The long-awaited prequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Rocket Boys—the basis for the movie October SkyElsie Lavender and Homer Hickam Sr.—the future parents of Homer Hickam Jr.—were high school classmates in the West Virginia coalfields, graduating just as the Great Depression began. When Homer asked for her hand, Elsie instead headed to Orlando where she sparked with a dancing actor named Buddy Ebsen (yes, that Buddy Ebsen). But when Buddy headed for New York, Elsie's dreams of a life with him were crushed and eventually she found herself back in the coalfields, married to Homer.Unfulfilled as a miner's wife, Elsie was reminded of her carefree days in Florida every day because of Buddy's unusual wedding gift: an alligator named Albert who lived in the only bathroom in their little house. Eventually Homer gave Elsie an ultimatum: "Me or the alligator!" After giving it some thought, Elsie concluded there was only one thing to do—carry Albert home.Carrying Albert Home tells the sweet, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking tale of a young couple and their special pet on a crazy 1,000-mile journey. Told with the warmth and down-home charm that made Rocket Boys a beloved bestseller, Homer Hickam's rollicking novel is truly a testament to that strange and marvelous emotion we call love.

To uncover the truth, she'll have to break the code of the hills …In the Missouri Ozarks, some things aren't talked about … even abuse. But prosecutor Elsie Arnold is determined to change that.When she is assigned to prosecute a high-profile incest case in which a father is accused of abusing his three young daughters, Elsie is ready to become the Ozarks' avenging angel.But as Elsie sinks her teeth into the case, everything begins to turn sour. The star witness goes missing; the girls refuse to talk about their father, who terrorizes the courtroom from the moment he enters; and Elsie begins to suspect that their tough-as-nails mother has ulterior motives. To make matters worse, Elsie receives gruesome threats from local extremists, warning her to mind her own business.While Elsie swears not to let a sex offender walk, she realizes the odds—and maybe the town—are against her, and her life begins to crumble. But amidst all of the conflict, the safety of three young girls hangs in the balance ...A powerful debut, with the haunting atmosphere of Winter's Bone and the page-turning suspense of Alafair Burke's thrillers.

Prosecutor Elsie Arnold loves her small-town home in the Ozark hills, but she’s been waiting for a murder to come along and make her career. So when a body is found under a bridge, throat cut, Elsie jumps at the chance to work on the case, even if it’s alongside the brash new chief assistant, Chuck Harris—and her latest flame, Detective Bob Ashlock.But when the investigation reveals that the deceased woman was driving a school bus, and the police locate the vehicle, its interior covered in blood, the occupant and only suspect is a fifteen-year-old boy. Elsie’s in for more than she bargained for.Win or lose, this case will haunt her. No one has successfully prosecuted a juvenile for first-degree murder in McCown County. If she loses, it’s her career on the line and a chilling homicide unresolved; if she wins, a boy’s liberty will be taken from him before he reaches his sixteenth birthday.

The epic tale of two families wrestling with questions of loyalty, liberty, and love during the American RevolutionAt the dawn of the American Revolution, young Isabella Linwood is poised to marry a well-to-do English nobleman. Meanwhile her true love, Eliot Lee, has just joined George Washington's army. In Catharine Maria Sedgwick's classic tale of two families torn apart by war, the loyalist Linwoods and revolutionary Lees must reckon with their beliefs and desires in a young republic still defining itself. Over the course of her conversion from proud Tory to ardent rebel, Isabella fosters a growing sense of independence, systematically questioning the institutions taken for granted all around her—from colonialism to slavery, patriarchy to aristocracy. Will her rebellious behavior free her from society's shackles, or only confirm the power of the status quo?

From master storyteller William Dietrich come books 1-3 in his bestselling Ethan Gage adventure series: Napoleon's Pyramids, The Rosetta Key, and The Dakota Cipher.

Get three electrifying thrillers from #1?New York Times?bestselling author Andrew Gross in one e-book, including:?The Dark Tide,?Don't Look Twice, and?Reckless. Thriller readers will love Ty Hauk, the Greenwich, Connecticut detective who finds himself caught in a deadly maze of cover-up and corruption involving?frightening?financial conspiracy.?

