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A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue. It's about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.
It's about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet's disappearance . . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism and an unexpected connection between themselves.
Contagiously exciting, it's about society at its most hidden, and about the intimate lives of a brilliantly realized cast of characters, all of them forced to face the darker aspects of their world and of their own lives. |
 Audio Book (MP3) [ 214.9 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2008  Audio Book (WMA) [ 109.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2008
"An intelligent, ingeniously plotted, utterly engrossing thriller that is variously a serial-killer saga, a search for a missing person and an informed glimpse into the worlds of journalism and business . . . Lisbeth is a punk Watson to Mikael's dapper Holmes, and she's the coolest crime-fighting sidekick to come along in many years." Washington Post
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book A Friday in November
It happened every year, was almost a ritual. And this was his eighty-second birthday. When, as usual, the flower was delivered, he took off the wrapping paper and then picked up the telephone to call Detective Superintendent Morell who, when he retired, had moved to Lake Siljan in Dalarna. They were not only the same age, they had been born on the same day--which was something of an irony under the circumstances. The old policeman was sitting with his coffee, waiting, expecting the call.
"It arrived."
"What is it this year?"
"I don't know what kind it is. I'll have to get someone to tell me what it is. It's white."
"No letter, I suppose."
"Just the flower. The frame is the same kind as last year. One of those do-it-yourself ones."
"Postmark?"
"Stockholm."
"Handwriting?"
"Same as always, all in capitals. Upright, neat lettering."
With that, the subject was exhausted, and not another word was exchanged for almost a minute. The retired policeman leaned back in his kitchen chair and drew on his pipe. He knew he was no longer expected to come up with a pithy comment or any sharp question which would shed a new light on the case. Those days had long since passed, and the exchange between the two men seemed like a ritual attaching to a mystery which no-one else in the whole world had the least interest in unravelling.
The Latin name was Leptospermum (Myrtaceae) rubinette. It was a plant about ten centimetres high with small, heather-like foliage and a white flower with five petals about two centimetres across.
The plant was native to the Australian bush and uplands, where it was to be found among tussocks of grass. There it was called Desert Snow. Someone at the botanical gardens in Uppsala would later confirm that it was a plant seldom cultivated in Sweden. The botanist wrote in her report that it was related to the tea tree and that it was sometimes confused with its more common cousin Leptospermum scoparium, which grew in abundance in New Zealand. What distinguished them, she pointed out, was that rubinette had a small number of microscopic pink dots at the tips of the petals, giving the flower a faint pinkish tinge.
Rubinette was altogether an unpretentious flower. It had no known medicinal properties, and it could not induce hallucinatory experiences. It was neither edible, nor had a use in the manufacture of plant dyes. On the other hand, the aboriginal people of Australia regarded as sacred the region and the flora around Ayers Rock.
The botanist said that she herself had never seen one before, but after consulting her colleagues she was to report that attempts had been made to introduce the plant at a nursery in Göteborg, and that it might, of course, be cultivated by amateur botanists. It was difficult to grow in Sweden because it thrived in a dry climate and had to remain indoors half of the year. It would not thrive in calcareous soil and it had to be watered from below. It needed pampering.
The fact of its being so rare a flower ought to have made it easier to trace the source of this particular specimen, but in practice it was an impossible task. There was no registry to look it up in, no licences to explore. Anywhere from a handful to a few hundred enthusiasts could have had access to seeds or plants. And...
$14.99
NYPD detective Jack Kanon is on a tour of Europe's most gorgeous cities. But the sights aren't what draw him—he sees each museum, each cathedral, and each restaurant through a killer's eyes. Kanon's daughter, Kimmy, and her boyfriend were murdered while on vacation in Rome. Since then, young couples in Paris, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, and Stockholm have become victims of the same sadistic killers. Now Kanon teams up with the Swedish reporter, Dessie Larsson. Every killing is preceded by a postcard to the local newspaper—and Kanon and Larsson think they know where the next victims will be. With relentless logic and unstoppable action, The Postcard Killers may be James Patterson's most vivid and compelling thriller yet. |
Audio Book (WMA) [ 301.3 Mb ] Street Date: Saturday, August 9, 2008
After reading all of the other books in the series I hesitated to read this one and end the story, but I'm glad I did. This, again, was a twist I didn't expect and a true page turner. The last 1/2 of the book was very difficult to put down.
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$8.99
Sold by Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc.
