July 1914. Young Englishwoman Vivian Rose Spencer is running up a mountainside in an ancient land, surrounded by figs and cypresses. Soon she will discover the Temple of Zeus, the call of adventure, and the ecstasy of love. Thousands of miles away a twenty-year old Pathan, Qayyum Gul, is learning about brotherhood and loyalty in the British Indian army.

July, 1915. Qayyum Gul is returning home after losing an eye at Ypres, his allegiances in tatters. Viv is following the mysterious trail of her beloved. They meet on a train to Peshawar, unaware that a connection is about to be forged between their lives — one that will reveal itself fifteen years later, on the Street of Storytellers, when a brutal fight for freedom, an ancient artefact and a mysterious green-eyed woman will bring them together again.

A powerful story of friendship, injustice, love and betrayal, A GOD IN EVERY STONE carries you across the globe, into the heart of empires fallen and conquered, reminding us that we all have our place in the chaos of history and that so much of what is lost will not be forgotten.

The war is ending, but for the occupants of the castle, their troubles are just beginning. Armed gangs roam a lawless land, and the castle becomes the focus of a dangerous game of desire, deceit and death to one particular outlawed captain. From the author of WHIT, THE CROW ROAD and COMPLICITY.

In A Stone in Heaven, Dominic Flandry finds friendship, maybe even love, after many years of being totally alone.

After A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, Flandry’s life stood in ruins. His Emperor, unbeknownst to him at the time, was dead; his sons were incompetent. His love was dead; his son was dead; he didn’t believe in his job any longer, and he’d taken out his biggest adversary.

So, what was left? This book shows the answer: plenty.

The younger son of Hans Molitor now holds the throne in his incompetent grasp, and worse, does not like Flandry. So, although Flandry is now a Vice-Admiral and commands much respect, he isn’t thrown too many assignments. On the other hand, he is able to make his own schedule, so when Miriam Abrams, daughter of mentor Max Abrams (his superior in Ensign Flandry), manages to get to him to point out a major problem on Ramnau, he leaves.

Once again, he finds intrigue and lots of it, problems, and pain. But unlike A Knight of Ghost and Shadows, Flandry this time finds more while he’s solving the mystery. He and Abrams reach an understanding, and more or less pair off by the end of the book. He also helps solve her problem, take out a would-be Emperor candidate, and rehabilitate his image with Emperor Gerhardt (the younger son of Hans Molitor) in the process, so it’s definitely not a wasted trip.

1931- Washington, D.C.

Brock Stone returns from places unknown to claim an inheritance an unravel a mystery his grandfather left behind. Stone and his companions set off on an action-packed adventure where enemies lurk in the shadows and the past comes to life. Mysteries, thrills, monsters, and more in David Wood’s classic-style adventure, Arena of Souls. Fans of Indiana Jones and Doc Savage will love Brock Stone!

Dagger Awards

Marianne Shearer is at the height of her career, a dauntingly successful barrister, respected by her peers and revered by her clients. So why has she killed herself? Her latest case had again resulted in an acquittal, though the outcome was principally due to the death of the prime witness after Marianne's forceful cross-examination. Had this wholly professional and unemotional lawyer been struck by guilt or uncertainty, or is there some secret to be discovered in her blandly comfortable private life? Her death reveals a paucity of friends, a grasping brother and a tenacious colleague, Peter Friel, who is determined to find out if that last trial held the reason for her taking her own life. The transcript holds intriguing clues, but it is another witness at the trial who holds the key to the truth and she is far from sure that she can reveal her secrets without releasing even more deceit and destruction.

The past may be immutable, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing anyone can do about it…

"Chronicle in Stone"…is epic in its simplicity; the history of a young Albanian and a primitive Albania awakening into the modern world."-Michael Dregni, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

In the Labyrinth, we had a saying: keep silent, keep still, keep safe.

In a city of walls and secrets, where only one man is supposed to possess magic, seventeen-year-old Kai struggles to keep hidden her own secret—she can manipulate the threads of time. When Kai was eight, she was found by Reev on the riverbank, and her “brother” has taken care of her ever since. Kai doesn’t know where her ability comes from—or where she came from. All that matters is that she and Reev stay together, and maybe one day move out of the freight container they call home, away from the metal walls of the Labyrinth. Kai’s only friend is Avan, the shopkeeper’s son with the scandalous reputation that both frightens and intrigues her.

