When Foster Lanier and Ben Phelps are released from a professional baseball team in 1904, it is the only experience they have in common, until they meet a runaway -- a girl-woman named Lottie Parker -- on the train that takes them from Augusta, Georgia, and away from their dreams of greatness.Foster will marry her and father her son.Ben will escort her home.And Lottie will change the lives of everyone she meets, from the day she runs away until she finally finds the place where she belongs.

A heart-stopping literary noir and richly atmospheric tale of espionage and international intrigue set in Shanghai in 1931 an electrifying, decadent world of love, violence, and betrayal filled with femmes fatales, criminals, revolutionaries, and spiesA boat from Hong Kong arrives in Shanghai harbor, carrying an important official in the Nationalist Party and his striking wife, Leng. Amid the raucous sound of firecrackers, gunshots ring out: an assassin has shot the official and then himself. Leng disappears in the ensuing chaos.Hsueh, a Franco-Chinese photographer aboard the same boat, has become captivated by Leng's beauty and unconcealed misery. Now she is missing. But Hsueh is plagued by a mystery closer to home: he suspects his White Russian lover, Therese, is unfaithful. Why else would she have disappeared so often on their recent vacationWhen he's arrested for mysterious reasons in the French Concession and forced to become a police collaborator, he realizes that in the seamy, devious world of Shanghai, no one is who they appear to be.Coerced into spying for the authorities, Hsueh discovers that Therese is secretly an arms dealer, supplying Shanghai's gangs with weapons. His investigation of Therese eventually leads him back to Leng, a loyal revolutionary with ties to a menacing new gang led by a charismatic Communist whose acts of violence and terrorism threaten the entire country.His aptitude for espionage draws Hsueh into a dark underworld of mobsters, smugglers, anarchists, and assassins. Torn between Therese and Leng, he vows to protect them both. As the web of intrigue tightens around him, Hsueh must play a dangerous game, hoping to stay alive.

Award-winning and international bestselling author Lynda La Plante returns with the eighth installment in her acclaimed series featuring London's Detective Chief Inspector Anna Travis.Late night on a notorious high-rise estate in the borough of Hackney. A woman on the street never makes it home after a long night of drinking. A white van is being driven erratically. The driver is pulled over by the police and questioned. A suspect . . . an arrest . . . a confession. Case closed?Five years earlier, a thirteen-year-old girl disappeared in broad daylight on a busy London street. Detective Chief Superintendent James Langton headed the investigation; the case was never solved. It has haunted him ever since. And now comes another confession, to this murder, and to one more besides. But is it too good to be trueAfter being pulled into the fray, Anna Travis isn't so sure that they have their man.Then the suspect changes his story. . . .

Detective Nick Belsey—one of London's sharpest but most unprincipled investigators, first introduced in the acclaimed The Hollow Man—is plunged into a perplexing mystery of secrets, danger, and suspense beneath the city's streets.Trouble once again finds Nick Belsey when he takes a date to an abandoned bomb shelter buried beneath the heart of London. One minute the young woman is there, and the next, she's gone, mysteriously vanishing into the dark labyrinth of secret tunnels. A seasoned cop with a bad reputation, Nick knows that if he reports her disappearance, he'll be the prime suspect.Instead, he's going to find her. It's not just her life at stake—it's his, too. Determined to discover who is down in those forgotten tunnels and how far this secret network of underground passages extends, he plunges headfirst into the investigation—and into a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a ruthless enemy who would rather let an innocent woman die than reveal Cold War secrets. A subversive thriller with the superb characterization of classic Lawrence Block and the psychological suspense of Sophie Hannah, Deep Shelter is a compulsively readable mystery from a master of literary suspense.

New York Times bestselling author J. A. Jance's heartrending collection of poetry and essays recounts a dark chapter of her own life, her first marriage to an alcoholic—a powerful look at the emotional cost of addiction and an inspiring story of courage and triumph in the wake of crushing defeatBefore she found fame as a bestselling mystery author, Judith Jance wrestled with the anguish of being married to an alcoholic. For years she channeled her pain into words, composing the poems in this moving volume, first published in 1984, a year before her debut novel.In searing and direct language, After the Fire chronicles the collapse of Jance's first marriage under the weight of her husband's addiction—and her own unwitting denial and codependence while she struggled to find herself. "I will not be the price of your redemption," she wrote then. "I will not pay my life to ransom yours."An intimate, deeply personal look into a wrenching time in Jance's life, After the Fire is a portrait of addiction and its insidious effects on lives and love. It illuminates universal truths about unbearable loss and finding the courage to carry on, and offers inspiration and profound insight into the heart and work of a beloved bestselling author.