Get the first four novels in Kim Harrison's #1 New York Times bestselling Hollows series as one e-book! This bundle includes Dead Witch Walking, The Good, the Bad, and the Undead, Every Which Way But Dead, and A Fistful of Charms. Discover this great series at a special price!Dead Witch WalkingAll the creatures of the night gather in "the Hollows" of Cincinnati, to hide, to prowl, to party ... and to feed.?Vampires rule the darkness in a predator-eat-predator world rife with dangers beyond imagining — and it’s Rachel Morgan'sjob to keep that world civilized.?A bounty hunter and witch with serious sex appeal and an attitude, she'll bring 'em back alive, dead ... or undead.The Good, the Bad, and the UndeadIt's a tough life for witch Rachel Morgan, sexy, independent bounty hunter, prowling the darkest shadows of downtown Cincinnati for criminal creatures of the night.?She can handle the leather-clad vamps and even tangle with a cunning demon or two. But a serial killer who feeds on the experts in the most dangerous kind of black magic is definitely pressing the limits.?Confronting an ancient, implacable evil is more than just child's play — and this time, Rachel will be lucky to escape with her very soul.Every Which Way But DeadRachel Morgan's back! Bestselling author Kim Harrison returns with a new supernatural adventure that fans of Laurell K. Hamilton and Charlaine Harris won't want to miss.?Some days, you just can't win. Witch and former bounty hunter Rachel Morgan's managed to escape her corrupt company, survive living with a vampire, start her own runner service, and face down a vampire master.?But her vampire roommate Ivy is off the wagon, her human boyfriend Nick is out of town indefinitely and doesn't sound like he's coming back while the far-too-seductive vampire Kisten is looking way too tempting, and there's a turf war erupting in Cincinnati's underworld.?And there's a greater evil still. To put the vampire master behind bars and save her family, Rachel made a desperate bargain and now there's hell to pay—literally. For if Rachel cannot stop him, the archdemon Algaliarept will pull her into the sorcerous ever-after to forfeit her soul as his slave. Forever.A Fistful of CharmsThe evil night things that prowl Cincinnati despise witch and bounty hunter Rachel Morgan. Her new reputation for the dark arts is turning human and undead heads alike with the intent to possess, bed, and kill her — not necessarily in that order.?Now a mortal lover who abandoned Rachel has returned, haunted by his secret past. And there are those who covet what Nick possesses — savage beasts willing to destroy the Hollows and everyone in it if necessary.?Forced to keep a low profile or eternally suffer the wrath of a vengeful demon, Rachel must nevertheless act quickly. For the pack is gathering for the first time in millennia to ravage and to rule. And suddenly more than Rachel's soul is at stake.

R.L. Stine, author of the bestselling Goosebumps series, raved that Gravediggers is “my kind of book—fast, frightening, and all too real!”During a class hiking trip, Ian, Kendra, and PJ get lost in the mountains and discover that they are being stalked by a pack of ravenous zombies. With the help of a witch doctor and some unusual folk magic, will they be able to defeat these monsters and escape the mountain with their lives?Author Christopher Krovatin perfectly blends humor and horror together in this first installment in a funny, frightening series that will get every kid reading.

Action, laughs, and thrills make Gravediggers: Terror Cove an exciting second book in the Gravediggers series, which R.L. Stine, author of Goosebumps, called "fast, frightening, and all too real!"Newly crowned zombie slayers Ian, Kendra, and PJ are on a family vacation in the tropics when they are warned about a cursed island called Isla Hambrienta. What none of them expect to find is a zombie colony much stronger than the one they defeated on the mountain—and another presence on the island that's way more dangerous than the creatures they're supposed to turn to dust.Fans of creepy books like Skeleton Creek by Patrick Carman will love Christopher Krovatin's wild stories about zombies and the kids who defeat them.

For tween fans of R.L. Stine and Patrick Carman, this exciting final installment of the Gravediggers series is full of gross-out gore, humor, and “splattery mayhem” (Kirkus Reviews).Severed limbs. Rotting flesh. Popping bones. Best friends Ian, Kendra, and PJ have seen it all, and they’ve spent the last few months risking their lives to rid the world of zombies. Now they face their biggest challenge yet: tracking down the vengeful ex-Gravedigger who is holding their mentor hostage in an abandoned underground city. Deep in the menacing caves of Kudus, time is running out for O’Dea, whose powers can be used to unlock a deadly curse.If that weren’t enough, all the kids are keeping things from each other—secrets that threaten to break up the group and thwart their efforts to destroy the gruesome zombies that are crawling all over Kudus. Will their friendship survive this harrowing underground missionWill they escape Kudus with their lives

The eldest of seven children,born low-caste and female in rural India,Mamta is abused and rejected by a father whocan see no reason to “water someone else’s garden” until ahusband is found for her. Seeking escape in matrimony, Mamta beginsher wedded life with hope—but is soon forced to flee her village and thehorrors of her arranged marriage to the bustle of a small city. Saved from becomingone of the nameless and faceless millions of rejected humanity by thesalvation of sublime love, Mamta struggles to find a precarious state ofacceptance and make peace with her past.Powerfully affecting and uplifting, set against a vivid and colorful backgroundof Eastern life, Dipika Rai’s Someone Else’s Garden transcends geographicaldivides and cultural chasms to brilliantly expose the commonalityof the human condition, compelling us to seek answerswithin ourselves to humanity’s eternalquestions: Is life random?Do we have a destiny?

