When Hilton was just a boy, his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him from drowning. Thirty years later, he begins to suspect that he was never meant to survive that accident, and that dark forces are working to rectify that mistake. When Hilton's wife, the only elected African-American judge in Dade County, FL, begins to receive racist hate mail, he becomes obsessed with protecting his family. Soon, however, he begins to have horrible nightmares, more intense and disturbing than any he has ever experienced. Are the strange dreams trying to tell him somethingHis sense of reality begins to slip away as he battles both the psychotic threatening to destroy his family and the even more terrifying enemy stalking his sleep. Chilling and utterly convincing, The Between follows the struggles of a man desperately trying to hold on to the people and life he loves, but may have already lost. The compelling plot holds readers in suspense until the final, profound moment of resolution.

In this dazzling addition to Deborah Crombie's acclaimed mystery series, a disappearance, a murder, and a child in danger lead Scotland Yard detectives Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid into London's legendary East End—a neighborhood where the rich and the poor, the ambitious and the dangerous, collide—to solve one of the most challenging and disturbing cases they've ever faced. . . .Necessary as BloodOnce the haunt of Jack the Ripper, London's East End is a vibrant mix of history and the avant-garde, a place where elegant Georgian town houses exist side by side with colorful street markets and the hippest clubs. But here races and cultures still clash, and the trendy galleries and glamorous nightlife of Whitechapel disguise a violent and seedy underside, where unthinkable crimes bring terror to the innocent. On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in mid May, a young mother, Sandra Gilles, leaves her daughter with a friend at the Columbia Road Flower Market and disappears. Shortly thereafter, her husband, a Pakistani lawyer, is killed. Scotland Yard detective Gemma James happens upon the scene in time to witness the investigator making a mistake.When Duncan and his trusted sergeant, Doug Cullen, see Gemma's name in the report, they decide to take the case. Working together again, Gemma, Duncan, Doug, and Melody Talbot must solve it before the murderer can get his hands on the real prize, Naz and Sandra's daughter.But just as the case grows more dangerous, a personal issue threatens to throw Gemma and Duncan off the trail. In the end, it is up to them to stop a vicious killer and protect the child whose fate hangs in the balance.

Watch out for the hidden things . . . That's the last thing Calliope Jenkins's best friend says to her before ending a two a.m. phone call from Iowa, where he's working a case she knows little about. Seven hours later, she gets a visit from the police. Josh has been found dead, and foul play is suspected. Calliope is stunned. Especially since Josh left a message on her phone an hour after his body was found. Spurred by grief and suspicion, Calli heads to Iowa herself, accompanied by a stranger who claims to know something about what happened to Josh and who can— maybe—help her get him back. But the road home is not quite the straight shot she imagined . . .

From the world-famous survival expert,learn how to make everyday an unforgettable adventure Life in the outdoors teaches us invaluable lessons. Encountering the wild forces us to plan and execute goals, face danger, push our "limits," and sharpen our instincts. But our most important adventures don't always happen in nature's extremes. Living a purpose-driven, meaningful life can often be an even greater challenge. . . .In A Survival Guide for Life, Bear Grylls, globally renowned adventurer and television host, shares the hard-earned wisdom he's gained in the harshest environments on earth, from the summit of Mt. Everest to the boot camps of the British Special Forces: What are the most important skills to learn if you really want to achieve your maximum potentialHow do you keep going when all the oddsare stacked against youHow can you motivate a team to follow youin spite of apparent risksFilled with exclusive, never-before-told tales from Bear's globe-trekking expeditions, A Survival Guide for Life teaches every reader no matter your age or experience that we're all capable of living life more boldly, of achieving our most daring dreams, and of having more fun along the way. Here's to your own great adventure!

They left everything behind to follow their hearts. . . . True stories that illuminate the experiences of British war brides in America after World War IIAmerican soldiers stationed in the UK came away winning more than just a war, they also won the hearts of young women across Britain. At the end of World War II, more than 70,000 GI brides followed the men they'd married men they barely knew to begin a new life in the United States. Meet four of these women:Sylvia Bradley, a loyal, bright-eyed optimist Rae Brewer, a resourceful, quick-witted tomboy Margaret Boyle, an English beauty who faced down every challengeGwendolyn Rowe, a brave woman ahead of her timeThough all made the bold choice to leave family and the world they knew, the journey each experienced was unique ranging from romantic to heartbreaking.Fascinating and unforgettable, GI Brides pays homage to these brave women, propelled by love and hope, who embarked on an adventure that would change their lives.

