken about in the same breath as the Hearsts and the Rockefellers, Houghton and Annabelle raise their four children with the expectation they’ll one day become world leaders. The burden of greatness falls early on eldest son Montgomery, a handsome and successful politician who has never recovered from the horrors and heartbreak of the Great War. His younger siblings Ramsey and Lance, known as the “infernal twins,” are rivals not only in wit and beauty, but in their utter carelessness with the lives and hearts of others. Their brother Harold, as gentle and caring as the twins can be cruel, is slowed by a mental disability—and later generations seem equally plagued by misfortune, forcing Houghton to seriously consider who should control the company after he’s gone.An irresistible tour de force of original storytelling, American Pop blends fact and fiction, the mundane and the mythical, and utilizes techniques of historical reportage to capture how, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s words, “families are always rising and falling in America,” and to explore the many ways in which nostalgia can manipulate cultural memory—and the stories we choose to tell about ourselves.
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe’s Honour, Sharpe’s Regiment, Sharpe’s Siege
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe’s Honour, Sharpe’s Regiment, Sharpe’s Siege
Bernard Cornwell
¥151.66
Major Sharpe finds himself a fugitive, hunted by enemy and ally alike. Major Richard Sharpe awaits the opening shots of the army’s campaign with grim expectancy. For victory depends on the increasingly fragile alliance between Britain and Spain – an alliance that must be maintained at any cost. Pierre Ducos, the wily French intelligence officer, sees a chance both to destroy the alliance and to achieve a personal revenge on Richard Sharpe. And when the lovely spy, La Marquesa, takes a hand in the game, Sharpe finds himself enmeshed in a web of political intrigue for which his military expertise has left him fatally unprepared. Soldier, hero, rogue – Sharpe is the man you always want on your side. Born in poverty, he joined the army to escape jail and climbed the ranks by sheer brutal courage. He knows no other family than the regiment of the 95th Rifles whose green jacket he proudly wears.
Up All Night
Up All Night
Miller, Carol
¥151.53
The all-American chronicle of radio legend Carol Miller, from her rise to success in a male dominated world, to the rockstars she's know along the way, to, for the first time, the private story of her quietly waged battle with a deadly disease.As one of the nation's top radio DJs, Carol Miller introduced the music of Bruce Springsteen to the New York airwaves, was on a first-name basis with Sir Paul McCartney, dated Steven Tyler, and has been recognized by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her on-air approach and singular voice have infl uenced the sound of rock radio for more than four decades, and her satellite and syndicated Get the Led Out programs are heard nationwide. In Up All Night, Carol spins the entertaining, moving, and revealing story of her life and times in rock radio and beyond. A nice Jewish girl from Queens, Carol was supposed to be a doctor or, at the very least, a lawyer. But hearing a doo-wop trio in the alley under her window changed the direction of her life forever: she fell in love with popular music. As the tumult and excitement of the sixties rocked colleges across America, Carol a biology major at the University of Pennsylvania became an underground rock DJ at the campus radio station. Radio jobs in Philadelphia and New York City quickly followed, and Carol rose to the top of the profession. But even as she enjoyed a professional and personal life imbued with rock and roll glamour, Carol harbored guilt, disappointment, and alienation, believing she'd failed her traditional, intellectual Jewish parents and often feeling like an outsider in the very culture she had helped to create. The specter of an unnamed illness that had claimed many of her relatives' lives hung over hers as well, and she too would face a monumental challenge when diagnosed with breast and uterine cancer. Told in the distinctive voice that has charmed millions of listeners for decades, Up All Night is a frank, funny, and inspiring memoir. Offering snapshots of the rarefied world of pop music and the shifting social history of our times, it is as much a cultural chronicle as it is one woman's candid and moving story.