Then Reev disappears. When keeping silent and safe means losing him forever, Kai vows to do whatever it takes to find him. She will leave the only home she’s ever known and risk getting caught up in a revolution centuries in the making. But to save Reev, Kai must unravel the threads of her past and face shocking truths about her brother, her friendship with Avan, and her unique power.

What secrets lie shrouded in darkness?

Okay, so jogging through Central Park after midnight wasn't a bright idea. But Margrit Knight never thought she'd encounter a dark new world filled with magical beings — not to mention a dying woman and a mysterious stranger with blood on his hands. Her logical, lawyer instincts told her it couldn't all be real — but she could hardly deny what she'd seen . . . and touched.

The mystery man, Alban, was a gargoyle. One of the fabled Old Races who had hidden their existence for centuries. Now he was a murder suspect, and he needed Margrit's help to take the heat off him and find the real killer.

As they worked together to figure out who was framing Alban, Margrit discovered that this man with a heart — and body — of stone made her feel more alive than ever, And as the dead pile up, it's a race against the sunrise to clear Alban's name and keep them both alive . . .

For star-crossed lovers Nimira and Erris, there can be no happily ever after until Erris is freed from the clockwork form in which his soul is trapped. And so they go in search of the sorcerer Ordoria Valdana, hoping he will know how to grant Erris real life again. When they learn that Valdana has mysteriously vanished, it's not long before Nimira decides to take matters into her own hands-and begins to study the sorcerer's spell books in secret. Yet even as she begins to understand the power and limitations of sorcery, it becomes clear that freeing Erris will bring danger-if not out-and-out war-as factions within the faerie world are prepared to stop at nothing to prevent him from regaining the throne.

In working together on two challenging new documentaries—South of the Border and the forthcoming The Untold History of the United States series for Showtime—filmmaker Oliver Stone engaged with author and filmmaker Tariq Ali in a probing, hard-hitting conversation on the politics of history.

Their dialogue brings to light a number of forgotten—or deliberately buried—episodes of American history, from the US intervention against the Russian Revolution and the dynamic radicalism of the Industrial Workers of the World to Henry Wallace’s sidelining by Democratic Party machine insiders and the ongoing interference of the United States in Pakistani political affairs.

For Stone and Ali—two of our most insightful observers on history and popular culture—no topic is sacred, no orthodoxy goes unchallenged.

TARIQ ALI is an internationally acclaimed Pakistani writer and filmmaker. He has written more than two dozen books on world history and politics and seven novels (translated into over a dozen languages) as well as scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of New Left Review and lives in London.

OLIVER STONE has directed, among other films, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, W., World Trade Center, Alexander, Any Given Sunday, Nixon, Natural Born Killers, Heaven and Earth, JFK, The Doors, Born on the Fourth of July, Talk Radio, Wall Street, Platoon, Salvador, and the documentaries Looking for Fidel, Comandante, Persona Non Grata, South of the Border, and the upcoming The Untold History of the United States series for Showtime.

“Sail of Stone is riveting-as hard and bleak as the Swedish coast in winter.” – Jeff Lindsay, creator of the Dexter series

A brother and sister believe that their father has gone missing. They think he may have traveled in search of his father, who was presumed lost decades ago in World War II. Meanwhile, there are reports that a woman is being abused, but she can’t be found and her family won’t tell the police where she is. Two missing people and two very different families combine in this dynamic and suspenseful mystery by the Swedish master Åke Edwardson.

Gothenburg’s Chief Inspector Erik Winter travels to Scotland in search of the missing man, aided there by an old friend from Scotland Yard. Back in Gothenburg, A fro-Swedish detective Aneta Djanali discovers how badly someone doesn’t want her to find the missing woman when she herself is threatened. Sail of Stone is a brilliantly perceptive character study, acutely observed and skillfully written with an unerring sense of pace.

“A tough, smart police procedural… Edwardson is a masterful stor yteller… This is crime writing at its most exciting, with great atmosphere and superb characters.” – The Globe Mail (Toronto) on Never End

“Sure to appeal to Stieg Larsson fans eager for more noir Scandinavian crime fiction.” – Library Journal on The Shadow Woman

A #1 Amazon Best Seller for both Dystopian Fiction & Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

What would you do if ALL our technology just stopped? Imagine no smart phones, computers, electricity and fresh water, food at a grocery store, cars or planes; and no prospect of it ever functioning again.

