The mind of Ray Bradbury is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror that stretches from the verdant Irish countryside to the coldest reaches of outer space. Yet all his work is united by one common thread: a vivid and profound understanding of the vast seet of emotionsthat bring strength and mythic resonance to our frail species. Ray Bradbury characters may find themselves anywhere and anywhen. A horrified mother may give birth to a strange blue pyramid. A man may take Abraham Linkoln out of the grave--and meet another who puts him back. An amazing Electrical Grandmother may come to live with a grieving family. An old parrort may have learned over long evenings to imitate the voice of Ernest Hemingway, and become the last link to the last link to the great man. A priest on Mars may confront his fondest dream: to meet the Messiah. Each of these magnificient creations has something to tell us about our own humanity--and all of their fates await you in this new trade edition of twenty-eight classic Bradbury stories and one luscious poem. Travel on an unpredictable and unforgettable literary journey--safe in the hands of the century's great men of imagination.The mind of Ray Bradbury is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror that stretches from the verdant Irish countryside to the coldest reaches of outer space. Yet all his work is united by one common thread: a vivid and profound understanding of the vast set of emotions that bring strength and mythic resonance to our frail species. Ray Bradbury characters may find themselves anywhere and anywhen. A horrified mother may give birth to a strange blue pyramid. A man may take Abraham Lincoln out of the grave--and meet another who puts him back. An amazing Electrical Grandmother may come to live with a grieving family. An old parrot may have learned over long evenings to imitate the voice of Ernest Hemingway, and became the last link to the great man. A priest on Mars may confront his fondest dream: to meet the Messiah. Each of these magnificent creations has something to tell us about our humanity--and all of their fates await you in this new trade edition of twenty-eight classic Bradbury stories and one luscious poem. Travel on an unpredictable and unforgettable literary journey--safe in the hands of one the centurys great men of imagination.

Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River Valley in Alaska, this is the suspenseful, shocking, ultimately inspirational tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine.Though these women have been known to complain more than contribute, they now must either survive on their own or die trying. In simple but vivid detail, Velma Wallis depicts a landscape and way of life that are at once merciless and starkly beautiful. In her old women, she has created two heroines of steely determination whose story of betrayal, friendship, community, and forgiveness "speaks straight to the heart with clarity, sweetness, and wisdom" (Ursula K. Le Guin).

Courtney Farrell is a disaffected, sexually precocious fifteen-year-old. She splits her time between Manhattan, where her father works in publishing, and Los Angeles, where her mother is a still-beautiful Hollywood actress. After a boarding-school crush on a female teacher ends badly, Courtney sets out to learn everything fast. Her first drink is a very dry martini, and her first kiss the beginning of a full-blown love affair with an older man.A riveting coming-of-age story, Chocolates for Breakfast became an international sensation upon its initial publication in 1956, and it still stands out as a shocking and moving account of the way teenagers collide, often disastrously, against love and sex for the first time.

Reunited once more, young Alexander Cold and his best friend, Nadia, embark upon a new adventure, following Alex's frighteningly fearless journalist grandmother Kate to a forbidden kingdom hidden away in the frosty peaks of the Himalayas. They seek the fabled Golden Dragon—a sacred statue and priceless oracle coveted by a greedy and powerful outsider. To prevent the desecration of the holy relic, they will need the help of a sage Buddhist monk, his young royal disciple, and a fierce tribe of Yeti warriors. But even the mystical power of their totemic animal spirits may not be enough to save the teenagers and this remote world from the destructive encroachment of “civilization.”Kingdom of the Golden Dragon is the second book in a remarkable trilogy by internationally acclaimed author Isabel Allende.

