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Injustice For All


C.C. Warrens - 2018
    Detective Marx is determined to unravel the mystery behind the notes before another innocent dies, but his efforts might put him directly in the killer’s path. note: Injustice for All is a spin-off from the Holly Novels, but it can be read as a standalone book. If you're wondering where this book falls in relation to the Holly Novels, here's the timeline: Criss Cross, Winter Memorial, Cross Fire, Crossed Off, Injustice for All.

The Levanter


Eric Ambler - 1972
    Michael Howell was utterly apolitical and genetically programmed for survival, a Levantine of mixed origin who possessed profitable business enterprises throughout the Middle East and an Italian mistress as his office manager. Life was sweet for Michael Howell until, one night in Damascus, he discovered that his factories had become the clandestine operations base of the Palestine Action Force, a fanatical terrorist organization dead-set on destroying Israel. Suddenly, Howell is caught in the middle with nowhere to run. Eric Ambler is the recipient of four Gold Dagger Awards and one Silver. In 1975, he was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

The Galosh: And Other Stories


Mikhail Zoshchenko - 1968
    His stories give expression to the bewildered experience of the ordinary Soviet citizen struggling to survive in the 1920's and `30s, beset by an acute housing shortage, ubiquitous theft and corruption, and the impenetrable new ideological language of the Soviet state. Written in the semi-educated talk of the man or woman on the street, these stories enshrine one of the greatest achievements of the people of the Soviet Union—their gallows humor. Housing block tenants who reject electricity because it illuminates their squalor too harshly, a young couple who live in a bathroom, a railway-line manager making a speech against bribery who accidentally mentions his own affinity for kickbacks—in all of Zoschenko's characters, petty materialism is balanced with a poignant faith in the revolutionary project. Zoschenko, the self-described "temporary substitute for the proletarian writer," combines wicked satire and an earthy empathy with a brilliance that places him squarely in the classic Russian comic tradition. Jeremy Hick's translation of The Galosh brings together sixty five of Zoschenko's finest short stories—bringing the choice writings of perhaps Soviet Russia's most humorous and moving writer to American readers for the first time.

Lady in Black


Christina Dodd - 1993
    At the age of ninety-two, the head of Donovan Corporation deserved a household staff. What shocked Reid was the fact that his grandfather's majordomo was a sexy blond bombshell with big blue eyes and curves in all the right places. Considering the recent kidnapping threats his grandfather had received, Reid didn't think the lady butler was a good idea.A graduate of Ivor Spencer's London School for Butler Administrators, Margaret Guarneri wasn't ruffled by Reid Donovan's critical assessment. In the past year, she'd developed a rapport with the elderly Mr. Donovan, who was amused and delighted by the antics of her daughter Amy And apart from their personal attachment, Margaret was the perfect butler, from her firm demeanor to her black silk tuxedo.The situation had been ideal until Reid Donovan came along. One glimpse of his sherry brown eyes sent waves of heat shimmering through Margaret's cool facade. His tender touch reminded her how it felt to be a woman in love, a woman with needs and passions. But falling in love with the boss's grandson was strictly forbid-den, and Margaret was well schooled in protocol. She had to put duty before the lure of desire.

Complete Poetical Works and Selected Prose, 1881-1957


George Bacovia - 1994
    Bacovia's prose and prose poems reveal his concern for the underdog and his yearning for new ideals. His descriptions of people and places are often set against a lyrical background and linked to an internal dialogue or a rhetorical question. They are sensual with powerful visual images, which also reveal Bacovia's introspective eroticism.

Lizoanca la 11 ani


Doina Ruști - 2009
    People consider her guilty of spreading a disease, and during one single torrid summer, she turns into public enemy no. 1. At first she attracts the attention of the villagers, and afterwards, through mass-media, she becomes a national sensation. As this character develops, hunted, blamed and adored at the same time, various secrets, more or less important, are revealed, gradually turning the story into the chronicle of this small rural community. Hypocrisy, humiliation, cruelty and murder. Each character had contributed one way or another to the change of mentality in society. All these old occurrences actually represent the underground of the contemporary world, and once disclosed, the history of the last 60 years is recomposed in detail, unveiling how the east-European village has been undergoing a sustained downfall. The 13 stories (forming Lizoanca’s story) all lead to a single character, a certain Crone Petrache Notaru (80 years old). He is the one who committed all these landmark acts changing the life of the village, and all the other characters are built around him, weaving, one way or another, Lizoanca’s biography. Notaru ruined Tori’s life (Lizoanca’s grandmother). He is also responsible for Greblă’s fixations, who is a paedophile. Notaru fed Sanitara’s fears, embittering her. And he rewrites the history of an antic ring which he had found when he was a child. Notaru is the unknown architect of a world which can synthetically be named Lizoanca.Based on a true story, the novel represents the radiography of the contemporary society, during its last moments.

The Book of Mirrors


E.O. Chirovici - 2017
    One night in 1987, Wieder was brutally murdered in his home and the case was never solved.Peter Katz is hell-bent on getting to the bottom of what happened that night twenty-five years ago and is convinced the full manuscript will reveal who committed the violent crime. But other people’s recollections are dangerous weapons to play with, and this might be one memory that is best kept buried.

