Mesmers Disciple (The Alvord Rawn Series Book 1)

Kerr, Philip Putnam pp. A transplanted Scot, Martins is a lapsed Catholic who curses religion following the execution of a man in whose wrongful conviction he played a part. She joined a cabala-like cult headed by the powerful pastor, who has unusually strong ties to the rabbinical community. The cult, she claims, causes terrible things to happen through the power of prayer.

Though there are more convincing fictional portrayals of Houston, Londoner Kerr seems relaxed in this sister city of sorts, and this is one of the more laid-back thrillers in a while. Though an interesting change of scenery for the author, the novel fails to distinguish itself.

King, Lily Atlantic Monthly pp. Fortune and Gregory Bateson—neither a slouch in his own right. In the early s, Nell and Fen are married anthropologists in New Guinea. American Nell has already published a controversial best-seller about Samoan child-rearing while Australian Fen has published only a monograph on Dobu island sorcery.

Their marriage is in trouble: She holds Fen responsible for her recent miscarriage; he resents her fame and financial success. Shortly after leaving the Mumbanyo tribe they have been studying and which Nell has grown to abhor , they run into British anthropologist Bankson, who is researching another tribal village, the Nengai, along the Sepik River. Also deeply lonely, Bankson offers to find Nell and Fen an interesting tribe to study to keep them nearby. Soon the couple is happily ensconced with the Tam, whose women surprise Nell with their assertiveness. While the attraction, both physical and intellectual, between Bankson and Nell is obvious, Fen also offers Bankson tender care, which threatens to go beyond friendship, when Bankson falls ill.

At first, the three-way connection is uniting and stimulating. King does not shy from showing the uncomfortable relationship among all three anthropologists and those they study. A small gem, disturbing and haunting. In this disquieting novel from Koch The Dinner, , etc. Marc Schlosser is a Dutch physician to the stars. His cynicism ensures a booming practice until one of his patients, a famous actor named Ralph Meier, winds up dead.

Both books are bulky, highly personal and unearth deep insights from humdrum acts. Most prominently, it gets at the roots of the dysfunctional relationship with his father that Knausgaard detailed in the previous two books. Knausgaard reimagines boyhood in general with similar precision; at the time, his family lived in a remote Norwegian town, and the book is filled with forest treks, games, squabbles with friends and an overall sense of an identity coming together. Candor and fearlessness are the hallmarks of the books: Knausgaard will share anything, not for shock value or self-indulgence, but to show that plainspoken honesty gets to the heart of the human condition.

Halfway through, this series is starting to look like an earlyst-century masterpiece. Louis, where a distinguished young artist has been seduced by sinister powers at the hands of Count Abendroth—a man who, according to whispered rumor, plumbs the darkest depths of occult science. There is plenty to unnerve here. Marc seems far from reliable as a narrator, never mind a doctor, and sociopathic instincts underpin his stinging social observations.

Larger-than-life Ralph, meanwhile, is a man of such rapacious appetites that even a trip to the beach sees him emerge from the waves brandishing a giant octopus for the grill. Most disturbingly of all, amid distinctly European attitudes to nudity, Koch probes the way in which men—including those with daughters—look at young girls. A sly psychological thriller lurks within this pitch-dark comedy of manners, yet its ending manages to raise far more questions than it solves. Dora is crucial to Freud, who is still in the beginning stages of his career, not only for the fee he can command for her daily sessions, but because he hopes to find validation of his theories concerning the causes of hysteria.

Reclining on his Persian-carpeted couch, gazing at his Greek and Roman antiquities, Dora a pseudonym is at first a reluctant analysand. Soon she begins to view Freud as the only confidant who believes her stories. She tells him that her father has an invidious motive for defending Herr Z.: He is consorting with Frau Z.

Freud appears sympathetic at first but later alienates Dora by implying that, far from feeling revulsion for Herr Z. Thus, though hewing closely to the details of the Dora case study as written and published by Freud after the abrupt departure of Kohler handily exploits the therapeutic deadlock between the two principals to reveal character. Lacey, Catherine Farrar, Straus and Giroux pp. Elyria, a soap-opera writer, is no stranger to the emotional drama that can permeate daily life. It was through this traumatic event that Elyria first met Charles, a mathematics professor; Ruby was his teaching assistant, and he bonded with Elyria over their common experiences of loss.

Her life becomes a series of hitchhiked rides, strange encounters and odd jobs. Early on, this voice pulls the reader in and provides moments of great insight and wit. As a narrator, she grows both less relatable and less reliable until the plot reaches its inevitable conclusion. Lane, Johanna Little, Brown pp. Pretty much the entire plot of this debut novel reveals itself in the opening chapter. The father tries to get them to open the door, but they ignore him. The rest of the novel fills in the details—names, motivations, how the past has led to the present—in a manner that plays hopscotch with chronology and point of view.

• Mesmer's Disciple.
• See a Problem?;
• Advances in Geosciences:Volume 30: Planetary Science (PS) and Solar & Terrestrial Science (ST).

More than half the novel after that scene-setting intro finds chapters alternating between the perspectives but not the voices of father John and son Philip as the family prepares to turn its house over to the government as a tourist attraction and move to a small cottage on the grounds.