Kingsley Amis described Paul Johnson's Intellectuals as a valuable and entertaining Rogues' Gallery of Adventures of the Mind. Now the celebrated journalist and historian offers Creators, a companion volume of essays that examines a host of outstanding and prolific creative spirits. Here are Disney, Picasso, Bach, and Shakespeare; Austen, Twain, and T. S. Eliot; and Drer, Hokusai, Pugin, and Viollet-le-Duc, among many others.Paul Johnson believes that creation cannot be satisfactorily analyzed, but it can be illustrated to bring out its salient characteristics. That is the purpose of this instructive and witty book.

Was the financial collapse caused by free-market capitalism and deregulation run amok, as liberals claimNot on your life, says Peter Schweizer. What we are really witnessing is a massive failure of social engineering by liberals. Architects of Ruin, bestselling author Peter Schweizer describes in riveting detail how a coalition of left-wing activists, liberal politicians, and "do-good capitalists" on Wall Street leveraged government power to achieve their goal of broadening homeownership among minorities and the poor. The results were not only devastating to the economy, but hurt the very people they were supposedly trying to help.The story begins in the 1960s with Saul Alinsky, the legendary Chicago rabble-rouser who trained his acolytes in highly aggressive techniques of community activism. Alinsky's disciples along with race-baiting activists like Jesse Jackson seized on the "redlining" controversy of those years to argue that banks were guilty of racial discrimination. In the 1970s, with the help of liberal senators like Ted Kennedy and William Proxmire, legislation was passed that put bankers under the thumb of local activists. In the Clinton years, a new generation of liberal technocrats came to power in Washington and on Wall Street. Schweizer describes how a powerful phalanx of elite liberals, including Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, Andrew Cuomo, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Janet Reno, Deval Patrick, Henry Cisneros, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Charles Schumer, and many others, aggressively pushed banks to make trillions of dollars in loans to individuals who should never have received them. Meanwhile, Clinton forged a new form of state capitalism in which the big Wall Street financial companies were repeatedly bailed out with their profits intact from a series of costly errors, leading them to take ever larger risks. Both financial policies had profoundly distorting effects. The result was the bursting of twin bubbles in mortgages and mortgage-backed derivatives, in turn leading to a global economic collapse. This tale of liberal "Robin Hood capitalism run wild" has never been told. But more than just a story about the past, it is also an urgent warning about the future. For today, the very same people who planted the seeds of the collapse are back in Washington, tasked with cleaning up the mess and determined to use the crisis they caused as cover for a massive overhaul of the American economic system. These people have learned nothing from their past mistakes and are busy applying the same methods to other sectors of the economy health care, the auto industry, real estate (again!), and above all the promotion of "green" technologies inflating bubbles that are sure to bring about another crisis. Ordinary Americans who foot the bill for the last state-capitalist bubble have reason to be afraid very afraid of the inevitable result.

For centuries the seas around Scotland were notorious for shipwrecks. Mariners' only aids were skill, luck, and single coal-fire light on the east coast, which was usually extinguished by rain. In 1786 the Northern Lighthouse Trust was established, with Robert Stevenson appointed as chief engineer a few years later. In this engrossing book, Bella Bathhurst reveals that the Stevensons not only supervised the construction of the lighthouses under often desperate conditions but also perfected a design of precisely chiseled interlocking granite blocks that would withstand the enormous waves that batter these stone pillars.The same Stevensons also developed the lamps and lenses of the lights themselves, which "sent a gleam across the wave" and prevented countless ships from being lost at sea.While it is the writing of Robert Louis Stevenson that brought fame to the family name, this memorizing account shows how his extraordinary ancestors changed the shape of the Scotland coast-against incredible odds and with remarkable technical ingenuity.

