After the international success of his collection of World War II newspaper articles, German Autumn—a book that solidified his status as the most promising and exciting writer in Sweden—Stig Dagerman was sent to France with an assignment to produce more in this journalistic style. But he could not write the much-awaited follow-up. Instead, he holed up in a small French village and in the summer of 1948 created what would be his most personal, poignant, and shocking novel: A Burnt Child.

Set in a working-class neighborhood in Stockholm, the story revolves around a young man named Bengt who falls into deep, private turmoil with the unexpected death of his mother. As he struggles to cope with her loss, his despair slowly transforms to rage when he discovers his father had a mistress. But as Bengt swears revenge on behalf of his mother’s memory, he also finds himself drawn into a fevered and conflicted relationship with this woman—a turn that causes him to question his previous faith in morality, virtue, and fidelity.

Written in a taut and beautifully naturalistic tone, Dagerman illuminates the rich atmospheres of Bengt’s life, both internal and eternal: from his heartache and fury to the moody streets of Stockholm and the Hitchcockian shadows of tension and threat in the woods and waters of Sweden’s remote islands. A Burnt Child remains Dagerman’s most widely read novel, both in Sweden and worldwide, and is one of the crowning works of his short but celebrated career.

An ideal husband and father? What can the small Australian town of Bay Beach offer an ambitious city lawyer like Nick Daniels? Well, first there's Shanni McDonald-a gorgeous, vivacious woman Nick is instantly attracted to. Second, there's tiny, vulnerable Harry-a three-year-old child from the orphanage, desperately in need of love. Nick is wary of commitment, but Shanni and Harry have decided that Nick is the man for them. All they have to do is persuade him!

A gripping novel about one man's dogged pursuit of a serial killer against the opposition of Stalinist state security forces, Child 44 is at once suspenseful and provocative. Tom Rob Smith's remarkable debut thriller powerfully dramatizes the human cost of loyalty, integrity, and love in the face of totalitarian terror.

A decorated war hero driven by dedication to his country and faith in the superiority of Communist ideals, Leo Demidov has built a successful career in the Soviet security network, suppressing ideological crimes and threats against the state with unquestioning efficiency. When a fellow officer's son is killed, Leo is ordered to stop the family from spreading the notion that their child was murdered. For in the official version of Stalin's worker's paradise, such a senseless crime is impossible – an affront to the Revolution. But Leo knows better: a murderer is at large, cruelly targeting children, and the collective power of the Soviet government is denying his existence.

Leo's doubt sets in motion a chain of events that changes his understanding of everything he had previously believed. Smith's deftly crafted plot delivers twist after chilling twist, as it lays bare the deceit of the regime that enveloped an impoverished people in paranoia. In a shocking effort to test Leo's loyalty, his wife, Raisa, is accused of being a spy. Leo's refusal to denounce her costs him his rank, and the couple is banished from Moscow. Humiliated, renounced by his enemies, and deserted by everyone save Raisa, Leo realizes that his redemption rests on finding the vicious serial killer who is eviscerating innocent children and leaving them to die in the bleak Russian woods.

The narrative unfolds at a breathless pace, exposing the culture of fear that turns friends into foes and forces families to hide devastating secrets. As Leo and Raisa close in on the serial killer, desperately trying to stay a step ahead of the government's relentless operatives, the reader races with them through a web of intrigue to the novel's heart-stopping conclusion.

In a semi-tropical London, surrounded by paddy-fields, the people feed off the sun, like plants, the young are raised in Child Gardens and educated by viruses, and the Consensus oversees the country, “treating” non-conformism. Information, culture, law and politics are biological functions. But Milena is different: she is resistant to viruses and an incredible musician, one of the most extraordinary women of her age. This is her story and that of her friends, like Lucy the immortal tumour and Joseph the Postman whose mind is an information storehouse for others, and Rolfa, genetically engineered as a Polar Bear, whose beautiful singing voice first awakens Milena to the power of music.

For years, Magiere and Leesil have sought a long-forgotten artifact, even though its purpose has been shrouded in mystery. All Magiere knows is that she must keep the orb from falling into the hands of a murdering Noble Dead, her half-brother Welstiel. And now, dreams of a castle locked in ice lead her south, on a journey that has become nothing less than an obsession.

Accompanying Magiere and Leesil are the sage Wynn, their canine protector Chap, and two elven assassins-turned-guardians who must fight their distrust of this sister of the dead. For forces more powerful than they are rallying around Magiere, arming her for the conflict to come. Because finding the orb may be just the beginning of the challenges that await her…

In 1218 an extraordinary princess is born, whose mystical powers and unquenchable spirit will alter the course of history…

"You were going to work your way into my marriage and you were going to call its new three-way shape holy," writes the unnamed narrator of Dear Thief.

The thief is Nina, or Butterfly, who disappeared eighteen years earlier and who is being summoned by this letter, this bomb, these recollections, revisions, accusations, and confessions.

“Sometimes I imagine, out of sheer playfulness, that I am writing this as a kind of defence for having murdered and buried you under the patio.”

Dear Thief is a letter to an old friend, a song, a jewel, and a continuously surprising triangular love story. Samantha Harvey writes with a dazzling blend of fury and beauty about the need for human connection and the brutal vulnerability that need exposes.

“While I write my spare hand might be doing anything for all you know; it might be driving a pin into your voodoo stomach.”

Here is a rare novel that traverses the human heart in original and indelible ways.

"A huge, jagged patchof light forms at the foot of my bed. Then a shape presses through. I'm too horrified to scream. It's a monster from my very worst nightmare - pale red skin; dark red eyes; no nose; and sharp, grey teeth. As it leans further forward I see a hole in the left side of its chest, and inside - dozens of tiny, hissing snakes. The monster frowns andstretches a hand towards me!"

