Catherine requests the assistance of Madeleine Porter, family history researcher, and her friend and fellow researcher Ian Clay, to investigate this claim. Their enquiries reveal the shocking truth behind the tale; and the account, as related in an old journal, of two quite different Victorian families, divided by class, but connected by death.

    This time, though, instead of cruising the American road together, Otto Ringling and Volya Rinpoche are part of the famous meditation master's offbeat weight loss clinic, held over the course of ten Saturdays in a New York City yoga studio. "These characters have been alive in my imagination for a decade now," Merullo says, "and I just had the sense that Rinpoche, out of his deep compassion, would try to do something about America's obesity epidemic. I've also been fascinated for a long time by the way addiction works—whether it's addiction to food, drugs, alcohol, sex, work, or anything else—the way it occupies the mind and moves us to do things we know we would be better off not doing. I've always wondered what advice Rinpoche would give on the subject."Known—across twenty books, scores of essays, and twenty-five years of publishing—for being willing to try his hand at an unusually wide variety of themes, subjects, and genres, here Merullo works for the first time in the novella form, putting together a deft, moving, and tightly compressed tale that includes his trademark mix of spiritual inquiry and ordinary human emotions. "This story is about the challenge of losing weight, yes," the author says, "but there's a twist to it at the end, and that opens into a wider territory. I tried to approach it with a full appreciation for the difficulty of breaking old habits, and I gave up a beloved food myself for ten weeks, just to keep things honest."While it does not promise to help readers with their troublesome eating habits or other addictions, Rinpoche's Remarkable Ten-Week Weight Loss Clinic does look at those painful issues from a fresh angle, one full of sympathy and wisdom. It will certainly please lovers of the Buddha Trilogy, and perhaps bring new fans to the hundreds of thousands who've already enjoyed the travels and conversations of Otto and his enlightened teacher.

    I don't know what it is, but it works that way for man and animal alike. I've seen some peculiar things on a hot day too. I've seen a scorpion sting itself to death. It just keeps drivin' its tail into its body again and again. A little killer killing itself. And what a man'll do on a hot day. A man could get his self killed just for rubbing shoulders with another. . . ."A loner, a drifter, a gambler--John Stewart asks little of life. But when his '64 Mustang busts a radiator hose in the middle of the empty Nevada desert, he prays to God, Buddha, L. Ron. And rolls into the tiny town of Sierra. Where he finds . . . nothing. A gas station whose former owner is lying low in the cemetery. A strip of barren, dust-blown store fronts. A truck stop cafe with more flies than customers.Stewart wants out. Sucker-punched in a rigged poker game, he's got to get to Vegas to settle a debt. Or else.Then in walks Grace, a seductive knockout who can read fortunes in faces. In the next twenty-four hours, Stewart becomes ensnared in a web of dirty double-crosses, cold propositions, and desperate souls--deadly ground where murder is just one gasp away.A stunning, fast-paced novel, Stray Dogs unfolds with unrelenting tension, memorable characters, and shocking twists of plot. John Ridley has created a hypnotic story that is pure noir, from its first page until its shattering climax.From the Hardcover edition.

    The book follows events in the life of a concierge, Ren e Michel, whose deliberately concealed intelligence is uncovered by an unstable but intellectually precocious girl named Paloma Josse. Paloma is the daughter of an upper-class family living in the upscale Parisian apartment building where Ren e works.

    

    Set in New Orleans at the turn of the 21st century, this continuation of the highly acclaimed Night People provides a stark, eccentric, and wholly original plunge into the dark and grimy world of just revenge, as it vividly tracks the lives of individuals intent on making a profound difference in the world before they are willingly or forcibly removed from it.

    The decorated US Air Force lieutenant is captured and taken to a POW camp. Only a supreme effort of will keeps him from breaking down. But his ordeal was just beginning. Richard Silva is turned over to a shadowy interrogator -- known as the Imp -- who specializes in the systematic torture of American prisoners. Miraculously, Silva survives and returns to the US. He finds an America that is profoundly different from the country he left, but America isn't the only thing that has changed. Silva's mind has been horribly altered. For him there is only one way out: Find the man who stripped him of his humanity. Find him and kill him. With only a few clues to his enemy's true identity, Silva embarks on a manhunt that spans years and continents. As he draws nearer to his elusive quarry, he move closer to a danger that could turn his desperate vendetta into a chilling face-off that threatens unspeakable consequences for him and his country.

