万本电子书0元读

万本电子书0元读

Brickhouse
Brickhouse
Ewing, Rita
¥84.16
Fitness superstar Nona Simms worked hard to make Brickhouse one of the hottest gyms in the city. Now corrupt city politics is coming uptown to Harlem, and Nona's dream is slated for the wrecking ball.Nona's a fighter, though, and she's gathering her friends around her for support against the special interests. However, her handsome business partner, Allen, is weighed down by a shattering secret that could destroy both their futures. Best girlfriend Leila is suffering through the disintegration of her marriage to a New York Knicks superstar. And Nona's being pulled into a web of treachery, deceit, and scandal that stretches into the very highest circles of New York power.Things look hopeless, but help is on the horizon—coming on strong from the last place Nona Simms ever expected to find it . . . and from the last man she ever expected to love.
Raylan
Raylan
Leonard, Elmore
¥84.16
The revered New York Times bestselling author, recognized as “America’s greatest crime writer” (Newsweek), brings back U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, the mesmerizing hero of Pronto, Riding the Rap, and the hit FX series Justified. With the closing of the Harlan County, Kentucky, coal mines, marijuana has become the biggest cash crop in the state. A hundred pounds of it can gross $300,000, but that’s chump change compared to the quarter million a human body can get you—especially when it’s sold off piece by piece. So when Dickie and Coover Crowe, dope-dealing brothers known for sampling their own supply, decide to branch out into the body business, it’s up to U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens to stop them. But Raylan isn’t your average marshal; he’s the laconic, Stetson-wearing, fast-drawing lawman who juggles dozens of cases at a time and always shoots to kill. But by the time Raylan finds out who’s making the cuts, he’s lying naked in a bathtub, with Layla, the cool transplant nurse, about to go for his kidneys.The bad guys are mostly gals this time around: Layla, the nurse who collects kidneys and sells them for ten grand a piece; Carol Conlan, a hard-charging coal-mine executive not above ordering a cohort to shoot point-blank a man who’s standing in her way; and Jackie Nevada, a beautiful sometime college student who can outplay anyone at the poker table and who suddenly finds herself being tracked by a handsome U.S. marshal. Dark and droll, Raylan is pure Elmore Leonard—a page-turner filled with the sparkling dialogue and sly suspense that are the hallmarks of this modern master.
Cash Out
Cash Out
Bardsley, Greg
¥84.16
It's 2008. In three days, family man and Silicon Valley speechwriter Dan Jordan will see his start-up stock vest. He'll cash out with $1.1 million, turn in his frenetic Valley life in for a slower one on the beach with his wife and two children, and finally live the life he's supposed to live. Or so he thinks. Before he can collect his cash and get outta Dodge, all hell breaks loose. Dan is kidnapped by a gang of tiny IT nerds who threaten to get him fired before the options can vest, stalked by a potentially murderous corporate security muscle man, and confronted with the possible disintegration of his marriage, all while his sociopath neighbor, Crazy Larry, threatens to ruin everything. . . .Side-splittingly funny and full of larger-than-life characters, Cash Out is like Office Space as reimagined by the creators of The Hangover—a sly caper gone outrageously, unforgettably awry.
The Grown Ups
The Grown Ups
Antalek, Robin
¥84.16
Spanning over a decade, told in alternating voices, The Grown Ups explores the indelible bonds of friends and family and the connections that form between Sam, Suzie, and Bella as they navigate parents, siblings, and one another on the way to becoming who they really want to be when they grow up.
Crackpot Palace
Crackpot Palace
Ford, Jeffrey
¥84.16
From the unparalleled imagination of award-winning author Jeffrey Ford come twenty short stories (one, "The Wish Head," written expressly for this collection) that boldly redefine the world. Crackpot Palace is a sumptuous feast of the unexpected—an unforgettable journey that will carry readers to amazing places, though at times the locales may seem strangely familiar, almost like home. Whether he's tracking ghostly events on the border of New Jersey's mysterious Pine Barrens or following a well-equipped automaton general into battle, giving a welcome infusion of new blood to the hoary vampire trope or exposing the truth about what really went down on Dr. Moreau's Island of Lost Souls, Jeffrey Ford has opened a door into a dark and fantastic realm where dream and memory become one.