When Kernel Fleck's brother is stolen by demons, he must enter their universe in search of him. It is a place of magic, chaos and incredible danger. Kernel has three aims: learn to use magic, find his brother,and stay alive. But a heartless demon awaits him, and death has been foretold!

Less complex than such recent novels as Manta's Gift and Angelmass, this start to a new SF adventure series from Hugo Award-winner Zahn will appeal largely to younger readers. Fourteen-year-old orphan Jack Morgan, former small-time thief, is on the run, framed for theft from megacorporation Braxton Universis. Hiding out on an unoccupied planet, his only companion an artificial intelligence programmed with the personality of his con man uncle Virge, Jack witnesses a battle between incoming spaceships. While looking over the wreckage, he meets Draycos, a dragon-like K'da, sole survivor of an advance team of K'da and their Shontine allies-murdered by their enemies, the Valahgua, with a terrible energy weapon called "the Death." With Valahgua-backed mercenaries searching the planet for survivors, Jack and Draycos work together to escape. Despite Virge's continuing doubts, Jack agrees to help Draycos find out who betrayed his people; but first they must prove Jack's innocence and get the police off his back. Along the way, each will earn the other's trust as they learn to work together as a team. Zahn keeps the story moving at a breakneck pace, maintaining excitement even when the plot becomes cliched. –From Publishers Weekly

High-flying businessman Carson Page loves his young son, but Joey is deaf-and Carson is unable to communicate with him.

Gina Tennison feels for Joey-she was once in his position herself. So for his sake, she agrees to live in Carson's home for the summer to show this proud man how to reach out to his son. As Carson becomes the dad of Joey's dreams, Gina begins to wonder if Carson could ever reach out for her, too…

Введите сюда краткую аннотацию

The new novel from Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.

Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child is a searing tale about the way childhood trauma shapes and misshapes the life of the adult. At the center: a woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life; but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love until she told a lie that ruined the life of an innocent woman, a lie whose reverberations refuse to diminish. . Booker, the man Bride loves and loses, whose core of anger was born in the wake of the childhood murder of his beloved brother. . Rain, the mysterious white child, who finds in Bride the only person she can talk to about the abuse she's suffered at the hands of her prostitute mother. . and Sweetness, Bride's mother, who takes a lifetime to understand that "what you do to children matters. And they might never forget."

The Eighth Story. Nineteen Years Later.

Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, a new play by Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage. The play will receive its world premiere in London’s West End on July 30, 2016.

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children. While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places. 

The first word in this mesmerizing novel by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is “No.” It is how the novel’s narrator, a middle-aged Hungarian-Jewish writer, answers an acquaintance who asks him if he has a child. It is the answer he gave his wife (now ex-wife) years earlier when she told him that she wanted one. The loss, longing and regret that haunt the years between those two “no”s give rise to one of the most eloquent meditations ever written on the Holocaust.

As Kertész’s narrator addresses the child he couldn’t bear to bring into the world he ushers readers into the labyrinth of his consciousness, dramatizing the paradoxes attendant on surviving the catastrophe of Auschwitz. Kaddish for the Unborn Child is a work of staggering power, lit by flashes of perverse wit and fueled by the energy of its wholly original voice.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Morgan Rowlands was the most powerful young blood witch for generations. Now, 20 years later, her daughter, 15-year-old Moira, knows there's more to her mother's past than she's been told. As she begins to put the puzzle together, she realizes that there are secrets that could destroy her world.

Rhapsody is high fantasy, descended from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings through Eddings’s Belgariad and Malloreon series, complete with an elf-like people, cannibalistic giants, fire-born demons, and dragons. Inquiring fantasy readers will wonder whether it can live up to such distinguished predecessors. The answer is yes. Haydon’s first fantasy is a palpable hit. The three protagonists are well-realized characters whose adventures are by turns hilarious, horrific, and breathtaking. Best of all, though elements are drawn from familiar sources ranging from Norse myth to Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Haydon’s magic worldbuilding is convincing, consistent, and interesting.

Rhapsody, a young woman trained as a Namer, can attune herself to the vibrations of all things, tap the power of true names, and rename people, changing their basic identities. Her magic lies in music: "Music is nothing more than the maps through the vibrations that make up all the world. If you have the right map, it will take you wherever you want to go," she tells her adoptive brothers. They are "the Brother," a professional assassin able to sense and track the heartbeats of all natives of the doomed Island of Seren, their homeland, and his giant sidekick Grunthor, a green-skinned Sergeant Major who enjoys making jokes, using edged weapons, and honing his cannibalistic palate. Inadvertently, Rhapsody has renamed the Brother Achmed the Snake, breaking his enslavement to Tsoltan the F’dor (a fire-born demon). Tsoltan sends minions in pursuit to rebind Achmed. The three escape into the roots of a World Tree, Sagia, emerging transformed into another country and century. But have they truly escaped the F’dor’s evil? And how does all this relate to the prologue’s story of Gwydion and Emily, two young lovers brought together across history and then separated by the mysterious Meridion?

Cal Innes is fresh out of prison and ducking a past muddied with ties to local gang lord «Uncle» Morris Tiernan. But when Tiernan finds out Innes is working as an unlicensed PI and calls in a favor Innes doesn't owe, Innes is thrust into a cat-and-mouse game with Tiernan's psychotic son, Mo. Ordered to track down a rogue casino dealer who's absconded with a hefty chunk of cash, Innes finds that the case points north to Newcastle. With Tiernan's son on his tail and a Manchester cop determined to put Innes back in jail, Saturday's child has to work hard to keep living.

It is 1939. Nazi Germany.

The country is holding its breath.

Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.

Liesel Meminger finds her life changed when she unearths a single object from the snow. It is The Grave Digger’s Handbook, left there by accident at her brother’s funeral, and it is her first act of book thievery.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel’s foster family hides a Jewish man in their basement, Liesel’s world is both opened up and closed down.

