万本电子书0元读

万本电子书0元读

The Queen of Patpong
The Queen of Patpong
Hallinan, Timothy
¥84.16
For American travel writer Poke Rafferty, life finally seems to hold some semblance of stability. He and his longtime love, Rose, have gone through with their much-deferred marriage ceremony, their adopted daughter, Miaow, a former street child, has become a loving—if sometimes difficult—part of the family, and the three of them live in relative comfort thanks to Rose's housekeeping business and Rafferty's writing. Then a nightmare figure from Rose's time as a Patpong dancer barges into their world, shattering the peace they've worked so hard to obtain. His appearance threatens everything they cherish: their love, their home . . . their very lives. As a foreigner who's seen some of the worst Bangkok has to offer and survived confrontations with Thailand's most powerful and dangerous elements, Rafferty feels equal to most of the challenges Bangkok can throw at him. But now his only hope is to discover the whole truth of Rose's past—a journey down the dark and twisting road that turned a shy, awkward village teenager into the queen of Asia's most lurid red-light street: Patpong Road. And just when Rafferty thought life was looking good, reality comes crashing in as he learns that the secrets from Rose's former life are almost impossible to accept—and even harder to survive.The Queen of Patpong is a terrifying, heart-breaking, electrifying story of peril, love, and, ultimately, redemption in modern-day Thailand—and the most ambitious, affecting novel yet from thriller master Timothy Hallinan.
Sourland
Sourland
Oates, Joyce Carol
¥84.16
A gripping and moving new collection of stories that reimagines the meaning of loss—through often unexpected and violent means.Joyce Carol Oates is not only one of our most important novelists and literary critics, she is also an unparalleled master of the short story. Sourland—sixteen previously uncollected stories that explore how the power of violence, loss, and grief shape both the psyche and the soul—shows us an author work-ing at the height of her powers.With lapidary precision and an unflinching eye, Oates maps the surprising contours of “ordinary” life. From a desperate man who dons a jack-o’-lantern head as a prelude to a most curious sort of courtship, to a “story of a stabbing” many times recounted in the life of a lonely girl; from a beguiling young woman librarian whose amputee state attracts a married man and father, to a girl hopelessly in love with her renegade, incarcerated cousin; from a professor’s wife who finds herself tragically isolated at a party in her own house, to the concluding title story of an unexpectedly redemptive love rooted in radical aloneness and isolation, each story in Sourland resonates beautifully with Oates’s trademark fascination for the unpredictable amid the prosaic—the comming-ling of sexual love and violence, the tumult of family life—and shines with her predilection for dark humor and her gift for voice.
Every Night Is Ladies' Night
Every Night Is Ladies' Night
Jaime-Becerra, Michael
¥84.16
In Every Night Is Ladies' Night, we are given a rare glimpse into a world created by the imagination of one of America's most promising authors. This brilliant debut collection of interrelated stories presents a portrait of a community whose members seek their own place beyond their immediate, physical world. The cast of recurring characters Jaime-Becerra has expertly created rings true: people whose hands show signs of hard work, who are optimistic enough to want to dance even if their feet are tired, and who go to bed at night and know just how long they are allowed to sleep before the obligations of their next day begin. From a teenage boy who lives in the shadow of his wild Goth sister, to a race car driver hot after the Mexican beauty queen of his dreams, to Grandpa Lopez, an on-the-road trucker who surprises his family by showing up for his granddaughter's wedding only to peel away with her dress on the day of the ceremony, readers will wholeheartedly engage themselves in Jaime-Becerra's vibrant, literary universe. Michael Jaime-Becerra shines a warm light on mechanics and musicians, on drivers of ice cream trucks and big rigs, on kids busy marking themselves with tattoos; he allows readers a unique vantage as the characters fall in love, make ends meet, and try to outlast their pasts. To help his characters negotiate the obstacles life places before them, Jaime-Becerra draws upon an attentiveness for rich, tender detail tempered by a masterful subtlety. These qualities suggest the talent of an author who is equal parts artist and craftsman. More important, they have resulted in a collection that is universal and stunning.
