From the author of Abhorsen comes classic fantasy set in a world dominated by the Ragwitch, a being of sinister, destructive intent. Quiet, easygoing Paul never expected to be cast in the role of savior. But his strong-willed sister, Julia, has come under the thrall of the Ragwitch, and Paul himself is drawn not only into the creature's world but into a battle for Julia's very existence -- as well as his own.

Hailed as "the most gifted American novelist of his generation" (Boston Globe), David Payne introduces us to Ransom Hill, a big-hearted, wild-man lead singer of a legendary indie rock group, who has come to South Carolina determined to save his marriage, his family, and himself. But back at Wando Passo, his wife's inherited family estate, things don't proceed according to plan. There's another man in the picture, and Ran's discovery of a mysterious relic from slave times transports him—and the reader—back into the story of another romantic triangle at Wando Passo that erupted violently at the height of the Civil War. Will the present repeat the past?Filled with fast-paced adventure, lyrical writing, wicked humor, and unforgettable characters, David Payne's Back to Wando Passo propels the two love stories, linked by place through time, to a simultaneous crescendo of betrayal, revenge, and redemption.

AS the twentieth century breathes its very last, with Britpop at its zenith, twenty-seven-year-old A&R man Steven Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through London’s music industry. Blithely crisscrossing the globe in search of the next megahit—fueled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine—Stelfox freely indulges in an unending orgy of self-gratification. But the industry is changing fast and the hits are drying up, and the only way he’s going to salvage his sagging career is by taking the idea of “cutthroat” to murderous new levels.

Cameisha Douglass has it all -- a sprawling home in a posh neighborhood, a fancy car, three healthy children, and a husband, Fashad, who is devoted to her. Her biggest worry is catching her daytime soap operas before the kids come home from school and her husband returns from work, "businesses" that everyone knows are mere fronts through which he launders his drug-dealing money. But as the emotional and sexual secrets of her family come to the surface, she can no longer deny that her life is not all that it seems. While family members point fingers at one another, the real threat may come from the outside, specifically from Smokey, a mixed-race twenty-year-old high school dropout and would-be rapper whose issues with sexual and racial identity fuel his inner rage.Written by a daring young author with a compelling voice, 5 Minutes and 42 Seconds is a fast-paced and edgy thriller that explores the questions of identity and sexuality with refreshing vigor.

Franny is thrilled when she's accepted by the Allbright Academy, an elite private boarding school designed to train leaders. But she knows she's not as smart as the other kids there—or as beautiful, accomplished, confident, or mature. The fact is, the Allbright students—from their shining teeth and flawless complexions to their sky-high test scores and long lists of honors—are absolutely perfect. Then the Allbright magic begins to rub off on Franny, too. The question is: Is this a good thing?Can Franny and her friends Cal, Brooklyn, and Prescott un-ravel the Allbright Academy's secret, or will they, too, succumb to its eerie perfection?

Between your full-length mirror and high-school biology class, you probably think you know a lot about the human body. While it's true that we live in an age when we're as obsessed with our bodies as we are with celebrity hairstyles, the reality is that most of us know very little about what chugs, churns, and thumps throughout this miraculous, scientific, and artistic system of anatomy. Yes, you've owned your skin-covered shell for decades, but you probably know more about your cell-phone plan than you do about your own body. When it comes to your longevity and quality of life, understanding your internal systems gives you the power, authority, and ability to live a healthier, younger, and better life.The flagship book of the YOU series, which spawned three subsequent New York Times bestsellers, has now been expanded and updated to make you understand your body even better—perhaps too well.YOU: The Owner's Manual, Updated and Expanded Edition challenges your preconceived notions about how the human body works and ages, then takes you on a tour through all of the highways, back roads, and landmarks inside of you. In this update, the doctors have included a new chapter on the liver and pancreas, which will finally demystify the most exotic parts of our bodies; a new workout chapter that will finally get you moving; and nearly one hundred Q&As asked by you, the reader. It has also been updated throughout to give you up-to-the-minute know-how to not just understand what to do to keep fit, but also why and how. The book opens with a quiz, "How Well Do You Know Your Body?," which sets the stage for the following chapters. After taking the quiz, you'll learn about all of your blood-pumping, food-digesting, and keys-remembering systems and organs, including the heart, brain, lungs, immune system, bones, and sensory organs. Each chapter also contains common myths of the particular body part that the authors will debunk.Just as important, you'll get the facts and advice you need to keep your body running long and strong. You'll find out how diseases start and how they affect your body—as well as advice on how to prevent and beat conditions that threaten your quality of life. Complete with exercise tips, nutritional guidelines, simple lifestyle changes, and alternative approaches, YOU: The Owner's Manual, Updated and Expanded Edition gives you an easy, comprehensive, and life-changing how-to plan for fending off the gremlins of aging. To top it off, this new edition includes even more great-tasting and calorie-saving recipes as part of the Owner's Manual Diet—an eating plan that is designed with only one goal in mind: to help you live a younger life.Welcome to your body. Why don't you come on in and take a look around?

