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Vampire Kisses 1: The Beginning


Ellen Schreiber - 2011
    Dangerous first love. This is where it all begins...The mansion on top of Benson Hill has stood empty for years. But one day it seems to be occupied, and its mysterious, handsome inhabitant Alexander Sterling becomes the source of much talk around town. Raven, a vampire-obsessed Goth-girl who has always considered herself an outsider in 'Dullsville', is determined to uncover the truth surrounding the secretive Alexander. As she gets to know him, and their spark intensifies, Raven finds herself in some unanticipated situations. Vampire Kisses: The Beginning captures the thrill of a most unusual romance.Also available by Ellen Schreiber:Vampire Kisses 2: Kissing CoffinsVampire Kisses 3: VampirevilleVampire Kisses 4: Dance with a VampireVampire Kisses 5: The Coffin ClubVampire Kisses 6: Royal BloodVampire Kisses 7: Love BitesOnce in a Full Moon

Darconville's Cat


Alexander Theroux - 1981
    The satire is broad, and uses southern culture cliches but is often very funny. Some of the names of the girls at the school, for example, are Mimsy Borogoves, Barbara Celarent, and Pengwynn Custiss.The story is said to be based on Theroux's years of teaching at Longwood University, and places described in the book are easily recognized buildings on the campus.[citation needed]

Mulligan Stew


Gilbert Sorrentino - 1979
    As avant-garde novelist Antony Lamont struggles to write a "new wave murder mystery," his frustrating emotional and sexual life wreaks havoc on his work-in-progress. As a result, his narrative (the very book we are reading) turns into a literary "stew": an uproariously funny melange of journal entries, erotic poetry, parodies of all kinds, love letters, interviews, and lists - as Hugh Kenner in Harper's wrote, "for another such virtuoso of the List you'd have to resurrect Joyce." Soon Lamont's characters (on loan from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flann O'Brien, James Joyce, and Dashiell Hammett) take on lives of their own, completely sabotaging his narrative.

Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down


Ishmael Reed - 1969
    This here is the story of the Loop Garoo Kid. A cowboy so bad he made a working posse of spells phone in sick. A bullwhacker so unfeeling he left the print of winged mice on hides of crawling women. A desperado so onery he made the Pope cry and the most powerful of cattlemen shed his head to the Executioner's swine." And so begins the HooDoo Western by Ishmael Reed, author of Mumbo Jumbo and one of America's most innovative and celebrated writers. Reed demolishes white American history and folklore as well as Christian myth in this masterful satire of contemporary American life. In addition to the black, satanic Loop Garoo Kid, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down features Drag Gibson (a rich, slovenly cattleman), Mustache Sal (his nymphomaniac mail-order bride), Thomas Jefferson and many others in a hilarious parody of the old Western.

Three Keys to Murder


Gary Williams - 2012
    Her father’s tragic death earlier in the year still haunts her. For decades, Juan Velarde Cortez obsessively hunted a legendary treasure, and his passing has left unresolved feelings for Fawn. Now, when a series of grisly killings rock the small island community—each victim’s face has a distinct signature—Fawn suspects a bizarre connection between the murders, her father’s quest, and the death ritual of an infamous Seminole Indian from the 1800s. A cigar box that once belonged to her father appears to hold the key. As Fawn draws closer and closer to solving the 200-year-old puzzle and determining the killer’s identity, she will be forced to unravel historical clues that will lead her on a harrowing journey. Time is quickly running out as a serial killer is watching and waiting in the shadows. Will Fawn discover the truth before she becomes the next victim? With historical links and storyline twists, this follow-up to Gary Williams’ & Vicky Knerly’s debut novel, Death in the Beginning, engages all the necessary elements of and delivers a fast-paced, heart-pounding thriller. This is a new release of a previously published edition.

