Nobody except his former physician's assistant who hasassumed his identity.Serenity was to be a fresh start and the fulfillment of a vowmade years ago. Being a doctor there is supposed to be a quiet, non-descript job. But it is in this touristy, seaside town wheredrugs flow, insurance is defrauded and people are dying.As the mystery around these suspicious activities and deathsunfolds, so does the new doctor's false identity. If the pretendercan survive the allegations and keep the unconditional love he'sdiscovered, he just may find the serenity he was seeking.

    Twenty miles up the Hudson River from Manhattan and the contemporary art scene Lissa wants to avoid, Tarrytown has a charming Main Street where she can set up her easel and paint, immersed in her subject, the way her beloved French Impressionists did. Charismatic cop Nick Bellini, whose family owns the ice cream shop she's painting, soon notices her expertise and asks her to be on the lookout for phony masterpieces he's heard are being made in town. She hesitates, afraid of being sued by unhappy art collectors, but takes the plunge after seeing a questionable Monet in the home of a local power couple. The danger goes from professional to personal when, responding to a vague request for help from another artist, she walks into his studio and finds him dead. Is there a link to the forgeries? Is someone in the arts community a murderer? Will Lissa be the next target?

    Each story is different and each ends with a surprising twist.

    The landscape pulses with the force of the upcoming revolution, an atmosphere rich in opportunity for a criminal such as Rawbone. His fortune arrives across the haze of the Sierra Blanca in the form of a truck loaded with weapons, an easy sell to those financing a bloodletting.But Rawbone’s plan spins against him, and he soon finds himself at the Mexican-American border and in the hands of the Bureau of Investigation. He is offered a chance for immunity, but only if he agrees to proceed with his scheme to deliver the truck and its goods to the Mexican oil fields while under the command of Agent John Lourdes. Rawbone sees no other option and agrees to the deal—but he fails to recognize the true identity of Agent Lourdes, a man from deep within his past.As they work to expose the criminal network at the core of the revolution, it is clear their journey into the tarred desert is a push toward a certain ruin, and the history lurking between the criminal and agent may seal their fates.Set against a backdrop of intrigue and corruption, The Creed of Violence is a saga about the scars of abandonment, the greed of war, and America’s history of foreign intervention for the sake of oil.

    But he also left behind another legacy: a secret from long ago that shadowed his accomplishments and estranged him from his loved ones—a crime of passion, committed in the throes of unrequited love, that became a lifetime’s burden. Yet when Peter is forced to confront the consequences of his actions, an unexpected turn of events shakes the very foundation of his past. Spanning a boyhood in Iceland to the Nazi occupation of Denmark to modern-day Manhattan, Absolution calls up Dostoevsky and Ibsen as it masterfully plumbs the darkest corners of a sinister mind and a wounded heart.

    Weaving in and out of the space that connects life and death in mysterious ways, these texts use carefully honed language that suggests a newfound spirituality.

    But when the state's latched onto his game, the feds take a bite and the lawyer fees eat away at the rest, all Jake's got left is the bottle and a beautiful wife whose every word is ugly. Jake's to be the top witness in a major case against organized crime -- if he hasn't already kicked the bucket before the trial has its day in court. But an enigmatic mafioso known only as The Man has a plan to make dead certain Jake never gets the chance to testify. The Man's hired Charlie "Little" Bigger, a hit man barely five feet tall, to infiltrate the Winroy residence as a tenant and murder Winroy in cold blood. To Little, it seems like the easiest job on Earth. Until he lays eyes on the beautiful and dangerous Fay and the Winroy's young housemaid Ruth, a woman as sensual as she is vulnerable. Savage Night is Jim Thompson at his most unpredictable and deeply suspenseful, in a claustrophobic thriller of one man's fractured mind.

    Nick Martin has just started graduate school when he’s dragooned into serving as the driver, guide and confidant of a blind poet by the name of Jorge Luis Borges. Together they must address an extraordinary series of crimes and the equally baffling conundrums of literature and philosophy, including Zeno’s paradoxes, the mind/body problem, and the mysteries of destiny, personal identity and artistic creation. Nick plays the parts of Watson, Sancho Panza, Dante and Stephen Daedalus, and before the story ends he hears the last tale of Scheherazade and finds the love of his life. Forty-five years later, struggling with pain and grief, he looks back with wonder at the magical year when he wandered into the labyrinth and took his first steps to self-understanding.Lighthearted but deeply serious, The Philosophical Detective is a unique journey into the visionary world of a genius.Kirkus Reviews called The Philosophical Detective “...a suspenseful, pitch-perfect novel with an unlikely lead detective: a fictionalized version of iconic Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)..... An intelligent, original detective novel.”Note: With my apologies, at this time the book is available only in the United States.

    A man purchases a house, the house of Fra Keeler, moves in, and begins investigating the circumstances of the latter's death. Yet the investigation quickly turns inward, and the reality it seeks to unravel seems only to grow more strange, as the narrator pursues not leads but lines of thought, most often to hideous conclusions.Obsessive. Surreal. Darkly comic. Chilling.--Robert CooverObsessive/delightful, FRA KEELER subtly elaborates on life's details, its ordinary lunacies. Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi's observations are droll and often hilarious. Her novel's incidents pile up and on, tilting and shifting under the weight of language's bizarre disturbances. FRA KEELER is wonderfully imaginative, the work of a terrific young writer.--Lynne TillmanAzareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is the descendent of writers as brilliant and disparate as Max Frisch, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Per Petterson. FRA KEELER is a compelling and humorously associative meditation on how 'one lives against one's dying, ' and how that living will be in contra-distinction to all that explains that death on paper after its fact. Would that more book groups read books of this complexity and intelligence; discussion would reach on into the wee hours!--Michelle LatiolaisIn FRA KEELER a mind churns on itself, while reality--if it is reality--comes rushing at it with a strange stutter, everything a bit lost, a bit off, and ready to be ground up further by the uncertain perception of the narrator. This is a book by turns funny and strange, but always entertaining.--Brian Evenson

