From Lauren Kelly, "a writer of formidable talent" (Scott Turow), comes the page-turning story of Merilee Graf, whose past and present mysteries converge in a revelation too painful, and too shocking, for her to accept. Sixteen years ago, a vivacious fifth-grade classmate of Merilee Graf was abducted from a park in Mt. Olive, New York. Haunted by the memory of the eleven-year-old "gypsy-looking" girl whose disappearance has never been explained, Merilee returns home to keep a vigil at the bedside of her dying father, a prosperous importer of exotic goods and a former, popular mayor of the upstate New York town on the Chautauqua River. After Mr. Graf's death, Merilee finds herself an "heiress" in more ways than one as she becomes involved, with both dread and fascination, with two very different men from her Mt. Olive past -- the elusive older brother of her missing classmate and her own seductive "Uncle Jedah," executor of her father's estate. Past and present mysteries converge in a revelation too painful, and too shocking, for Merilee to accept, and in a sudden act of reckless courage she frees herself of the terrifying obsessions of the past.

From patient advocate Mary Shomon, author of Living Well With Hypothyroidism, here is the first book to tackle the weight factors specific to thyroid patients and detail a conventional and alternative plan for lasting weight loss.An estimated 10 million Americans have been diagnosed with thyroid disease—most of them women—and for the majority of them, losing weight is mentioned time and time again as a primary concern and chief frustration—a challenge made more difficult due to the metabolic slowdown of a malfunctioning thyroid gland. For these thyroid patients, treatment alone doesn't seem to resolve weight problems. Further, they may struggle with raising basic metabolism, resolving underlying nutritional deficiencies, treating depression and correcting brain chemistry imbalances, reducing stress, and combating insulin resistance.The Thyroid Diet will identify these factors that inhibit a thyroid patient's ability to lose weight, and offer solutions—both conventional and alternative—to help. It will discuss optimal dietary changes, including how a thyroid sufferer should focus on a low-glycemic, high-fibre, low-calorie diet, eaten as smaller, more frequent meals to balance blood sugar. The Thyroid Diet addresses the use of various herbs, nutritional supplements, and pre*ion weight loss drugs, outlining the necessity of exercise, and drawing together all information into an integrated diet and exercise plan. It contains several different eating plans, food lists, and a set of delicious and healthy gourmet recipes. With handy worksheets to use in weight loss tracking, and a special resource section featuring websites, books, and support groups, here is vital help for the millions of thyroid patients dealing with weight problems.Mary Shomon has been praised by doctors around the country for her medical knowledge and sensitivity to patients' needs. She will be receiving similar blurbs for this new book. There are no other books on controlling your weight problems if you have a thyroid condition, yet over 40% of overweight people have evidence of a thyroid condition, and the weight loss problems facing them are unique and need a specific approach.

After a failed career and marriage in California, Hugh Davoren is back in Helena, Montana, as a construction hand at the old Pettyjohn Ranch, home of many childhood memories—including the seemingly accidental death of his teenaged first love, Celia.Hugh is just trying to get through another long workday on the ranch when he discovers two dead stallions. A further probe into the matter only pushes Hugh into dangerous corners, as he finds that the ranch's slick new owner, his beautiful wife, and even old Mr. Pettyjohn have terrible secrets to keep.

Shattered by his wife's death, and by his own role in it, successful cardiologist Charles Anderson volunteers to assist with earthquake relief in an impoverished Islamic country in a constant state of conflict with its neighbor. But when the refugees he's come to help do not appear and artillery begins to fall in the distance along the border, the story takes an unexpected turn.This haunting, resonant tour de force about one man's desire to live a moral life offers a moving exploration of the tensions between poverty and wealth, the ethics of intervention, the deep cultural differences that divide the world, and the essential human similarities that unite it.

Bev is the Smart One, who finally leaves her artistic ambitions in chalk dust (and her humor-impaired husband in the arms—and legs—of his nubile protégée) to become a schoolteacher. Clare is the Pretty One, who married well and seems to be living a designer version of the suburban dream. Joey is the Wild One, struggling to stay clean and sober now that she's used up her fifteen minutes of fame as a one-hit-wonder rock star.They love each other but mix like oil, water, and hundred-proof gin . . . a combination that threatens to combust over family tensions, suspected infidelities, a devastating accident, a stunning confession, and the sudden reappearance of their handsome, now all-grown-up former neighbor, Kenny Waxman, who's back in town making his mark as a TV comedy writer.It seems they'll never understand where their differences begin and their own destructive tendencies end. Then it happens: the sisters discover a decades-old body stuffed inside an industrial drum and begin a bold, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious journey that will either bring them together . . . or tear them apart for good.