ASHWIN SANGHI BOX SET


Ashwin Sanghi
    Sanghi speculates that Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion and spent his missing years in India, and that the men searching for Jesus were Buddhist Monks who were searching for the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. He mentions that the lost tribes of Israel may have settled in Kashmir. The author also introduces St. Thomas as one of Jesuss closest friends and Mary Magdalene as a woman from the ancient Mauryan Empire headed by Ashoka. The book further features terrorist attacks that share some parallels with the 2008 Mumbai attacks.Sanghis hypothesis goes on to establish that Jesuss descendants are todays Kashmiri Islamists. The author draws some similar lines between the fate of a group of terrorists and that of Jesus and his 12 apostles. The book traces the roots of various religions and states that all their origins are closely knit.The Rozabal Line was first published in 2007 under Sanghi's pseudonym Shawn Haigins in the United States. The revised edition was later published in India under Sanghis own name in 2008 before Westland published it in 2010. 2.) Chanakya's Chant , Chanakya's Chant is a racy and gripping account on Chanakya, one of the greatest political strategists India has seen. The story changes track as it narrates the tale of Gangasagar Mishra, the reincarnation of Chanakya, in parallel. Will he be the next kingmaker?Gangasagar Mishra, a denizen of a quaint old Indian town, is no ordinary man. Society sees him as a Brahmin teacher who can barely make ends meet, but he's the reincarnation of the man who brought the fragmented subcontinent together under a single empire Chanakya.Chanakya's Chant by Ashwin Sanghi gives its readers a look into two parallel worlds that are tied together by the intelligence of the main protagonists. The first story is set in 340 BC, when a young Brahmin man, fueled by the death of his father, vows revenge against the king and overthrows his rule by bringing in Chandragupta Maurya, the first emperor of the Maurya Dynasty.The scene then shifts to modern day India, where Gangasagar Mishra leads his life as a nonentity until he decides to groom an ambitious girl from Kanpur into India's prime minister. Will Chanakya's manipulative mechanisms change the face of the nation again? 3.) The Krishna Key Five thousand years ago, there came to earth a magical being called Krishna, who brought about innumerable miracles for the good of mankind. Humanity despaired of its fate if the Blue God were to die but was reassured that he would return in a fresh avatar when needed in the eventual Dark Agethe Kaliyug. In modern times, a poor little rich boy grows up believing that he is that final avatar.Only, he is a serial killer.In this heart-stopping tale, the arrival of a murderer who executes his gruesome and brilliantly thought-out schemes in the name of God is the first clue to a sinister conspiracy to expose an ancient secretKrishnas priceless legacy to mankind.Historian Ravi Mohan Saini must breathlessly dash from the submerged remains of Dwarka and the mysterious lingam of Somnath to the icy heights of Mount Kailash, in a quest to discover the cryptic location of Krishnas most prized possession. From the sand-washed ruins of Kalibangan to a Vrindavan temple destroyed by Aurangzeb, Saini must also delve into antiquity to prevent a gross miscarriage of justice. Ashwin Sanghi brings you yet another exhaustively researched whopper of a plot, while providing an incredible alternative interpretation of the Vedic Age that will be relished by conspiracy buffs and thriller-addicts alike.

Born Yesterday: The News as a Novel


Gordon Burn - 2008
    Floods. Foot and mouth. The disappearances of Tony Blair and Madeleine MacCann. The arrival of Gordon Brown. Terror attacks in Glasgow. And Gordon Burn, artist, journalist and true-crime author, has taken the events from this bleak summer and turned them into a novel about the way news is made, and the way the media creates and manipulates the stories we see before us.This is a daring and thrilling novel from one of the most astute observers of celebrity and tragedy. It is sure to make the headlines itself for the way it is written and for the controversial subjects he tackles. In Born Yesterday Gordon Burn creates a whole new way of writing a novel, and makes us think again about the stories we are fed by the media around us.

Hail! Hail!