Wildest Dreams


Jennifer Blake - 1992
    Joletta tries to track down the formula through journals written by her ancestress, Violet Fossier, who in 1854 made a grand tour of Europe. As Joletta follows Violet's itinerary across the continent, the story goes back in time, to nineteenth- century Europe and a scandalous love affair that is intimately bound up in the mystery of the perfume. In the present Joletta finds herself attracted to--and suspicious of--Rone Adamson, a Southern playboy whose astounding knowledge of perfume makes Joletta wary. Yet his chivalrous charms prove too much for her scruples, and Jolettta succumbs to her dubious white knight, even as danger swirls around them....A Main Selection of the Doubelday Book ClubFrom the Paperback edition.

Retribution Road


Antonin Varenne - 2014
    Arthur Bowman, a sergeant in the East India Company, is sent on a secret mission during the Second Anglo-Burmese War. But the expedition is foiled - his men are captured and tortured. Throughout their ordeal, a single word becomes Bowman's mantra, a word that will stiffen their powers of endurance in the face of unimaginable suffering: "Survival". But for all that, only a handful escape with their lives.Some years later in London, battling his ghosts through a haze of alcohol and opium, Bowman discovers a mutilated corpse in a sewer. The victim appears to have been subjected to the same torments as Bowman endured in the Burmese jungle. And the word "Survival" has been daubed in blood by the body's side. Persuaded that the culprit is one of the men who shared his captivity, Bowman resolves to hunt him down.From the Burmese jungle to the slums of London to the conquest of the Wild West, Antonin Varenne takes us on a thrilling journey full of sound and unabated fury, reviving the lapsed tradition of the great writers of boundless adventure. Sergeant Bowman belongs to that breed of heroes who inhabit the imaginations of Conrad, Kipling, Stevenson . . . Lost soldiers who have plunged into the heart of darkness and will cross the globe in search of vengeance and redemption. Translated from the French by Sam Taylor

Crimson Rain


Meg O'Brien - 2002
    Adopting one-year-old twin girls seemed like an answer to desperate prayers. But when one girl is caught trying to kill her sister with a knife on Christmas Eve four years later, the Bradleys have no choice but to return the disturbed child to the care of an orphanage. Sixteen years pass before their actions come back to haunt them, and by then Paul and Gina's marriage is in trouble; the only light in their lives is Rachel, the child they raised. Then Rachel is kidnapped, and the sacrifice Paul and Gina must make to ensure her safe return results in their own utter humiliation. Will they have the strength to get her back?

Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism


Matei Călinescu - 1987
    The concept of modernity—the notion that we, the living, are different and somehow superior to our predecessors and that our civilization is likely to be succeeded by one even superior to ours—is a relatively recent Western invention and one whose time may already have passed, if we believe its postmodern challengers. Calinescu documents the rise of cultural modernity and, in tracing the shifting senses of the five terms under scrutiny, illustrates the intricate value judgments, conflicting orientations, and intellectual paradoxes to which it has given rise.Five Faces of Modernity attempts to do for the foundations of the modernist critical lexicon what earlier terminological studies have done for such complex categories as classicism, baroque, romanticism, realism, or symbolism and thereby fill a gap in literary scholarship. On another, more ambitious level, Calinescu deals at length with the larger issues, dilemmas, ideological tensions, and perplexities brought about by the assertion of modernity.

That Elixir Called Love: The Truth about Sexual Attraction, Secret Fantasies, and the Magic of True Love


Ramtha - 2003
    In this book Ramtha questions, what is love really about? Is it real? What makes us fall in love? What can we expect from our relationships? What is there to learn about who we really are? After almost two decades since the publication of Love Yourself into Life, Ramtha reintroduces us with unmatching simplicity and genius to that mysterious subject at the heart of all human longing, that elixir called love.

Promise Me Tomorrow


Nora Roberts - 1984
    And Byron's searing kiss stirred wild longings in her no other man had roused. her future as an architect was in his hands. But he would trap her in a desperate passion- one never fulfilled by love. She fled to a glamorous assignment in Paris- to the embrace of an elegant Frenchman whose sensuous caress hid a dangerous ambition. Then destiny brought Byron into her life again, tempting her with new dreams, drawing her into the flames of the one unforgettable love that promised to consume her- body, heart and soul.

Flying Against the Arrow: An Intellectual in Ceausescu's Romania


Horia-Roman Patapievici - 1995
    The book vividly portrays the difficulties encountered by a young intellectual trying to shape himself under the oppressive Ceausescu regime and provides a stark depiction of a man's intellectual suffocation under hard-line socialist rule. The book's overall significance is therefore far more wideranging than just Romania or the 1980s.

Double Exposure: From A Gift of Love


Judith McNaught - 1996
    Stepsisters Cory and Diana Foster run Beautiful Living magazine. Diana handles the business side of things and Cory organizes the gorgeous photo layouts that the magazine is known for. When Diana arranges a photo shoot for the "perfect wedding", Cory is reunited with an old flame and a chance for romance to spark again.