In superbly crafted prose that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

in which our narrator introduces:

himself—the colors—and the book thief

featuring:

himmel street—the art of saumensching—an ironfisted

woman—a kiss attempt—jesse owens—

sandpaper—the smell of friendship—a heavyweight

champion—and the mother of all watschens

featuring:

a girl made of darkness—the joy of cigarettes

—a town walker—some dead letters—hitler’s birthday—

100 percent pure german sweat—the gates of thievery—

and a book of fire

featuring:

the way home—a broken woman—a struggler—

a juggler—the attributes of summer—

an aryan shopkeeper—a snorer—two tricksters—

and revenge in the shape of mixed candy

featuring:

the accordionist—a promise keeper—a good girl—

a jewish fist fighter—the wrath of rosa—a lecture—

a sleeper—the swapping of nightmares—

and some pages from the basement

featuring:

a floating book—the gamblers—a small ghost—

two haircuts—rudy’s youth—losers and sketches—

a whistler and some shoes—three acts of stupidity—

and a frightened boy with frozen legs

featuring:

death’s diary—the snowman—thirteen

presents—the next book—the nightmare of

a jewish corpse—a newspaper sky—a visitor—

a schmunzeler—and a final kiss on poisoned cheeks

featuring:

champagne and accordions—

a trilogy—some sirens—a sky

stealer—an offer—the long

walk to dachau—peace—

an idiot and some coat men

featuring:

dominoes and darkness—the thought of

rudy naked—punishment—a promise keeper’s

wife—a collector—the bread eaters—

a candle in the trees—a hidden sketchbook—

and the anarchist’s suit collection

featuring:

the next temptation—a cardplayer—

the snows of stalingrad—an ageless

brother—an accident—the bitter taste

of questions—a toolbox, a bleeder,

a bear—a broken plane—

and a homecoming

featuring:

the end of a world—the ninety-eighth day—

a war maker—way of the words—a catatonic girl—

confessions—ilsa hermann’s little black book—

some rib-cage planes—and a mountain range of rubble

featuring:

death and liesel—some

wooden tears—max—

and the handover man

HAS ENGLAND'S MOST INFAMOUS BRIDE THIEF FINALLY MET HIS MATCH?

At six-and-twenty, Samantha Briggeham knew her marital prospects were fading by the season and she was pleased by the thought. She had no intention of being betrothed-especially against her will-to a man she did not love. She had a plan…and it didn't include being swept into a pair of powerful arms and spirited away by a masked rider. News of Sammie's heroic rescue from undesired wedlock turned her into the toast of the ton, wooed by suitors far and wide. But she couldn't forget the swashbuckling brigand who'd abducted her-something about him intrigued her completely. Then she met Eric Landsdowne, the dashing and seductive Earl of Wesley.

His exploits were legendary, his life filled with danger. He was the elusive Bride Thief, who had his own reasons for helping young women escape the unhappy fate of arranged marriages, and whose true identity was a scrupulously guarded secret. But from the moment he rescued Sammie-only to discover she'd already managed to get herself un-betrothed-Eric knew he couldn't lose her a second time. Marriage was out of the question. Which left only one option: A clandestine affair that might lead to scandal, social ruin, and the unmasking of a love-bested legend…

In a semi-tropical London, surrounded by paddy-fields, the people feed off the sun, like plants, the young are raised in Child Gardens and educated by viruses, and the Consensus oversees the country, “treating” non-conformism. Information, culture, law and politics are biological functions. But Milena is different: she is resistant to viruses and an incredible musician, one of the most extraordinary women of her age. This is her story and that of her friends, like Lucy the immortal tumour and Joseph the Postman whose mind is an information storehouse for others, and Rolfa, genetically engineered as a Polar Bear, whose beautiful singing voice first awakens Milena to the power of music.

Homero Aridjis has always said that he was born twice. The first time was to his mother in April 1940 and the second time was as a poet, in January 1951. His life was distinctly cleaved in two by an accident. Before that fateful Saturday he was carefree and confident, the youngest of five brothers growing up in the small Mexican village of Contepec, Michoacán. After the accident — in which he nearly died on the operating table after shooting himself with a shotgun his brothers had left propped against the bedroom wall — he became a shy, introspective child who spent afternoons reading Homer and writing poems and stories at the dining room table instead of playing soccer with his classmates. After the accident his early childhood became like a locked garden. But in 1971, when his wife became pregnant with their first daughter, the memories found a way out. Visions from this elusive period started coming back to him in astonishingly vivid dreams, giving shape to what would become The Child Poet.

Aridjis is joyously imaginative. The Child Poet has urgency but still takes its time, celebrating images and feelings and the strangeness of childhood. Readers will love being in the world he has created. Aridjis paints the pueblo of Cotepec — the landscape, the campesinos, the Church, the legacy of the Mexican Revolution — through the eyes of a sensitive child.

Peter is quick, daring, and full of mischief—and like all boys, he loves to play, though his games often end in blood. His eyes are sparkling gold, and when he graces you with his smile you are his friend for life, but his promised land is not Neverland.

Fourteen-year-old Nick would have been murdered by the drug dealers preying on his family had Peter not saved him. Now the irresistibly charismatic wild boy wants Nick to follow him to a secret place of great adventure, where magic is alive and you never grow old. Even though he is wary of Peter's crazy talk of faeries and monsters, Nick agrees. After all, New York City is no longer safe for him, and what more could he possibly lose?

There is always more to lose.

Pearl S. Buck’s groundbreaking memoir, hailed by James Michener as “spiritually moving,” about raising a child with a rare developmental disorder.

The Child Who Never Grew is Buck’s candid memoir of her relationship with her oldest daughter, who was born with a rare type of mental retardation. A forerunner of its kind, the memoir was published in 1950 and helped demolish the cruel taboos surrounding learning disabilities. Buck describes life with her daughter, Carol, whose special needs led Buck to send her to one of the best schools for disabled children in the United States — which she paid for in part by writing The Good Earth, her multimillion-selling classic novel. Brave and touching, The Child Who Never Grew is a heartrending memoir of parenting. As Buck writes, “I learned respect and reverence for every human mind. It was my child who taught me to understand so clearly that all people are equal in their humanity and that all have the same human rights.”