John Le Carr returns in this new eBook with his best yarn in over a decade, with a thriller spy story as current as tomorrow's headlines
New spies with new loyalties, old spies with old ones; terror as the new mantra; decent people wanting to do good but caught in the moral maze; all the sound, rational reasons for doing the inhuman thing; the recognition that we cannot safely love or pity and remain good "patriots" -- this is the fabric of John Le Carr's fiercely compelling and current novel A Most Wanted Man.
A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa. Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client's survival becomes more important to her than her own career -- or safety. In pursuit of Issa's mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Frres, a failing British bank based in Hamburg.
Annabel, Issa and Brue form an unlikely alliance -- and a triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the "War on Terror," the rival spies of Germany, England and America converge upon the innocents. Thrilling, compassionate, peopled with characters the reader never wants to let go, A Most Wanted Man is a work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times. |
 Adobe ePub [ 0.4 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2008 Adobe Digital Edition [ 1.2 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2008 Microsoft Reader [ 0.4 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2008 MobiPocket (OD) [ 0.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2008 Audio Book (MP3) [ 330.5 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, September 15, 2008 Audio Book (MP3) [ 169.4 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, September 15, 2008 Audio Book (WMA) [ 168.7 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, September 15, 2008 Audio Book (WMA) [ 86.5 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, September 15, 2008Listen to the Unabridged MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the Abridged MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the Unabridged WMA excerpt of this title! Listen to the Abridged WMA excerpt of this title! From the book 1A Turkish heavyweight boxing champion sauntering down a Hamburg street with his mother on his arm can scarcely be blamed for failing to notice that he is being shadowed by a skinny boy in a black coat. Big Melik, as he was known to his admiring neighborhood, was a giant of a fellow, shaggy, unkempt and genial, with a broad natural grin and black hair bound back in a ponytail and a rolling, free-and-easy gait that, even without his mother, took up half the pavement. At the age of twenty he was in his own small world a celebrity, and not only for his prowess in the boxing ring: elected youth representative of his Islamic sports club, three times runner-up in the North German Championship hundred-meter butterfly stroke and, as if all that weren't enough, star goalkeeper of his Saturday soccer team. Like most very large people, he was also more accustomed to being looked at than looking, which is another reason why the skinny boy got away with shadowing him for three successive days and nights. The two men first made eye contact as Melik and his mother, Leyla, emerged from the al-Umma Travel Shop, fresh from buying air tickets for Melik's sister's wedding in their home village outside Ankara. Melik felt someone's gaze fixed on him, glanced round and came face-to-face with a tall, desperately thin boy of his own height with a straggly beard, eyes reddened and deep-set, and a long black coat that could have held three magicians. He had a black-and-white kaffiyeh round his neck and a tourist's camel-skin saddlebag slung over his shoulder. He stared at Melik, then at Leyla. Then he came back to Melik, never blinking, but appealing to him with his fiery, sunken eyes. Yet the boy's air of desperation need not have troubled Melik all that much since the travel shop was situated at the edge of the main railway station concourse, where every variety of lost soul -- German vagrants, Asians, Arabs, Africans, and Turkish like himself but less fortunate -- hung around all day long, not to mention legless men on electric carts, drug sellers and their customers, beggars and their dogs, and a seventy-year-old cowboy in a Stetson and silver-studded leather riding breeches. Few had work, and a sprinkling had no business standing on German soil at all, but were at best tolerated under a deliberate policy of destitution, pending their summary deportation, usually at dawn. Only new arrivals or the willfully foolhardy took the risk. Cannier illegals gave the station a wide berth. A further good reason to ignore the boy was the classical music that the station authorities boom at full blast over this section of the concourse from a battery of well-aimed loudspeakers. Its purpose, far from spreading feelings of peace and well-being among its listeners, is to send them packing. Despite these impediments the skinny boy's face imprinted itself on Melik's consciousness and for a fleeting moment he felt embarrassed by his own happiness. Why on earth should he? Something splendid had just occurred, and he couldn't wait to phone his sister and tell her that their mother, Leyla, after six months of tending her dying husband, and a year of mourning her heart out for him, was bubbling over with pleasure at the prospect of attending her daughter's wedding, and fussing about what to wear, and whether the dowry was big enough, and the groom as handsome as everybody, including Melik's sister, said he was. So why shouldn't Melik chatter along with his own mother? Which he did, enthusiastically, all the way home. It was the skinny boy's stillness, he decided later. Those lines of age...