Filthy Rich
Filthy Rich
Samuels, Dorothy
¥84.16
Marcy Mallowitz has just been dumped -- big time! Marcy's orthodontist boyfriend, Neil, blew a gasket during an appearance on So You Want to Be Filthy Rich!, the stratospheric television phenomenon and top-rated quiz show of all time. When Marcy incorrectly answered his $1.75 million Lifeline question, Neil immediately broke off their preengagement, abruptly terminating their three-year relationship -- in front of twenty million people coast to coast! Suddenly Marcy isn't just Marcy anymore. The thirtysomething Barnard Phi Beta Kappa and Personal Life Coach is now the nationally renowned victim of America's "Big Brush-Off." Media hounds are clamoring for interviews. The street in front of her West Village apartment is swarming with paparazzi sharks. And everyone -- everyone -- knows her name, even if only as the punchline to late-night talk-show jokes. Marcy, who has made a career of improving other peoples's lives, could now use some serious help reclaiming her own. But where does she turnTo her lovable, meddling, marriage-oriented momTo her protective dad, who dreams of Marcy joining the family roach extermination companyTo her two decidedly oddball best girlfriendsMarcy Mallowitz's fifteen minutes of fame are lasting a lot longer than she would ever have dreamed possible. And now she'll either have to find someplace to hide from the all-seeing, unblinking media eye...or agree to expose herself to the world, à la Survivor's naked fat guy. A dazzling debut novel as winning and smart as it Is uproariously funny, Dorothy Samuels's Filthy Rich is an unprecedented delight -- a story of women, men, friends, and mothers; of fame and romance in the early twenty-first century; and of that contemporary nemesis of modern love: reality TV.
Circling the Drain
Circling the Drain
Davis, Amanda
¥84.16
Enter into the worlds of fifteen young women who, despite their vastly different circumstances, seem to negotiate an eerily similar and unavoidably dangerous emotional terrain. With a visceral bite or a surreal edge, each electrically charged story in Circling the Drain presents women trying to understand the nature of loss--of leaving or being left--and discovering that in the throes of feverish conflict, things are rarely what they seem. By turns dark and lyrical, ferocious and playful, these stories are precise, startling, and undeniably original. Reading them is a cathartic, mesmerizing literary experience.
The Saving Graces
The Saving Graces
Gaffney, Patricia
¥84.16
Meet The Saving Graces, Four Of The Best Friends A Woman Can Ever Have.For ten years, Emma, Rudy, Lee, and Isabel have shared a deep affection that has helped them deal with the ebb and flow of expectations and disappointments common to us all. Calling themselves the Saving Graces, the quartet is united by understanding, honesty, and acceptance—a connection that has grown stronger as the years go by . . .Though these sisters of the heart and soul have seen it all, talked through it all, Emma, Rudy, Lee, and Isabel will not be prepared for a crisis of astounding proportions that will put their love and courage to the ultimate test.
A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories
A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories
Bradbury, Ray
¥84.16
Ray Bradbury is a painter who uses words rather than brushes--for he created lasting visual images that, once observed, are impossible to forget. Sinister mushrooms growing in a dank cellar. A family's first glimpse at Martians. A wonderful white vanilla ice-cream summer suit that changes everyone who wears it. A great artist drawing in the sand on the beach. A clunky contraption made out of household implements to help some kids play a game called Invasion. The most marvelous Christmas display a little boy ever saw. All those images and many more are inside this book, a new trade edition of thirty-one of Bradbury's most arresting tales--timeless short fiction that ranges from the farthest reaches of space to the innermost stirrings of the heart. Ray Bradbury is known worldwide as one of the century's great men of imagination. Here are thirty-one reasons why.Ray Bradbury is a painter who uses words rather than brushes--for he created lasting visual images that, once observed, are impossible to forget. Sinister mushrooms growing in a dank cellar. A familys first glimpse at Martians. A wonderful white vanilla ice-cream summer suit that changes everyone who wears it. A great artist drawing in the sand on the beach. A clunky contraption made out of household implements to help some kids play a game called Invasion. The most marvelous Christmas display a little boy ever saw. All those images and many more are inside this book, a new trade edition of thirty-one of Bradburys most arresting tales--timeless short fiction that ranges from the farthest reaches of space to the innermost stirrings of the heart. Ray Bradbury is known worldwide as one of the centurys great men of imagination. Here are thirty-one reasons why.