Ray and his best friend, Manny, close ever since they met in juvie almost twenty years ago, have a great scam going: With a couple of fake badges and some DEA windbreakers they found at a secondhand store, they pose as federal agents and rip off small-time drug dealers, taking their money and drugs and disappearing before anyone is the wiser. It’s the perfect sting: the dealers they target are too small to look for revenge and too guilty to call the police, nobody has to die, nobody innocent gets hurt, and Ray and Manny score plenty.

But it can’t last forever. Eventually, they choose the wrong mark and walk out with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a heavy hitter, who is more than willing to kill to get his money back, is coming after them. Now Ray couldn’t care less about the score. He wants out--out of the scam, out of a life he feels like he never chose. Whether the victim of his latest job--not to mention his partner--will let him is another question entirely.

Dennis Tafoya brings a rich, passionate, and accomplished new voice to the explosive story of a small-time crook with everything to lose in Dope Thief, his outstanding hardboiled debut.

In the remote hills of northern England lives a powerful clan with a centuries-old secret. They are the drákon, shape-shifters who possess the ability to Turn-changing from human to smoke to dragon. And from the very stones of the earth, they hear hypnotic songs of beauty and wonder. But there is one stone they fear…

Buried deep within the bowels of the Carpathian Mountains lies the legendary dreaming diamond known as Draumr, the only gem with the power to enslave the drákon. Since childhood, Lady Amalia Langford, daughter of the clan's Alpha, has heard its haunting ballad but kept it secret, along with another rare Gift…

Lia can hear the future, much in the way she hears the call of Draumr. And in that future, she realizes that the diamond-along with the fate of the drákon-rests in the hands of a human man, one who straddles two worlds.

Ruthlessly clever, Zane has risen through London's criminal underworld to become its ruler. Once a street urchin saved by Lia's mother, Zane is also privy to the secrets of the clan-and is the only human they trust to bring them Draumr. But he does nothing selflessly.

Zane's hunt for the gem takes him to Hungary, where he is shocked to encounter a bold, beautiful young noblewoman: Lia. She has broken every rule of the drákon to join him, driven by the urgent song of Draumr-and her visions of Zane. In one future, he is her ally. In another, her overlord. In both, he is her lover. Now, to protect her tribe, Lia must tie her fate to Zane's, to the one man capable of stealing her future-and destroying her heart…

When Special Agent Ren Bryce is called to Tate, Oregon to investigate the disappearance of twelve-year-old Caleb Veir, she finds a town already in mourning.

Two other young boys have died recently, although in very different circumstances. As Ren digs deeper, she discovers that all is not as it seems in the Veir household and that Tate a small town with a big secret.

Can Ren uncover the truth before more children are harmed?

When Rachel marries dark, handsome David, everything seems to fall into place. Swept from single life in London to the beautiful Carnhallow House in Cornwall, she gains wealth, love, and an affectionate stepson, Jamie.

But then Jamie's behavior changes, and Rachel's perfect life begins to unravel. He makes disturbing predictions, claiming to be haunted by the specter of his late mother - David's previous wife. Is this Jamie's way of punishing Rachel, or is he far more traumatized than she thought?

As Rachel starts digging into the past, she begins to grow suspicious of her husband. Why is he so reluctant to discuss Jamie's outbursts? And what exactly happened to cause his ex-wife's untimely death, less than two years ago? As summer slips away and December looms, Rachel begins to fear there might be truth in Jamie's words:

"You will be dead by Christmas."

From a leading US authority on a subject more timely than ever—an up-to-date, all-in-one resource on gender-nonconforming children and adolescents

In her groundbreaking first book, Gender Born, Gender Made, Dr. Diane Ehrensaft coined the term gender creative to describe children whose unique gender expression or sense of identity is not defined by a checkbox on their birth certificate. Now, with The Gender Creative Child, she returns to guide parents and professionals through the rapidly changing cultural, medical, and legal landscape of gender and identity.

In this up-to-date, comprehensive resource, Dr. Ehrensaft explains the interconnected effects of biology, nurture, and culture to explore why gender can be fluid, rather than binary. As an advocate for the gender affirmative model and with the expertise she has gained over three decades of pioneering work with children and families, she encourages caregivers to listen to each child, learn their particular needs, and support their quest for a true gender self.

The Gender Creative Child unlocks the door to a gender-expansive world, revealing pathways for positive change in our schools, our communities, and the world.

About the Author

Diane Ehrensaft, PhD, is a developmental and clinical psychologist. At the University of California–San Francisco, she is the cofounder and director of mental health at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center, an associate professor of pediatrics, and an attending psychologist at the Benioff Children’s Hospital Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic. Her work with—and advocacy for—gender creative children has been widely covered, including by *The New York Times*, the Huffington Post, and NPR. She has been featured on the Los Angeles Times online, Wired online, and has appeared on Anderson, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and The Today Show.

Worldwide bestseller Camilla Lackberg weaves together another brilliant contemporary psychological thriller with the chilling struggle of a young woman facing the darkest chapter of Europe's past…

Crime writer Erica Falck is shocked to discover a Nazi medal among her late mother's possessions. Haunted by a childhood of neglect, she resolves to dig deep into her family's past and finally uncover the reasons why.

Her enquiries lead her to the home of a retired history teacher. He was among her mother's circle of friends during the Second World War but her questions are met with bizarre and evasive answers. Two days later he meets a violent death. Detective Patrik Hedström, Erica's husband, is on paternity leave but soon becomes embroiled in the murder investigation. Who would kill so ruthlessly to bury secrets so old?