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Fans of The Twilight Saga will be enthralled by this riveting story of Bree Tanner, a character first introduced in Eclipse, and the darker side of the newborn vampire world she inhabits. In another irresistible combination of danger, mystery, and romance, Stephenie Meyer tells the devastating story of Bree and the newborn army as they prepare to close in on Bella Swan and the Cullens, following their encounter to its unforgettable conclusion. |
Audio Book (WMA) [ 61.2 Mb ] Street Date: Saturday, June 5, 2010
$28.50 $19.95
Listeners captivated by Twilight and New Moon will eagerly devour Eclipse, the much anticipated third audiobook in Stephenie Meyer's riveting vampire love saga. As Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger. In the midst of it all, she is forced to choose between her love for Edward and her ever-growing friendship with Jacob. And her decision has the potential to ignite the ageless struggle between vampire and werewolf. With her graduation quickly approaching, Bella has one more decision to make: eternal fear or eternal life. |
Audio Book (WMA) [ 241.8 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, September 25, 2007
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The electrifying follow-up to the phenomenal best seller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ("An intelligent, ingeniously plotted, utterly engrossing thriller" - The Washington Post), and this time it is Lisbeth Salander, the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker, who is the focus and fierce heart of the story.
Mikael Blomkvis - crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium - has decided to publish a story exposing an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern Europe and Sweden, implicating well-known and highly placed members of Swedish society, business, and government.
On the eve of publication, the two reporters responsible for the story are brutally murdered. But perhaps more shocking for Blomkvist: the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to Lisbeth Salander.
Now, as Blomkvist - alone in his belief in her innocence - plunges into his own investigation of the slayings, Salander is drawn into a murderous hunt in which she is the prey, and which compels her to revisit her dark past in an effort to settle with it once and for all. |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 536.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 Audio Book (WMA) [ 273.5 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 28, 2009
"The Girl Who Played with Fire will likely confirm Larsson's position as the most successful crime novelist in the world." Slate
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book CHAPTER 1
Thursday, December 16 -- Friday, December 17
Lisbeth Salander pulled her sunglasses down to the tip of her nose and squinted from beneath the brim of her sun hat. She saw the woman from room 32 come out of the hotel side entrance and walk to one of the green-and-white-striped chaises-longues beside the pool. Her gaze was fixed on the ground and her progress seemed unsteady.
Salander had only seen her at a distance. She reckoned the woman was around thirty-five, but she looked as though she could be anything from twenty-five to fifty. She had shoulder-length brown hair, an oval face, and a body that was straight out of a mail-order catalogue for lingerie. She had a black bikini, sandals, and purple-tinted sunglasses. She spoke with a southern American accent. She dropped a yellow sun hat next to the chaise-longue and signalled to the bartender at Ella Carmichael's bar.
Salander put her book down on her lap and sipped her iced coffee before reaching for a pack of cigarettes. Without turning her head she shifted her gaze to the horizon. She could just see the Caribbean through a group of palm trees and the rhododendrons in front of the hotel. A yacht was on its way north towards St Lucia or Dominica. Further out, she could see the outline of a grey freighter heading south in the direction of Guyana. A breeze made the morning heat bearable, but she felt a drop of sweat trickling into her eyebrow. Salander did not care for sunbathing. She had spent her days as far as possible in shade, and even now was under the awning on the terrace. And yet she was as brown as a nut. She had on khaki shorts and a black top.
She listened to the strange music from steel drums flowing out of the speakers at the bar. She could not tell the difference between Sven-Ingvars and Nick Cave, but steel drums fascinated her. It seemed hardly feasible that anyone could tune an oil barrel, and even less credible that the barrel could make music like nothing else in the world. She thought those sounds were like magic.
She suddenly felt irritated and looked again at the woman, who had just been handed a glass of some orange-coloured drink.
It was not Lisbeth Salander's problem, but she could not comprehend why the woman stayed. For four nights, ever since the couple had arrived, Salander had listened to the muted terror being played out in the room next door to hers. She had heard crying and low, excitable voices, and sometimes the unmistakable sound of slaps. The man responsible for the blows -- Salander assumed he was her husband -- had straight dark hair parted down the middle in an old-fashioned style, and he seemed to be in Grenada on business. What kind of business, Salander had no idea, but every morning the man had appeared with his briefcase, in a jacket and tie, and had coffee in the hotel bar before he went outside to look for a taxi.