The New York Times bestselling author's ever-popular hero, Jack Swyteck, is on his most dangerous case yet, uncovering a sinister underground world that has him racing across the globe.Then: Sergeant Vince Paulo held his best friend's daughter, McKenna, bleeding in his arms as she uttered the name of her murderer and ex-boyfriend, Jamal. That was minutes before a blast made everything go black for Vince—forever.Now: Miami criminal defense lawyer Jack Swyteck has been called in to save Jamal from the death penalty for terrorist activity. Despite urgent warnings from his fiancée, undercover FBI agent Andie Henning, to stay away from the case, Jack finds himself inextricably drawn to Jamal's past—even believing his alibi that he was abducted and held in a black site in Prague at the time of McKenna's death. But if Jamal is innocent, then the man who murdered McKenna and took Vince's sight is still out there . . . free.Soon bodies begin to pile up and ghosts from the past reappear very much alive, confirmed by ominous threats from a faceless man known only as "the Dark." Vince and Jack must confront a mortal danger that goes beyond McKenna's death, across international waters—a journey to piece together the past that leads through the back alleys of London, onto illegal Internet sites, and straight into the mind of pure evil.

Lily has squeezed herself into undersized relationships all her life, hoping one might grow as large as those found in the Jane Austen novels she loves. But lately her world is running out of places for her to fit. So when her bookish friend invites her to spend the summer at a Jane Austen literary festival in England, she jumps at the chance to reinvent herself.There, among the rich, promising world of Mansfield Park reenactments, Lily finds people whose longing to live in a novel equals her own. But real-life problems have a way of following you wherever you go, and Lily's accompany her to England. Unless she can change her ways, she could face the fate of so many of Miss Austen's characters, destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. My Jane Austen Summer explores how we fall in love, how we come to know ourselves better, and how it might be possible to change and be happier in the real world.

Caterer and sleuth extraordinaireGoldy Schulz returns in another tastyand suspenseful adventure fromNew York Times bestselling authorDiane Mott DavidsonColorado caterer Goldy Schulz cooks up bigtrouble as she tries to help her longtimefriend and fellow chef Yolanda Garcia. Whenthe rental house shared by Yolanda and herirrepressible aunt Ferdinanda is destroyed byarson, the pair move in with cop-turned-PIErnest McLeod. But then Ernest is shot deadand his house is set on fire, nearly killing Goldy,Yolanda, Ferdinanda, and nine beagle puppiesthat Ernest had recently rescued from a puppymill.Concerned for her friends, Goldy invites themto stay with her while the sheriff’s departmentinvestigates. Yet even Goldy’s house isn’t safe,and after a failed break-in by an unknownintruder a cop is sent to keep an eye on things.Then a second body is found.Swapping her chef’s hat for a sleuthing cap,the intrepid Goldy steps up the investigation.But she’s got to move fast. It’s crunch time toclose in on a killer, before he can close in on her.Filled with danger as well as laughs, wonderfulfood, and scrumptious recipes, CrunchTime is a delicious indulgence sure to satisfyall of Goldy’s fans.

Forensic pathologist Edward Jenner survived the horrific ordeal of the Inquisitor serial slayings in New York, but not the political fallout. With his state medical license suspended, he hopes to repair his shattered life while working as a medical examiner in Douglas County, Florida. But evil is not confined to big cities alone.Two corpses pulled from a sunken car—followed by the grisly discovery of four more bodies hanging in the Everglades—are evidence of an insidious rot infecting this quiet coastal resort community. Suddenly Jenner's investigation is turning up grim traces of a nightmarish conspiracy—and with no one to trust and nowhere to turn, his only hope of survival is to walk away . . . something Jenner could never do.

On the shores of the Mediterranean, exhausted from an afternoon of surfing,Pietro Paladini is shaken out of his stupor by a distant noise. “Over there!”he cries to his brother, Carlo, sunning beside him. “Over there!”So begins the adventure that will tear a hole in Pietro’s life. For while he and hisbrother struggle to save two drowning swimmers, a tragedy is unfolding down theroad at his summer cottage. Instead of coming home to a hero’s welcome, Pietrois greeted by the flashing lights of an ambulance, the wide-eyed stare of his youngdaughter, Claudia, and the terrible news that his fiancée, Lara, is dead. Life must go on. Or does itPietro, a true iconoclast, has to find his own way.When he drops Claudia off for the first day of school, he decides to wait outsidefor her all day, and then every day. To protect her. To protect himself. To wait forthe heavy fist of grief to strike. But as the days and weeks go by, the small parkinglot in front of the school becomes his refuge from the world as well as the placewhere family and colleagues come to relieve their own suffering—among them, thewoman he rescued from the waves. And Pietro plunges deeper into the depths ofhis life before seeing the simple truth before his eyes. Sandro Veronesi makes art of every detail, creating a mosaic of humor, hope,profound insight, and emotional resonance. Quiet Chaos is an unprecedented portrayalof a life set adrift by death.