Reluctantly Erica must read her mother's wartime diaries. But within the pages is a painful revelation about Erica's past. Could what little knowledge she has be enough to endanger her husband and newborn baby? The dark past is coming to light, and no one will escape the truth of how they came to be…

At the height of the hot summer of 1144, a lucky hit by one of King Stephen's archers rids the Fen country of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, who has amassed his castles and gold by robbing rich and poor alike. Thus, the Benedictine abbey at Ramsey, long used as a den for Geoffrey's raggle-taggle marauders, is returned in a thoroughly ruined state to the good brothers of that order. The news comes to Brother Cadfael or the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul in Shrewsbury in the person of the dour, raw-boned Brother Herluin who is soliciting funds and aid to restore Ramsey Abbey to its former splendor. Of much more interest to Cadfael is Herluin's companion, Brother Tutilo, a slightly built lad with a guileless face surrounded by a profusion of brown curls. But Brother Cadfael, long a shrewd judge of character, notes on that brow an intelligence that bespeaks more of mischief than innocence, and he muses that this Brother Tutilo bears watching. The arrival of a French troubadour, his servant, and a girl with the voice of an angel gives Cadfael a feeling in his wise bones that something is about to happen. It does. The late autumn rains bring flood waters right to the altar where the abbey's most precious possession reposes - the bones of Saint Winifred. Only Brother Cadfael knows that moving the holy relic can expose a long hidden secret. He never envisions that the results of disinterment will be the theft of the cherished bones...and murder. Suspicion quickly falls on a guilty-looking Brother Tutilo. But did he do it?

"Without doubt, The Holy Thief is one of the best historical mysteries I've read in the last ten years." – David Liss

***

Moscow, 1936 and Stalin's Great Terror is beginning. In a deconsecrated Church, a young woman is found dead, her mutilated body displayed on the altar for all to see.

Captain Alexei Dimitrevich Korolev, finally beginning to enjoy the benefits of his success with the Criminal Investigation Division of the Moscow Militia, is asked to investigate. But when he discovers that the victim is an American citizen, the NKVD -the most feared organisation in Russia- becomes involved. Soon, Korolev's every move is under close scrutiny and one false move will mean exile to The Zone, where the enemies of the Soviet State, both real and imagined, meet their fate in the frozen camps of the far north.

Committed to uncovering the truth behind this gruesome murder, Korolev,enters the realm of the Thieves, who run Moscow 's underworld. And as more bodies are discovered and the pressure from above builds, Korolev begins to question who he can trust; and who, in this Russia where fear, uncertainty and hunger prevails, are the real criminals. Soon, Korolev will find not only his moral and political ideals threatened, but also his life…

Number-one international best seller and Swedish crime sensation Camilla Lackberg's new psychological thriller featuring Detective Patrik Hedstrom and Erica Falck – irresistible for fans of Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbo.

January, Fjallbacka. A seminaked girl wanders through the woods in freezing cold weather. When she finally reaches the road, a car comes out of nowhere. It doesn't manage to stop. By the time Detective Patrik Hedstrom receives word of the accident, the girl has already been identified. Four months ago she disappeared on her way home from the local riding school, and no one has seen her since. It quickly becomes clear that she has been subjected to unimaginably brutal treatment. And it's likely she's not the only one.

Meanwhile, Patrik's wife, crime writer Erica Falck, is looking into an old case – a family tragedy that led to a man's death. His wife was convicted of murder, but Erica senses that something isn't right. What is the woman hiding? As Erica digs deeper, the past starts to cast a shadow over the present, and Patrik is forced to see his investigation in a whole new light.

Fresh off the success of his Edgar® Award-winning, New York Times bestseller Down River, John Hart returns with his most powerful and intricately-plotted novel yet.

Thirteen year-old Johnny Merrimon had the perfect life: happy parents and a twin sister that meant the world to him. But Alyssa went missing a year ago, stolen off the side of a lonely street with only one witness to the crime. His family shattered, his sister presumed dead, Johnny risks everything to explore the dark side of his hometown in a last, desperate search. What he finds is a city with an underbelly far blacker than anyone could've imagined – and somewhere in the depths of it all, with the help of his only friend and a giant of a man with his own strange past, Johnny, at last, finds the terrible truth.

Detective Clyde Hunt has devoted an entire year to Alyssa's case, and it shows: haunted and sleepless, he's lost his wife and put his shield at risk. But he can't put the case behind him – he won't – and when another girl goes missing, the failures of the past year harden into iron determination. Refusing to lose another child, Hunt knows he has to break the rules to make the case; and maybe, just maybe, the missing girl will lead him to Alyssa…

The Last Child is a tale of boundaries: county borders and circles on a map, the hard edge between good and evil, life and death, hopelessness and faith. Perfectly blending character and plot, emotion and action, John Hart again transcends the barrier between thrillers and literature to craft a story as heartrending as it is redemptive.

Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he can't seem to focus on his schoolwork or control his temper. And lately, being away at boarding school is only getting worse — Percy could have sworn his pre-algebra teacher turned into a monster and tried to kill him. When Percy's mom finds out, she knows it's time that he knew the truth about where he came from, and that he go to the one place he'll be safe. She sends Percy to Camp Half Blood, a summer camp for demigods (on Long Island), where he learns that the father he never knew is Poseidon, God of the Sea. Soon a mystery unfolds and together with his friends — one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena — Percy sets out on a quest across the United States to reach the gates of the Underworld (located in a recording studio in Hollywood) and prevent a catastrophic war between the gods.

Caryl Phillips’s The Lost Child is a sweeping story of orphans and outcasts, haunted by the past and fighting to liberate themselves from it. At its center is Monica Johnson — cut off from her parents after falling in love with a foreigner — and her bitter struggle to raise her sons in the shadow of the wild moors of the north of England. Phillips intertwines her modern narrative with the childhood of one of literature’s most enigmatic lost boys, as he deftly conjures young Heathcliff, the anti-hero of Wuthering Heights, and his ragged existence before Mr. Earnshaw brought him home to his family.

