A dread darkness is descending upon a great land called Midkemia—a powerful and malevolent race of monsters that has slipped through a hole in the dimensions. And two unlikely young heroes—a bastard heir denied his birthright and an irrepressible scoundrel with a penchant for thievery—must take up arms in the struggle to protect their besieged world...two friends chosen by Destiny to stand at the fore of the battle that is to come against the gargantuan reptile army of the terrible Emerald Queen.

The impact of four-year-old Spencer's death has rocked the Carpenter family. For Lainie, the loss of her son is unbearable, and now both her marriage and her very sanity are threatened. Her guitar-obsessed, slacker brother Russell isn't doing very well either, and his own love relationship is rapidly coming undone. Then there's Bop, her fierce and crusty 80-year-old grandfather. When he falls in love with a retired stripper, their earthy romance touches each of the Carpenters' lives in unexpected ways.

It is 1810, and in Napoleon's determination to conquer Portugal—and push the British back to the sea—he sends his largest army yet across the Spanish frontier. But between the Portuguese border and Napoleon's seemingly certain victory are twoobstacles—a wasted land, stripped of food by Wellington's orders, and Captain Richard Sharpe.But Sharpe is in trouble. The captain of the Light Company is threatened from inside and out: First by an incompetent British officer, who by virtue of family connections is temporarily given Sharpe's command. An even greater danger is posed by two corrupt Portuguese brothers—Major Ferreira, a high-ranking officer in the army of Portugal, and his brother, nicknamed "Ferragus" (after a legen-dary Portuguese giant), who makes no claims to respectability, preferring instead to rule by crude physical strength and pure intimidation. Together the brothers have developed a devious plot to ingratiate themselves with the French invaders who are threatening to become Portugal's new rulers.Sharpe's interference in the first stage of their plan earns the undying enmity of the brothers. Ferragus vows revenge and plots a merciless trap that seems certain to kill Sharpe and his intimates—battle-tested ally Sergeant Harper, the Portuguese officer Jorge Vicente, and a prickly but lovely English governess. As the city of Coimbra is burned and pillaged, Sharpe and his companions plot a daring escape, ensuring that Ferragus will follow on toward Lisbon, into the jaws of a snare laid by Wellington—the massive lines of Torres Vedras, a daring and ingenious last stand against the invaders. There, beneath the British guns, Sharpe is reunited with his shattered but grateful company, and meets his enemies in a thrilling and decisive fight.Sharpe's Escape emphatically reaffirms Bernard Cornwell's status as "perhaps the greatest writer of historical adventure novels today" (Washington Post); its climactic battle scenes and evocative re-creation of history sweep the reader off the page and into the action and drama of nineteenth-century warfare.

Lieutenant Richard Sharpe finds himself fighting the ruthless armies of Napoleon Bonaparte as they try to bring the whole of the Iberian Peninsula under their control. Napoleon is advancing fast through northern Portugal, and no one knows whether the small contingent of British troops stationed in Lisbon will stay to fight or sail back to England. Sharpe, however, does not have a choice: He and his squad of riflemen are on the lookout for the missing daughter of an English wine shipper when the French onslaught begins and the city of Oporto becomes a setting for carnage and disaster.Stranded behind enemy lines, Sharpe returns to his mission to find Kate Savage. Sharpe's position on enemy grounds is precarious, and his search is further complicated by a mysterious and threatening Englishman, Colonel Christopher, who has his own ideas on how the French can be driven from Portugal.

Allison Holloway may be one of the last holdouts: a true reality TV junkie. (Hey, there's no shame in admitting you enjoy watching the Donald say "You're fired!" for the millionth time.) But when her boss signs up their interior design firm for Kamikaze Makeover, Allison knows things are never going to be the same again. Dozens of cameras are set to tape every embarrassing moment as two teams compete for $3 million by executing a bold design concept using unorthodox materials (sex toys, anyone?). As if that wasn't bad enough, a hunky producer tries to seduce Allison with fine champagne and limo rides, while an equally hunky Dave wants to introduce her to the finer things in his life like beer and basketball games, and a piranhalike press hounds her day and night -- and let's not forget the vibrator wall art. Will Allison ever get her life backWill she finally find her prince after kissing so many frogsJoin Allison as she fights back against the lies, the double-dealing, and the backstabbing to prove that she's a survivor even a gooey round of pudding wrestling can't defeat.