    In death she becomes a greater icon than in life, and the Norfolk village where she lived is soon a place of pilgrimage. Six years later her husband Harry, a schoolteacher, is still haunted by her suicide and faithful to her memory. Until he meets Helen and they fall in love. Harry and Helen’s relationship initiates a return to the scene of Alison’s death where they meet ninety-eight year old Ern Higham, and a tale is revealed that has been generations in the making. As Harry pieces together a tragic history and finally confronts his own pain, he discovers that to truly move forward, first he must understand the past ... ‘A moving read, threaded through with mystery and excitement.’ – Good Housekeeping Magazine ‘A thriller full of twists and turns that keeps the reader guessing. Every word is magical, almost luminous.’ – Daily Mail ‘A classic tale of longing.’ – Time Out ‘There are many elements to savour in this novel: the intertwining of past and present; the struggle to write and the responsibility of writing about others’ lives. Best of all, Lofthouse has a fine eye for the bleak Norfolk landscape and how it both reflects and affects characters’ moods.’ – Tracy Chevalier author of Girl with a Pearl Earring ‘Captures the spacey feel of Norfolk well – an engaging read, intriguingly structured, tough in some of its insights, and sexy too.’ – Lindsay Clarke, author of The Chymical Wedding, winner of the Whitbread Prize for Fiction ‘Those who feel the reading public’s love of the 19th century Gothic mystery may be abating will be given pause by this latest entry in the field of pastiche. This is a considerable piece, full of subtle characterization and a well-chosen raft of literary underpinnings.’ – Publishing News ‘The intertwining of the two main stories is very skilfully done, as is the delicacy and understanding she brings to the key themes – suicide, creativity, love and especially paternal love. Very moving.’ – Henry Sutton, novelist and co-director MA Creative Writing, UEA

    He's never stopped searching. Suddenly, a shocking new development provides Foster with his first major lead in over a decade, and he may finally be on the verge of discovering the awful truth.Meanwhile, Mitzi Ives has carved out a space among the Foley artists creating the immersive sounds giving Hollywood films their authenticity. Using the same secret techniques as her father before her, she's become an industry-leading expert in the sound of violence and horror, creating screams so bone-chilling, they may as well be real.Soon Foster and Ives find themselves on a collision course that threatens to expose the violence hidden beneath Hollywood's glamorous façade. A grim and disturbing reflection on the commodification of suffering and the dangerous power of art, THE INVENTION OF SOUND is Chuck Palahniuk at the peak of his literary powers—his most suspenseful, most daring, and most genre-defying work yet.

    The unnamed narrator, a teenage boy, is hit by a car whose driver he vaguely recalls having met before. The mysterious ensuing events, involving a police van, a dose of ether, awakening in a strange hospital, and the disappearance of the woman driver, culminate in a packet being pressed into the boy’s hand. It is an envelope stuffed full of bank notes. The confusion only deepens as the characters grow increasingly apprehensive; meanwhile, readers are held spellbound. Modiano’s low-key writing style, his preoccupation with memory and its untrustworthiness, and his deep concern with timeless moral questions have earned him an international audience of devoted readers. This beautifully rendered translation brings another of his finest works to an eagerly waiting English-language audience. Paris Nocturne has been named “a perfect book” by Libération, while L’Express observes, “Paris Nocturne is cloaked in darkness, but it is a novel that is turned toward the light.”

    It is the author's attempt to reckon with the paradox of her father--a product of her grandparents' fiercely protective love and their status as Mitläufer, Germans who "went along" with Nazism, first reaping its benefits and later its consequences.This page-turning novel focuses on the Kappus family: Frank is a reconstructive surgeon who lost his beloved wife in childbirth and two months later married a young woman who must look after the baby and his two grieving sons when he is drafted into medical military service. Alone in the house, Liesl must attempt to keep the children fed with dwindling food supplies, safe from the constant Allied air attacks, and protected against the swell of desperate refugees flooding their town. When one child begins to mentally unravel, Liesl must discover the source of the boy's infirmity or lose him forever to Hadamar, the infamous hospital for "unfit" children. The novel bears witness to the shame and courage of Third Reich families during the devastating last days of the war, as each family member's fateful choices lead them deeper into questions of complicity and innocence, to the novel's heartbreaking and unforgettable conclusion.

    Somebody is killing cardinals. But what is going on and why? With the latest death, the Vatican is forced to act. The Church pulls Nate Condon, a young New York attorney, into the investigation. As the history of the crimes unfolds, we are drawn inside the magnificent city of Rome, her ancient secrets, and the most privileged inner sanctums of the Catholic hierarchy.In the midst of Nate’s investigation, more tragedy befalls the Church: The pope dies, a Vatican cardinal commits suicide, and the Mafia murders Nate’s primary contact, a self-loathing gay monsignor who is knee-deep in scandal. Soon after, an American cardinal, determined to change the corruption deep within the Church, is elected as the new pope. Will he be able to narrow the divide that is destroying everything he holds dear, or will the schism that separates the Church win out?Strange Gods is written by two priests with firsthand knowledge of the degree to which the Church will go to cover up financial corruption, abuse of power, sexual scandal, and evil. With an eye on the holiness and grace of ordinary people who keep the Church alive and want to change her future, Strange Gods promises to be an engaging and thought-provoking read.

    In this sordid and hilarious tale of whopping academic grants, sleeping on the job, sexual confusion and consenting adults, terrifying departmental secretaries, surprise impregnations and alcoholic lecturers we might conclude that most people are just not cut out for university life.