The New York Times bestselling author of Labor Day and The Good Daughters returns with a haunting novel of sisterhood, sacrifice, and suspense.I was always looking for excitement, until I found some . . . Summer, 1979. A dry, hot Northern California school vacation stretches before Rachel and her younger sister, Patty—the daughters of a larger-than-life, irresistibly handsome (and chronically unfaithful) detective father and the mother whose heart he broke.When we first meet her, Patty is eleven—a gangly kid who loves basketball and dogs and would do anything for her older sister, Rachel. Rachel is obsessed with making up stories and believes she possesses the gift of knowing what's in the minds of people around her. She has visions, whether she wants to or not. Left to their own devices, the sisters spend their days studying record jackets, concocting elaborate fantasies about the mysterious neighbor who moved in down the street, and playing dangerous games on the mountain that looms behind their house.When young women start turning up dead on the mountain, the girls' father is put in charge of finding the murderer known as the "Sunset Strangler." Watching her father's life slowly unravel as months pass and more women are killed, Rachel embarks on her most dangerous game yet . . . using herself as bait to catch the killer. But rather than cracking the case, the consequences of Rachel's actions will destroy her father's career and alter forever the lives of everyone she loves.Thirty years later, still haunted by the belief that the killer remains at large, Rachel constructs a new strategy to smoke out the Sunset Strangler and vindicate her father—a plan that unexpectedly unearths a long-buried family secret.Loosely inspired by the Trailside Killer case that terrorized Marin County, California, in the late 1970s, After Her is part thriller, part love story. Maynard has created a poignant, suspenseful, and painfully real family saga that traces a young girl's first explorations of sexuality, the loss of innocence, the bond shared by sisters, and the tender but damaged relationship between a girl and her father that endures even beyond the grave.

In Ten Storey Love Song, over the course of a single dynamite paragraph, we follow Bobby the Artist's rise to stardom and horrific drug psychosis, as Johnnie attempts to stop thieving and start pleasing Ellen in bed and forty-year-old truck driver Alan Blunt spends a worrisome amount of time patrolling the grounds of the local primary school. And when Bent Lewis, a famous art dealer and mover-shaker from London, appears, Bobby and friends are quickly swept away on a sweaty adventure of self-discovery, hedonism, and violence.Ten Storey Love Song is a cutting but characteristically charismatic portrait of a deeply dysfunctional, creative, and drug-sodden world, delivered with great beauty and abandon.

While working the weekend night shift, Caroline Mabry, a weary Spokane police detective, encounters a seemingly unstable but charming derelict who tells her, "I'd like to confess." But he insists on writing out his statement in longhand. In the forty-eight hours that follow, the stranger confesses to not just a crime but an entire life—spinning a wry and haunting tale of youth and adulthood, of obsession and revenge, and of two men's intertwined lives.Fiendishly clever and darkly funny, Land of the Blind speaks to the bonds and compromises we make as children—and to the fatal errors we can make at any time.

Jack Foley was busting out of Florida's Glades Prison when he ran head-on into Karen Sisco with a shotgun. Suddenly the world-class gentleman felon was sharing a cramped car trunk with a disarmed federal marshal—whose Chanel suit cost more than the take from Foley's last bank job—and the chemistry was working overtime. Here's a lady Jack could fall for in a big way, if she weren't a dedicated representative of the law that he breaks for a living. And as soon as she escapes, he's already missing her. But there are some seriously bad men and a major score waiting for Jack in Motown. And there's a good chance that when his path crosses Karen's again, she's going to be there for business, not pleasure.

Jojo Harvey is a dead ringer for Jessica Rabbit and the most ferocious literary agent in town. A former NYPD cop, she now lives in London making million-dollar book deals while trying to make partner at her firm . . . all the while sleeping with the boss man.Lily Wright is an author who believes in karma, and is waiting for the sky to fall after stealing her former best friend's man. Though her first book failed to sell, her life turns upside down when her most recent book becomes a huge bestseller. Gemma Hogan is an event designer extraordinaire, but her personal life is nonexistent after losing the love of her life and her best friend in one fell swoop. To make matters worse, her father has just left her mother. While taking care of her mother, she e-mails a close colleague about her frustrations, who in turn forwards the hilarious e-mails to a famous literary agent named Jojo Harvey, who just happens to represent her former friend, now enemy, Lily Wright. . . .Written in the charming and chatty voice that has become Marian Keyes's signature style, this hilarious and heartwarming novel proves there are three sides to every story . . . especially in the world of publishing!

