Bruce Cameron returns with an even more hilarious look at fatherhood, capturing the predicament of the forgotten man in the tux at his little girl's wedding. As Cameron explains, modern weddings are much like royal coronations, only more expensive. Aside from the writing of checks, there is not much fathers understand about them. Why can't guests successfully eat, drink, and dance unless the whole event is as carefully choreographed as a Broadway production? With his characteristic wit, Cameron captures the aspects of the wedding that are the most ridiculous to paternal eyes, for example: • why the wedding needs a theme (this one is "We're all stressed out") • why the wedding has to be photographed as if it will be reviewed by the Warren Commission • why the bouquet must include a species of flower found only at the tip of the Himalayas • why the wedding dress has to strike the right mood (which, judging from everyone's behavior, might best be summed up as "crabby") Throughout it all, however, a father keeps faith that the wedding -- if not the wedding preparation -- will make his daughter a happy woman. Hilarious yet poignant, 8 Simple Rules for Marrying My Daughter is sure to be a comfort to the legions of fathers (and mothers) who will one day have a daughter walking down the aisle.

    Merwin --Magic barrel / Bernard Malamud --About marriage / Denise Levertov --from Jane Austen / Virginia Woolf --Princess and the tin box / James Thurber.

     The arrival of the mysterious Magi, along with their near invincible guardians, signals a change. For Jakob, apprentice historian, and son of a priest, it begins an opportunity. When his home is attacked, Jakob starts a journey that will take him far from home and everything he has ever known. Studying with a new swordmaster, he gains surprising skill, but also strange new abilities that make him fear the madness which has claimed so many has come to him. He must withstand it long enough to finish the dangerous task given to him, one that with his new abilities he may be the only person able to complete. With a strange darkness rising in the north, and attackers moving in from the south, powers long thought lost begin to return. Some begin to suspect the key to survival is the answer to a lost prophecy, yet only a few remain with the ability to find it.

      A burned-out L.A. detective . . . a woman of mystery who is far more than she seems . . . a grotesque, ancient monster bent on a mission of retribution. When these three collide, a new standard of suspense is born. The legend of the Golem of Prague has endured through the ages, a creature fashioned by a sixteenth-century rabbi to protect his congregation, now lying dormant in the garret of a synagogue. But the Golem is dormant no longer. Detective Jacob Lev wakes one morning, dazed and confused: He seems to have picked up a beautiful woman in a bar the night before, but he can’t remember anything about the encounter, and before he knows it, she has gone. But this mystery pales in comparison to the one he’s about to be called on to solve. Newly reassigned to a Special Projects squad he didn’t even know existed, he’s sent to a murder scene far up in the hills of Hollywood Division. There is no body, only an unidentified head lying on the floor of a house. Seared into a kitchen counter nearby is a single word: the Hebrew for justice. Detective Lev is about to embark on an odyssey—through Los Angeles, through many parts of the United States, through London and Prague, but most of all, through himself. All that he has believed to be true will be upended—and not only his world, but the world itself, will be changed.

    Democracy has been suspended while the reconstruction effort lifts the country out of the ruins of conflict. America's fate lies in the hands of a genetically-engineered soldier with the ability to move through time.The Road to Hell deals with a futuristic world and the advent of limited time travel. It explores social issues such as the nature of trust and the conflict between loyalty and honesty.

    A quick-witted and vastly entertaining novel that takes Douglas Skelton into the crime fiction big league.” Alex Gray“If you like your humour black and your detective novels hard boiled, The Dead Don’t Boogie is a cut above the rest.” Theresa Talbot“A white-knuckle, wisecracking thriller.” Caro Ramsay A missing teenage girl should be an easy job for Dominic Queste – after all, finding lost souls is what he does best. But sometimes it’s better if those souls stay lost. Jenny Deavers is trouble, especially for an ex-cokehead like Queste. Some truly nasty characters are very keen indeed to get to Jenny, and will stop at nothing... including murder. 
As the bodies pile up, Queste has to use all his street smarts both to protect Jenny and to find out just who wants her dead. The trail leads him to a vicious world of brutal gangsters, merciless hitmen, dark family secrets and an insatiable lust for power in the highest echelons of politics.