He would come back to the hotel in the late afternoon, when he took a swim and sat with his wife by the pool. They had dinner together in what on the surface seemed to be a quiet and loving way. The woman may have had a few too many drinks, but her intoxication was not noisome.
Each night the commotion in the next-door room had started just as Salander was going to bed with a book about the mysteries of mathematics. It did not sound like a full-on assault. As far as Salander could tell through the wall, it was one repetitive, tedious argument. The night before, Salander had not been able to contain her curiosity. She had gone on to the balcony to listen through the couple's open balcony door. For more...
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Fans entranced by Twilight and hungry for more of this vampire saga won't be disappointed. For Bella Swan, there is one thing more important than life itself: Edward Cullen. But being in love with a vampire is even more dangerous than Bella could ever have imagined. Edward has already rescued Bella from the clutches of one evil vampire, but now, as their daring relationship threatens all that is near and dear to them, they realize their troubles may be just beginning. Praise for Twilight: “Ilyana Kadushin…makes the infinitely romantic tale of star-crossed lovers resonate with a bittersweet edge.”—School Library Journal |
Audio Book (WMA) [ 218.7 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, September 12, 2006
This book had its moments. There were some nice writing techniques employed, and we got to see more character developments.
However, it got a bit slow towards the middle, and it was a struggle to continue turning the page.
The ending was good, when they are in Italy. Good descriptions.
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$12.99
Former Marine and CIA agent Jack Morgan inherits his father's renowned security and detective business—along with a case load that tests him to the breaking point. Getting to the bottom of an NFL gambling scandal and an unsolved LAPD investigation into 18 school girl slayings would be enough. On top of all that, Morgan takes on solving the horrific murder of his best friend's wife. As Morgan fights the urge to exact brutal revenge on that killer, he has to navigate a workplace imbroglio that could blow the roof off his elite agency. And it's an especially explosive situation . . . because the love affair is his own. |
$8.95 $6.27
When Marty Preston comes across a young beagle in the hills behind his home, it's love at first sigh—and also big trouble. It turns out the dog, which Marty names Shiloh, belongs to Judd Travers, who drinks too much and has a gun—and abuses his dogs. So when Shiloh runs away from Judd to Marty, Marty just has to hide him and protect him from Judd. But Marty's secret becomes too big for him to keep to himself, and it exposes his entire family to Judd's anger. How far will Marty have to go to make Shiloh his? Winner of the Newbery Medal |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 80.5 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 Audio Book (WMA) [ 41.1 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2006
"Eleven-year-old Marty Preston happens upon a beagle puppy that has been abused. The animal follows the boy home and, in a test of courage and integrity, Marty learns difficult lessons of morality and kindness...his heartrending story will keep animal lovers riveted to their tape players." --Publishers Weekly
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$20.00 $14.00
Jaclyn Wilde is a wedding planner who loves her job—usually. But helping Carrie Edwards with her Big Day has been an unrelenting nightmare. Carrie is a bridezilla of mythic nastiness, a diva whose tantrums are just about as crazy as her demands. But the unpleasant task at hand turns seriously criminal when Carrie is brutally murdered and everyone involved with the ceremony is accusing one another of doing the deed.
The problem is, most everyone—from the cake maker and the florist to the wedding-gown retailer and the bridesmaids’ dressmaker—had his or her own reason for wanting the bride dead, including Jaclyn. And while those who felt Carrie’s wrath are now smiling at her demise, Jaclyn refuses to celebrate tragedy, especially since she finds herself in the shadow of suspicion.
Assigned to the case, Detective Eric Wilder finds that there’s too much evidence pointing toward too many suspects. Compounding his problems is Jaclyn, with whom he shared one deeply passionate night before Carrie’s death. Being a prime suspect means that Jaclyn is hands-off just when Eric would rather be hands-on. As the heat intensifies between Eric and Jaclyn, a cold-blooded murderer moves dangerously close. And this time the target is not a bride but one particularly irresistible wedding planner, unaware of a killer’s vow.
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Audio Book (MP3) [ 341.4 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 174.2 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book Chapter One
Six weddings in five days. Holy shit.