The Lost Child is a multifaceted, deeply original response to Emily Bronte’s masterpiece, Wuthering Heights. A critically acclaimed and sublimely talented storyteller, Caryl Phillips is "in a league with Toni Morrison and V. S. Naipaul" (Booklist) and "his novels have a way of growing on you, staying with you long after you’ve closed the book." (The New York Times Book Review) A true literary feat, The Lost Child recovers the mysteries of the past to illuminate the predicaments of the present, getting at the heart of alienation, exile, and family by transforming a classic into a profound story that is singularly its own.

In an England riddled by political and religious strife. Priscilla Eversleigh fights the man who ravaged her, who is attempting to possess her daughter, and who separates her through a dark secret they share from the man she truly loves.

During the turbulent period of the "Popish plots," fourteen-year-old Priscilla Eversleigh lives untouched in the haven of Eversleigh, the family estate, with her illegitimate sister, Christabel. But this bastion of innocence is about to fall. Danger and romance push their way to her doorstep. Harriet Main and her son Leigh, two trusted family friends, return from the war zone. Yet another refugee stumbles into their midst --- this time it is Jocelyn Frinton, a young man haunted by a pursuer. Priscilla and her friends hide Jocelyn and a furtive romance blossoms, which is cut short when Jocelyn is captured and beheaded. Priscilla discovers she will bear his child.

Harriet whisks Priscilla and Christabel to Venice to save the family name from disgrace of an illegitimate child and plots to pass the baby off as her own. A daughter, Carlotta, is born and the family returns to Eversleigh, but not before Priscilla is abducted by the cruel and lecherous Beaumont Granville. Granville's villainy plagues Priscilla and her loved ones through many tormented years until she at last gains the final victory.

From the Sept. 94 issue of Magazine of Fantasy & Science

(r) copyright 1994, by David Gerrold. All rights reserved.

David Gerrold, CIS: 70307,544

Nebula and Hugo Awards winner

The core story is set in Venice in the sixteenth century, when the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror. An object of glittering yet fearful fascination — was it reflecting simple reality, or something more spiritually revealing? — the Venetian mirrors were state of the art technology, and subject to industrial espionage by desirous sultans and royals world-wide. But for any of the development team to leave the island was a crime punishable by death. One man, however — a world-weary war hero with nothing to lose — has a scheme he thinks will allow him to outwit the city's terrifying enforcers of the edict, the ominous Council of Ten. .

Meanwhile, in two other Venices — Venice Beach, California, circa 1958, and the Venice casino in Las Vegas, circa today — two other schemers launch similarly dangerous plans to get away with a secret. .

All three stories will weave together into a spell-binding tour-de-force that is impossible to put down — an old-fashioned, stay-up-all-night novel that, in the end, returns the reader to a stunning conclusion in the original Venice. . and the bedazzled sense of having read a truly original and thrilling work of art.

Two worlds collide when a mermaid and human man meet, plunging readers into a vast underwater realm brimming with adventure and intrigue.

The mermaid's scales were bronze, and they shimmered like hundreds of pennies arranged close together. Her immense blue-green eyes gave a look of fragility to her face, yet he found her eyes unsettling. She was leaning against a thirty-foot-long shark, which emerged from behind her and opened its mouth to reveal a great big cavern lined with hundreds of teeth—a black tunnel ready to swallow him.

Coralline is a mermaid who is engaged to the merman of her dreams. But when an oil spill wreaks havoc on her idyllic village life, her little brother falls gravely ill. Desperate to save him, she embarks on aquest to find a legendary elixir made of starlight.

Izar, a human man, is on the cusp of an invention that will enable him to mine the depths of the ocean. His discovery will soon make him the richest man on earth—while threatening merpeople with extinction.But then, suddenly, Izar finds himself transformedinto a merman and caught in a web of betrayal and intrigue. Meeting Coralline in the ocean, he decides to join her on her quest for the elixir, hoping it will turn him human again.

The quest pushes Coralline and Izar together, even though their worlds are at odds. Their pasts threaten to tear them apart, while a growing attraction adds to the danger. Ultimately, each of them faces an impossiblechoice. Should Coralline leave her fiancé for a manwho might betray her? And Izar has a dark secret of his own—one that could cause him to lose Coralline forever.

Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy – from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to steal their thoughts, to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars. Except that Jean made one mistake. Now he is condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons – the Dilemma Prison – against countless copies of himself. Jean's routine of death, defection and cooperation is upset by the arrival of Mieli and her spidership, Perhonen. She offers him a chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self – in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed… The Quantum Thief is a dazzling hard SF novel set in the solar system of the far future – a heist novel peopled by bizarre post-humans but powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge and jealousy. It is a stunning debut.

For centuries they've lived in secret among northern England's green and misted hills. Creatures of extraordinary beauty, power, and sensuality, they possess the ability to shape-shift from human to dragon and back again. Now their secret-and their survival-is threatened by a temptation that will break every boundary.

Dubbed the Smoke Thief, a daring jewel thief is confounding the London police. His wealthy victims claim the master burglar can walk through walls and vanish into thin air. But Christoff, the charismatic Marquess of Langford, knows the truth: the thief is no ordinary human but a "runner" who's fled Darkfrith without

permission. As Alpha leader of the dra´kon, it's Kit's duty to capture the fugitive before the secrets of the tribe are revealed to mortals. But not even Kit suspects that the Smoke Thief could be a woman.

Clarissa Rue Hawthorne knew her dangerous exploits would attract the attention of the dra´kon. But she didn't expect Christoff himself to come to London, dangling the tribe's most valuable jewel-the Langford Diamond-as bait. For as long as she could rememb

er, Rue had lived the life of a halfling-half dra´kon, half mortal-and an outcast in both worlds. She'd always loved the handsome and willful Kit from the only place it was safe: from afar. But now she was no longer the shy, timid girl she'd once been. She was the first woman capable of making the Turn in four generations. So why did she still feel the same dizzying sense of vulnerability whenever he was near?