Harper
Harper
Cost, Jay
¥151.53
The Democratic Party has long presented itself as the party of the poor, the working class, the little guy. As Jay Cost's sweeping revisionist history reveals, nothing could be further from the truth.Why have the Democrats gone from being the people's party of reform to the party of special-interest carve-outsIn Spoiled Rotten, political analyst Jay Cost tells the story of the modern Democratic party from the end of the Civil War to the present, tracing the sad decline of a once noble political coalition that is no longer capable of living up to its lofty ideals.When Andrew Jackson formed the Democratic party in 1828, he promised to stand up for the little guy against the rule of privileged elites. What has become of this promiseAccording to Cost, recent history has shown the Democrats to be anything but the party of and for the people. Instead, they have become a collection of special-interest groups feeding off the federal government, exchanging votes for subsidies and benefits. With the creation of a partisan spoils system in the nineteenth century, both parties practiced the politics of patronage. But, starting with the New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the power of big government to transform whole classes of society into clients of the Democratic party. Urban machines, southern segregationists, and organized labor all benefited from this approach. FDR's successors Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter followed suit, turning African Americans, environmentalists, feminists, government workers, teachers, and a number of other groups into loyal Democratic factions. As a result, the Democratic party has become a kind of national Tammany Hall whose real purpose is to colonize the federal government on behalf of its clients. No longer able to govern for the vast majority of the country, the Democratic party simply taxes Middle America to pay off its clients while hiding its true nature behind a smoke screen of idealistic rhetoric. Thus, the Obama health care, stimulus, and auto bailout health care bill were created not to help all Americans but to secure contributions and votes. Average Americans need to see that whatever the Democratic party claims it is doing for the country, it is in fact governing simply for its base. Hard-hitting and uncompromising, Spoiled Rotten is a timely, powerful polemic from a rising intellectual star.
Collusion
Collusion
Bozell, L. Brent, III
¥151.53
Never before has the so-called mainstream media shown such naked political bias as in the 2012 presidential election. In 2012 Barack Obama was narrowly reelected, with naked support from a liberal media desperate to hide his failures, trumpet his accomplishments, and discredit his GOP rivals. Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, Santorum: one by one the media took them apart using hidden-camera exposés, innuendo from anonymous accusers, repetition of harmful sound bites, and irrelevant—even untrue—storytelling. As soon as Mitt Romney emerged as the Republican Party's nominee, the liberal media went to work in earnest. They repeated Obama's campaign caricatures that Romney terrified his family dog, enjoyed firing people, and was nothing more than a willing tool of wealthy radical-right extremists. The Washington Post published a 5,400-word "exposé" on the allegation that in 1965 he may have pinned down a boy and cut his hair. Those same Post readers were then treated to 5,500 words on Barack Obama's lifelong love of basketball. Unquestionably, 2012 was the year when the liberal news media did all in their power to steal the presidential election—and they arguably succeeded. Media Research Center Founder and President Brent Bozell and MRC Director of Media Analysis Tim Graham provide the dramatic and conclusive evidence to prove this point—and show conservatives how to put an end to the leftist media agenda threatening democracy itself.
Late in the Day:A Novel
Late in the Day:A Novel
Hadley, Tessa
¥151.53
“With each new book by Tessa Hadley, I grow more convinced that she’s one of the greatest stylists alive.”—Ron Charles, Washington PostNew York Times Book Review Editors' Choice |A Parnassus First Editions Club Pick | Powell’s Indispensable Book Club Pick | A Washington Post Notable Book | A Slate Best Book of the Year | A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year | A Bookpage Best Book of the YearThe lives of two close-knit couples are irrevocably changed by an untimely death in the latest from Tessa Hadley, the acclaimed novelist and short story master who “recruits admirers with each book” (Hilary Mantel).Alexandr and Christine and Zachary and Lydia have been friends since they first met in their twenties. Thirty years later, Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer’s evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia: she is at the hospital. Zach is dead.In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored; all agree that Zach, with his generous, grounded spirit, was the irreplaceable one they couldn’t afford to lose. Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. But instead of loss bringing them closer, the three of them find over the following months that it warps their relationships, as old entanglements and grievances rise from the past, and love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness.Late in the Day explores the complex webs at the center of our most intimate relationships, to expose how, beneath the seemingly dependable arrangements we make for our lives, lie infinite alternate configurations. Ingeniously moving between past and present and through the intricacies of her characters’ thoughts and interactions, Tessa Hadley once again “crystallizes the atmosphere of ordinary life in prose somehow miraculous and natural” (Washington Post).