Between your full-length mirror and high-school biology class, you probably think you know a lot about the human body. While it's true that we live in an age when we're as obsessed with our bodies as we are with celebrity hairstyles, the reality is that most of us know very little about what chugs, churns, and thumps throughout this miraculous, scientific, and artistic system of anatomy. Yes, you've owned your skin-covered shell for decades, but you probably know more about your cell-phone plan than you do about your own body. When it comes to your longevity and quality of life, understanding your internal systems gives you the power, authority, and ability to live a healthier, younger, and better life.The flagship book of the YOU series, which spawned three subsequent New York Times bestsellers, has now been expanded and updated to make you understand your body even better—perhaps too well.YOU: The Owner's Manual, Updated and Expanded Edition challenges your preconceived notions about how the human body works and ages, then takes you on a tour through all of the highways, back roads, and landmarks inside of you. In this update, the doctors have included a new chapter on the liver and pancreas, which will finally demystify the most exotic parts of our bodies; a new workout chapter that will finally get you moving; and nearly one hundred Q&As asked by you, the reader. It has also been updated throughout to give you up-to-the-minute know-how to not just understand what to do to keep fit, but also why and how. The book opens with a quiz, "How Well Do You Know Your Body?," which sets the stage for the following chapters. After taking the quiz, you'll learn about all of your blood-pumping, food-digesting, and keys-remembering systems and organs, including the heart, brain, lungs, immune system, bones, and sensory organs. Each chapter also contains common myths of the particular body part that the authors will debunk.Just as important, you'll get the facts and advice you need to keep your body running long and strong. You'll find out how diseases start and how they affect your body—as well as advice on how to prevent and beat conditions that threaten your quality of life. Complete with exercise tips, nutritional guidelines, simple lifestyle changes, and alternative approaches, YOU: The Owner's Manual, Updated and Expanded Edition gives you an easy, comprehensive, and life-changing how-to plan for fending off the gremlins of aging. To top it off, this new edition includes even more great-tasting and calorie-saving recipes as part of the Owner's Manual Diet—an eating plan that is designed with only one goal in mind: to help you live a younger life.Welcome to your body. Why don't you come on in and take a look around?

Follow world-renowned cardiologist Valentín Fuster's essential recommendations to a healthier heart and a longer life!Cardiovascular disease affects, and often cuts short, millions of lives every year—and very few doctors have had as much success as Dr. Valentín Fuster in treating this widespread scourge. For years, U.S. presidents and world leaders have sought Dr. Fuster's expertise and advice—and now he offers it to a wide audience.Dr. Fuster knows it isn't easy putting your health first—to reach and maintain an ideal weight, to quit smoking, and to conquer stress and depression . . . all the behaviors and alterations necessary to keep cardiovascular disease at bay. In The Heart Manual, the legendary physician gets to the core of many of today's most important health issues, and offers solid, easy-to-follow tips and advice on how to better the quality of your life and transform cardiovascular disease into a manageable ailment.