What if your mother were hit by a bus?And what if your father disappeared one day through a hole in the bathroom wall?Is there a way to change the course of your life's history?What if time movedIn this dazzling debut novel, Jason Cockcroft has crafted a mind-bending adventure with a startlingly original narrative structure.

There's undead and then there's . . . living dead!Private Investigator Felix Gomez thought he had seen it all since becoming a vampire: horny aliens, maniacal nymphos. But now he's facing everyone's worst nightmare.As far as being undead goes, vampires are indisputably the more civilized—intelligent, rational (on occasion), good conversationalists. Zombies, on the other hand, are just violent, walking, rotting, flesh-eating meat with no redeeming qualities. And now there's a ravenous army of them heading this way.So it's vamps versus zombies, round one. And Felix's only hope of stopping the stinking, hungry horde is a pre-cocious and much-too-hot-for-her-britches teenager with clairvoyant powers. But she's not going to help unless Felix agrees to make her immortal.

Sunny Cooper has been running since she was eighteen—from the New Mexican commune where she grew up . . . and from the haunting memory of the freak accident that took the life of her younger sister. Now, at thirty-two, Sunny voices radio spots in Albuquerque while struggling to hold on to a floundering relationship. But when a second tragic accident—and the devastating truths that come to light in its aftermath—turns her world upside down, Sunny runs again.In the town of Harmony on San Miguel Island, she takes a new job, learns to ride a motorcycle, and makes some surprising new friends. But the past is never far behind. A startling discovery—along with an emotional and revelatory reunion with her estranged mother—is forcing Sunny to step out from the shadows of yesterday to embrace an uncertain future.

"Music plays. Dad appears. I walk with him, eyes fastened to the floor. When I look up, something is very wrong. There are three grooms."This is the story of Quinn—born Prudence Quinn O'Malley—a confused young Manhattan attorney who loses her father on that tragic September morning that changed everything. Now, at an existential crossroads in her life, Quinn must confront impossible questions about commitment and career, love and loss. Her idealistic beau desperately wants a wedding, and whisks her away to Paris just to propose. But then Quinn has a dream featuring judges and handcuffs and Nietzsche and Britney . . . and far too many grooms. Suddenly, her future isn't so clear. Quinn's world has become a minefield of men—some living, some gone, and traversing it safely is going to take a lot more than numerous glasses of pinot grigio.Life After Yes is a blisteringly honest, thoroughly modern tale of life and love in chaos, marking the arrival of a truly exciting new voice in contemporary fiction.

In a little house from another time, with lace curtains in every window and paintings hung in gold doily frames, Wildflower, Rockstar, and Miss Selene live a warm and cozy life. They wear fancy dresses, bake play-dough cakes, and spend their days enjoying one another's company.For the three dolls, life is small but good.But life is not good for Madison Blackberry, the owner of the dollhouse. Her grandmother pays more attention to the dolls than to her. The dolls have one another, but she is lonely in her big, empty apartment.Then one day, as things always do—even for dolls—everything changes.This beautiful story from the acclaimed team of Francesca Lia Block, author of such novels as Weetzie Bat, and Barbara McClintock, author and illustrator of many picture books, including Adèle & Simon, brings to life the power of love, family, and friendship.

New York Times bestselling author Barbara Delinskycaptivates with a magnificent story of loving friendship and desperate acts, first published in 1992.The lovely vacation house on the Maine coast was meantto be a glorious retreat for Danica Lindsay and her husband Blake, a place where they could mend the wounds of a damaged and tired marriage. Instead, she finds herself mostly there alone while Blake's political star is rapidly rising back in Boston. Were it not for the cherished companionship of her new neighbor, gentle and caring Michael Buchanan, Danica would surely be overcome by loneliness and despair.But a friendship that is strong, uplifting, and real is slowlytransforming into something less innocent, more passionate -- something that could easily be called "love." For the first time in her life, a chance for true happiness may be in Danica's reach. But how can she grab onto it when she remains another man's wife, bound by her marriage vows to a union plagued by doubt and pain ... and by secrets so shocking an entire nation will take notice?