Eight-year-old Philip wonders where he will play, and he hates the thought of other children touring what was his bedroom where he will no longer be allowed. Then comes another long section narrated in the first person by mother Marianne, who remembers her courtship with John and her introduction to the countryside. Then a quick concluding chapter returns the novel full circle without really providing resolution. Four college suitemates, each with her own frustrated desires, reunite at a baby shower. After 11 years, will any of them have found real happiness?

We begin with Ruth, the eldest daughter of an immigrant mother whose expectations she can never hope to meet. Francesca, born into a privileged New York family, also feels stifled by her mother, who wants only the best for her. Setsu, grateful to have been adopted, tries to please everyone with sweet smiles and impeccable behavior. Since her biological parents were gifted musicians, she, too, has excelled at her violin lessons. All is well until her parents adopt a brother for her—a brother whose own voracious appetite for attention soon strips Setsu of her dreams.

In contrast, Opal has traveled the world or at least the resorts with her glamorous mother, who effortlessly attracts men. Suitably damaged, the suitemates endeavor to navigate the choppy waters of college life, dodging unsavory boyfriends and traumatic memories. A beautifully written but unsatisfying tale of women finding courage. In fact, the symbolism might initially seem laid on pretty thick for readers looking to solve a satisfying whodunit. He is also a hopeless junkie. His back story suggests that Sonny was a boy of considerable promise, a champion wrestler and model student, proud son of a police officer.

Then, when he was 18, he was devastated by the suicide of his father, who left a note confessing his corruption as the mole within the department, and the subsequent death of his heartbroken mother. The inspector obsessed with the case had a complicated How insight never clarifies, only complicates.

Their romance clearly has no future: She is the mistress of the elderly Lord Hunsdon; he is a playwright with little cash and a wife in Stratford. When Aemilia becomes pregnant, she makes the pragmatic choice and convinces Hunsdon the baby is his; he arranges her marriage to a complaisant courtier. Palmer, Matthew Putnam pp.

Questions?

Idealistic diplomat Alex Baines loses his security clearance over a disaster in Darfur, and he must decide between a civilian career and years of stamping visas for the State Department. Then a friend offers him a chance to restore his reputation, and Baines finds himself deep in the Congo. Residents of Busu-Mouli already have a modest mine along the Congo River, but Consolidated wants to take over and strip the mountain to rubble. The company has important political. Both foreigners and Congolese are villains and heroes here, though the real power still lies outside the country.

With their intelligence and humanity, Alex and Marie are easy characters to root for—but even the bad guys are well-drawn and believable. This is first-rate fiction.

• April 15, Volume LXXXII, No 8 by Kirkus Reviews - Issuu.
• Creepin In!
• Mesmer's Disciple by Edward Swanson;
• Aflame in Camelot (Bodices and Boudoirs).

Lou Welcome, a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, is a part-time emergency room doctor and the assistant director of the Physician Wellness Office, an institution that helps doctors with psychological and substance abuse problems. The new strain, which the press calls the Doomsday Germ, is resistant to antibiotics. As Lou learns from Humphrey Miller, whose brilliant scientific mind is trapped in a disabled body, the germ is the work of a fringe organization called the Society of One Hundred Neighbors. Palmer Political Suicide, , etc. The kids from Lawrenceville, a private New Jersey boarding school, are getting hammered at a birthday party in a Manhattan bar.

One girl has passed out. Two guys, Tom and Clare, both seniors, volunteer to take her home. His father, Michael, has been much in the news: Columbia has withdrawn its offer to Tom, and Clare is stuck on the waitlist for Yale, so they have thwarted ambitions in common. Andrews, Scotland, where Tom is headed small world ; he and Clare will lie low at the university there. Andrews is a party campus. The town is all pubs. The first one Tom enters, oh joy, reveals Prince William the year is Will may be prince, but cocaine is king.

Parish just skips blithely from one binge to the next, no direction in mind. She just lost her beloved brother, a renowned perfumer, to a quick, mysterious illness. Following his death-bed request that she visit an eccentric heiress in Barbizon, France, Jac is once again confronted with evidence that she has the ability to access past lives through stunningly realistic visions.

Best-selling author Rose has created a captivating world where. A suspenseful and enigmatic story, with gripping historical details and the paranormal subtext Rose has become famous for, which will please her many fans. One of the men, Mono, is dying of cancer. But there is no money, as Mono has invested all he owned in a sort-of-promising young soccer player named Pittilanga.

So the friends concoct a plan to sell off their interest in Pittilanga for enough cash to provide for Guadalupe. When was the last time he scored a goal? All four friends readily insult each other in mostly good humor, not sparing Mono, who wants to stay fully involved during his treatments: What does work is the clever ending, which makes the tale worth the telling. Overall, the book is a pleasure to read. Sandford, John Putnam pp.

Years after Heather Jorgenson, the fifth intended victim of a murderous rapist, escaped thanks to her Leatherman knife, a pair of high school kids searching for a remote location for a tryst makes a horrifying discovery which indicates that an awful lot of women were less lucky.

Working with Goodhue County deputy Catrin Mattsson, he reaches the pivotal conclusion that the rapist is actually two men working together, even though one of them, ex-dogcatcher Jack Horn, seems to have died years ago. Best known for mining her own adolescence in her trilogy of graphic memoirs, here Schrag Potential, , etc.