All Jaclyn Wilde could think was that her mother, Madelyn, who was her partner in Premier, the events planning firm to hire in the greater Atlanta area if you wanted your guests to be impressed, must have been sipping a couple or twelve champagne martinis when she'd accepted so many bookings so close together. It wouldn't have been nearly as bad if the bookings had been anything other than weddings: a party was simple in comparison to a wedding, because they were relatively free of emotional turmoil. A wedding, on the other hand, was fraught with every emotion known to man. It wasn't just the brides; it was the bride's mother, the groom's mother, the maid of honor, the bridesmaids, the parents of the flower girl and the ring bearer, the cousins who weren't invited to be in the wedding party, what colors to choose, the date, the location, the damn font on the friggin' invitations . . .
"Jaclyn Wilde," the clerk called, interrupting Jaclyn's increasingly stressed and frantic thoughts.
The clerk's voice was too cheerful. Didn't she realize it was inappropriate to sound cheerful when you were collecting payments for traffic violations? Maybe it was asking too much that she sound glum, but she could at least sound bored and noncom?mittal, instead of all but dancing with glee at taking someone's money.
Jaclyn stifled her irritation; it stemmed more from the almost impossible workload facing her during the coming week than it did from paying her speeding ticket. Adding to her stress was the fact that because they'd been working so hard, she'd forgotten to mail in the money for the speeding ticket, and today was the day it was due, so she'd either had to take time off from work--thereby increasing the stress by getting behind--or have a warrant issued for her arrest. Yeah, that would be a real stress-reducer.
Being late was her fault. If the city of Hopewell, where she lived and where she'd received the ticket, had been set up to receive online payments, she could have handled it that way, but it wasn't. She got up, silently forked over the cash, and a minute later was striding down the hall, the speeding ticket already forgotten because that particular item had just been checked off her to-do list.
She glanced down at her watch. She had just enough time to get to her next appointment--Carrie Edwards, a bitch for all seasons, and one of the reasons why six weddings in five days was looming as Mission Impossible. Carrie's wedding wasn't even one of the six; her wedding wasn't for another month, but Carrie was taking up way too much of their time with her histrionics and constant flip-flopping on decisions. One bridesmaid had already told her--Carrie, not Jaclyn--to go fuck herself, which was a first in ?Jac?lyn's experience. Usually, no matter what the bride did, the members of the wedding party would grit their teeth and see it through. Even when they did drop out, they'd make polite excuses. Not this girl; she'd let Carrie have it with both barrels, and hadn't minced words.
When the blow-up happened, Jaclyn had stepped out of sight, allowed herself a wide smile and a fist pump, then schooled her expression and returned to try to forestall a hair-pulling, eye-gouging cat fight. She'd have loved to see Carrie with a black eye, but business was business.
If she hadn't been so wrapped up in her thoughts she might have been faster on her feet, but when a door suddenly swung outward she was...
$7.99 $7.19
The shadowy side of the Sunshine State, where blood runs cold even in the tropical heat, is the tantalizing, terrifying territory few know better than James Swain. His razor-sharp tales of criminals, cops, and South Florida--style suspense bite like a hungry gator and never let go.
The past has come back to haunt P.I. Jack Carpenter, former head of the Broward County Missing Persons Unit. As a young cop he failed to stop the kidnapping of a college coed by a shockingly large assailant--and neither of them was ever seen again. The abduction has remained Carpenter's most chilling cold case, and even now the mystery of the missing girl lurks in his darkest dreams. But after eighteen years, it's about to become terrifying reality once more.
When his daughter, Jessie, asks him to bird-dog a camera-toting creep who's been shadowing her college basketball team, Carpenter's hot pursuit of the video voyeur leads him smack into another run-in with his old hulking nemesis, who abducts one of Jessie's teammates. While the Broward County cops are determined to pin the rap on a convenient suspect, Carpenter isn't about to let grim history repeat itself--especially when he discovers a pattern of unsolved kidnappings involving the same massive perp.
With the eager assistance of the kidnap victim's high-powered tycoon father, the uneasy cooperation of his old unit's new commander, and precious little time before the trail goes cold, Jack and his trusty dog, Buster, hit the ground running. And they'll need all the help they can get--including backup from an FBI man with a personal stake in the hunt--as they follow a twisted trail from the ruins of a shuttered mental asylum with an infamous past to the streets of a sinister small town with a ghastly secret.
With smooth-talking, uncompromising hero Jack Carpenter as guide, The Night Monster is an exhilarating journey into the heart of the American underworld. Bestselling author James Swain's fiendish plotting and energetic pacing will keep you electrified straight through till morning.