As American involvement in WW II grew imminent, President Roosevelt authorized the establishment of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of both the CIA and military Special Operations Forces. Using military cover OSS began building a clandestine capability to combat the Axis powers, in which saboteurs, guerillas, commandos, spies and counterintelligence agents worked behind enemy lines. Captain James Cantrell, a former Chicago homicide detective, is the leader of a secret intelligence team for OSS. He is charged with protecting Operation Overlord, the top–secret Allied plans for invading France, and with ferreting out Nazi spies who are desperately attempting to uncover these secrets. With time running out before D–Day, Cantrell must stop a cunning––and seductive––female Gestapo agent operating in London from delivering stolen Overlord information in time for Hitler to reinforce defenses at Normandy. The chase leads him through bomb ravaged London streets and across the English Channel only hours behind his prey. Parachuting into France behind enemy lines only days before the scheduled D–Day landings, his orders are to assassinate her before she reports to her contact on the French mainland. The fate of WW II hangs in the balance.

Hailed by Utne Reader as "a visionary" and the San Francisco Chronicle as "the X-rated intellectual," Susie Bright is indisputably the sexpert of our times. Now, in a frank and intimate look at our own erotic experience, she delves into the most personal aspects of sex and shows us how our sexual passion can be a source of creativity and inspiration. By her own example and insight, she helps us to discover our own erotic story and sexual philosophy. How do talking, reading, and writing about sex affect your actual sex life What are the real differences between men's and women's sense of the eroticWhy is it so threatening to consciously address sexual desire in the first placeIs there a line to be drawn in erotic creativity--can you go too farIs the best erotic expression soulfulHow can articulate erotic expression make us better lovers and, more important, better peopleBright concludes with an "erotic manifesto" that is a call for everyone to reclaim sexuality, cast off sexual shame, overcome repression, and become true sexual beings. She offers up "rules to live by," which include debunking your own fantasy life, appreciating the simplest erotic gesture, and taking inspiration from everyone but instruction from no one. Bright's work celebrates the joy of sexual creativity--and the very uniqueness of each individual's sense of the erotic. Susie Bright is the author and editor of more than a dozen books, including The Best American Erotica series, the first three editions of Herotica, Sexwise, and The Sexual State of the Union. She has written for Esquire, Playboy, Village Voice, New York Times Book Review, and is a regular columnist for the on-line magazine Salon. She lectures and performs at theaters and universities nationwide and currently lives in Northern California. How do you really feel about sex"I want to cut through all the labels and politics, and reveal what I've learned about sex - what has been transformational for me as a lover, a parent, a daughter, and an artist. I want to argue that sexuality is the soul of the creative process, and that erotic expression of any kind is a personal revolution." -- from Full Exposure Bestselling author and erotic pioneer Susie Bright boldly crosses our culture's most private boundary--our personal eroticism--and reveals the ways in which individual sexual expression has the power to inspire, challenge, and transform all aspects of our lives. Bright explores some of the most complex questions about sexuality today, including: how our emotional and sexual lives intertwine, how we can come clean about our true desire, and what sexual expression teaches us about our bodies. She offers an erotic manifesto of seventeen straightforward guidelines for gaining erotic freedom.

It's a tough life for witch Rachel Morgan, sexy, independent bounty hunter, prowling the darkest shadows of downtown Cincinnati for criminal creatures of the night.She can handle the leather-clad vamps and even tangle with a cunning demon or two. But a serial killer who feeds on the experts in the most dangerous kind of black magic is definitely pressing the limits.Confronting an ancient, implacable evil is more than just child's play -- and this time, Rachel will be lucky to escape with her very soul.

In 1936 the Schwarts, an immigrant family desperate to escape Nazi Germany, settle in a small town in upstate New York, where the father, a former high school teacher, is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. After local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty result in unspeakable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca, begins her astonishing pilgrimage into America, an odyssey of erotic risk and imaginative daring, ingenious self-invention, and, in the end, a bittersweet—but very "American"—triumph. "You are born here, they will not hurt you"—so the gravedigger has predicted for his daughter, which will turn out to be true. In The Gravedigger's Daughter, Oates has created a masterpiece of domestic yet mythic realism, at once emotionally engaging and intellectually provocative: an intimately observed testimony to the resilience of the individual to set beside such predecessors as The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys.

Two brothers, as different as night and day: one, charming and ruthless, buys his way into Harvard, Wall Street, and high society; the other brother remains by his mother's side and makes his way to the top without the influence of money or prestige.Raised in separate worlds, these brothers are bound by a bitter rivalry for riches and power, but mostly, for the exciting, wildly captivating woman they fight all their lives to possess, a woman whose passion for one destroys her love for the other.Their story consumes an American century, spanning decades of splendor, struggle, upheaval, and war. It's an absorbing saga of innocent dreams and green desire corrupted by gilded temptation.

Nora and Blanche are conjoined twins. Nora is strong, funny, and deeply independent, thirsting for love and adventure. Blanche, by contrast, has been asleep for twenty years. Sick of carrying her sister's dead weight, Nora wants her other half gone for good—a desire that takes her from San Francisco to London in search of the Unity Foundation, a mysterious organization that promises to make two one. But once in England, Nora's past begins to surface in surprising and disturbing ways, pushing her to the brink of insanity and forcing her to question her own—and Blanche's—grip on the truth.

