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Personal Effects: Sword of Blood


J.C. Hutchins - 2009
    When his cheerful elderly patient Gertrude “Spindle” Spindler completes her latest quilt and informs Zach that a 30-year-old "grand design of nine" has just concluded, Zach’s curiosity is piqued ... and he soon embarks on a quest to unwind the meaning of the woman's cryptic phrase.He isn't expecting a descent into a world filled with mystery and ruthless subcultures -- and he isn't expecting to be haunted by Spindle's coy clues. What is The Great Blade of Blood? What are The Charred? What is the grand design of nine? And who is the dark-skinned stranger stalking Zach at every turn, threatening his life?The answers may lie in Spindle's granddaughter, a willowy self-proclaimed psychic named Hen. But Zach soon discovers that Hen may be crazier than the patients he treats ... and the treasure he's pursuing may be more dangerous -- and deadly -- than he ever imagined.Personal Effects: Sword of Blood is a podcast-exclusive novella written by J.C. Hutchins, author of the 7th Son trilogy. It is a prequel to Hutchins' print novel debut, Personal Effects: Dark Art.

Right to Life


Jack Ketchum - 1998
    They also seem to know where she lives, where she teaches, where she was born, who her lover is—even where her father plays golf on the weekends. They tell her about a mysterious worldwide Organization devoted to white slavery and what happens to those slaves who try to run away. What happens to their families and those they love.That's what Sara is now. Their slave.They show her what happens if she tries to disobey.She sleeps in a coffin-like box in the basement.She's fed according to their whim. Abused according to their whim.They involve her in a brutal murder.That's just the beginning. Because Stephen and Katherine Teach have terrible plans for Sara.And her baby.Like his novels Joyride, Stranglehold, The Girl Next Door, and Cover, Right to Life is a descent into madness and human evil which is all the more harrowing because it's based on fact. Sara's ordeal really happened to somebody just like you and me and it's one that is vividly rendered. So consider yourself warned. This is disturbing, graphic writing.Not for the timid.Like life.

The Circle


Dave Eggers - 2013
    The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users' personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company's modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can't believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world--even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman's ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.(front flap)

Holy Cow


David Duchovny - 2015
    One night, Elsie and Mallory sneak out of their pasture; but while Mallory is interested in flirting with the neighboring bulls, Elsie finds herself drawn to the farmhouse. Through the window, she sees the farmer's family gathered around a bright Box God-and what the Box God reveals about something called an "industrial meat farm" shakes Elsie's understanding of her world to its core.There's only one solution: escape to a better, safer world. And so a motley crew is formed: Elsie; Jerry-excuse me, Shalom-a cranky, Torah-reading pig who's recently converted to Judaism; and Tom, a suave (in his own mind, at least) turkey who can't fly, but who can work an iPhone with his beak. Toting stolen passports and slapdash human disguises, they head for the airport.Elsie is our wise-cracking, pop-culture-reference-dropping, slyly witty narrator; Tom-who does eventually learn to fly (sort of)-dispenses psychiatric advice in a fake German accent; and Shalom, rejected by his adopted people in Jerusalem, ends up unexpectedly uniting Israelis and Palestinians. David Duchovny's charismatic creatures point the way toward a mutual understanding and acceptance that the world desperately needs.

Will Save the Galaxy for Food


Yahtzee Croshaw - 2017
    With the invention of Quantum Teleportation, space heroes aren't needed anymore. When one particularly unlucky ex-adventurer masquerades as famous pilot and hate figure Jacques McKeown, he's sucked into an ever-deepening corporate and political intrigue. Between space pirates, adorable deadly creatures, and a missing fortune in royalties, saving the universe was never this difficult!From the creator of Mogworld and Jam!Benjamin Richard "Yahtzee" Croshaw is a British-Australian comedic writer, video game journalist, author, and video game developer. He is perhaps best known for his acerbic video game review series, Zero Punctuation, for The Escapist.