When it comes to sex, what do women wantIn this eye-opening and courageous collection, Erica Jong reveals that every woman has her own answer. Susan Cheever talks about the "excruciating hazards of casual sex," while Gail Collins recounts her Catholic upbringing in Cincinnati and the nuns who passionately forbade her from having "carnal relations." In "Everything Must Go," Jennifer Weiner explores how, in love, the body can play just as big a role as the heart. The octogenarians in Karen Abbott's sharp-eyed piece possess a passion that could give Betty White a run for her money. Molly Jong-Fast reflects on her unconventional upbringing and why a whole generation of young women have rejected "free love" in favor of Bugaboo strollers and Mommy-and-me yoga. Sex, it turns out, can be as fleeting, heavy, mundane, and intense as the rest of life. Indeed, Jong states in her powerful introduction "the truth is—sex is life."

What goes unsaid can sometimes speak the loudest . . .What makes up a familyFor Casey it's sharing a house with her fiancé, Michael, and his three children, whom she intends to nurture more than she ever took care of herself. But Casey's plans have come undone. Michael's silences have grown unfathomable and deep. His daughter Angel seethes as only a teenage girl can, while the wide-eyed youngest, Jewel, quietly takes it all in.Then Michael's son, Dylan, runs off, and the kids' mother, a woman never afraid to say what she thinks, noisily barges into the home. That's when Casey decides that the silences can no longer continue. She must begin speaking the words no one else can say. She'll have to dig up secrets—including her own—uncovering the hurts, and begin the healing that is long overdue. And it all starts with just a few tentative words. . . .

When young Monica Winters Borrero loses her luminous mother in an accident at sea, she is exiled from the tropical paradise that was her home. Grieving and cut off from a life among El Salvador's elite, Monica and her American father move to Connecticut, vowing never to look back.Years later, an intriguing stranger, who has endured a terrible loss of his own, enters Monica's life, bearing an unusual request. Monica is propelled back to her lost world, retracing the shadowy last days of her mother, a marine scientist who had been on the brink of understanding the therapeutic applications of a rare, venomous sea creature. Now, her research is being corrupted by a secret clinic that claims the power to restore consciousness to the comatose.What Monica discovers will shatter the family's delicate truce with the past, and compel everyone involved to challenge their deepest notions of what it means to be alive. Atmospheric, thought-provoking, and timely. The Heiress of Water is a stunning parable of paradise lost and found.

Last year Godwin Honors Hall was draped in black. The university was mourningthe loss of one of its own: Nicole Werner, a blond, beautiful, straight-A sororitysister tragically killed in a car accident that left her boyfriend, who was driving,remarkably—some say suspiciously—unscathed. Although a year has passed, as winter begins and the nights darken, obsession withNicole and her death reignites: She was so pretty. So sweet-tempered. So innocent. Tooyoung to die.Unless she didn’t.Because rumor has it that she’s back.