After being ditched for a girl by. At one of many parties, Adam meets one of those girls who stop your heart, a redheaded goddess named Gillian who immediately takes a shine to him. This being a romantic comedy set in a supposedly post-gender metropolis, naturally the meet-cute couple experiences a few bumps in the road, namely that Gillian identifies as a lesbian and believes Adam is a trans boy, with lady parts instead of his constantly raging erection. Sensitive readers should know there are some raunchy bits here and there, with many variations of boot-knocking and a bawdy visit to an underground sex club.

A well-composed story about love and lust in all their myriad variations and about a boy finding his place in a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world. Author appearances in New York and San Francisco. See, Lisa Random House pp. In the late s, Grace, a talented dancer, comes to San Francisco from Ohio to flee the beatings of her father. Helen, who fled China under circumstances not immediately revealed, lives with her parents and extended family in a Chinatown compound. Ruby defies her parents, who plan to return to Japan, by staying in San Francisco to pursue a showbiz career.

Grace and Helen are cast, but Ruby is not—because of Japanese aggression in China, Chinatown is hostile toward all Japanese. However, racial barriers in Hollywood are insurmountable, and they return to Forbidden City. There, Ruby, now headlining as Chinese Princess Tai, performs a Rand-inspired bubble dance, employing a large beach ball as her gimmick. Pearl Harbor, the U. For Grace, Ruby and Helen, the war will bring more upheavals—and opportunities. Still, a welcome spotlight on an overlooked segment of showbiz history. Upton focuses on personal relationships, especially the immediacy and estrangement that emerge from the intensity of family life.

Mysteriously, Kulkins had published almost nothing during the last 17 years of his life, a period dating from the suicide of Seyla Treat, one of his former lovers, with whom he had a daughter, Flame. The biographer ultimately learns that talent is passed across generations when she intuits that some priceless material supposedly left by Kulkins might have been forged by Flame instead. These 17 tales explore personal and familial relationships with both pathos and humor—and all are well worth reading. Allison Weiss is a blogger at a Jezebel-like site called Ladiesroom.

Unhappy in the large house in an upscale Philadelphia suburb chosen by her husband, Allison develops a pill problem, starting with pain meds prescribed for a bad back. Weiner manages to postpone the inevitable train wreck for a few hundred pages, as Allison dismisses and denies her addiction, comparing herself favorably to stereotypical junkies, whose lives are so different from her upscale Whole Foods and private-school existence that she can pretend there is no connection.

Though it feels a bit like the literary equivalent of an after-school special for adults, Weiner does a good job of describing the mindset of the addict and provides a realistic portrayal of upper-middle-class addiction in a novel that will appeal to her many fans. Consider the missile defense system Perimeter, which is programmed to automatically unleash a full-scale attack on the U.

And she wants one-armed Capt. Jim Chapel, of U. Military Intelligence, along to witness that the system has indeed been neutralized. Nadia may not be exactly what she seems to be. The threats keep shifting, but the well-choreographed action, which requires a remarkably small cast, is nonstop.

From Russia with Love meets Dr. A rambling, soft-hearted Irish family saga stuffed with eccentricity, literature, anecdotes, mythology, humor and heartbreak, from the author of Four Letters of Love Ruth has a thing for Capital Letters. A Smart Girl and briefly a student at Trinity College Dublin but now ill and confined to her room while rain constantly drizzles across the skylight, Ruth explains how the Swain family holds to the Philosophy of Impossible Standard: Tributes and references to books and writers crop up constantly.

Virgil was a poet, and his father wrote books about salmon fishing, extracts from which appear in the text. Defensive lineman Kinjo Heywood is known for his crushing attacks on opposing quarterbacks. Now that a shadowy someone is following him around his hometown, his agent, Steven Rosen, and Patriots security chief Jeff Barnes are forced to play a different kind of defense.

Then Kinjo takes to the airwaves himself to make a quixotic announcement that seems calculated to push the story, whose tension Atkins Robert B. And it does, as the tale fizzles out in a shower of forced entries, meetings with conveniently connected mobsters, eleventh-hour twists and bang bang bang.

Two-thirds of a perfectly controlled kidnap tale, with Spenser close to his top form, crashes, burns and goes down without a trace in the end. Coleman, Reed Farrel Tyrus Books pp. She just said she felt that way when she posted her tale of a traumatic jilting online back in , when she was still in high school, and phone banks lit up all over the city. The furor at these revelations was so intense that Sloane changed her name to Siobhan Bracken when she moved to Manhattan.

Is she really in danger, or is this just another piece of performance art? The out-of-the-blue revelations that wind up this atmospheric, bluesy case may leave readers less satisfied than he is. Restless reporter teams up with veteran crime writer of questionable character to solve a series of disappearances. Can it possibly turn out well?

Despite her exile to the southern coast of Thailand, former big-city journalist Jimm Juree has almost managed to keep her sanity with the occasional online assignment, all the while peppering her imaginary friend Clint Eastwood with a series of chatty pitches for her dream screenplay. Jimm seems normal compared to her musclehead brother, Arny; her blithely unrealistic. She decides to investigate anyway.

Creepy unattributed blog entries woven into the tale, presumably from the killer, add tension, and an impending storm raises the stakes. The result is a perfect balance between droll comedy and serious plotting. Couch, Dick; Galdorisi, George St. Hood declines the honor but provides the perfect substitute: His ruse works well enough to fool Capt.