Point Doom


Dan Fante - 2013
    Mixing it up with the wrong people in New York, he escaped to L.A.—only to hit rock-bottom after too many nightmares and too much booze.Now forty-six and sober, JD is working hard to get it together. Living in Malibu at his mother's house in Point Dume, he's got a new job selling used cars with his friend Woody and a new girlfriend. But just as things are looking up, JD discovers a gruesome murder. Now the ex-private detective has to make a choice.Determined to exact vengeance, he follows a twisting trail of clues that leads him to unexpected truths about himself and his new life—and to a psychopathic killer with an eerie connection to his past. And, as JD soon learns, this time there's no easy way out.

Drive


James Sallis - 2005
    Sallis combines murder, treachery and payback in a sinister plot with resonances of 1940s pulp fiction and film noir. Told through a cinematic narrative that weaves back and forth through time and place, the story explores Driver's near existential moral foundations, intercut with moments of bloody violence.

Dawn of the Dead


George A. Romero - 1978
    Romero.A decade after the premiere of the 1968 film The Night of the Living Dead, George Romero returned with its sequel, Dawn of the Dead, which tore its way onto movie screens across the country, shocked an entire generation, and became an instant zombie classic as the highest grossing indie film of all time. Shortly thereafter, Romero, along with author Susanna Sparrow, wrote a novel based on the movie -- now back in print in this terrifying trade paperback edition.In one of the landmark tales of the zombie apocalypse, a handful of survivors seek refuge at a local shopping mall, barricading themselves in. They soon realize that this is the perfect place to wait out the end of the world, and despite pending doom, they even start to enjoy themselves. But it doesn't take long for the undead to find a way into their world.Named one of the "500 Greatest Movies of All Time" by Empire Magazine, the original Dawn of the Dead film has left its imprint on viewers for decades -- and will soon be re-released in theaters, having been transformed frame-by-frame into 3D for an entire new audience. Now readers can experience the same chills and thrills with this exciting reissue of a true classic.

Legend of a Suicide


David Vann - 2008
    It features the story 'Ichthyology', where a young boy watches his father spiral from divorce to suicide.

The Book of Joe


Jonathan Tropper - 2003
    Then he wrote a novel savaging everything in town, a novel that became a national bestseller and a huge hit movie. Fifteen years later, Joe is struggling to avoid the sophomore slump with his next novel when he gets a call: his father's had a stroke, so it's back to Bush Falls for the town's most famous pariah. His brother avoids him, his former classmates beat him up, and the members of the book club just hurl their copies of Bush Falls at his house. But with the help of some old friends, Joe discovers that coming home isn't all bad--and that maybe the best things in life are second chances.Fans of Nick Hornby and Jennifer Weiner will love this book, by turns howling funny, fiercely intelligent, and achingly poignant. As evidenced by The Book of Joe's success in both the foreign and movie markets, Jonathan Tropper has created a compelling, incredibly resonant story.

The Rats


James Herbert - 1974
    But now for the first time - suddenly, shockingly, horribly - the balance of power had shifted and the rats began to prey on the human population.

The Summer Without Men


Siri Hustvedt - 2011
    A comedy depends on stopping the story at exactly the right moment."   Mia Fredrickson, the wry, vituperative, tragicomic poet narrator of The Summer Without Men, has been forced to reexamine her own life. One day, out of the blue, after thirty years of marriage, Mia’s husband, a renowned neuroscientist, asks her for a “pause.” This abrupt request sends her reeling and lands her in a psychiatric ward. The June following Mia’s release from the hospital, she returns to the prairie town of her childhood, where her mother lives in an old people’s home. Alone in a rented house, she rages and fumes and bemoans her sorry fate. Slowly, however, she is drawn into the lives of those around her—her mother and her close friends,“the Five Swans,” and her young neighbor with two small children and a loud angry husband—and the adolescent girls in her poetry workshop whose scheming and petty cruelty carry a threat all their own. From the internationally bestselling author of What I Loved comes a provocative, witty, and revelatory novel about women and girls, love and marriage, and the age-old question of sameness and difference between the sexes.