One of the most renowned figures in science fiction, C.J. Cherryh has been enthralling audiences for nearly thirty years with rich and complex novels. Now at the peak of her career, this three-time Hugo Award winner launches her most ambitious work in decades, Hammerfall, part of a far-ranging series, The Gene Wars, set in an entirely new universe scarred by the most vicious of future weaponry, nanotechnology. In this brilliant novel -- possibly Cherryh's masterwork -- the fate of billions has come down to a confrontation between two profoundly alien cultures on a single desert planet."The mad shall be searched out and given to the Ila's messengers. No man shall conceal madness in his wife, or his son, or his daughter, or his father. Every one must be delivered up." -- The Book of the Ila's Au'itMarak has suffered the madness his entire life. He is a prince and warrior, strong and shrewd and expert in the ways of the desert covering his planet. In the service of his father, he has dedicated his life to overthrowing the Ila, the mysterious eternal dictator of his world. For years he has successfully hidden the visions that plague him -- voices pulling him eastward, calling Marak, Marak, Marak, amid mind-twisting visions of a silver tower. But when his secret is discovered, Marak is betrayed by his own father and forced to march in an endless caravan with the rest of his world's madmen to the Ila's city of Oburan.Instead of death, Marak finds in Oburan his destiny, and the promise of life -- if he can survive what is surely a suicidal mission. The Ila wants him to discover the source of the voices and visions that afflict the mad. Despite the danger sof the hostile desert, tensions within the caravan, and his own excruciating doubts, Marak miraculously reaches his goal -- only to be given another, even more impossible mission by the strange people in the towers.According to these beings who look like him yet act differently than anyone he has ever known, Marak has a slim chance to save his world's people from the wrath of Ila's enemies. But to do so, he must convince them all -- warring tribes, villagers, priests, young and old, as well as the Ila herself -- to follow him on an epic trek across the burning desert before the hammer of the Ila's foes falls from the heavens above.Written with deceptive simplicity and lyricism, this riveting, fast-paced epic of war, love, and survival in a brave new world marks a major achievement from the masterful C.J. Cherryh.

There's no peace for Mason Hawke from the ghosts of his past. A drifter and a loner, he's not looking for trouble when he rides into Wyoming Territory –– but it's waiting for him nonetheless. Coming to the rescue of a wealthy landowner's daughter who was kidnapped by a pair of inept outlaws, Hawke finds himself an unlikely hero in a town called Green River. But his unsought celebrity has earned him some powerful enemies, including a land–hungry lady with a crooked official in her pocket and a ruthless killer on a leash. Justice, it seems, is an illusion in this place where fraud and fortune hunting dance with cold–blooded murder. But all that is about to change in a brutal hail of gunfire now that Hawke has come to play.

"Anellia" is a young student who, though gifted with a penetrating intelligence, is drastically inclined to obsession. Funny, mordant, and compulsive, she falls passionately in love with a brilliant yet elusive black philosophy student. But she is tested most severely by a figure out of her past she'd long believed dead.Astonishingly intimate and unsparing, and pitiless in exposing the follies of the time, I'll Take You There is a dramatic revelation of the risks—and curious rewards—of the obsessive personality as well as a testament to the stubborn strength of a certain type of contemporary female intellectual.

Perhaps it was fitting justice: a dentist who enjoyed inflicting pain was murdered in his own chair. The question is not who wanted Dr. Frederick Nielsen dead, but rather who of the many finally reached the breaking point. The sordid details of this case, with its shocking revelations of violence, cruelty, and horrific sexual abuse, would be tough for any investigator to stomach. But for Seattle Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont, the most damning piece of the murderous puzzle will shake him to his very core -- because what will be revealed to him is nothing less than the true meaning of unrepentant evil.

Anny Butler is a caretaker, a nurturer, first for her own brothers and sisters, and then as a director of an agency devoted to the welfare of children. What she has never had is a real family. That changes when she meets and marries Lewis Aiken, an exuberant surgeon fifteen years older than Anny. When they marry, she finds her family not a traditional one, but a group of Charleston childhood friends who are inseparable, who are one another's surrogate family. They are called the Scrubs, and they all, in some way, have the common cord of family.Instantly upon meeting them at the old beach house on Sullivan's Island, which they co-own, Anny knows that she has found home and family. They vow that, when the time comes, they will find a place where they can live together by the sea.Bad things begin to happen a hurricane, a fire, deaths but still the remaining Scrubs cling together. They are watched over and bolstered by Camilla Curry, the heart and core of their group, always the healer. Anny herself allows Camilla to enfold and to care for her. It is the first time she has felt this kind of love and support.