From the Hardcover edition. |
"Easily a top candidate for best crime novel of the year." Lansing State Journal
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book Prologue Cops aren't supposed to get frightened. The badge and the uniform and the gun strapped to a cop's side are intended to ward off the normal fears that most people experience when confronted by unspeakable horror and evil.
But it doesn't always work out that way. Cops get scared, just like everyone else. Sometimes they get so scared, they run for their lives. Other times, they get shaken to the core and never forget the things they've seen. It happened to me, two years into the job.
I was going home in my cruiser when I got the distress call. A woman was being assaulted at the Sunny Isle apartment complex, and a neighbor had called 911. Sunny Isle was a mile from where I lived, so I took the call.
According to the dispatcher, a college student named Naomi Dunn was being assaulted by a man inside her apartment. It had sounded like a domestic disturbance, something I'd dealt with many times as a cop. When the dispatcher had asked if I wanted backup, I'd said no, I could handle the situation. The dispatcher had told me to proceed with caution.
I arrived at Sunny Isle a few minutes later. Four orange stucco buildings made up the complex, with entrances from each apartment facing a courtyard containing a pool and a children's play area. It had started to rain, and there were white caps on the water.
I searched for a place to park. The lot was filled with junkers, many with student tags. Several had bumper stickers that said Clinton in '92! I'd read about the Arkansas governor's run for president, and didn't think he had a chance.
I parked and got out of my cruiser. There was a yellow rain slicker in the trunk, but I didn't bother to retrieve it. I was a native, and was used to getting drenched by the occasional downpour.
Walking into the courtyard, I scanned the unmarked stucco buildings. They were quiet, and I saw nothing out of the ordinary. I walked around for a few minutes, then decided to leave. It had been a long day, and I wanted to eat dinner with my wife and two- year- old daughter, then hit the books. I was studying to become a detective, and the lengthy test was weighing heavily on my mind.
"Officer! Officer!"
A ghostlike woman materialized by the pool. Dressed in a simple black housedress, her soaking wet hair was plastered to her head.
"Did you call the police?" I asked.
"That was me."
Her voice was trembling, and she was shaking from head to toe. I couldn't tell if there was something wrong with her, or if she was just plain scared.
"What's the problem?" I asked.
"Earlier I saw a large man lurking around the complex. Then I heard noises from Naomi Dunn's apartment. She was screaming, so I called nine- one- one."
"Is Naomi Dunn still in her apartment?"
"Yes." The woman pointed at the last building, on the ground floor. "He's still in there, hurting her."
"Do you know who he is?"
"No, but he was huge."
I started to walk toward the building, and the ghostly woman called after me.
"Take your gun out," she said.
The words made me freeze. I'd been trained not to draw my weapon unless my life was being threatened. The tone of her warning said that it was. Unstrapping my holster, I rested my hand on my gun's handle.
"Please go inside your apartment and lock your door," I said.
"Yes,...
$11.48 $8.04
With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal,and rescue illuminates this book like flashes of heat lightening. |
Audio Book (WMA) [ 53.8 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, January 29, 2008
"A rare and spellbinding web of dreams." --Time"Sensuous, mysterious, rhapsodic, it transports the reader to another world . . . . Ondaatje's most probing examination yet of the nature of identity." --San Francisco Chronicle"Mr. Ondaatje [is] one of North America's finest novelists . . . . The spell of his haunted villa remains with us, inviting us to reread passages for the pure pleasure of being there." Wall Street Journal
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Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed a shift in the weather. There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air, and the tall cypresses sway. She turns and moves uphill toward the house, climbing over a low wall, feeling the first drops of rain on her bare arms. She crosses the loggia and quickly enters the house. In the kitchen she doesn't pause but goes through it and climbs the stairs which are in darkness and then continues along the long hall, at the end of which is a wedge of light from an open door. She turns into the room which is another garden--this one made up of trees and bowers painted over its walls and ceiling. The man lies on the bed, his body exposed to the breeze, and he turns his head slowly towards her as she enters. Every four days she washes his black body, beginning at the destroyed feet. She wets a washcloth and holding it above his ankles squeezes the water onto him, looking up as he murmurs, seeing his smile. Above the shins the burns are worst. Beyond purple. Bone. She has nursed him for months and she knows the body well, the penis sleeping like a sea horse, the thin tight hips. Hipbones of Christ, she thinks. He is her despairing saint. He lies flat on his back, no pillow, looking up at the foliage painted onto the ceiling, its canopy of branches, and above that, blue sky. She pours calamine in stripes across his chest where he is less burned, where she can touch him. She loves the hollow below the lowest rib, its cliff of skin. Reaching his shoulders she blows cool air onto his neck, and he mutters. What? she asks, coming out of her concentration. He turns his dark face with its gray eyes towards her. She puts her hand into her pocket. She unskins the plum with her teeth, withdraws the stone and passes the flesh of the fruit into his mouth. He whispers again, dragging the listening heart of the young nurse beside him to wherever his mind is, into that well of memory he kept plunging into during those months before he died. From the Trade Paperback edition.