The Average American Marriage
The Average American Marriage
Kultgen, Chad
¥84.16
In the beginning, there was The Average American Male . Maxim called it "pure filth." Even Penthouse called it "appalling." The New York Times called it "the literary love child of Neil LaBute, Judy Blume, and Eminem." Now, Chad Kultgen's unforgettable antihero is back this time as a married man. I can feel something hot twisting and burning in the pit of my stomach. For a fleeting moment I think back to a time when I was with Casey, my girlfriend before Alyna....I tried to initiate something by grabbing her tit and kissing her when we walked through her front door. She turned to me and said something about how our relationship didn't always have to be about sex. I remember how much I wanted to smash something when she said that, how much I wanted to scream in her face that our relationship was only about sex....Relationships between men and women are only about sex. The rest of the sh*t is incidental. Welcome back.
The Illustrated Man
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
¥84.16
You could hear the voices murmuring, small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body. A peerless American storyteller, Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury eighteen startling visions of humankind destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin. In this phantasmagoric sideshow, living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets. Provocative and powerful, Ray Bradbury The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world.
Dust to Dust
Dust to Dust
Busch, Benjamin
¥84.16
Dust to Dust is an extraordinary memoir about ordinary things: life and death, peace and war, the adventures of childhood and the revelations of adulthood. Benjamin Busch a decorated U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer who served two combat tours in Iraq, an actor on The Wire , and the son of celebrated novelist Frederick Busch has crafted a lasting book to stand with the finest work of Tim O'Brien or Annie Dillard. In elemental-themed chapters water, metal, bone, blood Busch weaves together a vivid record of a pastoral childhood in rural New York; Marine training in North Carolina, Ukraine, and California; and deployment during the worst of the war in Iraq, as seen firsthand. But this is much more than a war memoir. Busch writes with great poignancy about the resonance of a boyhood spent exploring rivers and woods, building forts, and testing the limits of safety. Most of all, he brings enormous emotional power to his reflections on mortality: in a helicopter going down; wounded by shrapnel in Ramadi; dealing with the sudden death of friends in combat and of parents back home. Dust to Dust is an unforgettable meditation on life and loss, and how the curious children we were remain alive in us all.
The Cabala and The Woman of Andros
The Cabala and The Woman of Andros
Wilder, Thornton
¥84.16
Featuring an illuminating new foreword by Penelope Niven and a revealing afterword by Tappan Wilder, this reissue of two early books by Thornton Wilder reintroduces the reader to the author's first novel, The Cabala, and to The Woman of Andros, one of the inspirations for his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Our Town.A young American student spends a year in the exotic world of post-World War I Rome. While there, he experiences firsthand the waning days of a secret community (a "cabala") of decaying royalty, a great cardinal of the Roman Church, and an assortment of memorable American ex-pats. The Cabala, a semiautobiographical novel of unforgettable characters and human passions, launched Wilder's career as a celebrated storyteller and dramatist.The Woman of Andros, Wilder's best-selling novel, published in 1930, is set on the obscure Greek island of Brynos before the birth of Christ, and explores Everyman questions of what is precious about life and how we live, love, and die. Eight years later, Wilder would pose the same questions on the stage in a play titled Our Town, also set in an obscure location, this time a village in New Hampshire. The Woman of Andros is celebrated for some of the most beautiful writing in American literature.
Green Shadows, White Whale
Green Shadows, White Whale
Bradbury, Ray
¥84.16
In 1953, the brilliant but terrifying titan of cinema John Huston summons the young writer Ray Bradbury to Ireland. The apprehensive scribe's quest is to capture on paper the fiercest of all literary beasts -- Moby Dick -- in the form of a workable screenplay so the great director can begin filming.But from the moment he sets foot on Irish soil, the author embarks on an unexpected odyssey. Meet congenial IRA terrorists, tippling men of the cloth impish playwrights, and the boyos at Heeber Finn's pub. In a land where myth is reality, poetry is plentiful, and life's misfortunes are always cause for celebration, Green Shadows, White Whale is the grandest tour of Ireland you'll ever experience -- with the irrepressible Ray Bradbury as your enthusiastic guide.
Wendell Black, MD
Wendell Black, MD
Imber, Gerald, M.D.
¥84.16
A New York City police surgeon finds himself in the middle of an international drug-smuggling ring—or is it an even more dangerous conspiracy?After a heart-thumping drop in altitude on a flight from London to New York, NYPD police surgeon Wendell Black is called on to try to save a woman who has gone into cardiac arrest. He's just carrying out his duty, but his aid places him at the center of an international drug-smuggling investigation.As Black, and his English girlfriend, Alice—a knockout beauty and a surgeon to boot—digs deeper into the activities of the drug ring, he begins to suspect that a number of British doctors are involved. And when one of Alice's colleagues is brutally murdered and Alice suddenly disappears, the NYPD starts looking to Black for answers. His search peels away rings of conspiracy that expose a shocking threat to the nation.