After the destruction of nature and the death of the world . . .After the Wicca virus drove billions to madness and suicide, replacing order and reason with violence and terror . . .In the parched ruins of what once was civilization, one commodity is far morevaluable than all others combined: female children.When well-armed marauders roll in at dusk to brutally attack a fiercely defended compound of survivors, Jessie is unable to halt the slaughter—and she can do nothing to prevent the ruthless abduction of innocents, including her youngest child. Now, along with her outraged teenage daughter, Bliss, Jessie must set out on a journey across a blasted landscape—joining up with the desperate, the broken, the half-mad, on an impossible mission: to storm the fortress of a dark and twisted religion and bring the children home.

Maisie Dobbs' first assignment for the British Secret Service takes her undercover to Cambridge as a professor—and leads to the investigation of a web of activities being conducted by the emerging Nazi Party.In the summer of 1932, Maisie Dobbs' career takes an exciting new turn when she accepts an undercover assignment directed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch and the Secret Service. Posing as a junior lecturer, she is sent to a private college in Cambridge to monitor any activities "not in the inter-ests of His Majesty's government."When the college's controversial pacifist founder and principal, Greville Liddicote, is murdered, Maisie is directed to stand back as Detective Chief Superintendent Robert MacFarlane and Detective Chief Inspector Richard Stratton spearhead the investigation. She soon discovers, however, that the circumstances of Liddicote's death appear inextricably linked to the suspicious comings and goings of faculty and students under her surveillance.To unravel this web, Maisie must overcome a reluctant Secret Service, discover shameful hidden truths about Britain's conduct during the Great War, and face off against the rising powers of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei—the Nazi Party—in Britain.As the storm clouds of World War II gather on the horizon, this pivotal chapter in the life of Maisie Dobbs foreshadows new challenges and powerful enemies facing the psychologist and investigator—and will engage new readers and loyal fans of this "outstanding" series (Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review).

If you've checked out my Diners, Drive-ins and Dives books or visited my restaurants, Johnny Garlic's and Tex Wasabi's, you know I'm down with all types of good food—and that I'll do what's required to track it down. In Guy Fieri Food, I'm cookin' it my way, from the perfect recipe for Pepper Jack Pretzels (from Mr. Awesome Pretzel himself—that's me) to how to pull together a Red Rocker Margarita Chicken sandwich to a full-on vegetable Guy'd (bet you didn't see that one comin'!). Before I'm finished I'll have you throwing parties with everything from Bacon-Jalapeno Duck appe-tapas to Chicago Beef Pizza to Johnny Garlic's Cedar Plank Salmon.Fact is, I've been cookin' it, livin' it, and lovin' it since I was just a kid, and it's a privilege to help you bring home some of my own classic, big, and bold flavors.

Stephen King hailed Michael Marshall's novel Straw Men as “a masterpiece . . . brilliantly written and scary as hell.” Now, Marshall returns with this latest unnerving tale—a creepy, fast-paced thriller that grips you from the first page straight through to its shocking end.Bill Moore already has a lot, but he wants more . . . much more.He's got a lucrative job selling condos in the Florida Keys, a successful wife, a good marriage, a beautiful house. He also has a five-year plan for supersuccess, but that plan has begun to drag into its sixth year without reaping its intended rewards. So now Bill's starting to mix it up—just a little—to accelerate his way into the future that he knows he deserves. Then one morning Bill arrives at work to find a card waiting for him, with no indication who it's from or why it was sent. Its message is just one word: modified.From that moment on, Bill's life begins to change.At first, nothing seems very different. But when things begin to unwind rapidly, and one after another, people around Bill start to die, it becomes increasingly clear that someone somewhere has a very different plan for Bill's future. Confused and angry, Bill begins to fight against this unseen force until he comes to a terrifying, inescapable realization: Once modified, there's no going back.

What sane woman would consider becoming any man's ninth wife?Bess Gray is a thirty-five-year-old folklorist and amateur martial artist living in Washington, DC. Just as she's about to give up all hope of marriage, she meets Rory, a charming Irish musician, and they fall in love. But Rory is a man with a secret, which he confesses to Bess when he asks for her hand: He's been married eight times before. Shocked, Bess embarks on a quest she feels she must undertake before she can give him an answer. With her bickering grandparents (married sixty-five years), her gay neighbor (himself a mystery), a shar-pei named Stella, and a mannequin named Peace, Bess sets out on a cross-country journey—unbeknownst to Rory—to seek out and question the wives who came before. What she discovers about her own past is far more than she bargained for. The Ninth Wife is a smart, funny, eye-opening tale of love, marriage, and the power of stories to unlock the true meaning of home and family.