Harry Turtledove - 2018
     Fresh from Duck Soup (1933), Julius, Leonard, Arthur and Herbert Marx - or as the world knows them, Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo - are transported by a freak electrical storm to Nacogdoches, Texas in the year 1826. Landing in the midst of the Fredonian Rebellion (the first attempt by settlers in Texas to secede from Mexico) and into the company of the only other Jewish person in town, they are in deep dreck. Falling in with Stephen F. Austin and inadvertently filling his head with knowledge of what is to come, our heroes risk tampering with the future of Texas, and perhaps the entire U.S.A., in their quest to return to their own time. Will they find their way back? Or will they be doomed to live out their lives without indoor plumbing?

The Public Burning


Robert Coover - 1977
    The first major work of contemporary fiction ever to use living historical figures as characters, the novel reimagines the three fateful days in 1953 that culminated with the execution of alleged atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Vice-President Richard Nixon - the voraciously ambitious bad boy of the Eisenhower regime - is the dominant narrator in an enormous cast that includes Betty Crocker, Joe McCarthy, the Marx Brothers, Walter Winchell, Uncle Sam, his adversary The Phantom, and Time magazine incarnated as the National Poet Laureate. All of these and thousands more converge in Times Square for the carnivalesque auto-da-fe at which the Rosenbergs are put to death. And not a person present escapes implication in Cold War America's ruthless "public burning."

Glittering Images / Glamorous Powers


Susan Howatch - 1994
    Now in one volume, the first and second in Susan Howatch's acclaimed series of novels; compelling, searching, wise and witty, they have gained her a huge following.

Killing Suki Flood


Robert Leininger - 1991
    The moment Frank Limosin sees gorgeous eighteen-year-old Suki Flood sitting on the rear deck of the red Trans Am in the hot empty desert, he feels trouble in the air. The Trans Am has a flat tire. They're over ten miles from the nearest highway. And Suki, dressed in short shorts and a tiny halter top, doesn't know how to change a tire. Against Suki's will, Frank gives her a lesson in tire changing, then he thinks that's it, he'll never see her again. How wrong can one man be? Because Suki turns out to be fifty times more trouble than Frank ever dreamed possible. He saved her once. Now he has to save her again and again and again . . .

The Paper Wife


Linda Spalding - 1981
    As evocative of an era as it is psychologically penetrating, "The Paper Wife" is the story of a friendship, a triangle, and a trial by fire as three young friends struggle to find their moral footing during the turbulent years of the Vietnam War.

Magic Astray


Gregory L. Mahan - 2013
    But the elves turn out to be more dangerous than he bargained for, seeking to rip open the veil between Tallia and Llandra and unleash swarming hordes of unspeakable horrors. Even worse, Berry seems to be on their side!Determined to stop them, Randall races against time to find the one artifact that can save Tallia, or destroy it.

The Deceivers


Harold Robbins - 2008
    Left unprotected, the vast complex has been a treasure trove for thieves who mercilessly cut off pieces, mutilating thousand-year-old sculptures with chainsaws.Madison knows there is no possibility that this artifact could have been acquired legally. That knock on her door sends her to one of the most dangerous places on the planet: Phnom Penh, the sex-sin-drug capital of the Far East.Stepping into a cauldron of murder and antiquity-looting that takes her from New York to Cambodia, Hong Kong to Thailand, Madison keeps one step ahead of temple robbers who kill as easily as they steal. She finds comfort in the arms of a soldier of fortune; tangles with a Russian model and her stud "bodyguard," who introduce her to the New Eroticism; and gets entangled with a Cambodian prince whose sex moves not even the worldly Madison had tried. But how much is Madison willing to sacrifice in order to protect her priceless, irreplaceable antiquities...?

Mr. Bedford and the Muses


Gail Godwin - 1983
    Her novels and short stories speak to women and men about their most intense relationships and heartfelt feelings.In this collection of five short stories and a novella, Ms. Godwin is at her best. In the title novella, "Mr. Bedford," a young would-be writer spends time in England under the strange and watchful eye of a rather unusual elderly couple; in "Amanuensis," a charming college student cares for a famous but blocked novelist, with unpredictable results; and in "The Angry Year," a rebellious student is drawn to two different kinds of men until she discovers what she has been running to and from.