One Day at a Time


Danielle Steel - 2009
    Her mother is a mega-bestselling author who writes under the name of Florence Flowers—and her sister, Jane, is one of Hollywood’s top producers. They’re not your typical family by any means.…Jane has lived with her partner, Liz, for ten years, in a solid, loving relationship. Florence, widowed but still radiant, has just begun a secret romance with a man twenty-four years her junior. And Coco, a law school dropout and the family black sheep, works as a dog walker, having fled life in the spotlight for the artsy northern California beach town of Bolinas.But when Coco reluctantly agrees to dog-sit in Jane’s luxurious home, she soon discovers how much things can change in just a matter of days.…It turns out Jane’s house comes complete with an unexpected houseguest: Leslie Baxter, a dashing but down-to-earth British actor who’s fleeing a psycho ex-girlfriend. Their worlds couldn’t be more different. The attraction couldn’t be more immediate. Suddenly Coco is seeing things differently: Leslie is not just a celebrity, he’s a single dad to an adorable six-year-old girl. Her mother is not just a self-centered walking advertisement for great cosmetic surgery, she’s a woman in love, with vulnerability and new insight. And Jane and Liz are about to take the bravest plunge of all—into parenthood. As Coco contemplates a future with one of Hollywood’s hottest stars, as her mother and sister settle into their lives, old wounds are healed and new familes are formed—some traditional, some not so traditional, but all bonded by love.With wit and intelligence, Danielle Steel’s new novel explores love in all its guises, taking us into the lives of three unusual but wonderfully real couples. Funny, sexy, and wise, One Day at a Time is at once moving, thought provoking, and utterly impossible to put down.

This Book Will Save Your Life


A.M. Homes - 2006
    M. Homes has been among the boldest and most original voices of her generation, acclaimed for the psychological accuracy and unnerving emotional intensity of her storytelling. Her keen ability to explore how extraordinary the ordinary can be is at the heart of her touching and funny new novel, her first in six years. Richard Novak is a modern-day Everyman, a middle-aged divorcé trading stocks out of his home. He has done such a good job getting his life under control that he needs no one- except his trainer, nutritionist, and housekeeper. He is functionally dead and doesn't even notice until two incidents-an attack of intense pain that lands him in the emergency room, and the discovery of an expanding sinkhole outside his house-conspire to hurl him back into the world. On his way home from the hospital, Richard forms the first of many new relationships: He meets Anhil, the doughnut shop owner, an immigrant who dreams big. He finds a weeping housewife in the produce section of the supermarket, helps save a horse that has fallen into the sinkhole, daringly rescues a woman from the trunk of her kidnapper's car, and, after the sinkhole claims his house and he has to relocate to a Malibu rental, he befriends a reluctant counterculture icon. In the end, Richard is also brought back in closer touch with his family-his aging parents, his brilliant brother, the beloved ex-wife whom he still desires, and finally, before the story's breathtaking finale, with his estranged son Ben. The promised land of Los Angeles-a surreal city of earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, and feral Chihuahuas-is also very much a character in This Book Will Save Your Life. A vivid, revealing novel about compassion, transformation, and what can happen if you are willing to lose yourself and open up to the world around you, it should significantly broaden Homes's already substantial audience.

Random Acts Of Heroic Love


Danny Scheinmann - 2004
    He blames himself for the tragedy and is sucked into a spiral of despair. But Leo is about to discover something which will change his life forever. 1917: Moritz Daniecki is a fugitive from a Siberian POW camp. Seven thousand kilometres over the Russian Steppes separate him from his village and his sweetheart, whose memory has kept him alive through carnage and captivity. The Great War may be over, but Moritz now faces a perilous journey across a continent riven by civil war. When Moritz finally limps back into his village to claim the hand of the woman he left behind, will she still be waiting?'Special' Sunday Express'Tender' Observer'Mesmerising' Publishing News