Our Earth is fighting a daily battle on our behalf, shielding us from the harmful ravages of the sun. Every 100 years or so, the sun is too powerful, and the Earth relents exposing its residents to the sun’s harmful plasma clouds. The last time this happened was in 1859, or over 150 years ago. We are past due! Or as one expert says, “Any day now we will be hit with a solar storm that will return us back to the Stone Age!” Dr. Carrington Reid, CMEResearchInstitute.org.

The Stone Age series explores three different time periods on earth, all affected by the same act of nature: A miner during the Gold Rush in 1859; a wanderer during the Stone Age; a family separated between a vacation home in Mexico & their Mid-West American home. All will struggle to survive and along the way, find the real meaning of their existence.

Stone Age is the first book in the exciting Stone Age series. Find out whose lives are lost, what mysteries are uncovered, and which secrets are revealed; all converging on to the present day apocalypse that destroys ALL of the Earth’s technology.

Will you be prepared for Stone Age?

The past comes back to haunt, in the new novel featuring Kathleen Mallory – “the strongest new detective of the decade” (Kirkus Reviews).

Carol O’Connell’s novels continue to draw extraordinary praise for her “unforgettable protagonist” (The Miami Herald), “thoroughly original characters” (People), “gifted storytelling” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), and “prose so stunning it takes your breath away” (Mostly Murder), all combining to produce some of the “most stylishly innovative and witty mysteries in years” (San Francisco Chronicle).

At their heart is NYPD sergeant Kathleen Mallory, a wild child turned policewoman possessed of a ferocious intelligence and a unique inner compass of right and wrong – which has drawn her now to a place far from home.

In a small town in Louisiana, Mallory steps off a train. Within an hour, one man has been assaulted, another has had a heart attack, a third has been murdered, and Mallory is in jail, although she has had nothing to do with any of these events. She is there for an entirely different purpose.

Seventeen years ago, Mallory’s mother died in this town, stoned to death by a mob, and the six-year-old Mallory vanished, to reappear later on the streets of New York. Now she has returned to find out who killed her mother, and what happened to the body, vanished as well, its only trace a winged angel in the local cemetery. Her search will take her through a dark and murky past, and into the company of people who have much to warn her about and even more to hide, but for Mallory there is no stopping – even if what she discovers is something better left buried in the grave.

Filled with the rich prose, resonant characters, and knife-edge suspense that have won her so many admirers, Stone Angel is Carol O’Connell’s most remarkable novel yet.

Carol O’Connell is also the author of Mallory’s Oracle, The Man Who Cast Two Shadows, and Killing Critics. She lives in New York City.

Stone Arabia, Dana Spiotta’s moving and intrepid third novel, is about family, obsession, memory, and the urge to create — in isolation, at the margins of our winner-take-all culture.

In the sibling relationship, “there are no first impressions, no seductions, no getting to know each other,” says Denise Kranis. For her and her brother, Nik, now in their forties, no relationship is more significant. They grew up in Los Angeles in the late seventies and early eighties. Nik was always the artist, always wrote music, always had a band. Now he makes his art in private, obsessively documenting the work, but never testing it in the world. Denise remains Nik’s most passionate and acute audience, sometimes his only audience. She is also her family’s first defense against the world’s fragility. Friends die, their mother’s memory and mind unravel, and the news of global catastrophe and individual tragedy haunts Denise. When her daughter, Ada, decides to make a film about Nik, everyone’s vulnerabilities seem to escalate.

Dana Spiotta has established herself as a “singularly powerful and provocative writer” (The Boston Globe) whose work is fiercely original. Stone Arabia — riveting, unnerving, and strangely beautiful — reexamines what it means to be an artist and redefines the ties that bind.

The electrifying new Joe Pickett novel from the *New York Times*—bestselling author.

Everything about the man is a mystery: the massive ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming that nobody ever visits, the women who live with him, the secret philanthropies, the private airstrip, the sudden disappearances. And especially the persistent rumors that the man’s wealth comes from killing people.

Joe Pickett, still officially a game warden but now mostly a troubleshooter for the governor, is assigned to find out what the truth is, but he discovers a lot more than he’d bargained for. There are two other men living up at that ranch. One is a stone-cold killer who takes an instant dislike to Joe. The other is new — but Joe knows him all too well. The first man doesn’t frighten Joe. The second is another story entirely.