Clive Barker, author of The Thief of Always, delivers an epic battle filled with fantasy and adventure that readers won't want to put down!Candy Quackenbush, her allies, and her enemies are back in Abarat: Absolute Midnight, the third book in Clive Barker's New York Times bestselling Abarat series."The waiting is over. Tomorrow there will be no dawn. Only midnight, absolute and eternal." Mater Motley, the Old Mother of Darkness herself—following the events of Abarat and Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War—has crafted a scheme that may destroy the Abarat, a vast archipelago where every hour is an island in one eternal day.When Candy discovers Mater Motley's secret plot, she realizes that only she can bring an end to the destruction. Only she can stop the complete darkness threatening to abolish all hope and happiness from the Abarat.

While taking an evening stroll through one of London's most impoverished districts, author Bram Stoker spies a maddeningly familiar figure hurrying through the shadows. Little does he know that, only a few steps away, a vicious killer has claimed his first victim, a local prostitute. The crime spree of the century has begun—and the hapless writer is the prime suspect. Now, to clear his name, Stoker must enlist the aid of illustrious friends—including Walt Whitman, the wildly popular novelist Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine, and Lady Jane Wilde, mother of the most notorious literary notable of the day—to hunt down the fiend who is taunting and terrorizing London and calling himself Jack the Ripper.

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton travel from Boston to the North Carolina mountains where they plan to create a timber empire. Although George has already lived in the camp long enough to father an illegitimate child, Serena is new to the mountains—but she soon shows herself to be the equal of any man, overseeing crews, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving her husband's life in the wilderness. Together this lord and lady of the woodlands ruthlessly kill or vanquish all who fall out of favor. Yet when Serena learns that she will never bear a child, she sets out to murder the son George fathered without her. Mother and child begin a struggle for their lives, and when Serena suspects George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons' intense, passionate marriage starts to unravel as the story moves toward its shocking reckoning.Rash's masterful balance of violence and beauty yields a riveting novel that, at its core, tells of love both honored and betrayed.

Award-winning food critic Steven A. Shaw (a.k.a. "The Fat Guy") can get a last-minute dinner reservation at the most popular hot spot in town. He knows how that flawless piece of fish reached your plate. He can read between the lines of a restaurant review, and he knows the secrets of why some restaurants succeed and others fail. Now he shares his insider's expertise with food lovers everywhere.But Turning the Tables is much more than an invaluable how-to guide to eating out. Written with style and humor, it's an in-depth exploration of the restaurant world -- a celebration of the incredibly intricate workings of professional kitchens and dining rooms. It is a delectable feast from a uniquely down-to-earth gourmet who has crisscrossed North America in search of culinary knowledge at every level of the food chain -- from five-star temples of haute cuisine to barbecue joints and hot dog stands -- and who has never been afraid to get his hands greasy on the other side of the swinging kitchen door.

Outside San Francisco, a sting of NGI's--violent sociopaths found not guilty by reason of insanity--have been sent back into society, and, one by one, mysteriously disappeared....Beautiful psychologist Alison Chapley wants to know why and sets off on a search for answers that lures her and her former lover, medical examiner Carroll Monks, into a menacing and increasingly macabre dance with a brilliant psychopath known only as Naia....Naia's perverse and carefully chosen clues--plaster masks, a snuff videotape, a deadly cobra--draw Alison into a psychological seduction she's powerless to resist. Running out of time, Monks's only chance to save Alison is to outwit this twisted mastermind in a deranged and deadly game of cat-and-mouse.

Just out of prison after serving time on a drug charge, Roper Rackard comes across a woman's body while mowing the tall grass at the far end of his new boss's property, and although he is innocent of her death, Roper panics. Terrified that he will be charged with murdering a white woman and sent back to jail, he decides to hide the body where it won't be found. As days and then weeks pass, and the search for the missing woman continues, Roper begins to doubt himself. Did he do the right thingWhy didn't he call for helpWill anybody believe he is innocent and, most important, how can he possibly come forward now?