The Heap:A Novel
The Heap:A Novel
Adams, Sean
¥151.53
“As intellectually playful as the best of Thomas Pynchon and as sardonically warm as the best of Kurt Vonnegut, The Heap is both a hilarious send-up of life under late capitalism and a moving exploration of the peculiar loneliness of the early 21st century. A masterful and humane gem of a novel.” —Shaun Hamill, author of A Cosmology of MonstersBlending the piercing humor of Alexandra Kleeman and the jagged satire of Black Mirror, an audacious, eerily prescient debut novel that chronicles the rise and fall of a massive high-rise housing complex, and the lives it affected before - and after - its demise.Standing nearly five hundred stories tall, Los Verticalés once bustled with life and excitement. Now this marvel of modern architecture and nontraditional urban planning has collapsed into a pile of rubble known as the Heap. In exchange for digging gear, a rehabilitated bicycle, and a small living stipend, a vast community of Dig Hands removes debris, trash, and bodies from the building’s mountainous remains, which Orville Anders burrows into the bowels of the Heap to find his brother Bernard, the beloved radio DJ of Los Verticalés, who is alive and miraculously broadcasting somewhere under the massive rubble. For months, Orville has lived in a sea of campers that surrounds the Heap, working tirelessly to free Bernard—the only known survivor of the imploded city—whom he speaks to every evening, calling into his radio show.The brothers’ conversations are a ratings bonanza, and the station’s parent company, Sundial Media, wants to boost its profits by having Orville slyly drop brand names into his nightly talks with Bernard. When Orville refuses, his access to Bernard is suddenly cut off, but strangely, he continues to hear his own voice over the airwaves, casually shilling products as “he” converses with Bernard.What follows is an imaginative and darkly hilarious story of conspiracy, revenge, and the strange life and death of Los Verticalés that both captures the wonderful weirdness of community and the bonds that tie us together.
The End of Dieting
The End of Dieting
Fuhrman, Joel
¥151.53
Eat as much as you want, whenever you want. Welcome to the end of dieting.We're fatter, sicker, and hungrier than ever, and the billion-dollar diet industry—with its trendy weight-loss protocols and eat-this-notthat ratios of fat, carbs, and protein—offers only temporary short-term solutions at the expense of our permanent long-term health. As a result, we're trapped in a cycle of food addiction, toxic hunger, and overeating.In The End of Dieting, Joel Fuhrman, M.D., a board-certified doctor and the New York Times bestselling author of Eat to Live and The End of Diabetes, shows us how to break free from this vicious cycle once and for all. Dr. Fuhrman lays out in full all the dietary and nutritional advice necessary to eat our way to a healthier and happier life. At the center of his revolutionary plan is his trademark health formula: Health = Nutrients/Calories. Foods high in nutrient density, according to Dr. Fuhrman, are more satisfying than foods high in calories. They eliminate our cravings for fat, sweets, and carbs. The more nutrient-dense food we consume, the more our bodies can function as the self-healing machines they're designed to be. Weight drops, diseases reverse course and disappear, and our lives become longer and healthier.The End of Dieting is the book we have been waiting for—a proven, effective, and sustainable approach to eating that lets us prevent and reverse disease, lose weight, and reclaim our right to excellent health.
Secrets From the Eating Lab
Secrets From the Eating Lab
Mann, Traci
¥151.53
Is Your Diet Making You Fat?From her Health and Eating Laboratory at the University of Minnesota, Professor Traci Mann researches self-control and dieting. And what she has discovered is groundbreaking: not only do diets not work, they often result in weight gain. We are losing the battle of the bulge because our bodies and brains are not hardwired to resist food—in fact, the very idea of it works against our biological imperative to survive.In Secrets from the Eating Lab, Mann challenges assumptions—including those that make up the foundation of the weight loss industry—about how diets work and why they fail. As Mann explains, most weight loss plans are reliant on the notion of willpower—and willpower is an illusion. Moreover, even when we are able to successfully lose weight, our bodies fight our efforts, seeking to regain the weight we've worked so hard to lose. In the end, we become chronic "yo-yo" dieters, destined to lose and regain the same pounds time and again. The diet industry is well aware of these facts and has tellingly built their business model on the concept of the "repeat customer"; they know we'll be back.The result of more than two decades of research, Secrets from the Eating Lab presents cutting-edge science and offers exciting new insights into the American obesity epidemic and our relationship with food. From redefining "comfort food" to reconsidering healthy food labeling that, ironically, makes us less inclined to make healthy choices, Mann presents an arsenal of simple, common-sense strategies that take advantage of human nature instead of fighting it—helping you to achieve a healthy and sustainable weight.