Oliver Stone and the Camel Club are back in their most dangerous adventure yet, a war on two fronts. Casino king Jerry Bagger from The Collectors is hunting Annabelle Conroy, the beautiful woman who conned him out of millions. Stone and his colleagues Reuben, Milton, and Caleb marshal all their resources to protect Annabelle. Yet all their skills may not be enough when a deadly new opponent rips off the veneer of Stone’s own mysterious past: Bagger’s menace pales next to newcomer Harry Finn’s lethality. Passing as a normal family man, Finn has already killed three men, with more targets to come. When Finn sets his bull’s-eye on Stone, his reason will be the greatest shock of all, causing readers to reconsider their views of good and evil. As bodies and institutions topple, the story rockets toward a shattering finale that will leave the survivors of this explosive tale changed forever.

When private eye Sal Kilkenny is asked to discover the whereabouts of Jennifer Pickering, disinherited by her family twenty years ago, it seems that Jennifer does not want to be found. Despite her initial reservations, as the events of the past gradually unfold, single-mum Sal finds that she is becoming engrossed in the case. There are dark secrets waiting to be uncovered but can Sal break the conspiracy of silence that surrounds this mystery? As she spends her days tracing Jennifer, Sal's nights become shattered by an emotional and often dangerous assignment with the Neighbour Nuisance Unit on one of Manchester's toughest housing estates. In this highly charged atmosphere of racial tension it is not surprising when tempers flare. As properties start to burn, Sal's two cases spiral out of control and events, past and present, collide with deadly intensity…

“It was the stunned, pale look of bad news” The call was from Rabbi Jonathan Levine, Decker’s recently discovered half brother. There has been a murder in Jonathan’s family; his brother-in-law, a Hassidic Jew and former drug addict, was found naked in a seedy Manhattan hotel, a single gunshot wound to his head. And his niece, fifteen-year-old Shaynda, is missing… In a desperate bid to track down the missing girl, Decker finds himself in an alien city and a maze of deceit and danger, on a twisted journey that takes him from the darkened slums of New Jersey and the deserted industrial streets of New York, to the hidden meeting places of Hassidic outcasts…

A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband. An elderly lady with Charles Bonnet’s syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly-formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence. A woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire. And a crime committed long-ago is revenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion year old stromatalite.

In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood ventures into the shadowland earlier explored by fabulists and concoctors of dark yarns such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Daphne du Maurier and Arthur Conan Doyle — and also by herself, in her award-winning novel Alias Grace. In Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game.

In Wizard’s First Rule, Richard Cypher’s world was turned upside down. Once a simple woods guide, Richard was forced to become the Seeker of Truth, to save the world from the vile dominance of Darken Rahl, the most viciously savage and powerful wizard the world had ever seen. He was joined on this epic quest by his beloved Kahlan, the only survivor among the Confessors, who brought a powerful but benevolent justice to the land before Rahl’s evil scourge. Aided by Zedd, the last of the wizards who opposed Rahl, they were able to cast him into the underworld, saving the world from the living hell of life under Rahl.

But the veil to the underworld has been torn, and Rahl, from beyond the veil, begins to summon a sinister power more dreadful than any he has wielded before. Horrifying creatures escape through the torn veil, wreaking havoc on the unsuspecting world above.

If Rahl isn’t stopped, he will free the Keeper itself, an evil entity whose power is so vast and foul that once freed, it can never again be contained.

Metropolitan newspaper writer Zack Walker has a knack for stumbling onto deadly stories. But it’s one that his good friend Trixie Snelling doesn’t want told that’s about to unleash a storm of trouble. As a professional dominatrix in the suburbs, Trixie has her share of secrets, but Zack has no idea what she’s really hiding when a local newspaperman threatens to do an exposé on her… not until Zack finds a dead body strapped to the bondage cross in her basement dungeon.

Now Zack is implicated in a murder, Trixie is missing, and everything he thought he knew about his friend, his town, even his own marriage, reveals a darker side. Zack’s twisted trail to the truth will lead to a long-unsolved triple homicide, bikers, drug wars, and a stone-cold killer hell-bent on revenge. It’s a story that’s already cost him his job and possibly his wife, and, if Zack’s not very lucky, it will cost him his life.