In a work unlike anything she's written before, National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates unveils a poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of her husband of forty-six years and its wrenching, surprising aftermath."My husband died, my life collapsed." On a February morning in 2008, Joyce Carol Oates drove her ailing husband, Raymond Smith, to the emergency room of the Princeton Medical Center where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Both Joyce and Ray expected him to be released in a day or two. But in less than a week, even as Joyce was preparing for his discharge, Ray died from a virulent hospital-acquired infection, and Joyce was suddenly faced totally unprepared with the stunning reality of widowhood.A Widow's Story illuminates one woman's struggle to comprehend a life without the partnership that had sustained and defined her for nearly half a century. As never before, Joyce Carol Oates shares the derangement of denial, the anguish of loss, the disorientation of the survivor amid a nightmare of "death-duties," and the solace of friendship. She writes unflinchingly of the experience of grief the almost unbearable suspense of the hospital vigil, the treacherous "pools" of memory that surround us, the vocabulary of illness, the absurdities of commercialized forms of mourning. Here is a frank acknowledgment of the widow's desperation only gradually yielding to the recognition that "this is my life now."Enlivened by the piercing vision, acute perception, and mordant humor that are the hallmarks of the work of Joyce Carol Oates, this moving tale of life and death, love and grief, offers a candid, never-before-glimpsed view of the acclaimed author and fiercely private woman.

When her once-glamorous and witty novelist-mother got Alzheimer's, Eleanor Cooney moved her from her beloved Connecticut home to California in order to care for her. In tense, searing prose, punctuated with the blackest of humor, Cooney documents the slow erosion of her mother's mind, the powerful bond the two shared, and her own descent into drink and despair.But the coping mechanism that finally serves this eloquent writer best is writing, the ability to bring to vivid life the memories her mother is losing. As her mother gropes in the gathering darkness for a grip on the world she once loved, succeeding only in conjuring sad fantasies of places and times with her late husband, Cooney revisits their true past. Death in Slow Motion becomes the mesmerizing story of Eleanor's actual childhood, straight out of the pages of John Cheever; the daring and vibrant mother she remembers; and a time that no longer exists for either of them.

When legendary Negro League player Buck O'Neil asked Joe Posnanski how he fell in love with baseball, the renowned sports columnist was inspired by the question. He decided to spend the 2005 baseball season touring the country with the ninety-four-year-old O'Neil in hopes of rediscovering the love that first drew them to the game.The Soul of Baseball is as much the story of Buck O'Neil as it is the story of baseball. Driven by a relentless optimism and his two great passions for America's pastime and for jazz, America's music O'Neil played solely for love. In an era when greedy, steroid-enhanced athletes have come to characterize professional ball, Posnanski offers a salve for the damaged spirit: the uplifting life lessons of a truly extraordinary man who never missed an opportunity to enjoy and love life.

A rip-roaring original prequel novel based on Showtime's Award-winning hit series HomelandDamascus, Syria, 2009. Carrie Mathison is leading an operation to capture or kill al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Nazir. But arriving at the compound where he was supposed to be in hiding, her team finds it empty. Carrie is sure that someone is leaking CIA information to the enemy and has betrayed their operation, seriously threatening American interests in the Middle East. To expose the double agent, her boss, Saul Berenson, devises an elaborate ruse that will send her on the most dangerous mission of her life.This twisting tale of international intrigue takes fans deeper into the intense world of high-stakes espionage and explores never-before-seen details of Carrie's life as an operative in the Middle East, Saul's past as an agent in Iran, Brody's dark childhood and captivity, and events involving the trio—and other favorite characters like Dar Adal—that will lead them to the present.

Waking up on Hampstead Heath not far from a crashed squad car, Detective Nick Belsey wants out—out of London and out of the endless complications of his life. When Alexei Devereux, a wealthy hermit, vanishes, leaving behind a suicide note and his Porsche, Belsey discovers an opportunity—a new identity and a fortune—waiting for the taking.Unfortunately, there are others who share the detective's interest in Devereux, including Scotland Yard. A dead rich man with suspicious financial holdings is bound to have some dangerous ties and a few ruthless enemies. Now, Belsey and his clever plan are about to be overshadowed by far more ambitious players with their own brilliant—and deadly—scheme.Combining dark humor, dazzling twists, and a sharp narrative style, The Hollow Man is a tour de force of suspense—and the debut of an extraordinary new writer.