A Far Piece to Canaan
A Far Piece to Canaan
Halpern, Sam
¥84.16
Celebrated retired professor Samuel Zelinsky reluctantly leaves New Hampshire after his wife's death to visit a farm in the Kentucky hills where he lived as a child. The son of sharecroppers, Samuel has long since left that life behind—yet now he must reconnect with long-buried memories to fulfill a childhood promise to a friend.In 1945, Sam and his best friend, Fred Mulligan, visit the Blue Hole, a legendary pool on the Kentucky River where the hill people believe an evil force lurks. Along with a couple of neighbor boys, they discover the body of a dog, surrounded by twisted human footprints—and a cave that offers further evidence that something terrible has transpired. Fearing they'll be punished for their trespasses, the boys initiate a series of cover-ups and lies that eventually leads to a community disaster.When the Zelinskys move, Fred and Samuel promise each other that if either calls, the other will come to his aid. But Samuel's failure to keep his promise has lasting consequences he could never have predicted. Now, decades later, he confronts his failures and attempts to redeem himself, finally achieving peace through his late return to Canaan land.
Men in Miami Hotels
Men in Miami Hotels
Smith, Charlie
¥84.16
In Men in Miami Hotels, Smith tells the story of Cot Sims, a listing Miami gangster who returns to Key West aiming to—among other things—save his fool-proof mother from homelessness after a recent hurricane. For love, for cash, and for the hell of it, he snatches a trove of emeralds that his boss, the relentlessly vicious Albertson, keeps hidden on a small island. And then trouble, which has been coiling around him for years like a snake, bites.Cot has forty-eight hours to return the emeralds before items of equal or greater value—namely, the lives of everyone he loves—are repossessed by Albertson and his army of hired gunmen. Fleeing across the Caribbean, Cot blazes a trail of survival, skeltering between the narrowing walls of fate.Charlie Smith has been called a novelist of "appalling brilliance" on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. Critics have praised his work with the fervor of converts. And his prose, as radiant and dynamic as it has ever been, "lands him in the ranks of America's greatest contemporary fiction writers" (Houston Chronicle).
Pretty Little Mistakes
Pretty Little Mistakes
McElhatton, Heather
¥84.16
There are hundreds of lives sown inside Pretty Little Mistakes, Heather McElhatton's singularly spectacular, breathtakingly unique novel that has more than 150 possible endings. You may end up in an opulent mansion or homeless down by the river; happily married with your own corporation or alone and pecked to death by ducks in London; a Zen master in Japan or morbidly obese in a trailer park. Is it destiny or decision that controls our fateYou can't change your past and start over from scratch in real life—but in Pretty Little Mistakes, you can! But be warned, choose wisely.
Sins of the Father
Sins of the Father
Benson, Angela
¥84.16
God asked the biblical Abraham to sacrifice his son. But Abraham Martin's only god is money.Successful media mogul Abraham Martin has great wealth, an elegant wife, Saralyn, and a rebellious son, Isaac. He also has a secret: a second family that no one knows about. Now, after thirty years—driven by the urging of his long dormant conscience—Abraham is determined to do the right thing by finally bringing his illegitimate children into the light...and into the family fold.But beautiful, manipulative Saralyn will never accept the proof of her husband's indiscretions. Isaac, the heir, shaken by his father's revelations, will fight mercilessly when his world is threatened, and may lose everything that matters as a result. And while Abraham's forgotten daughter, Deborah, is open to the undreamed-of possibilities suddenly awaiting her, his son, Michael, cannot forgive the man who cruelly abandoned them to near poverty. And he's driven by only one desire: revenge!Angela Benson's Sins of the Father is a powerful story of a house bitterly divided—a rich, multilayered family saga of betrayal and redemption, rage and compassion, faith, forgiveness, and ultimately, of love.
The Ancient Ship
The Ancient Ship
Zhang, Wei
¥84.16
Originally published in 1987, two years before the Tiananmen Square protests, Zhang Wei's award-winning novel is the story of three generations of the Sui, Zhao, and Li families living in the fictional northern town of Wali during China's troubled postliberation years.Spanning four decades following the creation of the People's Republic in 1949, The Ancient Ship is a bold examination of a society in turmoil, the struggle of oppressed people to control their own fate, and the clash between tradition and modernization. In the course of the narrative, the townspeople of Wali face the moments that have defined China's history during the latter part of the twentieth century: the land reform programs, the famine of 1959-1961, the Great Leap Forward, the Anti-Rightist Campaign, and the Cultural Revolution. Translated into English for the very first time, The Ancient Ship is a revolutionary work of Chinese fiction that speaks to people across the globe.
