Reunited on a Frankfurt estate in that war’s hungry aftermath, Karin and Billy become fascinated with tribal rituals found in the Wild West stories of Karl May, whose Winnetou tales are among the most popular books published in Germany. Coming of age in Frankfurt and Berlin, Karin and Billy share a passion for speed, jazz, and nightclubs. They also share a fantasy of escape—from darkening Germany, from history—to El Llano Estacado, the high plains of Texas and New Mexico, vividly reimagined in May’s fiction.   Intriguing characters braid this intricate and harrowing story together, from golden Edwardian summers to London under Zeppelin attack, Ireland on the brink of its War of Independence, and Germany collapsing into the Hitler era. As a society loses its civic and moral bearings, a childhood friendship deepens into a love affair with extraordinarily high stakes. Brilliantly conceived and elegantly written, Carry Me is an epic for grown-ups, an unusual love story, and a lucid meditation on Europe’s violent twentieth century.

    Greta Weissensteiner, daughter of a Jewish weaver, slowly settles in with the Winkelmeier clan just as the developments in Germany start to make waves in Europe. The political climate in the multifaceted cultural jigsaw puzzle of disintegrating Czechoslovakia becomes more complex and affects relations between the couple and the families.The story follows their lot through the war with its predictable and also its unexpected turns and events and the equally hard times after.From the moment that Greta Weissensteiner enters the bookstore where Wilhelm Winkelmeier works, and entrances him with her good looks and serious ways, I was hooked. But this is no ordinary romance; in tact it is not a romance at all, but a powerful, often sad, Holocaust story. What makes The Luck of the Weissensteiners so extraordinary is the chance Christoph Fischer gives his readers to consider the many different people who were never in concentration camps, never in the military, yet who nonetheless had their own indelible Holocaust experiences. Set in the fascinating area of Bratislava, this is a wide-ranging, historically accurate exploration of the connections between social location, personal integrity and, as the title says, luck. I cared about every one of this novel's characters and continued to think about them long after I'd finished reading.-- Andrea Steiner, University of California Santa CruzThe Luck of the Weissensteiners is an epic saga set in wartime Eastern Europe. It follows the lives of two families - one Jewish, one Catholic - and their entwined survival amidst the backdrop of the second world war; first the fascist then the communist invasion and occupation of Slovakia, and the horror of the consequences of war. The reader is transported to a world of deception, fear, distrust and betrayal, alongside enduring love and family drama. The characters are vividly painted in the mind of the reader as we follow their journey across Europe at a time of unimaginable challenge and trauma. Weissensteiners is a magnificent tale of human survival. I wish I hadn't read it already so that I may repeat the pleasure of discovering and becoming lost in the story once again.

    For retired NYPD Detective, James Maguire, the pieces of his life were finally starting to fall into place. He was running his own lucrative private security firm catering to Fortune 500 companies and had just met Melody Anderson, a highly successful business woman from Long Island's posh enclave of Southampton. Everything, it seemed, was looking up. That was until the morning newscast reported that his former high school flame was missing from a one car accident on a rural country road in upstate New York. Arriving back in his old hometown Maguire must come to terms, not only with his past, but the fact that no one seems interested in pursuing the investigation into Patricia Browning's disappearance, including the missing woman’s husband, the local sheriff. As Maguire struggles to put the clues together in time, he is drawn deeper into a game where people are as expendable as pieces in a chess game and the only goal is to take down the king. A crown Maguire unwittingly wears.

    A misunderstood act of chivalry places Scott at the mercy of a town hiding a sinister secret.As they say, no good deed goes unpunished, and for Scott, that punishment could be his life. Sit back and enjoy this stay-up-all-night serial killer psychological thriller.Author Commentary‘Brother’s Keeper’ is my first psychological thriller, and it was simultaneously fun and challenging to write. It tells the story of Scott Sharp, a traveler whose train makes a stop at the tiny town of Burdensville. There he begins to unravel the goings-on, which pulls him into the dark secrets the town holds, and the secrets won’t let him go.Writing this story was fun for a variety of reasons. It was off the beaten path compared to most books I write. The monster in this book is not a vampire, witch, or zombie; instead, the monster is an unknown man.Scott walks into Burdensville without the slightest idea of what has been happening to this town. The whole place is off, and he can’t seem to put his finger on what is happening around him. I wanted people to really be in Burdensville while they read this. I also wanted readers to get a very specific feel for the town, Mayberry, without a shower. I did my best to convey the gloom of the constant shadows that seem to hang over the place, even when the sun was shining. That’s more or less what happens in small-town life and, evil or not, Burdensville is no different.

    

    At the centre is Rose, the cantankerous matriarch, who longs for her earlier life in London and Vienna but is now forced into dependency on her sons Ed, an academic expert on terrorism (ahead of his time!), and Henry, an artistic expatriate with a taste for antiques and post modern poetry. Also in the family circle are Sarah, Ed's wife, who teaches creative writing and longs for a more literary life, and Sarah and Ed's daughter Miriam, a medical student who causes great alarm in her largely assimilated family by rediscovering Judaism.

    Not to mention how much you may be annoying them. The route from cubicle to corner office is strewn with etiquette landmines. And now that the boundaries that once cleanly separated work from personal life are blurred, even polite people don’t recognize the difference between professional and social manners. What do you say to a colleague who has just been fired? How do you maintain a family-friendly office without discriminating against singles? What’s the difference between showing romantic interest and sexual harassment? Which colleagues should be invited to family weddings? When should you be unavailable, at or away from work? Don’t convene a focus group or appeal to Human Resources—consult Miss Manners!With wit and wisdom, Miss Manners restores civility, guiding you around your coworker’s messy cubicle, past your overly prying boss, around the bridal shower for the new temp, and through tedious staff meetings.In Miss Manners Minds Your Business, Judith Martin and her son, executive Nicholas Ivor Martin, equip readers with the practical, pertinent, and utterly correct advice necessary to win the job, keep the job, and leave the job with sanity and dignity intact.