At a swim meet in their quiet New England town, Annie watches as her daughters glide through the water. Her thoughts drift lazily from whether she fed her daughters enough carbs that morning to why her husband doesn't kiss her anymore, to Paul, a swim-team parent, who's taken notice of her and seems to embody everything she's beginning to think her life is missing.When a girl on the team is murdered at a nearby highway rest stop—the same spot where Paul made a gruesome discovery years ago—Annie and her fellow swim-parents find themselves adrift. With a serial killer too close for comfort, they must make choices about where their loyalties lie. And as a series of shocking events unfolds, Annie must discover what it means to follow her intuition—even if love, as well as lives, could be lost.

Handsome Eddie Hartley was once a golden boy poised for the kind of success promised by good looks and a modicum of talent. Now thirty-three, he has abandoned his dream of an acting career and accepted the reality of life as a drama teacher at the boys' prep school he once attended. But when Eddie and his wife, Susan, discover they cannot have children, it's one disappointment too many.Weighted down with debt, Susan's mounting unhappiness, and his own deepening sense of failure, Eddie is confronted with an alluring solution when an old friend-turned-Web-impresario suggests Eddie sell a sex tape he made with an ex-girlfriend, now a wildly popular television star. In an era when any publicity is good publicity, Eddie imagines that the tape won't cause any harm—a mistake that will have disastrous consequences and propel him straight into the glaring spotlight he once thought he craved.A hilariously biting and incisive takedown of our culture's monstrous obsession with fame, Arts & Entertainments is also a poignant and humane portrait of a young man's belated coming-of-age, the complications of love, and the surprising ways in which the most meaningful lives often turn out to be the ones we least expected to lead.

A successful lawyer is pulled back into her troubled family's life in rural Montana in the wake of her sister's death in this mesmerizing, emotionally evocative, and atmospheric literary novelFor a Terrebonne, the home place is the safe haven, the convergence of waters, the place where the beloved dead are as real as the living. . . . The only Terrebonne who made it out, Alma thought she was done with Montana, with its cruel poverty, bleak winters, and stifling ways. Hard work and steely resolve got her to Yale, and now she's an attorney in a high-profile Seattle law firm, too consumed by her career to think about the past. But an unexpected call from the Montana police takes the successful lawyer back to her provincial hometown and pulls her into the family trouble she thought she'd escaped. Her lying, party-loving younger sister, Vicky, is dead. The Billings police say that a very drunk Vicky wandered away from a party and died of exposure after a night in the brutal cold. The strong one who fled Billings and saved herself, Alma returns to make Vicky's funeral arrangements and see to her eleven-year-old niece, Brittany. Once she is back in town, Alma discovers that Vicky's death may not have been an accident. Needing to make her peace with the sister she left behind, Alma sets out to find the truth, an emotional journey that leads her to the home place, her grandmother Maddie's house on the Montana plains that has been the center of the Terrebonne family for generations. She re-encounters Chance, her first love, whose presence reminds her of everything that once was . . . and everything that might be. But before she can face the future, Alma must acknowledge the truth of her own life—the choices that have haunted her and ultimately led her back to this place.The Home Place is a story of secrets that will not lie still, human bonds that will not break, and crippling memories that will not be silenced. It is a story of rural towns and runaways, of tensions corporate and racial, of childhood trauma and adolescent betrayal, and of the guilt that even forgiveness cannot ease. Most of all, it is a story of the place we carry in us always: home.

When life unravels, it's time to knit . . .Sybil has always taken comfort in her passion for knitting, creating beautiful garments stitch by stitch. But her world suddenly unravels when her fiancé ditches her for her identical twin sister at her Star Wars–themed wedding, leaving Sybil at the altar sporting a Princess Leia do. And things go from bad to worse when an incident at work jeopardizes her job.To escape her woes and forget that she'll be alone for Christmas this year, Sybil sets off to visit her friend Cher in Tindledale—a winter wonderland of quaint shops and snowy rooftops. When she arrives in the idyllic town, she can't help feeling like she's in a Hallmark greeting card. She's embraced by welcoming—if eccentric—locals wearing handmade sweaters that remind Sybil of her own creations and her unrealized ambitions of selling them. So when the owner of a vintage-clothing boutique asks her to make an assortment of knits for their display window, she's thrilled. And hoping to heal her broken heart, the hot town doctor has even taken an interest in Sybil.But just when Sybil thinks she's going to have her fairy-tale Christmas after all, an unexpected turn of events threatens to unspool her happily ever after.