Scientists have discovered that traditional Mediterranean cuisine is one of the most healthful, nutritious diets in the world one that can help everyone lose weight and enjoy lower rates of coronary heart disease and other chronic conditions, including diabetes and cancer. From tasty Moroccan vegetable stew to rosemary focaccia, from eggplant parmesan to lemon almond cake, The Mediterranean Diet offers a program that will make dieters everywhere and food lovers in general rejoice. Includes a 7-day eating plan chock full of savory meals Essential in-depth nutritional information about each food category A 3-day exercise plan Luscious soup-to-nuts recipes designed to satisfy your individual tastes Lose weight and worry with every delicious meal!

In Salthill-on-Hudson, a half-hour train ride from Manhattan, everyone is rich, beautiful, and -- though they look much younger -- middle-aged. But when Adam Berendt, a charismatic, mysterious sculptor, dies suddenly in a brash act of heroism, shock waves rock the town. But who was Adam BerendtWas he in fact a hero, or someone more flawed and human?

The nation's capital that serves as the setting for the stories in Edward P. Jones's prizewinning collection, Lost in the City lies far from the city of historic monuments and national politicians. Jones takes the reader beyond that world into the lives of African American men and women who work against the constant threat of loss to maintain a sense of hope. From "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons" to the well-to-do career woman awakened in the night by a phone call that will take her on a journey back to the past, the characters in these stories forge bonds of community as they struggle against the limits of their city to stave off the loss of family, friends, memories, and, ultimately, themselves.Critically acclaimed upon publication, Lost in the City introduced Jones as an undeniable talent, a writer whose unaffected style is not only evocative and forceful but also filled with insight and poignancy.

Do you want to live until you're ninety but always feel like you're twentyDo you want to find out about the most recent breakthroughs in nutrition, weight loss, disease prevention, cognitive enhancement, and anti-agingDo you want the very best body you've ever had -- one that will last you a lifetime?Oz Garcia's The Healthy High-Tech Body is the first comprehensive guide to the finest health supplements, procedures, products, techniques, and technology in the world today. Whether you're looking for remedies to boost your energy level, reliable sources for nutraceuticals, information on the latest European cell treatments, secrets to youthful aging, or the latest in cosmeceuticals for skin, nails, and teeth, it's all here. Renowned nutritional consultant Oz Garcia shares an unmatched array of health information and resources, along with information from some of the most famous and sought-after doctors, scientists, and health authorities in the world, including Dr. Barry Sears, Dr. Nicholas Perricone, Clinique La Prairie of Switzerland, Dr. Peter Proctor, Ann Louise Gittleman, and Dr. Pamela Peeke. Together they present the essential building blocks of health and fitness for our time. Only Oz Garcia's The Healthy High-Tech Body offers: ?A global resource guide of health products, services, and technology ?Secrets to youthful aging, from European cell shots to the use of human growth hormones ?The Paleotech Diet, a revolutionary nutritional program, including dozens of deliciously healthy recipes ?The seven steps to successful fat burning and permanent weight loss ?The secrets of maintaining sexual pleasure and potency throughout your life ?Updated information on injectables, stem cell implants, cosmeceuticals, and body scans ?Interviews with the top experts and pioneers in the fields of nutrition, fitness, life extension, cosmetic surgery, integrative medicine, and bioengineering ?CD-ROM including an interactive version of Life Extension's 945-page reference book Disease Prevention and Treatment, archives of articles from Life Extension magazine, and useful Web links You can start today, at any age, to develop a Healthy High-Tech Body by taking advantage of the newest inventions, innovations, approaches, and techniques to enhance your living experience. Armed with the information in this book, you will be able not only to prolong your life, but also to maintain and extend your youthfulness in ways you never thought possible.

To his legions of fans, Charles Bukowski was and remains the quintessential counterculture icon. A hard-drinking wild man of literature and a stubborn outsider to the poetry world, he wrote unflinchingly about booze, work, and women, in raw, street-tough poems whose truth has struck a chord with generations of readers.Edited by John Martin, the legendary publisher of Black Sparrow Press and a close friend of Bukowski's, The Pleasures of the Damned is a selection of the best works from Bukowski's long poetic career, including the last of his never-before-collected poems. Celebrating the full range of the poet's extraordinary and surprising sensibility, and his uncompromising linguistic brilliance, these poems cover a rich lifetime of experiences and speak to Bukowski's immense intelligence, the caring heart that saw through the sham of our pretenses and had pity on our human condition (New York Quarterly ). The Pleasures of the Damned is an astonishing poetic treasure trove, essential reading for both longtime fans and those just discovering this unique and legendary American voice.