From the moment he saw her, Kit knew that the alluring and powerful beauty was every bit his Alpha equal and destined to be his bride. And by the harsh laws of the dra´kon, Rue knew that she was the property of the marquess. But they will risk banishment and worse for a chance at something greater. For now Rue is his prisoner, the diamond has disappeared, and she's made the kind of dangerous proposition a man like Kit cannot resist.

As a graduate student in upstate New York, Nathaniel Mason is drawn into a tangle of relationships with people who seem to hover just beyond his grasp. There's Theresa, alluring but elusive, and Jamie, who is fickle if not wholly unavailable. But Jerome Coolberg is the most mysterious and compelling. Not only cryptic about himself, he seems also to have appropriated parts of Nathaniel's past that Nathaniel cannot remember having told him about. In this extraordinary novel of mischief and menace, we see a young man's very self vanishing before his eyes.

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.

Here is the dazzling saga of two women, the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults; life’s great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women’s friendship has remained the gravitational center of their lives.

Both women once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up — a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final book, she has returned to Naples. Lila, on the other hand, never succeeded in freeing herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect her neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable!

Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, the story of a lifelong friendship is told with unmatched honesty and brilliance. The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and every return will bring with it new revelations.

Alan Hollinghurst's first novel in seven years is a magnificent, century-spanning saga about a love triangle that spawns a myth – and a family mystery – across generations.

In 1913, George Sawle brings charming, handsome Cecil Valance to his family's modest home outside London for a summer weekend. George is enthralled by his Cambridge schoolmate, and soon his sixteen-year-old sister, Daphne, is equally besotted by both Cecil and the stories he tells about Corley Court, the country estate he is heir to. But what Cecil writes in Daphne's autograph album will change their and their families' lives forever: a poem that, after Cecil is killed in the Great War and his reputation burnished, will be recited by every schoolchild in England. Over time, a tragic love story is spun, even as other secrets lie buried – until, decades later, an ambitious biographer threatens to unearth them.

Rich with the author's signature gifts – haunting sensuality, wicked humor, and exquisite lyricism – The Stranger's Child is a tour de force: a masterly novel about the lingering power of desire, and about how the heart creates its own history.

Stealing things from people who had upset her was something Polly did quite a lot. There was her Aunt Pauline; a girl at school; a boyfriend who left her; and there was the man on the plane…Humiliated and scared, by a total stranger, Polly does what she always does. She steals something. But she never could have imagined that her desire for revenge would have such terrifying results.

Once upon a time, two girls from opposite corners of the globe collide in a deceptively sleepy town in the deep south. Their unlikely friendship becomes the catalyst that unravels Havenwood's most closely guarded secrets, and will change their lives forever.

Jul Graham doesn't know what to expect when she's sent to live with her grandmother after her father's abrupt disappearance, but it certainly isn't a private school full of foreign students and a magic mirror in her backyard. Her new best friend is a blonde girl who speaks Japanese, and all of the adults - including her grandmother - treat Jul like she's some sort of time bomb. On top of that, she's a subject of interest to her new classmates, who don't seem entirely normal themselves. What is Havenwood hiding?

Naguib Mahfouz is Egypt's most famous novelist and his leading role in Arabic literature remains assured. He is now the author of no fewer than thirty novels and more than a hundred short stories; in Egypt each new publication is regarded as a major cultural event and his name is inevitably among the first mentioned in any literary discussion from Gibraltar to the Gulf. If only because of his impact on the Arab world, Mahfouz must be considered an author of international importance.

"This is a psychological novel, impressionist rather than realist; it moves with the speed and economy of a detective story. Here Mahfouz uses the "stream of consciousness" technique for the first time to show the mental anguish of the central figure consumed by bitterness and a desire for revenge against the individuals and the society who have corrupted and betrayed him and brought about his inevitable damnation. It is a masterly work, swiftly giving the reader a keenly accurate vision of the workings of a sick and embittered mind doomed to self-destruction."

From the Introduction by Trevor Le Gassick

From Library Journal

Block introduced Evan Tanner, specialist in lost political causes, in this rousing, often comic 1966 yarn. Unable to sleep for 15 years following a Korean War head wound, Tanner devotes his considerable free time to reading, learning languages, and turning his affliction into a livelihood by writing theses and dissertations for graduate students in New York. Then he learns of hidden Armenian gold in Turkey and sets off on an unlikely adventure that makes him the most wanted fugitive in the world as well as the accidental leader of a Macedonian revolt. Block's tale gets off to an engaging start, sags in the middle partly because of some bone-jarring violence, and recovers neatly at the end. Nick Sullivan handles the characters' many accents quite well. Highly recommended.

Jack didn’t know what to call the nameless, skeletal creature that slunk into her house in the dead of night, stealing the very things she loved the most. So she named him The Toy Thief…

There’s something in Jack’s past that she doesn’t want to face, an evil presence that forever changed the trajectory of her family. It all began when The Toy Thief appeared, a being drawn by goodness and innocence, eager to feed on everything Jack holds dear.

What began as a mystery spirals out of control when her brother, Andy, is taken away in the night, and Jack must venture into the dark place where the toys go to get him back. But even if she finds him, will he ever be the same?

After her mother mysteriously disappears, sixteen-year-old Haley convinces her father to take her to Iceland, where her mother was last seen. There, amidst the ancient fissures and crevices of that volcanic island, Haley meets gorgeous Ari, a boy with a dangerous side who appoints himself her protector.

When Haley picks up a silver coin that entangles her in a spell cast by her ancestor Hallgerd, she discovers that Hallgerd's spell and her mother's disappearance are connected to a chain of events that could unleash terrifying powers and consume the world. Haley must find a way to contain the growing fires of the spell—and her growing attraction to Ari.