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" I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers." January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she's never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb....
As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends--and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society--born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island--boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.
Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society's members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.
Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises, and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.
From the Hardcover edition. |
Adobe ePub [ 0.4 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 Adobe Digital Edition [ 1.4 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 Microsoft Reader [ 0.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 MobiPocket (OD) [ 0.8 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 eReader [ 0.2 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 Audio Book (MP3) [ 233.8 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 Audio Book (WMA) [ 119.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, August 19, 2008
"I can't remember the last time I discovered a novel as smart and delightful as this one, a world so vivid that I kept forgetting this was a work of fiction populated with characters so utterly wonderful that I kept forgetting they weren't my actual friends and neighbors. Treat yourself to this book please--I can't recommend it highly enough." Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! Chapter One 8th January, 1946 Mr. Sidney Stark, Publisher Stephens & Stark Ltd. 21 St. James's Place London S.W.1 England Dear Sidney, Susan Scott is a wonder. We sold over forty copies of the book, which was very pleasant, but much more thrilling from my standpoint was the food. Susan managed to procure ration coupons for icing sugar and real eggs for the meringue. If all her literary luncheons are going to achieve these heights, I won't mind touring about the country. Do you suppose that a lavish bonus could spur her on to butter? Let's try it--you may deduct the money from my royalties. Now for my grim news. You asked me how work on my new book is progressing. Sidney, it isn't. English Foibles seemed so promising at first. After all, one should be able to write reams about the Society to Protest the Glorification of the English Bunny. I unearthed a photograph of the Vermin Exterminators' Trade Union, marching down an Oxford street with placards screaming "Down with Beatrix Potter!" But what is there to write about after a caption? Nothing, that's what. I no longer want to write this book--my head and my heart just aren't in it. Dear as Izzy Bickerstaff is--and was--to me, I don't want to write anything else under that name. I don't want to be considered a light-hearted journalist anymore. I do acknowledge that making readers laugh--or at least chuckle--during the war was no mean feat, but I don't want to do it anymore. I can't seem to dredge up any sense of proportion or balance these days, and God knows one cannot write humor without them. In the meantime, I am very happy Stephens & Stark is making money on Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War. It relieves my conscience over the debacle of my Anne Bront biography. My thanks for everything and love, Juliet P.S. I am reading the collected correspondence of Mrs. Montagu. Do you know what that dismal woman wrote to Jane Carlyle? "My dear little Jane, everybody is born with a vocation, and yours is to write charming little notes." I hope Jane spat on her. From Sidney to Juliet 10th January, 1946 Miss Juliet Ashton 23 Glebe Place Chelsea London S.W. 3 Dear Juliet: Congratulations! Susan Scott said you took to the audience at the luncheon like a drunkard to rum--and they to you--so please stop worrying about your tour next week. I haven't a doubt of your success. Having witnessed your electrifying performance of "The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation" eighteen years ago, I know you will have every listener coiled around your little finger within moments. A hint: perhaps in this case, you should refrain from throwing the book at the audience when you finish. Susan is looking forward to ushering you through bookshops from Bath to Yorkshire. And of course, Sophie is agitating for an extension of the tour into Scotland. I've told her in my most infuriating older-brother manner that It Remains To Be Seen. She misses you terribly, I know, but Stephens & Stark must be impervious to such considerations. I've just received Izzy's sales figures from London and the Home Counties--they are excellent. Again, congratulations! Don't fret about English Foibles; better that your enthusiasm died now than after six months spent writing about bunnies. The crass commercial possibilities of the idea were attractive, but I agree that the topic would soon grow horribly fey. Another subject--one you'll like--will occur...