When Laurie persuades squadron pilot Lt. Paging the Op-Center, which turns the whole situation around, except for the little matter of 1, innocent American casualties. The authors Tom Clancy Presents: Act of Valor, , who are becomingly careful not to outshine their model as prose stylists, provide many details about weapons systems, lots of acronyms and some unforgettable dialogue, as when the president yells at his unexpectedly peacenik defense secretary: Culver, Chris Grand Central Publishing pp.

Given their history with Ash, neither is crazy about the assignment. Smith in particular alternates between smoldering with resentment and scheming to get Ash tossed off the force. The revelations of human trafficking, official corruption and infighting among and within law enforcement agencies are sordid, messy and ultimately not all that interesting.

What sets the tale apart is its hero: Seldom has a police procedural been so aptly titled. But even at the fade-out, it seems as if his family may have to wait a long time for his next quiet dinner with them. Deaver, Jeffery Grand Central Publishing pp. Rhyme staves off boredom between the discoveries of the corpses by prepping Officer Ron Pulaski to masquerade as a mourner at the services for Richard Logan, the Watchmaker, after this connoisseur of timepieces and serial homicide suffers a fatal heart attack in prison. Is his quarry yet another of the fiendish, interchangeable, solitary psychos who keep challenging his mettle, or are larger forces at work here?

Four false endings, which must be a record even for Deaver. And indeed, so does Deaver, though not necessarily in such a good way. The income rarely covers more than travel expenses, but the work definitely makes his travels more interesting. Two new elements change the equation on his latest excursion from Tsingtau, China, to Shanghai Political tensions have been accelerated by the looming European war, making China far less safe, and McColl finds surprising romance with Caitlin Hanley, a vibrant young American journalist.

When they meet again, they rekindle their affair, fueled by an ardor the time apart has triggered. Could McColl himself have been the intended victim? This first installment of a proposed series by the author of the six John Russell novels Masaryk Station, , etc.

1. Adventures of Hare and Elephant (Sahara Series Book 3).
2. Madoc's Legacy (Paperback).
3. Twelve Songs, op. 1, no. 6: Dance-song in May (Tanzlied im Mai)!

DuBois, Brendan Pegasus Crime pp. And not just to send him to prison. Lewis was on the scene at the Falconer nuclear plant when a demonstration run amok claimed three and a half lives. Lawrence Todd Thomas, the retired D. So Lewis is left with no one but his buddy Felix Tinios for company as he beats the bushes looking for Chesak. When he gets warned off the case by his sometime-girlfriend, Annie Wynn, and by Detective Pete Renzi of the New Hampshire State Police, Lewis thinks twice, but both thoughts are bloody. This sequel probably should have been published as Part 2 of Deadly Cove , which presented the Falconer demonstration up close and personal.

Hamilton, Ian Picador pp. A prequel to the Ava Lee series takes the jet-setting accountant into foreign lands and considerable danger. When Ava, a Toronto-based forensic accountant, gets a referral from her elderly business partner, she hesitates to take the case. Satisfied that the money, if not the shrimp, is retrievable, she travels to Hong Kong and Bangkok to track down the two scamming partners. Much of her initial work is a waiting game that leaves her time to shop, work out and order food, until she blackmails the less-important conspirator into giving up the location of his partner, Jackson Seto.

Hamilton The Red Pole of Macau,, etc. Once she does, buyer beware this elegantly ruthless debt collector. To save those she loves, an evangelist must confront an evildoer desperate for salvation. Immediately she knows that these pictures have come from the Dark Man, a nameless figure from her past who believes Joy may represent his only hope of salvation. They tell her that Caroline and her daughter Andee have been kidnapped, yet no note has been left. The latest from Hightower The Piper, , etc. A visiting American finds the mystique of Oxford marred by murder. Oxford has long been a mecca for academic scholarship and mystery fiction.

The dead man is Bram Fitzwaring, a New Ager from Glastonbury who had planned a speech he thought would rock the academic community. Unlike most everyone else at the conference and indeed throughout the world, Bram was a firm believer in the authenticity of King Arthur. While her fellow scholars wrangle over the King Arthur controversy, Dotsy spends her time trying to discover how Bram might have been killed and why Lindsey was shot.

Although she provides no serious competition to Oxford masters Dorothy L. For alcoholic college professor Eliot Conte The Accidental Pallbearer, , who finds Herman Melville even more perplexing than the cases he once worked as a private eye, this new mystery is as overwhelming as a great white whale. Lescroart, John Atria pp.

But that all changes when Glitsky begins looking into a rash of suspicious activity at the jail, especially the fatal slip and fall of inmate Alanos Tussaint. Probing ever more deeply, Glitsky links nefarious County Sheriff Burt Cushing and Adam Foster, his chief deputy, to both the allegations of illegal violence in the jail and an unusually nasty coverup. The cost promptly rises. A rookie cop and a rough-edged veteran pair up to stop a series of grisly murders in Manhattan. Gladyss Chronou is six months out of the police academy when she first meets DS Bernie Farrell at a homicide scene—the third recent murder of a long-legged blonde prostitute in a sleazy Times Square hotel.