From the New York Times bestselling author Sally Beauman comes an intensely atmospheric, spellbinding re-creation of Lord Carnarvon's hunt for Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.Sent abroad to Egypt in 1922 to recover from the typhoid that has killed her mother, eleven-year-old Lucy becomes swept up in the feverish excitement surrounding the search for Tutankhamun's tomb. Through her friendship with Frances, the daughter of an American archaeologist, Lucy witnesses first-hand the intrigue, politics, and passions surrounding this quest. Raised in a world in which adults are often cold and unpredictable, Lucy forms an immediate bond with Frances. Their friendship sustains them throughout childhood, guides them through the class-ridden colonial society in which they grow up, and takes them into an adult life that promises fulfilment—until it veers toward heartbreak.Deftly constructed and transportive, peopled by powerful characters, moving from the 1920s to the present day, The Visitors is a timeless coming-of-age narrative set against the backdrop of profound historical change. But how is such change documentedWhose testimony is reliableWhich witness should we believe?Looking back on her past much later in life, viewing it from the perspective of age, Lucy tells a deeply moving story of love and loss, of mistakes made and incendiary secrets concealed. She reveals the circumstances that lie behind the most celebrated discovery ever made in the Valley of the Kings, a discovery clouded by deception, in which triumph swiftly turned to tragedy; it is a story, as she comes to see, whose truths are both elusive and occluded, one that mirrors her own. As Lord Carnarvon and the archaeologist Howard Carter force the desert to yield its treasures, Lucy reveals the extremes to which people are driven by desire—even when these extremes involve building a life around a lie.

A young orphan goes from rags to riches in this remarkable tale of friendship, love, and adventure at the height of the Industrial Revolution.Like Charles Dickens's beloved Oliver Twist, John Halifax is an orphan. Determined to make his success through honest hard work, he becomes an apprentice to Abel Fletcher, a tanner and Quaker, whose invalid son, Phineas, befriends John as a young boy. Together they embark upon numerous adventures, with Phineas narrating John's noble struggles in business and love. Spanning four decades, the novel chronicles John's improbable rise to industrial fortune and contested marriage to the noblewoman Ursula. On his journey, John must overcome the deep prejudices of an aristocracy that refuses to view him as anything but a simple commoner, no matter his professional achievements or strength of character.In John Halifax, Gentleman Dinah Maria Mulock deftly explores the sweeping transformations wrought by the Industrial Revolution, including the rise of the middle class and its impact on the social, economic, and political makeup of Great Britain as it transitioned from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century.

The nearly 37 million people in the United States who play golf probably all have one thing in common: At some point they have contemplated giving up the game because they were frustrated with the way they were playing. When those blissful moments of precise drives and perfect putts disappear, when the ball seems to have a mind of its own, and when well-grooved swings become totally unhinged, we find ourselves in that panicked state known as a "slump."When Jimmy Roberts, the award-winning reporter and writer, entered his own period of frustration with the game, he decided to ask some of the most famous golfers and successful people in the world for advice. Here, for the first time, are the stories and recollections of eighteen veteran players whose wisdom is both practical and philosophical. Some concentrate on technique (when Phil Mickelson is dissatisfied with the way he's driving the ball, he practices bunker shots to reinforce the most important element of the tee shot rhythm). Others focus on mental adjustments (Davis Love III remembers his late father's essential advice when he's frustrated: Try less hard).With stories from greats Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Johnny Miller, Dottie Pepper, Greg Norman, George Herbert Walker Bush, Paul Azinger, and many others, this is an emotional and spiritual first aid kit for anyone who plays the game and even those who don't. As the 41st president says, the way we handle adversities in golf can provide a template for how to handle the challenges in life: Golf lessons can sometimes be life lessons too. There may not be a universal cure-all, but there are many ways to recover from a debilitating slump.