Janni Lee Simner brings the fierce romance and violent passions of Iceland's medieval sagas into this twenty-first-century novel, with spellbinding results.

He was a gentleman bandit, she was a cat burglar. And they caught each other in more ways than one. But their desire was as strong as their distrust, and Jordan Tavistock began to fear that Diana Lamb was more than just a thief of hearts.

Magiere the dhampir thinks that her nights of hunting vampires are over. After settling down in her newly adopted village of Miiska-now vampire-free thanks to her and her half-elf partner, Leesil-she looks forward to quiet days tending to her tavern.

But far away in the capital city of Bela, a prominent councilman's daughter has been found dead on her own doorstep… and all signs point to a vampire. Knowing that the battered and burned village of Miiska could use an infusion of cash, Bela's town council offers a generous bounty to the dhampir if she will slay their vampire. Magiere resists, wanting nothing more than to forget her past and ignore her half-vampire nature. Only Leesil can persuade Magiere to follow her destiny-before more innocents are claimed by darkness.

The shattering sequel to the acclaimed Scorpion Shards.

For five young people born with extraordinary powers, a climatic battle against Evil seemingly brought an end to their nightmare. But as they will discover, the nightmare has only began.

Imprisoned for thousands of years, an ancient, malevolent force—The Bringer—awaits the moment when it can break free and wreak its revenge upon the world. Only one force can stop it: the power of the five.

— “Neal Shusterman dazzles you with action and excites you with ideas, but underneath it all, his stories are unforgettable because his characters have souls.” — Orson Scott Card

‘People have been messing around with time ever since there were people. Wasting it, killing it, sparing it, making it up. People’s heads were made to play with time.’

But time isn’t a toy to be played with. It’s bigger than all of us. It exists outside the artificial and arbitrary divisions into which humankind has presumptuously shoehorned it. It needs to be elastic.

To understand truly, you have to see time as the most important resource we have. You mess with it at your peril. You can let it move fast or slowly but what you mustn’t do is allow it to stop. Because when time stands still, everything stops with it. Then, there really is no future. And where would we be without one of those?

Annotations collected and edited by Leo Breebaart. http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/thief-of-time.html

Eff was born a thirteenth child. Her twin brother, Lan, is the seventh son of a seventh son. This means he's supposed to possess amazing talent — and she's supposed to bring only bad things to her family and her town. Undeterred, her family moves to the frontier, where her father will be a professor of magic at a school perilously close to the magical divide that separates settlers from the beasts of the wild.

 With wit and wonder, Patricia Wrede creates an alternate history of westward expansion that will delight fans of both J. K. Rowling and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Рассказ вошёл в сборники:

I Sing the Body Electric (Электрическое тело пою)

The Stories of Ray Bradbury (И грянул гром: 100 рассказов)

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Fern Michaels-one of the most beloved authors of our time-comes a gripping new novel filled with heart and hope, as a young woman wrongly found guilty of murder receives the gift of a second chance…

On the eve of her retirement, Georgia attorney Mikala Aulani is as vivacious and vibrant as ever, eagerly anticipating a happy future with her partner, Ben. But if Kala has learned anything in thirty-five years of practicing law, it's that the truth can always surprise you. And when Adam Star turns up at her office, confessing to the long-ago murder of his wife, Kala must return to a notorious case that has never stopped haunting her.

Ten years have passed since young nurse Sophie Lee was accused of murdering her wealthy patient, Audrey Star. Kala defended Sophie and had no doubt of her innocence-or of Adam Star's guilt-but the prosecution convinced a jury otherwise. Sophie was convicted on a Tuesday-the day on which every significant event in her life, good or bad, seems to happen. Now, on the verge of his death, Adam exonerates Sophie and also leaves her a huge fortune in atonement.

Released from prison, Sophie retreats to Kala's house and tries to evade the media frenzy that surrounds her. Kala is determined to help her client make her way back into the world and adjust to her new wealth and freedom. Yet for both, there are still revelations in store-about the nature of redemption, the strange workings of fate, and the power of forgiveness. And most of all, about the secrets that hide in every heart-even those we think we know best.

S.N. Dyer takes a harshly satiric look at the society that could give birth to the… Wild Child.

A superb new collection from "a writer who can take you anywhere" (The New York Times)

In the title story of this rich new collection, T.C. Boyle has created so vivid and original a retelling of the story of Victor, the feral boy who was captured running naked through the forests of Napoleonic France, that it becomes not just new but definitive: yes, this is how it must have been. The tale is by turns magical and moving, a powerful investigation of what it means to be human.

There is perhaps no one better than T.C. Boyle at engaging, shocking, and ultimately gratifying his readers while at the same time testing his characters' emotional and physical endurance. The fourteen stories gathered here display both Boyle's astonishing range and his imaginative muscle. Nature is the dominant player in many of these stories, whether in the form of the catastrophic mudslide that allows a cynic to reclaim his own humanity ("La Conchita") or the wind-driven fires that howl through a high California canyon ("Ash Monday"). Other tales range from the drama of a man who spins Homeric lies in order to stop going to work, to that of a young woman who must babysit for a $250,000 cloned Afghan and the sad comedy of a child born to Mexican street vendors who is unable to feel pain.

Brilliant, incisive, and always entertaining, Boyle's short stories showcase the mischievous humor and socially conscious sensibility that have made him one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.

Tofu casseroles, communes, clothing-optional kindergarten, antiwar proteststhese are just a few of the hallmarks of a counterculture childhood. What became of kids who had been denied meat, exposed to free love, and given nouns for names? In Wild Child, daughters of the hippie generation speak about the legacy of their childhoods. The writers present a rearview mirror to contemporary culture; with an eye on the past they remind us that there is more than one path through the present. Contributors include Lisa Michaels (Split) and Ariel Gore (Hip Mama).