    This collection comprises of the first six titles in Harry Harrison's brilliantly entertaining Stainless Steel Rat series, containing:A Stainless Steel Rat Is BornThe Stainless Steel Rat gets DraftedThe Stainless Steel Rat Sings the BluesThe Stainless Steel RatThe Stainless Steel Rat's RevengeThe Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World

    You’re supposed to have faith.Not a lot is going right for Taran Sharma. First, he stole his annoying brother’s necklace and ran off into the night. Then, his family got taken hostage by spindly creatures of the dead. And to top it all, he’s just been charged with a mission by Lord Ganesha himself! Now, in order to rescue his family from the hands of the preta, he has to undertake a journey more fantastical than he can begin to comprehend.As Taran embarks on an epic voyage that may lead to disastrous consequence, he realizes that having faith, especially in himself, might be harder than he was led to believe.Dive into this riveting adventure to the Veiled Lands, replete with evil Naga armies, mythical creatures and a supervillain who will stop at nothing to reach the elusive Gateway of Moksha.

    Now, years on, Ali's greatest fear is that her happiness and contentment might be taken away from her. But just as Max's star is rising, unsettling incidents at their artisan bakery in Dublin's creative quarter threaten to damage the reputation of the bakery. Finn and Jo were running away from heartache when they met in Australia over 20 years ago. But now Finn is in shock after the demise of his gritty role in a popular television crime drama, and Jo fears for him and their marriage. Then an accident on a Saturday night has devastating consequences for both families, tearing their lives apart in ways they never imagined.

     Seventeen-year-old Caleb Ross is adrift in the wake of the sudden disappearance of his mother more than a year ago, and is struggling to find his way out of the small Texas border town of Murfee. Chris Cherry is a newly minted sheriff’s deputy, a high school football hero who has reluctantly returned to his hometown. When skeletal remains are discovered in the surrounding badlands, the two are inexorably drawn together as their efforts to uncover Murfee’s darkest secrets lead them to the same terrifying suspect: Caleb’s father and Chris’s boss, the charismatic and feared Sheriff Standford “Judge” Ross. Dark, elegiac, and violent, The Far Empty is a modern Western, a story of loss and escape set along the sharp edge of the Texas border. Told by a longtime federal agent who knows the region, it’s a debut novel you won’t soon forget.

    Entering a world of mysterious powers and nightmarish consequences, Chris realizes the secret belief of every teenage boy- that his wang has the power to change the world. The Monkey's Penis is the third installment in the terrifying Shingles series, and once again readers with weak hearts or bladders are advised to read on at their own risk...

    Suspecting that something is amiss with their father’s burial, teenager Kenneth Tyler and his sister Corrie venture to his gravesite and make a horrific discovery: their father, a whiskey bootlegger, was not actually buried in the casket they bought for him. Worse, they learn that the undertaker, Fenton Breece, has been grotesquely manipulating the dead.Armed with incriminating photographs, Tyler becomes obsessed with bringing the perverse undertaker to justice. But first, he must outrun Granville Sutter, a local strongman and convicted murderer hired by Fenton to destroy the evidence. What follows is an adventure through the Harrikin, an eerie backwoods filled with tangled roads, rusted machinery, and eccentric squatters–old men, witches, and families among them–who both shield and imperil Tyler as he runs for safety. With his poetic, haunting prose, William Gay rewrites the rules of the gothic fairy tale while exploring the classic Southern themes of good and evil.

    His fierce jealous mother hates and fears her as does his brother, an Islamist hardliner. A feminist, an idealist, and very much in love, Sarah aims to live with integrity. Can she—dare she— in the kingdom where women are kept veiled and secluded? This love story of cultural collision is also a spiritual quest for Sarah, who is both fascinated and repelled by Islam. Former Middle East journalist Jean Grant takes us behind the locked doors of Saudi Arabian society. She presents a picture of the controversial kingdom on the cusp of change and of the men and women, both expatriates and nationals, who either embrace or courageously confront their destiny.

    In five stories that are vintage Gilchrist, plus the hilarious title novella -- in which a psychiatrist in a Mississippi town goes mad and begins revealing his patients' deepest secrets and embarrassing misdeeds to anyone who will listen -- one of the contemporary South's finest storytellers gives us her richest, most inventive collection since Victory Over Japan.