Bernie, who was one of the first responders at Ground Zero, has a decaying foot, a permanent cough, an irascible nature and a lack of patience with beginners. As she and Bernie investigate previous sex offenders who might be good for the killing spree, one clue piques Gladyss: Nersesian Mesopotamia, , etc. During the Gilded Age, the wealthy could, and did, get away with murder. Many clues point to the involvement of Capt. Jed Crake, a decorated Union Army veteran whose bad reputation with women includes at least one rape during the Civil War. His wife is a much younger former prostitute with a lover of her own.

While Pamela and Harry are pursuing their investigations, the Crakes repair for the summer to the Grand Hotel in Saratoga Springs, playground of the rich and famous. The sleuths soon determine that a number of people had reason to kill Crake: As they circulate among the varied denizens of the beautiful summer playground, more and more information comes to light.

But will it be enough to reveal the truth? Stanley Peke should have trusted his instincts.



They told him that the guys packing his belongings for a move across the country to Santa Barbara were a day early. When another set of movers arrives the next day to an empty house, Peke, retired from his own chemical company, and his wife, Rose, realize that the smiling crew who loaded furniture, papers and family photographs into a big white truck the day before has driven off with virtually everything they owned.

Case closed, he thinks. Talty, Stephen Ballantine pp. Every cop in Erie County, it seems, is deployed to search for Flynn, dubbed Hangman when he was convicted of strangling four high school students. Tonkin, Peter Severn House pp. In London, Richard and Robin Mariner are about to head for the theater when they receive a red alert from their remote monitor, Indira. Robin is left to go alone while Richard flies to Moscow to assess the situation and consult with his Russian partners, Felix Makarov and Aleks Zaitsev. Robin meets with local intelligence agents to fill in the back stories of the presumed perpetrators while Richard and his colleagues close in.

Meanwhile, both Mariners realize they may be mistaken in their original assumptions about the pirates, whose true identities could cut disturbingly close to home. Can Richard trust anyone? But this installment is tense, actionpacked and authentic-feeling, especially in its welcome attention to maritime detail. In one world, the use of magic results in black trails of depletion known as Soot, until eventually more magic seeps in to replace it. Student sorcerer-archaeologist Tyen Ironsmelter discovers a sentient book named Vella in an ancient tomb.

She still has her memories, and she can also absorb the knowledge of any person who holds her. Reluctant to give up such a powerful tool to professor Kilraker, his supervisor at the Academy where, of course, no women are permitted , Tyen conceals Vella—and when Kilraker learns of her existence, he accuses Tyen of theft. Facing ruin as well as the loss of Vella, Tyen steals an aircart and flees. In another world, meanwhile, only male priests in the service of the Angels may wield magic.

Here, using magic creates Stain, black blobs of depletion that fade only slowly. Unwilling to accept a husband selected by her parents, she runs away to live with painter Izare Saffre. Canavan narrates in a pleasant tone of voice, the plotting is plausible and the backdrops reasonably persuasive. Characters, though, tend toward the bland. Over the centuries, various groups of humans—invariably warriors, so how come there are so many women? Among the immigrants are descendants of conquistadores, who formed a powerful, belligerent and bloodthirsty empire called the Holy Dominion; WWI Germans; a Czech battalion from the Russian Revolution; offshoots of a somewhat different British Empire; and mysterious skin-wearing, stone tool—equipped warriors with English accents—as well as Lt.

Matthew Reddy, commander of the old destroyer USS Walker, and his battle group, together with various Japanese navy vessels from the same era. And the latest influx—French Nazis in a gigantic submarine, intent on sinking U. A Grand Alliance has formed to battle the insensate Grik. Flushed with previous successes, Alliance Chairman Adar, a Lemurian, intends a raid on Grik-occupied Madagascar, the revered homeland of his species.

An about-average addition to the series. Domingue, Ronlyn Atria pp. Keeper of Tales, 2. In this tale, Evensong Riven, known as Secret, is born to Zavet, a cold and enigmatic. After her beloved father leaves for work each day, Secret plays alone, listening to Zavet muttering over her work. Mute and painfully lonely, Secret discovers that she can communicate with trees and squirrels; all of nature seems to have stories and visions to share with her.

When Secret is 12, her mother is asked to translate a manuscript that seems dangerous. Suddenly, Secret falls ill with a fever, awakening to discover that she does, indeed, have a secret of her own. War hero Derek Hunt would much rather be with his men on the battlefield than in a ballroom, but since having a dukedom bestowed on him for his service, following orders means staying put and boosting morale on the homefront.

Before leaving the war zone, however, Lord Hunt made a deathbed promise to his best friend that he would marry Lady Cassandra, a quiet, easygoing young woman who would make a perfect bride. She jabbed with nouns, riposted with verbs One who could rip an overzealous beau to shreds in mere seconds. He had to reluctantly admit, it fascinated him. Bowman gives playful nods to Shakespeare and Cyrano de Bergerac in this appealing start to a new series. A fun, smart comedy of errors and a sexy, satisfying romance. Dimon, HelenKay Berkley pp. Then suddenly—and suspiciously—she found incriminating evidence that would have sent Jarrett to jail if not for some powerful friends and potent information to negotiate with.

This is a love story, though, so readers will be beguiled by the romance that. Hot and bold in a hard-shell—over-a—soft-center kind of way that romance fans will find sexy, fun and satisfying. Fenske, Tawna Sourcebooks Casablanca pp. Besides, Will has major trust issues thanks to a disastrous marriage, and Marley has a few secrets that she knows will push his buttons.