Scratched:A Memoir of Perfectionism
Scratched:A Memoir of Perfectionism
Tallent, Elizabeth
¥151.53
“Reading Scratched gave me the feeling of standing very close to a blazing fire. It is that brilliant, that intense, and one of the finest explorations I know of what it means to be a woman and an artist.”—Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend and Winner of the National Book Award for FictionIn a bold and brilliant memoir that reinvents the form, the acclaimed author of the novel Museum Pieces and the collection Mendocino Fire explores the ferocious desire for perfection which has shaped her writing life as well as her rich, dramatic, and constantly surprising personal life.Scratched is an intimate account of the uses a child, and the adult she becomes, will find for perfectionism and the role it will play in every part of her life. Elizabeth Tallent’s story begins in a hospital in mid-1950s suburban Washington, D.C., when her mother refuses to hold her newborn daughter, shocking behavior that baffles the nurses. Imagining her own mother’s perfectionist ideal at this critical moment, Elizabeth moves back and forth in time, juxtaposing moments in the past with the present in this innovative and spellbinding narrative.Elizabeth traces her journey from her early years in which she perceived herself as “the child whose flaws let disaster into an otherwise perfect family,” to her adulthood, when perfectionism came to affect everything. In the decade between 27 and 37, she publishes five literary books with Knopf and her short stories appear in The New Yorker. But this extraordinary start to her career is followed by twenty-two years of silence. She wrote, or rather published, nothing at all. Why? Scratched is the remarkable response to that question.Elizabeth’s early publications secure her a coveted teaching job at Stanford University. As she toggles between Palo Alto and the Mendocino coast where she lives, raises her son Gabriel, and pursues an important psychoanalysis, Elizabeth grapples with the perfectionism that has always been home to her. Eventually, she finds love and acceptance in the most unlikely place, and finally accepts an “as is” relationship with herself and others. Her final triumph is the writing of this memoir, filled with wit, humor, and heart, and unlike any other you will read. Scratched is a brave book that repeatedly searches for the emotional truth beneath the conventional surface of existence.
Fabulous:Stories
Fabulous:Stories
Hughes-Hallett, Lucy
¥151.53
一本幽默诙谐的现代社会寓言小说集,记录了普通人平凡却又跌宕起伏的生活。 From the?author of the “sophisticated and erudite”?Peculiar Ground?(Boston Globe),?comes a collection of classic, witty fables, elegantly updated for our modern times.It's in the nature of myth to be infinitely adaptable.Each of these startlingly original stories is set in modern Britain. Their characters include a people-trafficking gang-master and a prostitute, a migrant worker and a cocksure estate agent, an elderly musician doubly befuddled by dementia and the death of his wife, a pest-controller suspected of paedophilia and a librarian so well-behaved that her parents wonder anxiously whether she’ll ever find love.They’re ordinary people, preoccupied, as we all are now, by the deficiencies of the health service, by criminal gangs and homelessness, by the pitfalls of dating in the age of #metoo. All of their stories, though, are inspired by ones drawn from Graeco-Roman myth, from the Bible or from folk-lore.The ancients invented myths to express what they didn’t understand. These witty fables, elegantly written and full of sharp-eyed observation of modern life, are also visionary explorations of potent mysteries and strange passions, charged with the hallucinatory beauty and horror of their originals.
Game Over
Game Over
Moushey, Bill
¥151.53
The shocking details chronicling how a beloved coach and esteemed university became enmeshed in one of the worst scandals in U.S. sports historyIt's a scandal that began in a place called Happy Valley. But it's not as happy as it once was, as the child-sex-abuse charges against a longtime coach and the conspiracy of silence surrounding the allegations have rocked America and Division 1 college sports.The shocking stories started to pour out after the November 6, 2011, arrest of Jerry Sandusky, a former coach under the Penn State football legend Joe Paterno. Sandusky had been Paterno's top lieutenant for thirty-two years. He was also the founder of a charity, The Second Mile, that devoted itself to helping disadvantaged youth. It turns out Paterno was told about an incident involving an underage boy showering with Sandusky in the football locker room, but reported the incident to school officials rather than the police. The numerous boys in Sandusky's program who have come forward told a grand jury lurid stories of a sexual predator who stalked and abused them, sometimes even in the showers of Penn State's football complex. In Game Over, journalists Bill Moushey and Bob Dvorchak investigate claims of a startling cover-up within the Penn State hierarchy that attempted to protect its football legacy, quite possibly at the expense of disenfranchised children.Game Over is filled with the shocking details of how a culture built around one deified coach with a glorious vision to have "success with honor" fails to act in the best interests of the most vulnerable. University president Graham Spanier has been consumed in this firestorm along with Joe Paterno himself in what spiraled downward into the worst scandal in the history of college sports.