"This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity, as well as nontraditional grammar, split infinitives, and the odd wank . . . If that's the sort of thing you think you might enjoy, then you have happened upon the perfect story!"Verily speaks Christopher Moore, much beloved scrivener and peerless literary jester, who hath writteneth much that is of grand wit and belly-busting mirth, including such laurelled bestsellers of the Times of Olde Newe Yorke as Lamb, A Dirty Job, and You Suck (no offense). Now he takes on no less than the legendary Bard himself (with the utmost humility and respect) in a twisted and insanely funny tale of a moronic monarch and his deceitful daughters—a rousing story of plots, subplots, counterplots, betrayals, war, revenge, bared bosoms, unbridled lust . . . and a ghost (there's always a bloody ghost), as seen through the eyes of a man wearing a codpiece and bells on his head.FoolA man of infinite jest, Pocket has been Lear's cherished fool for years, from the time the king's grown daughters—selfish, scheming Goneril, sadistic (but erotic-fantasy-grade-hot) Regan, and sweet, loyal Cordelia—were mere girls. So naturally Pocket is at his brainless, elderly liege's side when Lear—at the insidious urging of Edmund, the bastard (in every way imaginable) son of the Earl of Gloucester—demands that his kids swear their undying love and devotion before a collection of assembled guests. Of course Goneril and Regan are only too happy to brownnose Dad. But Cordelia believes that her father's request is kind of . . . well . . . stupid, and her blunt honesty ends up costing her her rightful share of the kingdom and earns her a banishment to boot.Well, now the bangers and mash have really hit the fan. The whole damn country's about to go to hell in a handbasket because of a stubborn old fart's wounded pride. And the only person who can possibly make things right . . . is Pocket, a small and slight clown with a biting sense of humor. He's already managed to sidestep catastrophe (and the vengeful blades of many an offended nobleman) on numerous occasions, using his razor-sharp mind, rapier wit . . . and the equally well-honed daggers he keeps conveniently hidden behind his back. Now he's going to have to do some very fancy maneuvering—cast some spells, incite a few assassinations, start a war or two (the usual stuff)—to get Cordelia back into Daddy Lear's good graces, to derail the fiendish power plays of Cordelia's twisted sisters, to rescue his gigantic, gigantically dim, and always randy friend and apprentice fool, Drool, from repeated beatings . . . and to shag every lusciously shaggable wench who's amenable to shagging along the way.Pocket may be a fool . . . but he's definitely not an idiot.

As the tiny town of Mulberry, Georgia, celebrates its spring Peach Blossom Festival, things are far from peachy for three generations of Pines women. Eighteen-year-old LaShawndra, who wants nothing more out of life than to dance in a music video, has messed up again -- but this time she isn't sticking around to hear about it. Not that her mother seems to care: Sandra is too busy working on her career and romancing a local minister to notice. It's LaShawndra’s grandmother Lily Paine Pines who is out scouring the streets at midnight looking for her granddaughter. But Lily discovers she is not alone. A ghost of a well-known Mulberry pioneer is coming out of the shadows.Over the course of one weekend, these three disparate women, guided by the wisdom of three unexpected spirits, will learn to face the pain of their lives and discover that with reconciliation comes the healing they all desperately seek. You Know Better brilliantly portrays the fissures in modern African American family life to reveal the indestructible soul that bonds us all.

As Egypt's young king is crowned, a vicious killer waits in the shadows. . . . Egypt's next Pharaoh, the young Tutankhamun, is ready to claim his birthright—a vast, powerful, and sophisticated empire. It should be at the height of its glory, but it is troubled by long-lasting foreign wars, public dissent, and internal struggles. With his new wife, Ankhesenamun, the daughter of Nefertiti, Tutankhamun undertakes an audacious plan to consolidate his power and return tolerance and enlightenment to his land. But not everyone wants the ambitious new Pharaoh to succeed, and soon sinister "gifts" begin appearing in the royal palace—evil objects designed to terrify the nineteen-year-old King.Rahotep, the stalwart chief detective of the Thebes division, is summoned to the palace to investigate. As he begins to piece together the clues, he realizes that the mysterious gifts have much in common with a series of sadistic murders plaguing the city. Rahotep's determination to protect the vulnerable King and Queen makes him a target, too, and he is soon enmeshed in a web of intrigue and danger that reaches from the top command of the army to the dark heart of the empire's government. What he discovers will change his life and put everything he loves at risk. In this compelling second novel, set against the dazzling splendor of the golden age of the Pharaohs, Nick Drake takes an imaginative and historically accurate look at one of the most fascinating reigns in ancient history. Drawing on the latest archaeological evidence, he crafts a sophisticated and gripping thriller that explores one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of ancient Egypt—the untimely death of young Tutankhamun.