The morning after the aged Ute shaman receives a perplexing visits from a silent, disheveled matukach "magician," daisy's neighbor Nathan McFain discovers something astonishing buried in the dirt on his foundering Colorado dude ranch: the bones of gargantuan beast from a prehistoric age. It is a find of enormous scientific importance that attracts the attention of a wide variety of individual: noted paleontologist Moses Silver and his archaeologist daughter Delia; pillars of the scientific community Robert Newton and Cordell York; an Arkansas sharpie named Flye, an overly interested local antiques dealer.. and Charlie Moon of the Southern Ute Police Department. At the McFain spread primarily to keep an eye on the disreputable Flye, Moon is curious about the strange old bones ....and wary as well. For things this ancient and rare have been known to inspire evil deeds in the past, including avarice, mendacity, and murder. And when one of the prime players in this timeless drama vanishes without a trace, Charlie worries that his greatest fears have been realized. But while Charlie investigates the unexplained disappearance --and a very suspicious death that follows soon after--using rational and accepted police methods, his aunt Daisy is being drawn by forces preternatural into a grimly related mystery. For craven murder is not the exclusive domain of contemporary Man--and a cry for justice from the past has reached Daisy Perika and tow extraordinary young girls in her care, ensnaring them all in something old, dark, and dangerous.

Let's go crazy!Successful Claudia Barrett seems to be doing it all right. She's a vice president at her firm, with an engagement ring on her finger from the man who's loved her since high school. So what if she's been wearing it for five years -- and her classic, expensive, dull everyday outfits make her look like someone fatally allergic to a good time?What exactly is wrong with the girl?She's bored, for one thing. She's thirty years old and in a rut -- and best friend, Pam, thinks it's time Claudia got her freak on. It's time to inject a little action, adventure, and good old-fashioned lust into this sister's life. But practicing what Pam is preaching and going buck wild could have some serious consequences, especially when tall, dark, and dangerous Cody is added to the mix.

Michael Jordan was a late bloomer.Cut from the Varsity basketball team in high school when he first tried out, Michael nonetheless became the best basketball player that ever lived—Rare Air Jordan.The true story of how Michael Jordan achieved this amazing level of success as a basketball player—and as the high king of commercial endorsements—underscores one of the new roles of athletes in our society today.Here's a fascinating look at both the evolution of basketball and Michael Jordan's stunning climb to the peak of his sport, and his season in minor league baseball.

Dr. Michael F. Roizen has empowered thousands of Americans to take control of their own destinies. HowHis best-selling books, RealAge?, The RealAgeMakeover, and YOU: The Owner's Manual, have helped people reverse their chronological aging by ten, fifteen, and up to twenty-nine years by revealing simple lifestyle changes that have profound effects that control their genes -- and thus control their health and the aging process. Chances are you picked up this book because you, too, want to be healthier and younger. The RealAgeWorkout explains the importance of gradually phasing exercise into your everyday routine, because even the smallest changes in behavior can make you feel, look, and be younger. No matter how busy your schedule, Dr. Michael Roizen will show you how to gain the maximum age-reduction benefits from a minimum amount of time and effort. Before you take your first step, The RealAgeWorkout offers a series of calculations that factor in age, genetics, and lifestyle so you can determine your overall status of health and create a program to help you plan and execute your goals. The RealAgeWorkout then begins with a simple, yet life-changing premise -- just by walking 30 minutes a day, every day, you can roll back the years, significantly improve the status of your overall health, and have more energy to work and do the things you love. After you've adjusted to this change in your lifestyle, The RealAgeWorkout will guide you through a series of training phases during which you will steadily develop your foundation muscles and eventually add a stamina-building program to help you maintain improved health. You will learn how to lift weights safely and effectively through step-by-step instructions with photographs and easy-to-understand explanations. Additionally, there are charts that help you determine the RealAge effect -- the number of biological years younger you become with each change you make. Along the way, The RealAgeWorkout dis-cusses common myths, addresses frequently asked questions pertaining to age and lifestyle choices, and offers tips to actually enjoy, yes, even love, exercise. So get ready to achieve optimal health and be as young as you can be!

Louie Banks has it made.He's got a starting spot on the football team, good friends, and a smart, beautiful girlfriend who loves him as much as he loves her.Early in the fall, he sees all his ideas of fair play go up in smoke; by spring, what he cares about most has been destroyed. How can Louie keep going when he's lost everything?

Hank and his wife, Sarah, agree to write a screenplay, and encounter the strange world of the movie industry.

Hot Water Music is a collection of short stories by Charles Bukowski, published in 1983. The collection deals largely with: drinking, women, gambling, and writing. It is an important collection that establishes Bukowski's minimalist style and his thematic oeuvre.