Cindi Broaddus didn't realize that her life was about to be forever altered as she sat in the passenger seat of a car on a lonely highway, speeding toward the airport in the early morning hours of June 5, 2001. A single mother of three and a delighted new grandmother, she was thinking only of her well-earned vacation when a gallon jar of sulfuric acid, tossed from an overpass by an unknown assailant, came crashing through the windshield. In a heartbeat, Cindi was showered with glass and flesh-eating liquid, leaving her screaming in agony and burned almost beyond recognition.A Random Act is the riveting firsthand account of a brutal and senseless attack and its aftermath. Much more than one remarkable woman's chronicle of an unthinkable tragedy and amazing recovery, Cindi's story is one of hope and transcendence, born of a conscious and dedicated determination to turn a nightmarish experience into something positive and uplifting. Her unforgettable journey back to life and a gloriously renewed sense of purpose offers illuminating truths about love, healing, and the astounding power of choice.

For the better part of a decade, Edward Ugel spent his time closing deals with lottery winners, making a lucrative and legitimate if sometimes not-so-nice living by taking advantage of their weaknesses . . . weaknesses that, as a gambler himself, he knew all too well. In Money for Nothing, he explores the captivating world of lottery winners and shows us how lotteries and gambling have become deeply inscribed in every aspect of American life, shaping our image of success and good fortune. Money for Nothing is a witty, wise, and often outrageously funny account of high expectations and easy money.

In Cuba, Castro has finally relinquished power. . . . now a mysterious exile (Che Guevara?) returns to finish the revolution. When a strange man appears in rural towns around Cuba quietly advocating a new kind of politics he calls "the True Republic," old-timers begin to suspect that the elderly stranger, who calls himself Ernesto Blanco, may actually be the martyr Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Shortly after Blanco's appearance, Fidel Castro steps down from power in exchange for a commitment from the United States to recognize Cuba and lift the crippling embargo. Two traditional parties quickly form: one is a successor to the Communist Party and the other is composed of U.S. and Mafia-backed Cuban exiles. As the True Republic movement spreads like wildfire throughout Cuba, each faction devises a plot to get rid of Ernesto Blanco by assassination if necessary.

From the author of Pitching Around Fidel and Far Afield comes an account of the accidental death of minor league first base coach Mike Coolbaugh, illustrating the many ways in which baseball still has a hold on America.Heart of the Game centers on the death of Mike Coolbaugh, a minor league coach who was killed on a sweltering Sunday evening in Little Rock in July 2007 when a foul ball rocketed off Tino Sanchez's bat. Coolbaugh died almost instantly, his body carted off the field of the Double-A Arkansas Travelers. He was thirty-five years old and the father of two; a third child was on the way.Mike's exemplary life his devotion to the game and to his family is the spine of the story. But it isn't the drama. The drama is in the telling of what can happen when a projectile hits the human body, of the narratives of the remarkable people who happened to be in the ballpark at that fatal moment, of the impact of Coolbaugh's death on the man who hit the ball, and of all the lives left behind.Price reveals anew that classic heart of Americana small-town sports, small-town lives and makes us understand that a game played away from the mindless churn of Internet blather and highlight shows can be more important than those played on the national stage.

Veteran NPR science correspondent and award-winning radio and TV journalist Ira Flatow's enthusiasm for all things science has made him a beloved on-air journalist. For more than thirty-five years, Flatow has interviewed the top scientists and researchers on many NPR and PBS programs, including his popular Science Friday spot on Talk of the Nation. In Present at the Future, he shares the groundbreaking revelations from those conversations, including the latest on nanotechnology, space travel, global warming, alternative energies, stem cell research, and using the universe as a super super computer. Flatow also further explores his favorite topic of the science of everyday life with explanations on why the shower curtain sticks to you, the real story of why airplanes fly, and much more.From dark matter and the human consciousness to the surprising number of scientists who believe in a Creator, Present at the Future reveals the mysteries of science, nature, and technology that shape our lives.