“A novel of epic scope and ambition.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

An influential Polish classic celebrates 50 years — and its first English edition

Stone Tablets is a richly rendered novel of the plight of a Hungarian diplomat working in India in 1956. As it opens, Istvan Terey, a poet and World War II veteran, is serving as cultural attaché with the Hungarian embassy in Delhi just a few months before his country is torn apart by the Hungarian Uprising. Though he is personable and popular with Indians and Europeans, communists and capitalists, Terey’s outspoken criticisms of corruption in the Hungarian government and the embassy threaten to undermine his career. Meanwhile, he has fallen in love with Margit, an Australian ophthalmologist working in India, who is still living through a tragedy of her own: her fiancé died under torture during World War II.

Draining heat, brilliant color, intense smells, and intrusive animals enliven this sweeping Cold War romance. Based on the author’s own experience as a Polish diplomat in India in the late 1950s, Stone Tablets was one of the first literary works in Poland to offer trenchant criticisms of Stalinism. Stephanie Kraft’s wondrously vivid translation unlocks this book for the first time to English-speaking readers.

"A high-paced, passionate narrative in which every detail is vital." — Leslaw Bartelski

"[Zukrowski is] a brilliantly talented observer of life, a visionary skilled at combining the concrete with the magical, lyricism with realism." — Leszek Zulinski

Wojciech Zukrowski(1916–2000) was a Polish novelist, screenwriter, and essayist. He worked at the embassy in New Delhi from 1956 to 1959, hence the Indian setting of his novel. In 1996 Zukrowski won the Reymont Prize for lifetime literary achievement.

A photograph forgotten for a hundred years holds the key to finding the legendary lost civilization of Atlantis and an ancient artifact of mysterious power. When a letter with the photograph and a faded map of Egypt shows up in the mail, the Project is launched into a search that takes them from the depths of the Atlantic to the sands of Egypt and places unseen for thousands of years.

Elizabeth Harker's Project team is caught up in a power struggle between two of Russia's vast intelligence services. As the trail to Atlantis emerges from the mists of the past, the team is stalked by agents of a man who will stop at nothing to gain another rung on the ladder of his ambition.

Whoever succeeds will gain knowledge to benefit the world or destroy it. The stakes don't get any higher…

Can the Project keep the secrets of Atlantis out of the wrong hands?

It is 1943, and the Second World War is ravaging Europe. Mussolini decides to pull out of his alliance with the Nazis, and withdraws the Italian troops occupying Albania. Soon after, Nazi forces invade Albania from occupied Greece. The first settlement in their path is the ancient stone city of Gjirokastër, an Albanian stronghold since the fourteenth century. The townsfolk have no choice but to surrender to the Nazis, but are confused when they see that one of the town’s residents, a certain Dr. Gurameto, seems to be showing the invading Nazi Colonel great hospitality. That evening, strains of Schubert from the doctor’s gramophone waft out into the cobbled streets of the city, and the sounds of a dinner party are heard. The sudden disappearance of the Nazis the next morning leaves the town wondering if they might have dreamt the events of the previous night. But as Albania moves into a period of occupation by the Nazis, and then is taken over by the communists, Dr. Gurameto is forced to answer for what happened on the evening of the Nazi’s invasion, and finally explain the events of that long, strange night.

Dealing with themes of resistance in a dictatorship, and steeped in Albanian folklore and legend, The Fall of the Stone City shows Kadare at the height of his powers.

THIEF, SWORDSMAN, AND WIZARDESS

AARON. Clan Heir, he has fled his people when his beloved was slain by his own father's command, abandoning his training, duty and beliefs to become a thief. A master of his trade, he now dared the odds in Ischia, city of the volcano, where the price of being caught was death.

DARVISH. Prince of Ischia, third son of a king who had no intention of giving up his throne. The prince was a drunkard, a lover, and a wastrel, yet was gifted with sword skills and with the ability to charm all around him. But not even his charm could free him from the political marriage now being planned.

CHANDRA. Born a princess, she had chosen to become a Wizard of the Nine, that rarest of beings, able to master all the forms that sorcery could take. Now, promised as Darvish's bride, she undertook a desperate journey to Ischia to convince him they must not wed.