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Lisbeth Salander--the heart of Larsson's two previous novels--is under close supervision in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She's fighting for her life in more ways than one: when she's well enough, she'll stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will have to prove her innocence, and to identify the corrupt politicians who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse. And, on her own, she will plot her revenge--against the man who tried to kill her and the government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life.
Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now Lisbeth Salander is ready to fight back.
From the Hardcover edition. |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 585.1 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 298.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2010
"A thoroughly gripping read . . . Lisbeth Salander, Stieg Larsson's fierce pixie of a heroine, is one of the most original characters in a thriller to come along in a while--a gamin, Audrey Hepburn look-alike but with tattoos and piercings, the take-no-prisoners attitude of Lara Croft and the cool, unsentimental intellect of Mr. Spock . . . Owes less to the Silence of the Lambs horror genre than to something by John le Carré." Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book chapter 1
Friday, April 8
Dr. Jonasson was woken by a nurse five minutes before the helicopter was expected to land. It was just before 1:30 in the morning.
"What?" he said, confused.
"Rescue Service helicopter coming in. Two patients. An injured man and a younger woman. The woman has gunshot wounds."
"All right," Jonasson said wearily.
Although he had slept for only half an hour, he felt groggy. He was on the night shift in the ER at Sahlgrenska hospital in Göteborg. It had been a strenuous evening.
By 12:30 the steady flow of emergency cases had eased off. He had made a round to check on the state of his patients and then gone back to the staff bedroom to try to rest for a while. He was on duty until 6:00, and seldom got the chance to sleep even if no emergency patients came in. But this time he had fallen asleep almost as soon as he turned out the light.
Jonasson saw lightning out over the sea. He knew that the helicopter was coming in the nick of time. All of a sudden a heavy downpour lashed at the window. The storm had moved in over Göteborg.
He heard the sound of the chopper and watched as it banked through the storm squalls down towards the helipad. For a second he held his breath when the pilot seemed to have difficulty controlling the aircraft. Then it vanished from his field of vision and he heard the engine slowing to land. He took a hasty swallow of his tea and set down the cup.
Jonasson met the emergency team in the admissions area. The other doctor on duty took on the first patient who was wheeled in-an elderly man with his head bandaged, apparently with a serious wound to the face. Jonasson was left with the second patient, the woman who had been shot. He did a quick visual examination: it looked like she was a teenager, very dirty and bloody, and severely wounded. He lifted the blanket that the Rescue Service had wrapped around her body and saw that the wounds to her hip and shoulder were bandaged with duct tape, which he considered a pretty clever idea. The tape kept bacteria out and blood in. One bullet had entered her hip and gone straight through the muscle tissue. He gently raised her shoulder and located the entry wound in her back. There was no exit wound: the round was still inside her shoulder. He hoped it had not penetrated her lung, and since he did not see any blood in the woman's mouth he concluded that probably it had not.
"Radiology," he told the nurse in attendance. That was all he needed to say.
Then he cut away the bandage that the emergency team had wrapped around her skull. He froze when he saw another entry wound. The woman had been shot in the head, and there was no exit wound there either.
Jonasson paused for a second, looking down at the girl. He felt dejected. He often described his job as being like that of a goalkeeper. Every day people came to his place of work in varying conditions but with one objective: to get help.
Jonasson was the goalkeeper who stood between the patient and Fonus Funeral Service. His job was to decide what to do. If he made the wrong decision, the patient might die or perhaps wake up disabled for life. Most often he made the right decision, because the vast majority of injured people had an obvious and specific problem. A stab wound to the lung or a crushing injury after a car crash were both particular and recognizable problems that could be dealt with. The survival of the patient depended on the extent of the damage and on...
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You've been asked before, "Don't tell anyone the ending." With Honeymoon, don't tell anyone the beginning either. All writers have a book that they know is their best book, ever. Welcome to James Patterson's Honeymoon. How does it feel to be desired by every man and envied by every woman? Wonderful. This is the life Nora Sinclair has dreamed about, the life she's worked hard for, the life she will never give up. Meet Nora Sinclair When FBI agent John O'Hara first sees her, she seems perfect. She has the looks. The career. The clothes. The wit. The sophistication. The tantalizing sex appeal. The whole extraordinary package - and men fall in line to court her. She doesn't just attract men, she enthralls them. If you dare |
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