In this quirky comedy, up-and-coming romance author Fenske sets up impeccable internal and external conflict and sizzling sexual tension for a poignant love story between two engaging characters, then infuses it with witty dialogue and lively humor. An appealing blend of lighthearted fun and emotional tenderness. Professionally, Sidney has reached the pinnacle of her career, moving back from New York to Chicago to accept the position of her dreams.

Which almost makes up for the fact that the man she thought was her perfect. Now she simply needed to apply those same instincts to her personal life. This guy was a bad investment. James is a contemporary romance superstar, known for intelligent characters and quick, witty dialogue that ratchets up intense sexual tension. Her new novel goes in a slightly different direction from her recent titles, creating strife without any external suspense devices—to great effect. After a lifetime of running from place to place and man to man, Summer thinks she may be ready to settle down with Aaron, a dreamy pilot everyone tells her is the ideal man and who seems ready to pop the question.

Add in Dutch, the sexy mayor who makes her heart pound more than Aaron ever did, and Ingrid, his teenage sister, who makes her heart squeeze, and Summer may actually consider long-term plans. But her dreams for the future meet a huge obstacle when the local curmudgeon and real estate mogul takes a personal interest in her and decides to use her as a pawn in a power struggle steeped in past vendettas that puts the idyllic town at risk. The plot whistles along, taking a few unexpected turns that make the inevitable happy ending more textured and satisfying. With snappy dialogue and a breezy tone that still manages to support emotional depth, the author keeps us turning pages and rooting for Black Dog Bay and everyone in it.

Kery, Beth Berkley pp. Kam is shocked that the seemingly reserved executive is so willing to explore sexual eroticism and responds to it—and him—in such an explosive way. As they work to position his product, Kam begins to hope that Lin might be his most important partner of all. Best-selling erotic-romance author Kery pens a red-hot tale of the road to love complicated by scorching, graphically described sex, including light BDSM.

With two enigmatic main characters who seem to be completely mismatched but come to see themselves as perfect for each other in every way, Kery weaves together a story that nicely balances the romance and the erotica and throws in some satisfying emotional details concerning family and relationship back story. In a subgenre that often misses the mark in some element of writing, storytelling, worldbuilding or character development, Kery does a fine job pulling them all together. An intensely sexual love story. These titles earned the Kirkus Star: Strategies to balance gender inequity at work.

Through comprehensive research and data collected over a span of 25 years, Annis co-author: Despite years of improved laws and access, women still hold far fewer positions of power than men. Instead of forcing women to become more like men, the authors recommend embracing the differences they bring to the workplace, which offset and complement the strategies men have found useful and successful. They discuss the role of leadership and the gradual spread of gender-intelligence ideas and practices around the globe.

Practical solutions to an age-old dilemma. William Palmer, whose mounting gambling debts caused great mental anguish and eventually prompted him to poison several people dearest to him. He never confessed, and evidence of strychnine was not discovered in the corpse probably from lack of stringent or accurate analysis.

Palmer makes for a curiously bland, hence chillingly ordinary and indifferent villain. A resident of his provincial hometown of Rugeley, he had been trained as a doctor, but his family inheritance allowed him to fall into rascally ways, from heavy drinking to seducing young ladies to betting on horse racing. In both cases, just before their deaths, Palmer had taken out an insurance policy on their lives from the Prince of Wales Insurance Office. The author sifts all kinds of other circumstantial evidence—e. A pleasantly instructive social history.

In her second collection of humorous personal essays People Are Unappealing, , Barron continues to unpack the minutiae of her life. A natural comedian with a penchant for making her audience squirm, Barron regularly hosts events for The Moth, a wildly popular organization that features performances in which randomly chosen people take the stage to recount themed, unscripted stories.

She jumps from subject to subject even more frequently than she has romantic partners, some of whom come across as questionable at best. A longtime resident of New York City, she again proves, in her second autobiographical book, that to her, no topic is off-limits, no matter how offensive, gross or unflattering. Still, for fans of mostly funny, embarrassing-for-everyone-involved confessional essays by a single woman in her mids, these pieces may resonate for their gutsy truthfulness and ceaseless levity. Hopefully, Barron will expand her range in her next collection. Forget the bad pun of the title; this is a first-rate survey of the world of mathematics by a British practitioner of the art.

Yes, there is art in doing math, an aesthetic delight in the kind of creation that leads to an aha experience at what a proof reveals. He begins with chapters revealing how deep-seated are our feelings about numbers: He follows up with an amazing finding on the abundance of numbers beginning with one or two and the paucity of higher initial digits in any stories you read in the paper but also in populations, stock prices, etc.

The author then moves on to geometry, algebra, calculus, the laws of logic and the nature of proofs, always with an eye toward showing how an esoteric discovery so often has practical applications. Sprightly look at the parochial midthcentury England that produced an infamous serial poisoner. Sometimes the going gets tough e. In this way, the author leads readers by the hand through such marvels as pi and the exponential constant e, noting how often mathematicians deplored new concepts like imaginary numbers, not to mention infinity.

Great reading for the intellectually curious. In , surfing a wave of personal and career success in radio, the year-old author began experiencing troubling health issues beginning with numbness in his lips and tongue and a lack of coordination. He would consume a beer or two and become extremely drunk. For five months, he kept quiet regarding his symptoms. Finally, Bishop confided to the love of his life and livein girlfriend, Christie, that something was wrong.