"Every story has a narrator. Someone who writes it down after it's all over. Why am I the narrator of this storyI am because it is the story of my life—and of the people I love most. . . ."Harry and Madeleine Winslow have been blessed with talent, money, and charm. Harry is a National Book Award–winning author on the cusp of greatness. Madeleine is a woman of sublime beauty and grace whose elemental goodness and serenity belie a privileged upbringing. Bonded by deep devotion, they share a love that is both envied and admired. The Winslows play host to a coterie of close friends and acolytes eager to bask in their golden radiance, whether they are in their bucolic East Hampton cottage, abroad in Rome thanks to Harry's writing grant, or in their comfortable Manhattan brownstone.One weekend at the start of the summer season, Harry and Maddy, who are in their early forties, meet Claire and cannot help but be enchanted by her winsome youth, quiet intelligence, and disarming naivete. Drawn by the Winslows' inscrutable magnetism, Claire eagerly falls into their welcoming orbit. But over the course of the summer, her reverence transforms into a dangerous desire. By Labor Day, it is no longer enough to remain one of their hangers-on. A story of love, lust, deception, and betrayal as seen through the omniscient eyes of Maddy's childhood friend Walter, a narrator akin to Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, Indiscretion is a juicy, richly textured novel filled with fascinating, true-to-life characters—an irresistibly sensual page-turner that explores having it all and the consequences of wanting more.Indiscretion also marks the debut of a remarkably gifted writer and storyteller whose unique voice bears all the hallmarks of an exciting new literary talent.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist comes a pulse-pounding technological thriller—as ingenious as the works of Michael Crichton and as irresistible as a summer blockbuster—in which one man has three days to prevent the outbreak of World War III and the world's annihilationWhat if you knew the world was going to end?What if no one believed you?Jeremy Stillwater is a genius with computers but not so much with people. Maddeningly self-righteous, he's alienated his girlfriend and infuriated his Silicon Valley financiers and the government agents who saw military promise in his innovation: a program that seemed to be able to predict war.Even Jeremy has begun to doubt the algorithm's capabilities. Then one day his computer has a message for him. War is coming. Three days and counting until massive nuclear conflict.Is it realA malicious jokeA bug?Isolated yet relentless, Jeremy soon uncovers an ancient conspiracy of unspeakable danger. And it will take every bit of Jeremy's stubborn ingenuity to survive another minute, let alone save the world.

Struggling to move on after her husband's death, thirty-five-year-old Anna receives an unexpected phone call from her estranged grandmother, Goldie, summoning her to New York. A demanding woman with a sharp tongue and a devotion to fashion and etiquette, Goldie has not softened in the five years since she and her granddaughter last spoke. Now she wants Anna to drive her to San Francisco to return a collection of exquisite Japanese art to a long-lost friend. Hours of sitting behind the wheel of Goldie's Rolls-Royce soften Anna's attitude toward her grandmother, and as the miles pass, old hurts begin to heal. Yet no matter how close they become, Goldie harbors painful secrets about her youthful days in 1940s San Francisco that she cannot share. But if she truly wants to help her granddaughter find happiness again, she must eventually confront the truths of her life. Moving back and forth across time and told in the voices of both Anna and Goldie, The Secret of the Nightingale Palace is a searing portrait of family, betrayal, sacrifice, and forgiveness and a testament to the enduring power of love.

The sensational tale of the first mixed-race girl introduced to high-society England and raised as a lady...The illegitimate daughter of a captain in the Royal Navy and an enslaved African woman, Dido Belle was raised by her great-uncle, the Earl of Mansfield, one of the most powerful men of the time and a leading opponent of slavery. When the portrait he commissioned of his two wards, Dido and her white cousin, Elizabeth, was unveiled, eighteenth-century England was shocked to see a black woman and white woman depicted as equals. Inspired by the painting, Belle vividly brings to life this extraordinary woman caught between two worlds, and illuminates the great civil rights question of her age: the fight to end slavery.The feature film Belle is produced by Damian Jones (The Iron Lady, The History Boys, Welcome to Sarajevo), written by Misan Sagay, and directed by Amma Asante, and stars the extraordinary Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido Belle, Tom Wilkinson, Sam Reid, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, Tom Felton, Matthew Goode, and Emily Watson.