Ines of My Soul
Ines of My Soul
Allende, Isabel
¥84.16
In the early years of the conquest of the Americas, Inés Suárez, a seamstress condemned to a life of toil, flees Spain to seek adventure in the New World. As Inés makes her way to Chile, she begins a fiery romance with Pedro de Valdivia, war hero and field marshal to the famed Francisco Pizarro. Together the lovers will build the new city of Santiago, and they will wage war against the indigenous Chileans—a bloody struggle that will change Inés and Valdivia forever, inexorably pulling each of them toward separate destinies.Inés of My Soul is a work of breathtaking scope that masterfully dramatizes the known events of Inés Suárez's life, crafting them into a novel rich with the narrative brilliance and passion readers have come to expect from Isabel Allende.
The Maytrees
The Maytrees
Dillard, Annie
¥84.16
Toby Maytree first sees Lou Bigelow on her bicycle in postwar Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her laughter and loveliness catch his breath. Maytree is a Provincetown native, an educated poet of thirty. As he courts Lou, just out of college, her stillness draws him. Hands-off, he hides his serious wooing, and idly shows her his poems. In spare, elegant prose, Dillard traces the Maytrees' decades of loving and longing. They live cheaply among the nonconformist artists and writers that the bare tip of Cape Cod attracts. When their son Petie appears, their innocent Bohemian friend Deary helps care for him. But years later it is Deary who causes the town to talk.In this moving novel, Dillard intimately depicts willed bonds of loyalty, friendship, and abiding love. She presents nature's vastness and nearness. Warm and hopeful, The Maytrees is the surprising capstone of Dillard's original body of work.
Seduced By Darkness
Seduced By Darkness
Devlin, Delilah
¥84.16
For eight hundred years Nicolas Montfaucon has dedicated his life to preventing the rebirth of an immortal evil. But now a terrible storm has assaulted unsuspecting New Orleans—and the beast walks the earth once more. "The Devourer" has been awakened, and there is only one in the besieged city who can help Nicolas defeat the foul creature—a mysterious and beautiful enigma who haunts the handsome Revenant's erotic waking dreams and enflames his passionate obsessions. Chessa Tomas is not an ordinary policewoman. A vampire, she works only at night, patrolling a seamy and unseen underworld of roiling chaos. Though Nicolas is sensuality incarnate, Chessa wants no part of him or his kind—but she cannot close her eyes to the unholy malevolence that would consume their world. And Nicolas has uncovered the secret lust that rules her—a steaming, uncontrollable desire he intends to unleash, bending Chessa to his will by making her most forbidden fantasies real.
Good-bye and Amen
Good-bye and Amen
Gutcheon, Beth
¥84.16
In a summer cottage on the coast of Maine, an unlikely love was nurtured, a marriage endured, and a family survived. Now it is time for the children of that marriage to make peace with the wounds and the treasures left to them. And to sort out which is which. The complicated marriage of the gifted Danish pianist Laurus Moss to the provincial American child of privilege Sydney Brant was a mystery to many who knew them, including their three children. Now Eleanor, Monica, and Jimmy Moss have to decide how to divide or share what Laurus and Sydney have left them without losing one another.
Home to Harmony
Home to Harmony
Gulley, Philip
¥84.16
Welcome to Harmony ...In this acclaimed inaugural volume in the Harmony series, master American storyteller Philip Gulley draws us into the charming world of minister Sam Gardner in his first year back in his hometown, capturing the essence of small-town life with humor and wisdom.