The Cardboard Universe
The Cardboard Universe
Miller, Christopher
¥84.16
Genius or fraudHack or HemingwayThe life and work of obese, obsessive, logorrheic pulp novelist Phoebus K. Dank have long enflamed bitter controversy—and numerous drunken rants often culminating in vomiting, unconsciousness, or both. In this uproarious novel, Christopher Miller pulls back the curtain on two unforgettable critics—fawning scholar William Boswell (the world's leading Dankian) and his mortal enemy, the murderously snarky Owen Hirt. No stone is left unturned—and no gooey mess unstepped in—in this essential study of Dank's all-too-brief existence and all-too-extensive oeuvre.
Bed Rest
Bed Rest
Bilston, Sarah
¥84.16
In a charming and witty novel in the tradition of Allison Pearson and Sophie Kinsella, Sarah Bilston tells the story of a busy career woman who finds her pregnancy a breeze -- until she's ordered off her feet for complete and total bed rest.Quinn "Q" Boothroyd is a young British lawyer married to an American and living in New York City. She's checked off most of the boxes on her "Modern Woman's List of Things to Do Before Hitting 30," and her busy working life has been relatively painless. But when her doctor tells her she must spend the last three months of her pregnancy lying in bed, Q is thrown into a tailspin. Initially bored and frustrated, Q soon fills her days by trying to reconnect with her workaholic husband, provide legal advice for her sweet Greek neighbor, forge new emotional bonds with her mother and sisters, and figure out who will keep her stocked up in cookies and sandwiches.Q experiences adventures on the couch she never would have encountered in the law firm and learns a lot about herself and what she wants out of life -- above all, about the little one growing inside her.
Kockroach
Kockroach
Knox, Tyler
¥84.16
It is the mid-1950s, and Kockroach, perfectly content with his life infesting a fleabag hotel off Times Square, awakens to discover that somehow he's been transformed into, of all things, a human. A tragic turn of events, yes, but cockroaches are awesome coping machines, so Kockroach copes. Step by step, he learns the ways of man—how to walk, how to talk, and how to wear a jaunty brown fedora. Led by his primitive desires and insectile amorality, he navigates through the bizarre human realms of crime, business, politics, and sex. Will he find success or be squashed flat from aboveWill he change humanity, or will humanity change him?
Tumbling After
Tumbling After
Witcover, Paul
¥84.16
Jack and Jilly Doone are twelve-year-old twins bound by blood and forbidden secrets. Running wild through endless August afternoons, they explore the tributaries of Chesapeake Bay, spinning fantasies and sneaking cigarettes. But when a near-drowning awakens a strange power in Jack, the line between fantasy and reality blurs. . . .Kestrel is an airie, one of five mutant races born in the conflict known as the Viral Wars. With one companion from each of the other races—a delph, a merm, a mander, and a boggle—he sets out to battle human enemies sworn to exterminate mutantkind.Now the destinies of two worlds move toward a shocking convergence . . . and a climax of violent transfiguration.
Condor
Condor
Nielsen, John
¥84.16
The California condor has been described as a bird "with one wing in the grave."Flying on wings nearly ten feet wide from tip to tip, these birds thrived on the carcasses of animals like woolly mammoths. Then, as humans began dramatically reshaping North America, the continent's largest flying land bird started disappearing. By the beginning of the twentieth century, extinction seemed inevitable.But small groups of passionate individuals refused to allow the condor to fade away, even as they fought over how and why the bird was to be saved. Scientists, farmers, developers, bird lovers, and government bureaucrats argued bitterly and often, in the process injuring one another and the species they were trying to save. In the late 1980s, the federal government made a wrenching decision -- the last remaining wild condors would be caught and taken to a pair of zoos, where they would be encouraged to breed with other captive condors. Livid critics called the plan a recipe for extinction. After the zoo-based populations soared, the condors were released in the mountains of south-central California, and then into the Grand Canyon, Big Sur, and Baja California. Today the giant birds are nowhere near extinct.The giant bird with "one wing in the grave" appears to be recovering, even as the wildlands it needs keep disappearing. But the story of this bird is more than the story of a vulture with a giant wingspan -- it is also the story of a wild and giant state that has become crowded and small, and of the behind-the-scenes dramas that have shaped the environmental movement. As told by John Nielsen, an environmental journalist and a native Californian, this is a fascinating tale of survival.