William Morrow
William Morrow
Rees, Rod
¥151.53
The Demi-Monde:1. A subclass of society whose members embrace a decadent lifestyle and evince loose morals. 2. A shadow world where the norms of civilized behavior have been abandoned.3. A massive multiple-player simulation technology that re-creates in a wholly realistic cyber-milieu the threat-ambiance and no-warning aspects of a hi-intensity, deep-density, urban Asymmetric Warfare Environment.4. Hell.Welcome to the Demi-Monde, the ultimate in virtual reality—a military training ground and vivid, simulated world of cruelty and chaos run by psychopaths, madmen and fanatics. If you die here, you die in the Real World . . .In the year 2018, the Demi-Monde is the most sophisticated, complex and unpredictable computer simulation ever created, devised specifically to train soldiers for the nightmarish reality of urban warfare. A virtual world of eternal civil conflict, its thirty million inhabitants—“Dupes”—are ruled by cyber-duplicates of some of history’s cruelest tyrants: the fanatical Nazi butcher Reinhard Heydrich; Stalin’s arch executioner Lavrentii Beria; the torture-loving Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada; the Reign of Terror’s bloodthirsty mastermind Maximilien Robespierre. But something has gone horribly wrong inside the Demi-Monde, and the U.S. president’s daughter, Norma, has been lured into this terrifying shadow world, only to be trapped there. Her last hope of rescue is Ella Thomas, an eighteen-year-old jazz singer and very reluctant heroine. But when Ella infiltrates the Demi-Monde and begins her hunt for Norma, she soon discovers the walls containing the evils of this simulated environment are dissolving—and the Real World is in far more danger than anyone knows. With the help of resistors determined to understand their world, Ella must race to save Norma and stop an apocalypse . . . but the clock is ticking.Blending fact and fantasy, history and religion, military and existential themes, epic adventure and dark wit, dystopia and steampunk in a wholly original and driving narrative stream, The Demi-Monde: Winter is inventive fiction at its finest.
Before She Knew Him:A Novel
Before She Knew Him:A Novel
Swanson, Peter
¥151.53
Catching a killer is dangerous—especially if he lives next doorFrom the hugely talented author of The Kind Worth Killing comes an exquisitely chilling tale of a young suburban wife with a history of psychological instability whose fears about her new neighbor could lead them both to murder . . .Hen and her husband Lloyd have settled into a quiet life in a new house outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Hen (short for Henrietta) is an illustrator and works out of a studio nearby, and has found the right meds to control her bipolar disorder. Finally, she’s found some stability and peace.But when they meet the neighbors next door, that calm begins to erode as she spots a familiar object displayed on the husband’s office shelf. The sports trophy looks exactly like one that went missing from the home of a young man who was killed two years ago. Hen knows because she’s long had a fascination with this unsolved murder—an obsession she doesn’t talk about anymore, but can’t fully shake either.Could her neighbor, Matthew, be a killer? Or is this the beginning of another psychotic episode like the one she suffered back in college, when she became so consumed with proving a fellow student guilty that she ended up hurting a classmate?The more Hen observes Matthew, the more she suspects he’s planning something truly terrifying. Yet no one will believe her. Then one night, when she comes face to face with Matthew in a dark parking lot, she realizes that he knows she’s been watching him, that she’s really on to him. And that this is the beginning of a horrifying nightmare she may not live to escape. . .