Initially given six months to live, Bishop began radiation and chemotherapy. Little Morals for Big Business, , etc. Combining humor with the stark reality of his situation, Bishop shepherds readers through his life following the bleak diagnosis.

BEST INDIE NOVELS OF 2014:

From being fitted for his radiation mask to his bachelor party in Las Vegas, a comical trip to a sperm bank, his wedding and honeymoon in Maui, the author chronicles both the highs and lows of his journey through the disease. Bishop recounts the pressures on his new wife, the financial stress the couple faced and his guilt over a family breach spawned by the emotional stress of his illness.

Clearly the product of exhaustive research, it is a torrent of facts but, ultimately, to no clear purpose. Far more valuable and readable would have been a more selective use of facts to support an overarching thesis, but nothing of the sort ever emerges; it is all trees and no forest. General readers will leave better informed but little wiser. A celebration of innovations that have produced cheaper and more abundant energy, faster computing, lighter vehicles and other technological benefits.

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Bryce Power Hungry: Due to widespread innovation, for example, computers are smaller and faster; food packaging is lighter, farms are denser, and goods and services are cheaper. In time, cheaper computing, high-speed Internet connectivity, wireless communications and 3-D printing may foster yet more innovation.

His topics include the Panama Canal, oil drilling bits, the density of cities and online learning, and he writes at length about the critical importance of cheap, abundant, reliable energy, emphasizing the need for more natural gas, oil, nuclear energy and coal. A comprehensive chronicle of the collection and uses of information during the last six centuries. During this period, the nature and perception of information changed as reliance on classical and ecclesiastical authority gave way to a greater respect for empirical facts.

Governments needed information primarily for taxation and military purposes, and businesses used it to expand trading opportunities. As more, and timelier, information became available, new uses for it emerged, and new demands as well. At the top of his hit list are insurers and hospitals. The author contends that the cost of medical treatment could be vastly reduced by the expansion of clinics staffed largely by semiprofessionals perhaps attached to big-box stores such as Wal-Mart , which would treat minor injuries, colds and immunization.

He advocates making medical records available to patients so that they can freely shop for affordable care from a pool of competing providers without the need of government intervention. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything, , etc. The author charges that the ACA has failed. Likely to find its way onto the Republican platform but worthy of serious consideration on its own merits. With the assistance of Sokolove Drama High: As it becomes increasingly common for basketball players to join the NBA if not straight out of high school, then after only a year or two of college, coaches at elite universities, under pressure to sign top prospects and make deep runs in the NCAA tournament, are facing new challenges.

Where Calipari, known throughout his career as outspoken and whose teams have been cited for NCAA violations, really gains steam is in his discussion of proposed reforms to the embattled organization, which has come under increasing criticism over its handling of the student athletes who bring billions of dollars in revenue to the NCAA and its schools. No backboard-shattering revelations but a candid look at what it takes to remain at the top of the college basketball heap. A Life in Small Things, , etc. Where Dido was born and what relationship Lindsay had with her mother are unanswered questions.

About 15, blacks lived in London in the 18th century, some as servants, some as middle-class landowners. A noted legal scholar analyzes the problems with race-based affirmative action in college admissions and proposes a race-neutral plan as an alternative. To create real diversity and greater social cohesion, the author proposes that colleges give more weight to the structural disadvantages faced by applicants. By this, she means all forms of disadvantages but especially growing up in a neighborhood where poverty is prevalent, attending a poor school or living in a low-income household.

Applicants would be invited to share the disadvantages they have had to overcome, and no special consideration would be given to race or ethnicity. Further, Cashin proposes that financial aid be based solely on need. In subsequent chapters, Cashin presents two case histories demonstrating how racial coalitions that included Republicans brought about legislative changes that affected higher education in Texas and immigrant rights in Mississippi. Her point is that multiracial alliances that create new collective identities are effective ways to bring about social change.

An epilogue that could stand alone but seems appropriate here contains a moving letter from Cashin to her two young sons voicing the hopes and fears of a mother raising black sons in contemporary America. A sensible proposal backed by hard data. Where are we still deluded? How do we think about failures and fears? He takes readers inside candid discussions and retreats at which participants, assuming the early versions of movies are bad, explore ways to improve them.

Unusually rich in ideas, insights and experiences, the book celebrates the benefits of an open, nurturing work environment. An immensely readable and rewarding book that will challenge and inspire readers to make their workplaces hotbeds of creativity. The president of Pixar Animation Studios describes the making of the creative culture that has produced Toy Story, Finding Nemo and other award-winning movies.

The author grew up idolizing Walt Disney and earned degrees in physics and computer science at the University of Utah, where he encountered the collegial, collaborative approach of interactive computer graphics pioneer Ivan Sutherland. Put it this way: Music companies bemoan ever falling levels of sales, fewer and fewer units moved of what used to be surefire best-sellers.

Does this mean that no one is listening to music? Of course not, observes British economic consultant Coyle: But in a time of increasing abstraction and specialization, when so much economic activity centers on consuming and the servicing of consumers rather than actually making anything, can GDP serve as a reliable measuring stick?