Aaron, Darvish, Chandra—three strangers whose fates were about to become interwined. For someone had stolen The Stone, the magical talisman which stood between Ischia and the volcano's wrath. And unless the three could learn to work together on a quest to find the Stone, Ischia would drown in a sea of lava

Ruth Galloway is called in to investigate when builders, demolishing a large old house in Norwich to make way for a housing development, uncover the bones of a child beneath a doorway – minus the skull. Is it some ritual sacrifice or just plain straightforward murder? DCI Harry Nelson would like to find out – and fast. It turns out the house was once a children's home. Nelson traces the Catholic priest who used to run the home. Father Hennessey tells him that two children did go missing from the home forty years before – a boy and a girl. They were never found. When carbon dating proves that the child's bones predate the home and relate to a time when the house was privately owned, Ruth is drawn ever more deeply into the case. But as spring turns into summer it becomes clear that someone is trying very hard to put her off the scent by frightening her half to death…

During one of the most successful exhibitions in the history of the British Museum, catastrophe strikes. An unexpected seismic anomaly rocks London, causing immense damage to the exhibits on show. One of the damaged artifacts is a male sculpture belonging to collector Dr. James Heidmann's collection of Greek Mythology.

Upon investigation, benefactor Dave Purdue and curator Prof. Helen Barry discover that the broken statue had in fact once been a human being. This begs the question as to the origin of its condition, which immediately sparks Purdue's interest.

Due to a mysterious reference to the deadly gas employed at Auschwitz during World War II, Purdue assembles a party of archaeologists and art experts, including historian Dr. Nina Gould. Chemical analysis proves that an ancient alchemic practice caused the man to turn to stone. Similar to the Greek myth of Medusa, the team find themselves on a perilous hunt for what is reputed to be called the Medusa Stone.

However, interpersonal tension within the group suggests that there might be more than one interested party involved in the search. Between the collectors, experts and conclusive old information found on a deceased SS officer, the chase escalates into a web of secret agendas.

Is the existence of such an item all just speculative desire or does it hold more unsettling truth beyond the silent walls of Nazi ambition? Does Greek Mythology hold the key to the power of the Medusa Stone or does its thrall lie in the greed of men?

The Medusa Stone leads the reader on a roller-coaster ride in search of a legend. Packed with breathtaking suspense and nerve-shredding action, The Medusa Stone is a thrilling read for all fans of action, suspense, and intrigue.

A word from the author: Hello and thank you for your interest in my book. It has come to my attention that some people have been mistaking my books for those written by the famous author duo Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. This is not the case. I wish to clarify that I am not, by any means, related to Douglas Preston or Lincoln Child, Lee Child or any other author called Preston Child. I hope this clears up the confusion.

The Pagan Stone had stood for hundreds of years, long before three boys gathered around it to spill their blood in a bond of brotherhood, unwittingly releasing a force bent on destruction…Gage Turner has been running from his past for a long time. The son of an abusive drunk, his childhood in the small town of Hawkins Hollow was tough – his only solace his friendship with Fox O'Dell and Caleb Hawkins. But, aged ten, the boys unleashed evil on their town: every seven years murder and mayhem reign, and each cycle is more extreme than the last. Now Gage has returned home to help his friends save Hawkins Hollow, but a lifetime as a loner has made him wary of emotional ties. And who can make plans for the future when their present is so uncertain? For unless they find a way to use the Pagan Stone against the demonic force, everything they know and love will be destroyed…

Rahimi (Earth and Ashes) won the 2008 Prix Goncourt for this brief, melodramatic novel set amid factional violence somewhere in Afghanistan or elsewhere. It follows the circumscribed movements of a Muslim woman largely confined to the house where she nurses her comatose husband, who's been shot by a fellow jihadist. A humorless, inflammatory mullah pays the woman unwelcome visits, and sexually menacing soldiers break into her house. Though such events generate tension and drama, the novel's cultural and historical milieu lacks specificity, and Rahimi may have erred in sketching the story's political context vaguely. For some readers, his intimate attention to objects and spaces may compensate for the grating confessional tenor that develops later, when the narrator divulges damning secrets to her husband's unresponsive body and fulfilling the book's premise a little too obviously by referring to him as her patience stone. McLean 's translation is faultless, but the narrator's reminiscences feel stilted; the patience-stone conceit borders on gimmickry; and incidents of a violent or sexual nature seem overdetermined.

Попытка разобраться и понять, как программировать эффективно. С точки зрения авторов, проблема создания эффективных программ скрыта в способе мышления человека при решении задач. Людям свойственны две стратегии мышления — «паковка» (packing) и «отображение» (mapping). Стать хорошим программистом можно лишь освоив «отображение».