    It seemed like a simple case of murder, but questions remained. Was Dale Harrell a hapless, innocent victim of a brutal killing, or was this the final act of a desperate woman who had suffered through years of domestic violence? The fact that the incident took place in a middle class suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, with the couple’s three children within the property at the time, meant nothing. The questions for the jury were simple. Was the killing premeditated or was it an act of self defense? Was it done for financial gain? Should the defendant pay for her crime with her life, should she be incarcerated for twenty-five years to life, or should she receive a life sentence with no chance of parole? Author Paul Sanders was Juror #13 in a trial packed with twists and turns. He sat every day in court, in a trial which got deep inside the day-to-day lives of a family and eventually delivered justice to a victim. Read this remarkable true story now and make up your own mind as to the truth behind the Hammer Killing Trial. Amazon reviews: “Mr. Sanders is a brilliant writer. You feel like you are right in the courtroom with him…” “This is a must-read for any avid trial watcher!” “Brain Damage is a very interesting journey through a death penalty trial. It made me want to be a juror!” Also by Paul Sanders: "Why Not Kill Her: A Juror's Perspective - The Jodi Arias Death Penalty Retrial" "Banquet of Consequences: A Juror's Plight - The Carnation Murders Trial of Michele Anderson" (March 2017)

    Her husband, Eric, seriously injured in a car accident on the way to the hospital, was dead for a full eight minutes before being revived—all while Shelly was in labor. Those eight minutes changed everything Shelly thought was possible.Three years later, their son, Toby, brings home an imaginary friend. But he’s no ordinary playmate—John Robberson is a fighter pilot and Vietnam vet. As Toby provides unlikely details about John’s life—and Toby’s tantrums increase—Shelly becomes convinced that John was real and now wants something from Toby. But her husband has his doubts, and as Shelly becomes involved, even obsessed, with finding out the truth, their marriage begins to disintegrate. Torn between protecting her child and keeping the peace with her husband, Shelly desperately searches for a way to finally put John Robberson out of their lives.

    Resident Eddie Parks’s contribution is nothing less than extraordinary: an “echo box” that can re-create never-recorded sounds using acoustic archeology.All Eddie wants is to hear his late mother’s voice. But what he’s created is inadvertently posing a threat to national security.To Harmony House’s shadowy government backers and radical extremists, the echo box is the ultimate intelligence asset—an end to the very concept of secrecy. Now for Eddie and the compassionate Dr. Skylar Drummond, the true nature of the institution is becoming chillingly clear.As ruthless competing enemies close in on Eddie and his miraculous machine, Skylar risks all to take him on the run. Because once that prize is won, Eddie Parks will no longer be considered a “special person” but a dangerous redundancy. An inconvenient echo that must be silenced.

    

    Now, the mantle of the Bat must be passed on to another, and Jean Paul Valley answers the call! But as the new Caped Crusader slowly loses his grip on sanity, his idea of justice takes a violent and deadly turn. Witnessing this dangerous behavior firsthand, Nightwing and Robin try to come to grips with Bruce's highly controversial decision while the new Batman sets his sights on taking revenge against Bane!This volume collects Detective Comics #667-675, Shadow of the Bat #19-20, #24-28, Batman #501-508, Catwoman #6-7 and Robin #7

