But before he can dig into this latest case, he comes face to face again with Arrington Calder, the one woman who still holds a key to his affections. Stone and his partner, Dino, comb the glittering streets of Palm Beach and begin to suspect that more than one person might be after Allison: one so clever he manages never to show his face, but even more frightening, another man everybody has long forgotten. The Short Forever: Stone's new client, John Bartholomew, asks Stone to fly to London in search of a young woman whom he suspects has taken up with a mysterious character. Bartholomew asks Stone to see what he can find to discredit the man, Cabot. What Stone finds is more bizarre than he had expected. The woman in question isn't related to Bartholomew in quite the way he had implied. And it appears that Bartholomew and Cabot, who once worked together on a secretive assignment, now have very different versions of what went wrong. When Stone himself is implicated in a shocking double murder, he and his partner, Dino, know they have stepped into a strange case unlike any other.

    Streets that are ruled by Ghost and his crew. And now Ghost- inked, vicious, unprincipled- has a job for Jig.A job that no one can afford to go wrong- not the gangs, the police, the locals, and least of all not Jig.

    Introduction by Robert Silverberg. Afterwords by Norman Spinrad, Vonda N McIntyre, Robert Sheckley, Philip Jose Farmer, Thomas M Disch, and Edward Bryant.

    Would she do the same for him? When Merith Mackenzie is saved from vagrants by a dashing hero, she wonders if she has stepped into the stories of old that she loved as a child. But reality is far different from tales.Finlay Dunne, her savior, would leave right then and there as he has no desire to play guardsman to the young lass and her lady companions. But with their guards dead, he has no choice but to escort them back to where they were going.Reaching the Mackenzie estate, Finlay realizes that Merith Mackenzie is of a noble family. His actions are praised, and he is tasked to be among of the guards that will take her to her betrothed, a job he never expected to take on. And what he had expected even less was to fall in love with the beautiful but spoiled lass.Things will only get worse when Merith finds herself in danger again, as Finlay has to decide how much more he is willing to sacrifice for a woman that can never be his.His worst fears will come true as being so close to a noble lady can be easily used against him by those who wish the powerful guard of Merith to get out of their way.The tables turn, and now Merith is the one that will have to give up everything to save Finlay from certain death.

    Jerry’s Stahl’s perverse, yet often touching tales, many of which first appeared in publications ranging from Playboy to the Pushcart Prize to Best Erotic Fiction, plumb the depths of eccentric romance, sex-starved adolescence, mid-life crisis, and family dysfunction. From a teenager’s tryst with a recently widowed middle-aged woman on an airplane, to a dissatisfied dentist’s attempt to find freedom on the road with a much younger woman, all the way to an intensely erotic love affair between an ex-junkie and an ex-circus midget with a sexual obsession with vegetables, this collection never fails to arouse and surprise. With a disarmingly immediate prose style, Stahl finds great eroticism, humor, and humanity in the wildest of encounters.

    'My only concern', John McGahern once said, 'is that I get the sentence right and describe my world clearly and deeply.''The Country Funeral' witnesses three brothers, John, Philly and Fonsie Ryan, as they travel west from Dublin to Gloria Bog - the heart of the territory where so many of McGahern's stories take place - to attend the funeral of their uncle. Depicting the customs and rituals of the day, McGahern exquisitely traces how the brothers react to the area in unexpected and tender ways, and face their own feelings about the transience of life.Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.

     *** Her gift is her curse. Her world is her prison. Her fate is bigger than she knows... In the hot and harsh farming world of Agricola, Cyra Drayton prepares to be tested. Along with all 16 year olds, she’s about to discover what duty she’ll hold for life. For most, their paths are set – they’ll follow in their parents’ footsteps. For Cyra, however, the little world she knows is about to become a whole lot different. Because Cyra isn’t just a normal girl. She’s got a special gift, a powerful ability, locked deep down inside. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s to be sent to Eden, the most powerful of the sea cities. There, her true purpose will be discovered, a purpose that will change her world forever. And in time, she might just change the world for everyone else as well… *** Sign up to the author’s email list, and you’ll also get a free novella, told from the perspective of Jackson, one of the main characters. This novella is a perfect accompaniment for the series, and isn’t available anywhere else!

    

    

      Growing up in Finglas, Dublin, there was only one thing Christy Dignam ever wanted to do – and that was sing. By the early 1980s, he had formed the band Aslan, part of a new wave of acts coming out of Ireland. Repeatedly chewed up and spat out in the feeding frenzy to sign 'the next U2', they stuck to their principles. developed a loyal following, and their first album Feel No Shame went to No 1 in their home country, showcased by the song ‘This Is’, which Christy proudly acknowledges has become 'part of Ireland's DNA'.   But just as America seemed ready to fall for Aslan, Dignam was battling with heroin addiction, perhaps caused by having been sexually abused as a child, and so he was kicked out of the band. In 1993, after five years in the wilderness, he rejoined Aslan, leading the outfit to a triumphant second coming, despite struggling with further drug problems and serious illness. In this compelling memoir, Dignam looks back over his long career, vividly bringing to life the good times and the bad, but always remembering that at the heart of it all are his songs and his family.

    

    

    It's a case that nobody wants to touch, deeply rooted in old evil—and old evil is Charlie Parker's specialty. He's about to enter a living nightmare, a dreamscape of sorrow haunted by the murderous specter of a hooded woman, by a black car waiting for a passenger that never comes, and by the sinister complicity of both friends and enemies in Larousse's brutal death. Soon, all will face a final reckoning in an unearthly realm where the paths of the living and the dead converge. A place known only as the White Road. THE BLACK ANGELWhen a young woman disappears from the streets of New York City, ties of friendship and blood inevitably draw ingenious, tortured detective Charlie Parker into the search. Soon he discovers links to a church of bones in Eastern Europe, a 1944 slaughter at a French monastery, and to the myth of an object known as the Black Angel—considered by evil men to be beyond priceless. But the Black Angel is not a legend. It is real. It lives. It dreams. And the mystery of its existence may contain the secret of Parker's own origins. THE UNQUIETDaniel Clay, a once-respected psychiatrist, has gone missing. His daughter insists that he killed himself after allegations surfaced surrounding the harm done to patients in his care. Now, a killer obsessed with finding the truth about his own daughter’s disappearance is seeking revenge—and private investigator Charlie Parker finds himself trapped between those who want the truth about Clay’s disappearance to be revealed, and those who will go to any length—no matter the cost—to keep a deep, dark secret about a local town hidden.

    Walter Macken paints a memorable portrait of the hard life of subsistence farming, of loveless arranged marriages, and of rebellion against suffocating social mores.

    When his mysterious employer, Eli Glinn, gives him an eyebrow-raising mission, he has no reason to refuse. Gideon's task: steal a page from the priceless Book of Kells, now on display in New York City and protected by unbreakable security. Accomplishing the impossible, Gideon steals the parchment--only to learn that hidden beneath the gorgeously illuminated image is a treasure map dating back to the time of the ancient Greeks. As they ponder the strange map, they realize that the treasure it leads to is no ordinary fortune. It is something far more precious: an amazing discovery that could perhaps even save Gideon's life.Together with his new partner, Amy, Gideon follows a trail of cryptic clues to an unknown island in a remote corner of the Caribbean Sea. There, off the hostile and desolate Mosquito Coast, the pair realize the extraordinary treasure they are hunting conceals an even greater shock-a revelation so profound that it may benefit the entire human race . . . if Gideon and Amy can survive.