© Википедия

The Last Manuscript of a Master

It began with an accident, as if Fate had a plan for Vergil Magus…

After his trials in the Very Rich City of Averno but before his crowning achievement of a certain magic mirror, the great sorcerer and alchemist finds himself on a journey nothing short of epic. Sure he is slated for death in Rome, Vergil seeks safety in the far reaches of the Empire — and finds a world teeming with wonders and magical oddities.

The “unhistoric” sea adventure is a deft mix of fantastic fact and fable, showcasing the author’s keen attention to the often forgotten connections between them.

The deadliest stone of all

A bigger chill than snow. Harder to kick than heroin.

The Destroyer was stoned on star lust. Remo was losing it...and loving it...in the highly-trained arms of Kim Kiley, Hollywood sex specialist...and the hottest weapon in the Wo family arsenal.

Okay, the House of Wo was steamed. But two thousand years was a long time to hold a grudge against the Destroyer. The Wos were like that, though. Give those guys a revenge motive, and it was carved in stone. The family stone. Where Prince Wo the Nearly Great had preprogrammed the Destroyer to self-destruct...unless Chiun could get his mind off sex and back onto violence where it belonged...

Jean Auel's fifth novel about Ayla, the Cro-Magnon cavewoman raised by Neanderthals, is the biggest comeback bestseller in Amazon.com history. In The Shelters of Stone, Ayla meets the Zelandonii tribe of Jondalar, the Cro-Magnon hunk she rescued from Baby, her pet lion. Ayla is pregnant. How will Jondalar's mom react? Or his bitchy jilted fiancée? Ayla wows her future in-laws by striking fire from flint and taming a wild wolf. But most regard her Neanderthal adoptive Clan as subhuman "flatheads." Clan larynxes can't quite manage language, and Ayla must convince the Zelandonii that Clan sign language isn't just arm-flapping. Zelandonii and Clan are skirmishing, and those who interbreed are deemed "abominations." What would Jondalar's tribe think if they knew Ayla had to abandon her half-breed son in Clan country? The plot is slow to unfold, because Auel's first goal is to pack the tale with period Pleistocene detail, provocative speculation, and bits of romance, sex, tribal politics, soap opera, and homicidal wooly rhino-hunting adventure. It's an enveloping fact-based fantasy, a genre-crossing time trip to the Ice Age.

What if the monsters from your favorite horror books were real?

Eddie Fennicks has always been a loner, content to lose himself in a mystery novel by his favorite author, Nathaniel Olmstead. That's why moving to the small town of Gatesweed becomes a dream come true when Eddie discovers that Olmstead lived there before mysteriously disappearing thirteen years ago. Even better, Eddie finds a handwritten, never-before-seen Nathaniel Olmstead book printed in code and befriends Harris, who's as much an Olmsteady as he is. But then the frightening creatures of Olmstead's books begin to show up in real life, and Eddie's dream turns into a nightmare. Eddie, Harris, and their new friend, Maggie, must break Olmstead's code, banish all gremlins and monster lake-dogs from the town of Gatesweed, and solve the mystery of the missing author, all before Eddie's mom finishes writing her own tale of terror and brings to life the scariest creature of all.

The remote resort of Fjallbacka has seen its share of tragedy, though perhaps none worse than that of the little girl found in a fisherman's net. But the post-mortem reveals that this is no accidental drowning! Local detective Patrik Hedstrom has just become a father. It is his grim task to discover who could be behind the methodical murder of a child both he and his partner, Erica, knew well. He knows the solution lies with finding a motive for this terrible crime. What he does not know is how this case will reach into the dark heart of Fjallbacka and tear aside its idyllic facade, perhaps forever.

The Stone Diaries is the story of one woman’s life; a truly sensuous novel that reflects and illuminates the unsettled decades of our century. Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill drifts through the chapters of childhood, marriage, widowhood, remarriage, motherhood and old age. Bewildered by her inability to understand her own role, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her own story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography.

Ulysses Singing Bear had no idea that his scientific work would result in a twenty-million-year journey to a world peopled by the descendants of present-day animals. It was the world of Awina, the cat-woman with an impossible love for Ulysses. It was the planet of a mammoth continent-spanning intelligence — The Tree — who knew that Ulysses, the newly-awakened Stone God, could destroy his reign. To enable his species to survive, Ulysses had to find a human mate. To do so, and to fulfill the single condition set by his worshippers, he had to confront The Tree. It would have been an easy task for a god, but he was only a man — and the only man at that.