    Higgins's final novel, was completed in the fall of 1999, just weeks before the author's death at the age of 59. It seems unlikely that the coming year will bring us a novel with a sadder, more appropriate title. Like Higgins's famous first novel, iThe Friends of Eddie Coyle/i, iAt End of Day/i is an authoritative and decidedly unromantic portrait of life as it is really lived in the criminal underworld of Boston. Like iEddie Coyle/i, it is the clear product of a genuine American master.pTwo figures dominate the crowded narrative: Arthur McKeach and Nick Cistaro, career criminals who have clawed their way to the top of the food chain by ruthlessly eliminating all competitors and who have remained at the top -- unchallenged and unindicted -- for an unnaturally long time. Together, McKeach and Cistaro have successfully opposed the traditional center of organized crime -- the Cosa Nostra -- and have established an empire based on extortion, gambling, drug dealing, loan sharking, and the rigorous application of terrorist tactics. They rule by fear and will do whatever is necessary to preserve what they have built.piAt End of Day/i is the story of the violent world of McKeach and Cistaro, and of the secret "arrangement" that has kept them in power -- and out of jail -- for decades. More than 30 years before the primary narrative begins, McKeach and his partner established a symbiotic relationship with the FBI's resident expert on organized crime. In exchange for information to be used against their common enemy -- the Boston Mafia -- the two received a degree of protection from the inconvenient investigations of local law enforcement agencies. This immensely profitable arrangement, which was passed along like a family legacy from one FBI agent to the next, has persisted into the present day and has contributed enormously to the durability of the McKeach/Cistaro empire.pThis devious, mutually corrupting relationship stands at the heart of this painstaking portrait of the Boston criminal milieu. As always, Higgins fleshes out the portrait with a varied, credible gallery of characters on both sides of the law. As always, he brings these characters to immediate life through his uncanny ear for dialogue and his matchless ability to create the sustained, rambling dramatic monologues that are so much a part of his narrative technique. In iAt End of Day/i, as in all of Higgins's novels, a succession of characters step into the spotlight and proceed to talk, gradually revealing their histories and circumstances, their essential natures, and the shape and direction of their circumscribed lives. pMonologue follows monologue, each one amplifying, illuminating -- sometimes even contradicting -- the ones that have come before. Together, they create a coherent picture of the predatory universe that most of Higgins's characters call home.pThe inhabitants of this universe include FBI agents Jack Farrier and Darren Stoat, the latest inheritors of the McKeach/Cistaro relationship; Jim Dowd and Emmett Naughton, Boston policemen who are ignorant of the relationship and have their own independent agendas to pursue; Todd Naughton, Emmett's son, who is drawn simultaneously to the world of the cop and the world of the criminal; Tim Sexton, a paraplegic Vietnam vet who conceives an astonishing plan for accumulating and distributing prescription medications; and Max Rascob, a former public accountant who is forced -- as a result of a single, irrevocable mistake -- to throw in his lot with Arthur McKeach and Nick Cistaro. These and other equally vital characters -- all of them bound together by blood, circumstances, or a sense of common cause -- light up the novel, and are as effortlessly, seamlessly real as an overheard conversation in a corner bar.piAt End of Day/i is George V. Higgins at the top of his form and may be his most successful novel since his 1987 masterpiece, iOutlaws/i. No one understood the world of modern urban hoodlums better than Higgins. No one reproduced the scatological rhythms of their everyday speech with the same reportorial accuracy. George V. Higgins died much too soon, and he will be greatly missed. Fortunately for all of us, he left behind a varied, voluminous body of work that includes two dozen novels, a collection of short stories, and several volumes of cogent nonfiction. These 30 books, though not all uniformly excellent, constitute a large and singular accomplishment. The best of them -- such as iOutlaws/i, iThe Friends of Eddie Coyle/i, iCogan's Trade/i, iThe Digger's Game/i, and, of course, his swan song, iAt End of Day/i -- will be read, admired, and remembered for a very long time to come.P#151;Bill Sheehan

    The story is impressive in the way it shifts readers’ sympathies … a gem of a legal thriller, full of plot twists and juicy secrets.” —Kirkus Reviews “Powell’s third novel, a legal thriller, reveals the complexities and tragedies of our criminal justice system. It shows how a series of unexpected events can force a law abiding individual to choose a criminal path. The story in this fast-paced novel will stay with the reader forever.” —Focus On Women Magazine From the courtroom to the kidnappers’ lair, Powell keeps the excitement in tune with a pitch-perfect delivery of realistically motivated characters and a nonstop series of powerfully tense situations. There is no lag in the book, from the opening pages depicting the kidnapping to the thrilling conclusion. ROSE GARRETT —Clarion Reviews As Judge Walter McNeil heads home from Washington, DC’s Superior Court, he is preoccupied with the triple-murder case assigned to him. But everything changes when a car pulls up next to him and a man asks for directions. Seconds later, McNeil is pushed into the backseat of the car, knocked unconscious, and whisked away into uncertainty. McNeil’s kidnappers are three ex-convicts whose lives have been ruined by the judge’s harsh sentences. Out for revenge, they feed the judge drugs, repeatedly threaten his life, and then imply they have his teenage daughter, Daphne, who disappeared four years earlier. After they tell him at gunpoint that he must rule favorably on a defense attorney’s motions in the triplemurder case, McNeil has no idea his ordeal is just beginning. Before it is over, the judge’s life will be turned upside down. Now it is up to criminal defense attorney Amanda Perkins and detective Aristo Manfredi to partner together in a race against time to unravel the clues and hopefully save the judge from a fate he never could have imagined. In this legal thriller, a judge is kidnapped and thrust into the midst of a twisted web that intertwines him with the lives of three ex-convicts and the mystery surrounding his missing daughter.

    After the death of her only child, 73 handwritten notebooks came to light, from single jots to lists, to full outlines of memorable plots and characters, plus grocery and schedule memos from a bountiful creative mind - a complex web of connections to unravel and link. Actual notebook page reproductions. 2 unpublished Hercule Poirot short stories: "The Capture of Cerebrus", and "The Incident of the Dog's Ball".

    Trying not to miss his girlfriend (away studying in Mexico), the nameless writer steadily crafts his literary effort--until strange things begin happening around him.Starting with a series of peculiar phone calls, the writer then finds clumps of seaweed on his doorstep. But as the incidents escalate, his friends fall victim to a series of mysterious "accidents"--some of them fatal. Aided by Elmo Crumley, a savvy, street-smart detective, and a reclusive actress of yesteryear with an intense hunger for life, the wordsmith sets out to find the connection between the bizarre events, and in doing so, uncovers the truth about his own creative abilities.