Ingrid Betancourt, a senator and a presidential candidate in Colombia, grew up among diplomats, literati, and artists who congregated at her parents' elegant home in Paris, France. Her father served as Colombia's ambassador to UNESCO and her mother, a political activist, continued her work on behalf of the country's countless children whose lives were being destroyed by extreme poverty and institutional neglect. Intellectually, Ingrid was influenced by Pablo Neruda and other Latin American writers like Gabriel García Márquez, who frequented her parents' social circle. She studied at ?cole de Sciences Politiques de Paris, a prestigious academy in France. From this charmed life, Ingrid Betancourt -- not yet thirty, happily married to a French diplomat, and a mother of two children -- returned to her native country in the late 1980s. On what was initially just a visit, she found her country under internal siege from the drug cartels and the corrupt government that had allowed them to flourish. After seeing what had become of Colombia's democracy, she didn't feel she could leave. Until Death Do Us Part is the deeply personal story of a woman who gave up a life of comfort and safety to become a political leader in a country being slowly demolished by terrorism, violence, fear, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness. It is a country where democracy has been sacrificed for the well-being of the few, where international criminals determine policy, and where political assassinations are a way of life. Now forty, Ingrid Betancourt has been elected and reelected as a representative and as a senator in Colombia's national legislature. She has founded a political party that has openly confronted Colombia's leaders and has earned the respect of a nation. And now she has become a target of the establishment and the drug cartels behind it. Forced to move her children out of Colombia for protection against death threats, Ingrid Betancourt remained and continued to fight the political structure that has crumbled under the destructive power of the paramilitary forces, the financial omnipotence of the drug cartels, and the passivity of governmentfor-sale. Here is a political cocktail that has destroyed countless lives in Colombia and has spread to countries beyond its borders. A memoir of a life in politics that reads like a fastpaced political thriller, Until Death Do Us Part -- already an international bestseller -- is a hair-raising account of one woman's fight against the establishment. It is a story of a woman whose love for her country and faith in democracy gave her the courage to stand up to the power that has subjugated, intimidated, or corrupted all those who opposed it. A chilling account of the dangerous, byzantine machine that runs Colombia, it is also an inspiring story of privilege, sacrifice, and true patriotism.

The architect Klaus Lehmann loves his wife, Elsa, with a passion that continues throughout their married life despite long periods of separation. Almost half a century after Lehmann's death in the village of Steerborough, a young woman, Lily, arrives to research his life and work. Pouring over Klaus's letters to Elsa, Lily pieces together the story of their lives together and apart. And alone in her rented cottage by the sea, she begins to sense an absence in her own life that may not be filled by simply going home.The Sea House is the story of the village of Steerborough and the marshes and the sea beyond. It is the story of one generation living in the footprints of another; of a landscape shaped by lives, and lives shaped by landscape. With characteristic skill and a new depth and range, Esther Freud explores the twisting paths that people take -- and the places where those paths meet.This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Journalist Alex Dyer made his name covering the bloody horrors of the European trenches. Yet even after the Great War is over, he cannot shake the guilt he feels for not serving on the front lines like his dearest childhood friend, Ted Eden. Worse still, Alex cannot put to rest the emotions that gnaw at him from the inside: his feelings for Clare, Ted's wife—a woman they both have loved more A masterful debut novel from the acclaimed author of The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, Carol Ann Lee's Winter of the World combines fascinating historical detail and color with breathtaking invention. Recalling the fire of the battlefield and the nightmare of the trenches, it brilliantly evokes a volatile time when life was frozen in the present tense and looking forward was the only thing more painful than looking back.

A hilarious and touching new installment of Armistead Maupin's beloved Tales of the City seriesTwenty years have passed since Mary Ann Singleton left her husband and child in San Francisco to pursue her dream of a television career in New York. Now a pair of personal calamities has driven her back to the city of her youth and into the arms of her oldest friend, Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, a gardener happily ensconced with his much-younger husband.Mary Ann finds temporary refuge in the couple's backyard cottage, where, at the unnerving age of fifty-seven, she licks her wounds and takes stock of her mistakes. Soon, with the help of Facebook and a few old friends, she begins to reengage with life, only to confront fresh terrors when her checkered past comes back to haunt her in a way she could never have imagined.After the intimate first-person narrative of Maupin's last novel, Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Ann in Autumn marks the author's return to the multicharacter plotlines and darkly comic themes of his earlier work. Among those caught in Mary Ann's orbit are her estranged daughter, Shawna, a popular sex blogger; Jake Greenleaf, Michael's transgendered gardening assistant; socialite DeDe Halcyon-Wilson; and the indefatigable Anna Madrigal, Mary Ann's former landlady at 28 Barbary Lane.More than three decades in the making, Armistead Maupin's legendary Tales of the City series rolls into a new age, still sassy, irreverent, and curious, and still exploring the boundaries of the human experience with insight, compassion, and mordant wit.