In Which I Explain How An Ancient, Ambiguous, and Diverse
In Which I Explain How An Ancient, Ambiguous, and Diverse
Enns, Peter
¥151.53
Controversial evangelical Bible scholar, popular blogger and podcast host of The Bible for Normal People, and author of The Bible Tells Me So and The Sin of Certainty explains that the Bible is not an instruction manual or rule book but a powerful learning tool that nurtures our spiritual growth by refusing to provide us with easy answers but instead forces us to acquire wisdom. For many Christians, the Bible is a how-to manual filled with literal truths about belief that must be strictly followed. But the Bible is not static, Peter Enns argues. It does not hold easy answers to the perplexing questions and issues that confront us in our daily lives. Rather, the Bible is a dynamic instrument for study that not only offers an abundance of insights but provokes us to find our own answers to spiritual questions, cultivating God’s wisdom within us. “The Bible becomes a confusing mess when we expect it to function as a rulebook for faith. But when we allow the Bible to determine our expectations, we see that Wisdom, not answers, is the Bible’s true subject matter,” writes Enns. This distinction, he points out, is important because when we come to the Bible expecting it to be a textbook intended by God to give us unwavering certainty about our faith, we are actually creating problems for ourselves. The Bible, in other words, really isn’t the problem; having the wrong expectation is what interferes with our reading.Rather than considering the Bible as an ancient book weighed down with problems, flaws, and contradictions that must be defended by modern readers, Enns offers a vision of the holy scriptures as an inspired and empowering resource to help us better understand how to live as a person of faith today. How the Bible Actually Works makes clear that there is no one right way to read the Bible. Moving us beyond the damaging idea that “being right” is the most important measure of faith, Enns’s freeing approach to Bible study helps us to instead focus on pursuing enlightenment and building our relationship with God—which is exactly what the Bible was designed to do.
Uncle Sam Can't Count
Uncle Sam Can't Count
Folsom Jr., Burton W., Jr.
¥151.53
In their fascinating history of government misadventure, Burton and Anita Folsom show why the Obama administration's urge to pick winners and losers in the private sector is doomed to fail.From the days of George Washington through World War II to today, government investments have failed dismally. They not only drain the Treasury of cash but also impede economic growth, and they hurt the very companies they try to support.Why does federal aid seem to have a reverse Midas touchSimply put, federal officials don't have the same abilities or incentives as entrepreneurs. In addition, federal control always produces political control of some kind. What is best for politicians is not often what works in the marketplace. Politicians want to win votes, and they can do so by giving targeted CEOs benefits while dispersing costs to others.Uncle Sam Can't Count is filled with examples of government failures and free market triumphs, including John Jacob Astor, who owned a fur company that defeated a government-funded rival supported by George Washington himself by actively cooperating in trade with the Native Americans instead of trying to tell them what they wanted. The Wright brothers, who, with two thousand dollars of their own money, successfully flew the first manned flight, while the government threw money at Samuel Langley, whose two failed attempts at flight both landed in the Potomac River. George Mitchell, who spent seventeen years developing fracking, after the high taxes on oil drilling were repealed, while the government subsidized ethanol. Uncle Sam Can't Count is a hard-hitting critique of a government completely incapable of either picking winners or learning from its many mistakes, which demonstrates why business should be left to private entrepreneurs.
Big Tent
Big Tent
Factor, Mallory
¥151.53
Bestselling author, professor, and pundit Mallory Factor illuminates the conservative tradition in American politics with essays from leading figures in the conservative movement. Ambitious in its breadth and depth, Big Tent provides a fresh and surprising treatment of the conservative movement as told by the leaders themselves. In this unique collection, which is based on his star-studded course at The Citadel, conservative leaders explain how the movement developed as a powerful force in American politics, how it functions now with a wide range of viewpoints, and where it is going in the future. The origin of conservative ideas—from their ancient roots to their English origins, from the American Revolution to William F. Buckley, Alexis de Tocqueville to Barry Goldwater, and libertarianism to neo-conservatism—are revealed and examined in this compelling volume. These illuminating essays include Newt Gingrich on the political ideas surrounding the American Revolution Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute on the emergence of libertarianism Ed Meese on the Reagan Revolution David Keene of the NRA on Buckley-style "fusionism" Phyllis Schlafly on the rise of the religious right Donald Rumsfeld on the Bush administration's "War on Terror" Rand Paul on the future of the conservative movement. Insightful and stimulating, Big Tent is an outstanding survey of the conservative movement from its most significant living figures.