During a two-year urban adventure through the world of commerce, journalist Alex Frankel proudly wore the brown uniform of the UPS driver, folded endless stacks of T-shirts at Gap, brewed espressos for the hordes at Starbucks, interviewed (but failed to get hired) at Whole Foods, enrolled in management training at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and sold iPods at the Apple Store.In this lively and entertaining narrative, Frankel takes readers on a personal journey into the land of front-line employees to discover why some workers are so eager to drink the corporate Kool-Aid and which companies know how to serve it up best.

There is one card game that towers above all others as the most intelligent, intricate, and psychologically absorbing ever to be invented. It has a rich history. It's played and loved by some of the world's most famous and influential people. And it's not the one that's currently on television twenty-four hours a day.In 1925 Harold Stirling Vanderbilt invented modern bridge, and a national craze was born. In the 1930s, bridge was even bigger than baseball. Its devotees would eventually include the Marx Brothers, George Burns, Wilt Chamberlain, Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who played to unwind before the Normandy invasion. Today bridge players number about twenty-five million in the U.S. alone; current celebrity addicts include Warren Buffett (who goes by the online handle "T-Bone"), Bill Gates, Hugh Hefner, Sting, a sitting Supreme Court justice, and the guys from Radiohead.In this spirited homage, Edward McPherson recounts the history of the game while attempting to master its deep mysteries in time to compete at the North American Bridge Championships in Chicago. Barely able to shuffle cards let alone play bridge, he sets out to discover why the game became and remains such a popular pastime, stopping in Dallas, Kansas City, Gatlinburg, Gettysburg, Las Vegas, and London. He focuses on a handful of professionals and eager but fumbling amateurs, and the characters he meets convince him that in a game that pits mind against mind, close attention to the cards often reveals much about those sitting at the table. He attempts to learn from bridge's devoted fans from white-haired grannies and international playboys to teenage pros and billionaires how its legacy can be preserved for future generations. And along the way, he picks up a playing partner of his own: Tina, a New York octogenarian with sharp card skills and energy to burn.Insightful, funny, and steeped in respect for bridge, The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats is an affectionate view of a grand game by an outsider trying to make his way into the inner circle.

A haunting and inventive book length sequence of poems from the distinguished author of Study for the World's Body. The Face is both fiercely lyrical and intimately conversational. Coming to terms with the failure of a great love, the speaker descends into his own dark night of the soul. Here are poems that explore the drama of the shattered self in a variety of voices, calling on memory to speak and imagination to make beauty from the shards. Slowly, the speaker reassembles his life and again finds faith in himself and the world. These poems reveal a swirling cinematic poetry of visionary scope; meditative and confessional in some moments, ironic and playful in others. Deeply passionate and raw in its candour, The Face may be for this generation of poets what Lowell's Life Studies and Ashbery's Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror were.

Our neighboring planets may have the answer to this question. Scientists have already identified ice caps on Mars and what appear to be enormous oceans underneath the ice of Jupiter's moons. The atmosphere on Venus appeared harsh and insupportable of life, composed of a toxic atmosphere and oceans of acid -- until scientists concluded that Earth's atmosphere was eerily similar billions of years ago.An extraterrestrial colony, in some form, may already exist, just awaiting discovery.But the greatest impediment to such an important scientific discovery may not be technological, but political. No scientific endeavor can be launched without a budget, and matters of money are within the arena of politicians. Dr. Ben Bova explores some of the key players and the arguments waged in a debate of both scientific and cultural priorities, showing the emotions, the controversy, and the egos involved in arguably the most important scientific pursuit ever begun.

What would you do if your eighty-year-old father dragged you into his hell-bent hunt for new loveBob Morris, a seriously single son, tells you all about it in this warm, witty, and wacky chronicle of a year of dating dangerously.A few months after the death of his wife, Joe Morris, an affable, eccentric, bridge-obsessed octogenarian, starts flapping about for a replacement. If he can get a new hip, he figures, why not a new wifeAt first, his son Bob is appalled, but suspicion quickly turns to enthusiasm as he finds himself trolling the personals, screening prospects, and offering etiquette tips, chaperoning services, and post-date assessments to his needy father.Bob hopes that Joe will find a well-heeled lady or at least one who is very patient to get him out of his hair. But soon they discover that finding a new mate will not be as easy as they think: one date is too morose, another too liberal; one's a three-timer, another just needs an escort until Mr. Right comes along. Dad persists and son assists. Am I pimping for my fatherhe begins to wonder. Meanwhile, Bob suffers similar frustrations; trying to find love isn't easy in a big-city market that has little use for a middle-aged gay man with an attitude and a paunch. But with the encouragement of his father (his biggest fan and the world's "most democratic Republican") he prevails. In the end, this memoir becomes a twin love story and a soulful lesson about giving and receiving affection with an open heart.With wicked humor and a dollop of compassion, Bob Morris gleefully explores the impact of senior parents on their boomer kids and the perils of dating at any age.