In a race against time, Lincoln and Amelia are recruited to track down a cargo ship carrying two dozen illigal Chinese immigrants, as well as the notorious human smuggler and killer – Youling the Ghost. Can they stop the Ghost before he murders again?

A love as bright as the stars and enduring as stone…

Katie James is unlucky in love-so unlucky she's been reduced to kissing the marble statue in her own garden. But her luck changes when the statue warms to life in her arms-and turns out to be a hunk straight out of any woman's fantasy! Well, almost… Jorlan en Sarr hails from a distant planet and like all the other men Katie's known, he comes with a lot of baggage.

A cursed warrior with a lover's magic touch…

Entombed in his stony skin for centuries, Jorlan has been waiting for a maiden fair to break the spell. Yet this statuesque beauty with the will of an Amazon and kisses like flame is a far cry from the obedient damsels of Imperia. And though Jorlan is tempted to abandon all for the sake of Katie, unless he can convince her to give him her heart in two weeks' time, he'll be turned back to stone. And she'll be lost to him forever.

When the Iberian Peninsula breaks free of Europe and begins to drift across the North Atlantic, five people are drawn together on the newly formed island-first by surreal events and then by love. “A splendidly imagined epic voyage...a fabulous fable” (Kirkus Reviews). Translated by Giovanni Pontiero.

José Saramago was born in Portugal in 1922. He is the author of six novels, including Baltasar and Blimunda and The History of the Siege of Lisbon, Blindness, and All The Names. His backlist is available in Harvest editions.

The abbot of a humble monastery in the Valley of Sorrows calls upon Master Li and Number Ten Ox to investigate the killing of a monk and the theft of a seemingly inconsequential manuscript from its library. Suspicion soon lands on the infamous Laughing Prince Liu Sheng—who has been dead for about 750 years. To solve this mystery and others, the incongruous duo will have to travel across China, outwit a half-barbarian king, and saunter into (and out of) Hell itself.

A man who suffered brain damage can see the ancient past and hear the traffic of the stars—and the creature trapped under a mountain.

Рассказ вошёл в сборники:

The October Country (Октябрьская страна)

Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (Сборник ста лучших рассказов)

Wynn journeys to the mountain stronghold of the dwarves in search of the "Stonewalkers," an unknown sect supposedly in possession of important ancient texts. But in her obsession to understand these writings, she will find more puzzles and questions buried in secrets old and new-along with an enemy she thought destroyed…

Wood and Stone was John Cowper Powys' first novel published in 1915. It is no prentice-work however — the author was already in his forties.

The novel is set in the area of south Somerset that John Cowper Powys grew up in. The village of Nevilton is based on Montacute where his father was vicar for many years. When he wrote it Powys was living in the USA and it is perhaps this absence that accounts for the heightened vividness of the descriptive writing.

Powys deploys a large and wonderfully delineated cast of characters. They are loosely divided between 'the well-constituted' and 'the ill-constituted'. Characteristically Powys favours the latter.

С первого же номера журнал Rolling Stone был не просто «еще одним музыкальным журналом» – его создатель Ян Веннер, человек, безумно преданный рок-н-роллу, все же ориентировался на интеллектуальную составляющую журналистики. И потому интервью в Rolling Stone всегда были чем-то большим, чем разговор с музыкантами о музыке. Их авторами были удивительные люди – от тинейджера Кэмерона Кроу, ставшего потом знаменитым кинорежиссером, до профессора права Йельского университета Чарльза Райха; не отставали от них и штатные сотрудники журнала, включая самого Веннера. Но и герои были непростыми: помимо Джона Леннона, Кита Ричардса, Мика Джаггера, Курта Кобейна, Эминема и Боно рок-журналу давали интервью композитор Леонард Бернстайн, кинорежиссер Фрэнсис Форд Коппола, писатель Трумэн Капоте, Далай-Лама и Билл Клинтон.

Перед вами – не просто сборник интервью. Это – живой, дышащий, яркий и очень драйвовый образ эпохи, история великого времени, когда рок-н-роллом было все на свете – от религии до политики. Ну и самого рок-н-ролла, конечно.