Trapped in a small, poverty-ridden town in 1933, under pressure from his father to go into the family business, seventeen-year-old Dominic Molise yearns to fulfill his own dreams.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train comes a novel about friendship and the memories that haunt usOn the night of her high school graduation, Kathryn Campbell sits around a bonfire with her four closest friends, including the beautiful but erratic Jennifer. "I'll be fine," Jennifer says, as she walks away from the dying embers and towards the darkness of the woods. She never comes back.Ten years later, Kathryn has tried to build a life for herself, with a marriage and a career as a journalist, but she still feels the conspicuous void of Jennifer's disappearance. When her divorce sends her reeling back to the Maine town where she grew up, she finds herself plunged into a sea of memories. With nothing left to lose, she is determined to answer one simple question: What happened to Jennifer Pelletier?

When a home health attendant, Paulette Williamson, appears at Homicide South in Manhattan, she's introduced to the NYPD's Detective Darlene O'Hara and skeptically reports the confession of a senior citizen struggling with Alzheimer's. Gus Henderson, a former junkie and petty criminal, claims he murdered and buried his former partner-in-crime in a park off Avenue B more than a decade ago, a lowlife who fell off the grid and hasn't been seen since. The city agrees to excavate the alleged scene of the crime, and the police find a body—just not the one they were looking for. The cops unearth the skeleton of a ten-year-old boy, neatly dressed and buried ceremoniously with a comic book, a CD, some pot, and booze. Instead of an easy open-and-shut case, O'Hara is faced with finding the murderer of a child, and the pressure is on the newly promoted detective to prove herself. The trail takes O'Hara from the seediest corners of the city and its cast of misguided players—a coven of preteen potheads in Tompkins Square Park, a sleazy art house photographer in Chelsea—to a retirement community in South Florida. Driving headlong into the dark urban underbelly to find a killer, O'Hara uncovers a tribe of criminals who brazenly prey on the weakest members of the population, and she must stop the cycle before yet another child is lost to the depths of the city.

The passing of the Hungarian prime minister before he could realize his dream of a fascist state has little effect on crime reporter Zsigmond Gordon. Life—and death—go on in the bustling old city, and a late-night tip soon leads him to a crime scene where a young woman lies dead, a Jewish prayer book in her purse. Disturbed by the bizarre circumstances—the corpse of a beautiful, well-groomed, religious victim abandoned in one of Budapest's seedier neighborhoods—Gordon is determined to unravel the mystery of her demise, especially after her shocking identity is revealed. The investigation will lead him deep into the city's dark underbelly—a shadow world of pornographers, crime syndicates, and Communist cells—and to the highest echelons of power, where one of Hungary's most influential executives plans to make an economic killing through his strong political ties to Germany's leaders...if he can somehow keep secret the fact that he was, at one time, Jewish.A gripping and evocative thriller, brimming with suspense and breathtaking political intrigue, Vilmos Kondor's Budapest Noir is a richly atmospheric tale of murder and betrayal from a remarkable new voice in noir detective fiction.

Recounting the story of her life, Oei plunges us into the colorful world of nineteenth-century Edo, in which courtesans rub shoulders with poets, warriors consort with actors, and the arts flourish in an unprecedented moment of creative upheaval. Oei and Hokusai live among writers, novelists, tattoo artists, and prostitutes, evading the spies of the repressive shogunate as they work on Hokusai’s countless paintings and prints. Wielding her brush, rejecting domesticity in favor of dedication to the arts, Oei defies all expectations of womanhood—all but one. A dutiful daughter to the last, she will obey the will of her eccentric father, the man who created her and who, ultimately, will rob her of her place in history.Vivid, daring, and unforgettable, The Printmaker’s Daughter shines fresh light on art, loyalty, and the tender and indelible bond between a father and daughter.