He is a giant among coaches, a Hall of Famer with a legacy that spans six full decades of coaching, and arguably the greatest Division I college football coach in history. And now Bobby Bowden finally has a biography that befits his stature: Bowden by award-winning journalist and author Mike Freeman.Based on six years of research and interviews with Bowden himself, not to mention the Bowden family, former players, and opposing coaches, Bowden is the complete stunning story of the making of a legend. Despite growing up in the segregated South and witnessing the ugly racism of the time, Bowden still developed into one of the most race-sensitive coaches in college history. When sick as a child, he listened to the radio and gained a taste for war strategy and for Alabama football games on Saturdays. He played football in high school but decided he wanted to be a coach. After years of turning around smaller football programs, and following a tumultuous but successful head coaching tenure at West Virginia University, Bowden accepted the post at Florida State University (FSU), a failing program that was regularly beaten by in-state rival University of Florida. In fact, just the year before Bowden became coach, in 1975, the president of FSU contemplated terminating the program altogether, particularly because the team had won only four games in the past three years.What Bowden accomplished at FSU is nothing short of miraculous: twenty-one bowl wins and two national championships. And he was the only coach to secure a top-five ranking in the Associated Press polls for fourteen straight seasons. A brilliant tactician, he helped usher the pro passing game into college football, after initially doubting it could work on the college level. He has been an unrivaled recruiter, not only coaching his players but also becoming a surrogate father to many of them, all while producing thirty-one consensus All-Americans over the course of his tenure. He spawned one of the greatest rivalries in sports against the University of Miami. He trails only Penn State's Joe Paterno in career victories.Along the way he has had to deal with family tragedies, scandals, and the rise and fall of his three sons' coaching careers. But he has been steadfast, with his good humor intact and with Ann, his wife of sixty years, at his side, raising a family of six children and now twenty-one grandchildren. As he nears the end of his career, though, the critics have their knives out, claiming, among many other things, that he has become a dinosaur who clings to his job so that he can win more games than Paterno.This work examines the total Bowden and is the first of its kind on a one-of-a-kind coach. Poignant, blunt, and eye-opening, Bowden is a towering biography of a man who has left his mark on FSU and the game of college football.

Millions have visited the museums that bear her name, yet few know much about Madame Tussaud. A celebrated artist, she had both a ringside seat at and a cameo role in the French Revolution. A victim and survivor of one of the most tumultuous times in history, this intelligent, pragmatic businesswoman has also had an indelible impact on contemporary culture, planting the seed of our obsession with celebrity. In Madame Tussaud, Kate Berridge tells this fascinating woman's complete story for the first time, drawing upon a wealth of sources, including Tussaud's memoirs and historical archives. It is a grand-scale success story, revealing how with sheer graft and grit a woman born in 1761 to an eighteen-year-old cook overcame extraordinary reversals of fortune to build the first and most enduring worldwide brand identified simply by reference to its founder's name: Madame Tussaud's.

When Muhammad Ali met Joe Frazier in Manila for their third fight, their rivalry had spun out of control. The Ali-Frazier matchup had become a madness, inflamed by the media and the politics of race. When the "Thrilla in Manila" was over, one man was left with a ruin of a life; the other was battered to his soul. Mark Kram covered that fight for Sports Illustrated in an award-winning article. Now his riveting book reappraises the boxers -- who they are and who they were. And in a voice as powerful as a heavyweight punch, Kram explodes the myths surrounding each fighter, particularly Ali. A controversial, no-holds-barred account, Ghosts of Manila ranks with the finest boxing books ever written.