Five years ago the eldest Furey son, Hugh, ran off into the night and never returned. His parents, estranged by grief, are trying to put the tragedy behind them after a long, exhausting, and fruitless search. His mother, recovering from an emotional breakdown, has lost herself in a new career; Hugh's father, having abandoned his faith and his position as a theology professor, now cares halfheartedly for their two remaining children. Left more or less to fend for themselves, ten-year-old Owen and fifteen-year-old Lena struggle to hold on to their brother's memory—an increasingly self-destructive obsession that gives rise to angel fantasies, drug use, quixotic quests, and dangerous experimentation that will ultimately force a damaged family to confront its past and find a future.

Felix Gomez, Latino vampire detective extraordinaire, tackles a dangerous werewolf cabal in the fifth installment in Mario Acevedo's satirical supernatural seriesA sure-to-be-bloody civil war is brewing between rival werewolf factions, and P.I . Felix Gomez will do anything he can to make sure it doesn't explode into a vicious battle that engulfs all creatures, living and dead. Between that, the sudden reappearance of an ex-girlfriend, and a gang of other vampires trying to take off his head, this is one rumble even a fanged detective extraordinaire may not be able to handle.

re-creating the lives of two of the most intriguing rulers in history, Shan Sa brings us a novel filled with the sound of hooves, the whistle of arrows, blood, passion, and betrayal. The familiar figure of Alexander the Great comes to new life in this richly imagined tale, which entwines his historical legacy with a fantastic love affair set in a wartime between Western and Eastern civilizations.Abused by his father, King Philip, who loved and hated his beauty; shadowed by his mother, the mystical and overbearing Queen Olympias; educated by Aristotle who wanted him to be a wise philosopher of Macedonia, Alexander develops a complex character. He becomes a brutal warrior, a pitiless strategist, and a poet longing for the world's wonders. Meanwhile, in the remote steppes of Siberia, an abandoned girl grows up among the wild mares, then adopted by the queen of the Amazons—the tribe of female warriors who dominates a wild world of snow and volcano. As a future queen, the young girl is trained to hate men and to fight against all invaders. In the course of his great conquest of Asia, Alexander first meets the stunning Alestria on the battlefield. Surprised to find that his adversary is a woman, he is instantly smitten by the fierce queen. Dazzled by his strength, she decides to kidnap him and make him her "wife." At last, this legendary king—renowned for his beauty and love of men—has found his equal. And at last, this indomitable young woman has found a reason to leave her tribe. Their love, deeply passionate and problematic, evolves against an exotic backdrop of warfare and political turmoil, sweeps from antique Greece to Egypt, across the ancient Iraq and Iran, unto the mysterious kingdoms of India.

A comprehensive guide to the diagnosis and treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia -- vital help for the millions of people suffering from pain, fatigue, and sleep problems An estimated 6 million Americans suffer from fibromyalgia and 800,000 have chronic fatigue syndrome. Both conditions are characterized by severe and widespread pain, debilitating fatigue, and difficulty with concentration and memory. Getting diagnosed can be particularly difficult, and patients must then navigate conflicting information and the latest fads in order to choose from among dozens of treatment options. In her trademark accessible, easy-to-follow style, patient advocate Mary J. Shomon explores these often confusing conditions, highlighting the pros and cons of conventional and alternative approaches, giving you tips for developing a recovery plan, and providing clear direction and solutions for sufferers of chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.

In the definitive biography of John Fante, English and film studies professor Stephen Cooper explores the life of a man whose muse was Los Angeles.

Two of the six legendary crowns may have been found, but Trundle's quest is far from over. With bloodthirsty pirates right on their heels, the mild-mannered lamplighter and his friends—courageous Princess Esmeralda and Jack the bard—journey onward to the island of Swallowhaven. The citizens of Swallowhaven live in the lap of luxury, with many riches but little experience battling pirates. And before he can say "cabbages," Trundle and his crew are enlisted to join the fight to defend the island. Will the reluctant heroes make it out aliveAnd can they find the Crown of Fire before it falls into the wrong hands?