A pleasure for facts-and-numbers geeks, though accessibly written and full of meaningful real-world examples. In the United States, the exhilaration of beating Russia to the moon in evaporated quickly. The space shuttle now retired and the International Space Station generated only modest national attention. Clegg has a low opinion of the space station as a means of exploration, regarding it as entirely focused on the Earth. He makes an exciting case for looking beyond to the moon, planets and stars—and for doing this sooner rather than later.

Transportation remains an obstacle, with rockets burning chemical propellants that are expensive, heavy and unlikely to improve greatly. However, futuristic technology should overcome this: Once in space, humans must survive for months going to Mars or millennia to the stars. Clegg explains how, adding that space and other worlds will provide resources hydrogen, water, perhaps fuel and profits from mining.

For the near future, money remains the greatest barrier to exploration. Angry at being excluded from the ISS by the U. Deep, unsettling explorations into a city that has lost its soul, from a BritishIndian novelist who has lived in Delhi for more than 10 years.

Once a quiet, bureaucratic, family-oriented haven for refugees from the convulsions of the partition, Delhi is now a nakedly acquisitive engine for getting rich quick. The entrepreneurial frenzy made millionaires overnight; a new middle class broke with old traditions such as arranged marriages; and crime escalated, especially against women. The new fast-and-loose lifestyle has created what Dasgupta describes as trauma and neurosis in the people. In college, she attended Mass simply to scope out potential dating partners. Things changed after she met and married Lutheran Minnesotan Brad in graduate school, was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, relocated to Lincoln and had two sons.

Content with motherhood yet yearning for divine direction, she began to reconsider her disbelief in theocracy and found God in the everyday. An intermittently rambling book that may nevertheless serve as a potent source of inspiration for the spiritually and religiously inclined.

Davidson, Jenny Columbia Univ. The author of four novels, Davidson confesses her own frustration with what she sees as the artificiality of made-up characters and plots. You have to say what you have to say. Like all practiced screenwriters, he pulled out a corkboard and 3-byinch index cards and created a storyboard to shape a balanced narrative: A vibrator appears on the second page.

In one of the most powerful moments of the book, Lowe recounts a group session from rehab when he witnesses a famous athlete transform from a stoic giant into a tender, scared boy conceding to his demons—a scene that will turn the most fierce skeptics of rehabilitation into believers, including Lowe himself. Lowe had always been a hard worker IMDB lists 82 acting credits for him , but once he finds so-. After years of entertaining guests at dinner parties with his treasure trove of material and knack for storytelling, he decided to put pen to paper—and loved it.

Lowe explains that his first book was neatly contained within the narrative frame of his life, where This ambitious, deeply present and dedicated lover of life is the character whom Lowe portrays most wholeheartedly throughout the book. He meditates on the grief of losing loved ones and the all-encompassing joy of raising his sons. Lowe counters these personal moments with a lighter and often more insightful respite into the inner workings of Hollywood.

Or possibly Dome of the Great Emancipator? Also, his hands are too large and completely unrealistic. Everyone knows Lincoln was not thirty feet tall. Love Life was reviewed in the Apr. Freeman, Jim; Turchie, Terry D. Although the book lists three authors, the text is a firstperson narrative by Freeman, who was given the difficult task of heading a large team charged with cracking the Unabomber case after years of frustration within the agency.

Freeman mentions co-authors Turchie and Noel frequently, but there is no sign that either wrote any of the chapters.

Madoc's Legacy by Edward Swanson | Kirkus Reviews

Kaczynski mailed the bombs to private homes, university offices and commercial establishments; a few times, he physically placed them near such locales. In , he arranged for a bombladen package to be hauled in the cargo bay of a commercial airliner heading for Washington, D. Freeman emphasizes throughout the impressive resources of the FBI but also includes criticism of the bureaucratic methods that initially hindered the investigation.

Regrettably, his account is poorly written and organized. Characters from inside and outside the FBI appear, disappear and reappear with mind-bending rapidity. Though Pasternak anticipated significant censure, he insisted that his manuscript be smuggled to the Italian editor who agreed to publish it and serve as international agent.

From a table behind curtains at the back, Russian visitors eagerly grabbed their contraband. Soviet response was swift and crushing, intensifying after Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in A fast-paced political thriller about a book that terrified a nation. Gilbert, Richard Michigan State Univ.

Similar authors to follow

The author, his wife and their two children spent a decade breeding and selling sheep on the family homestead in Appalachian Ohio. Gilbert had a day job at a university press, and his wife was the university provost, but the farm was his obsession. Not at all a bromidic gentleman farmer, he was earnestly hands-on and farmed for profit. The trapping party is entering upon a land festooned in reports of unsolved disappearances and unearthly pale-skinned sentinels known to the Chippewa Indians as copper gods.

Copper gods grown wrathful as America's Copper Boom brings mining men ever closer to their hallowed territory. Along with the dauntless Marcel and Finnbar, Alvord is inexorably drawn into the lethal vortex revolving around a legendary tribe that will stop at nothing to veil its ancient secret. And what lies at its bloodstained core could demand a drastic revision to American history if they expose it Edward Swanson is a twenty-six year old writer of historical thrillers.

His first novel, Mesmer's Disciple, was published when he was twenty-four. Having graduated college with a BA in History and a Minor in Art History, he now applies his research skills to the writing of fiction. Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it. Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image. Is this product missing categories?