     Over the past twenty-five years, renowned addiction therapist Dr. Frederick Woolverton has used his dynamic, empathetic approach to help thousands of addicts achieve long-term recovery—including himself. He sees the specific habit as less important than the underlying chaos and fear that motivate the urge to sooth ourselves with bad habits. The solution, he has found, requires only a better understanding of yourself and a change in attitude. Unhooked: How To Quit Anything is an intelligent, readable, and actionable guide to conquering any addictive habit. Using real patient examples as well as research and his own experience, Dr. Woolverton and coauthor (and former patient) Susan Shapiro show how to thrive without self-medicating. The approach involves an unorthodox blend of straightforward changes to behavior and open and honest conversation with another person. Woolverton’s specific instructions do not require an expensive therapist, rehab, 12-step program, or a higher power (but he does make readers aware of those viable options). Let him help you kick your addiction and find what’s missing in your world. When you conquer a toxic habit, you are leaving room for something more beautiful to take its place.

    The Pinch revolves around a single enchanted day containing years, during which the antics of a group of Jewish mystics threaten to ravage the life of general store proprietor Pinchas Pin with miracles, and his nephew Muni's ardor for an alluring tightrope walker collides with his passion for chronicling the wonders of North Main Street. Their stories, gleaned by a hapless bookseller from a fabulist history book, transform the fate of the neighborhood.

    Fortune, however, is a fickle thing and Edith ends up working in a vintage bakery in the positively antique town of Compiègne. Escaping heartache and singledom in Ireland, Edith discovers that the bakery on Rue De Paris is not exactly what it seems and that some ghosts from the past are harder to escape than others. A heart-warming story that is sure to appeal to all of the senses, The Mysterious Bakery On Rue De Paris is a mouth-watering journey of love, liberty and la vie en rose.

    A widowed insomniac is roused from malaise when an alligator appears in her backyard. A group of college friends try to stay close after graduation, but are drawn away from-and back toward-each other by the choices they make. A boy's friendship with a pair of identical twins undergoes a strange and tragic evolution over the course of adolescence. A promising academic and her fiancée attempt to finish their dissertations, but struggle with writer's block, a nasty secret, and their own expert knowledge of Freud.From an East Village rooftop to a cabin in Tennessee, from the Florida suburbs to Hong Kong, Taylor covers a vast emotional and geographic landscape while ushering us into an abiding intimacy with his characters. Flings is a commanding work of fiction that captures the contemporary search for identity, connection, and a place to call home.

    There is no A-to-Z path, and there are no magic beans that will carry you upward overnight. Have you ever wondered how to start, scale up, build teams, and flourish in an uncontested market? I can tell you. I did it. In 1992, I landed in Estonia with $400 in my pocket. There, I discovered a truth that changed my life and the way I conducted business: You can make a lot of money as an entrepreneur by moving decisively in blue-sky markets - markets where you face very little competition and the tide can carry you to riches.Over the next decade and a half, I built a portfolio of businesses worth $200 million. Now, I want to share the paths that led me to success, passing on my knowledge to you. In Why Sell Tacos in Africa? I explain sixteen principles that allowed me to drive such tremendous growth. May you, too, find a blue-market and watch your business soar.

    Never in my wildest imaginings did I expect it would happen when I was on all fours vomiting my guts out beside a sugar cane field in far north Queensland on Mother’s Day.” And so begins another brilliantly funny instalment in the true and chaotic life of middle-aged stand up comic, Denise Scott. This time Denise is on tour through the back blocks and remote country towns of regional Australia with a bunch of young male comics on a tiny bus… Although old enough to be their mother, Denise in true form manages to keep up with the partying and outrageous behaviour (and many times leading it) on tour. However, although that tiny bus took her many miles away from her real life, life has a habit of catching up with you. It was mid journey on those long, long stretches of empty road that Denise confronts her own issues of ageing, motherhood, sex, intimacy, regret, and wearing your bathing suit in public.

    It's been two years since her husband, John, was killed in Iraq and life has been a struggle. Her new job as a caregiver doesn't pay much, but the locals are welcoming. In fact, Cate has barely unpacked before she's drawn--reluctantly at first--into a circle of friends. There's diner-owner Gaby, who nourishes her customers' spirits as well as their bodies; feisty Beatrice, who kept the town going when its men marched off to WWII; wise-cracking MaryLou, as formidable as Fort Knox but with the same heart of gold; and, Sheila, whose Italian grocery is the soul of the place. As Amberley reveals itself to be a town shaped by war, Cate encounters another kindred spirit--a Holocaust survivor with whom she feels a deep connection. When revelations about John's death threaten Cate's newfound peace of mind, these sisters-in-arms' stories show her an unexpected way forward. And Cate comes to understand that although we suffer loss alone, we heal by sharing our most treasured memories.

    And she's seen how a simple message of hope uplifts a life that's left in tatters.In these pages you'll find a daily dollop of Barbara's favorite jokes, heartwarming stories, witty cartoons, and heartache-survival strategies. Share a moment each morning with the Geranium Lady, and soon you, like Barbara, will realize you've been "blessed to be a blessing."