The Road to Jerusalem
The Road to Jerusalem
Guillou, Jan
¥84.16
For power. For passion. For glory. The epic story of the knights templar.Born in 1150 to a noble family in the Kingdom of Western G?taland, young Arn Magnusson is marked early on by a miraculous and fateful event. When the boy inexplicably recovers after falling from the parapet of his ancestral home, his mother finds herself beholden to a promise made in a moment of prayer. Arn, second-born son of Magnus Folkesson, will live his life in the service of God—sent from his family to do holy work and to prepare for a position in the priory.At Varnhem monastery, Arn comes of age under the tutelage of Father Henri, a Cistercian monk devoted to his aristocratic pupil's education. However, grammar, math, and logic are not the only lessons: Brother Guilbert, the monastery blacksmith and former Knight Templar, finds Arn adept at training of a very different kind. Observing the boy's extraordinary talent with horse, sword, and bow, Father Henri, trusting in God's will, sends his charge into the world to fulfill a destiny that lies beyond the cloister walls.Returning home, Arn finds his monastic habits at odds with his clan's old and tested ways. Yet his family soon discovers that Arn has learned more than poetry and farm work, and he proves himself useful at a time when he is needed most. The murder of a king has brought Western G?taland into a whirlwind of intrigue, and cunning lords from East and West are vying for power. And, when Arn meets the lovely Cecilia, he discovers this new and dangerous world holds other surprises too. Before he can claim her hand, however, the headstrong and na?ve noble makes a fateful mistake that will wrench him from his love and send him to a foreign war—to the Holy Land to battle infidels for twenty years.From the frozen landscapes of Northern Europe to the bloody battlefields of the Middle East, Arn will face brave knights, powerful queens, and treacherous kings. The first book in the international bestselling Crusades Trilogy, this thrilling epic of betrayal, faith, blood, and love sets "a Shakespearian quest for power" (Corriere della Sera, Italy) against the backdrop of the Holy Wars, witnessed through a vibrant, unorthodox lens.
Winter in June
Winter in June
Haines, Kathryn Miller
¥84.16
New York, 1943: Aspiring actress Rosie Winter has been marooned in New York throughout the war. Now, faced with the news that her ex-boyfriend Jack might not be coming home again, she's desperate to leave the home front and head for the war front. So when Rosie and her best pal Jayne get an offer to go to the South Pacific to perform with USO Camp Shows, they jump at the chance.But being a greasepaint soldier isn't as easy as they had hoped. Not only are the cast members surly, the schedules inhumane, and the housing conditions primitive but they also have to travel with a major—and majorly difficult—Hollywood star. But none of that is as bad as living in a war zone, and when tragedy strikes, Rosie and Jayne are left wondering if they are being targeted by the enemy or if something far more sinister is afoot.
Beauty Confidential
Beauty Confidential
Haobsh, Nadine
¥84.16
Renowned beauty expert Nadine Haobsh has the answers to the world's really BIG questions:How much should I tip my hair stylist (and the shampoo girl and the colorist)?How red can I go before my lips make me look too vampy?What's the best perfume for my lifestyle?What's the proper method for using that most important beauty accessory, the eyelash curler?Is it ever too early to get Botox?Forget celebrity trends and complicated how-to books. In Beauty Confidential, Nadine names names and provides the inside scoop on the products that are worth it and those to forget. In this must-have handbook for the modern girl, she offers industry secrets and insider tips on everything beauty—from how to make a dye job last to finding the ideal mascara to creating the perfect ponytail—fearlessly debunking with wit, style, and smarts the common beauty myths perpetuated by the top magazines. With Nadine's expert guidance and priceless secrets, you'll learn how to put yourself together flawlessly in under ten minutes . . . and you'll have the best skin and hair at any age!
The Ultimatum
The Ultimatum
Graziano, Dan
¥84.16
Henry's got it good. He's a semi-successful, if not yet famous novelist. He's got a good job and good buds. Best of all, he's got Layla, his long-time, live-in lover, a fast-track associate at a New Jersey law firm. Henry loves Layla and she loves him. Life is a banquet, until . . . The Ultimatum!In a week, Henry and Layla are off to Maine for a friend's wedding. And if Henry hasn't proposed marriage by the time the bride tosses the bouquet, Layla swears they're finished. For good. Henry thinks if it's not broke, don't fix it. But Layla needs proof of his love and devotion. And she's not kidding.So who can he turn to for adviceJake, his despondent divorced brotherHis marriage-junkie golf friend, Big JohnHis outsized Peter Pan pal Pete, who simply won't grow upMeanwhile Layla's got her two best girlfriends, tough-talking Gloria and sensitive Susan, giving helpful, contradictory advice.Time is ticking away on the most important decision of Henry's life. But it'll take a mad, high-speed road trip and some bizarre behavior—perhaps even an impromptu kidnapping—to point him in the right, life-changing direction.
Hometown Tales
Hometown Tales
Gulley, Philip
¥84.16
Stories from a Place That Feels Like HomeMaster storyteller Philip Gulley envelops readers in an almost forgotten world of plainspoken and honest small-town values, evoking a simpler time when people knew each other by name, folks looked out for their neighbors, and people were willing to do what was right—no matter the cost.When Philip Gulley began writing newsletter essays for the twelve members of his Quaker meeting in Indiana, he had no idea one of them would find its way to radio commentator Paul Harvey Jr. and be read on the air to 24 million people. Fourteen books later, with more than a million books in print, Gulley still entertains as well as inspires from his small-town front porch.
The Hellbound Heart
The Hellbound Heart
Barker, Clive
¥84.16
Frank Cotton's insatiable appetite for the dark pleasures of pain led him to the puzzle of Lemarchand's box, and from there, to a death only a sick-minded soul could invent. But his brother's love-crazed wife, Julia, has discovered a way to bring Frank back—though the price will be bloody and terrible . . . and there will certainly be hell to pay.
The Shadow Wars
The Shadow Wars
Rees, Rod
¥84.16
The shadows of war grow ever darker across the Demi-Monde. Norma Williams knows she was a fool to be lured into the virtual nightmare that is the Demi-Monde. When the agent sent in the game to save her goes rogue and a long forgotten evil is awoken, it falls to Norma to lead the resistance.Lost, without a plan, and with the army of the ForthRight marching ever closer, she must come to terms with terrible new responsibilities and with the knowledge that those she thought were her friends are now her enemies. To triumph in this surreal cyber-world she must be more than she ever believed she could be . . . or perish.
The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn
The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn
Hallowell, Janis
¥84.16
A remarkable debut novel that 'dares us to imagine mystery in our lives, in our time?book that sends us away refreshed, with the potential to see the sacramental in the everyday' – Boston Globe Told from the viewpoints of four unforgettable characters, The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn is the story of an ordinary girl who is believed to be a modern–day Holy Virgin. At the heart of the story is Francesca: a shy and moody teenager hungry for her absent father's love, she is frightened and intoxicated by her sudden elevation to the rank of divine. Chester is a visionary homeless man who first 'discovers' Francesca and makes himself her protector. Anne is Francesca's no–nonsense mother, whose religion is Darwin and biology. Sid is Francesca's troubled friend, who keeps a few secrets of her own. Tender and tragic, their intersecting stories probe the need to believe, and the relationship between divinity and madness. Beautifully crafted, here is a compelling first novel that heralds the arrival of a powerful new talent.
Up Pops the Devil
Up Pops the Devil
Benson, Angela
¥84.16
Two hard years in prison have changed Wilford "Preacher" Winters for the better. He did his time, now he's going to "do the right thing." But the women in his life have other ideas.Tanya, the sleek and sexy mother of his two kids, is much too comfortable with her pearls-and-Porsche lifestyle, and she'll do whatever it takes to maintain it...His sister, Loretta, kept "the business" running smoothly while Preacher was inside, and she can't believe he'd trade Easy Street bling for a nickel-and-dime dead-end job...His one-time girlfriend Serena, now married to his main man Barnard, is hiding a secret—and if past sins come to light, they'll ruin several lives and a very new, very precious friendship between Preacher and Barnard's beautiful-inside-and-out sister, Natalie.With his world about to explode all around him, Preacher's going to need every ounce of his new-found faith to remain strong. Because it takes a lot to become a new man, sometimes even a miracle.