The John Connolly Collection #2: The White Road, The Black Angel, and The Unquiet


John Connolly - 2012
    It's a case that nobody wants to touch, deeply rooted in old evil—and old evil is Charlie Parker's specialty. He's about to enter a living nightmare, a dreamscape of sorrow haunted by the murderous specter of a hooded woman, by a black car waiting for a passenger that never comes, and by the sinister complicity of both friends and enemies in Larousse's brutal death. Soon, all will face a final reckoning in an unearthly realm where the paths of the living and the dead converge. A place known only as the White Road. THE BLACK ANGELWhen a young woman disappears from the streets of New York City, ties of friendship and blood inevitably draw ingenious, tortured detective Charlie Parker into the search. Soon he discovers links to a church of bones in Eastern Europe, a 1944 slaughter at a French monastery, and to the myth of an object known as the Black Angel—considered by evil men to be beyond priceless. But the Black Angel is not a legend. It is real. It lives. It dreams. And the mystery of its existence may contain the secret of Parker's own origins. THE UNQUIETDaniel Clay, a once-respected psychiatrist, has gone missing. His daughter insists that he killed himself after allegations surfaced surrounding the harm done to patients in his care. Now, a killer obsessed with finding the truth about his own daughter’s disappearance is seeking revenge—and private investigator Charlie Parker finds himself trapped between those who want the truth about Clay’s disappearance to be revealed, and those who will go to any length—no matter the cost—to keep a deep, dark secret about a local town hidden.

Children of the Corn


Stephen King - 1977
    Out in the corn, something is watching them, and help is nowhere to be found.From the unrivaled master of horror and the supernatural, Stephen King. “Children of the Corn,” first collected in the extraordinary collection Night Shift in 1973 and then adapted into a horror film franchise of the same name, is a terrifying and unforgettable classic of the genre.

Ghost Town


Mark Lukens - 2014
    They don't know each other and they don't know how they got there. Their only refuge from the heat and sun is the ghost town shimmering on the horizon.Once inside the ghost town they become pawns in a twisted game. They must figure out the clues, the connection they all have to each other, and the rules of this game if they have any hope of surviving.

Classic Ghost Stories


Charles Dickens - 2017
    Sometimes they are a malevolent warning, or they come seeking revenge, or as a horrible reminder of past misdeeds. But ghosts can visit on the brightest summer's day, or on a lonely stretch of beach, making themselves felt just when you least expect it.The great writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Rudyard Kipling, also produced some of the most influential ghost stories ever written, shaping the conventions of the genre for generations of writers to follow. Collected here are some of the most iconic of these Victorian ghost stories, from Charles Dickens's 'The Signalman' to M.R. James's 'A Warning to the Curious', alongside more unexpected contributions from masters of the form such as J.S. Le Fanu and H.G. Wells.You may think you don't believe in ghosts, but these stories will haunt you nonetheless.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories


Robert Louis Stevenson - 1969
    Jekyll and Mr. Hyde --The Suicide Club --The bottle imp --The body-snatcher --Olalla.

The Book Thief / I Am the Messenger


Markus Zusak - 2014
    . . . the kind of book that can be life-changing.” I Am the Messenger is a cryptic journey filled with laughter, fists, and love, which School Library Journal called “unpretentious, well conceived, and appropriately raw” in a starred review. Markus Zusak is the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for his significant and lasting contribution to writing for teens, and together, these two stories form an extraordinary collection to showcase the intensity and heart inherent in his storytelling.

Vanishing Point


David Markson - 2004
    From Wittgenstein’s Mistress to Reader’s Block to Springer’s Progress to This Is Not a Novel, he has delighted and amazed readers for decades. And now comes his latest masterwork, Vanishing Point, wherein an elderly writer (identified only as "Author") sets out to transform shoeboxes crammed with notecards into a novel — and in so doing will dazzle us with an astonishing parade of revelations about the trials and calamities and absurdities and often even tragedies of the creative life — all the while trying his best (he says) to keep himself out of the tale. Naturally he will fail to do the latter, frequently managing to stand aside and yet remaining undeniably central throughout — until he is swept inevitably into the narrative’s startling and shattering climax. A novel of death and laughter both — and of extraordinary intellectual richness.

For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand


Ayn Rand - 1961
    One of the most controversial figures on the intellectual scene, Ayn Rand was the proponent of a moral philosophy - an ethic of rational self-interest - that stands in sharp opposition of the ethics of altruism and self-sacrifice. The fundamentals of this morality - "a philosophy for living on earth" - are here vibrantly set forth by the spokesman for a new class, "For the New Intellectual."

Glory


Vladimir Nabokov - 1931
    Glory is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a twenty-two-year-old Russian émigré of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him.  Convinced that his life is about to be wasted and hoping to impress his love, he embarks on a "perilous, daredevil project"--an illegal attempt to re-enter the Soviet Union, from which he and his mother had fled in 1919.  He succeeds--but at a terrible cost.

Big Red Son (A Story from Consider the Lobster): And Other Essays


David Foster Wallace - 2005
    Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the annual Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters.

The Sketch Book


Washington Irving - 1820
    Tales and sketches dealing with Hudson Valley traditions and life in England as seen by an American observer.

Bellefleur


Joyce Carol Oates - 1980
    They own vast lands and profitable businesses, they employ their neighbors, and they influence the government. A prolific and eccentric group, they include several millionaires, a mass murderer, a spiritual seeker who climbs into the mountains looking for God, a wealthy noctambulist who dies of a chicken scratch.Bellefleur traces the lives of several generations of this unusual family. At its center is Gideon Bellefleur and his imperious, somewhat psychic, very beautiful wife, Leah, their three children (one with frightening psychic abilities), and the servants and relatives, living and dead, who inhabit the mansion and its environs. Their story offers a profound look at the world's changeableness, time and eternity, space and soul, pride and physicality versus love. Bellefleur is an allegory of caritas versus cupiditas, love and selflessness versus pride and selfishness. It is a novel of change, baffling complexity, mystery.Written with a voluptuousness and startling immediacy that transcends Joyce Carol Oates's early works, Bellefleur is widely regarded as a masterwork—a feat of literary genius.

The Outsider


Howard Fast - 1984
    Rabbi to the fourteen Jewish families in his small community, Hartman, along with his town, spends the years after the war facing the major political and social upheaval of the time. From McCarthyism and nuclear spies, to civil rights and Vietnam, Hartman, along with his best friend, a Congregational minister, helps lead the town through the chaotic changes sweeping the nation. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author's estate.

Fire Caste


Peter Fehervari - 2013
    Fresh Imperial Guard forces from the Arkhan Confederates are sent in to break the stalemate and annihilate the xenos. But greater forces are at work, and the Confederates soon find themselves broken and scattered. As they fight a desperate guerrilla war, their only hope may lie in the hands of a disgraced commissar, hell-bent on revenge.

River God (Ancient Egypt, #1) / Gold Mine (Omnibus)


Wilbur Smith - 2005
    But Tanus will have to defy the same gods to attain the reward they have forbidden him, an object more prized than battle's glory: possession of the Lady Lostris, a rare beauty with skin the color of oiled ceder--destined for the adoration of a nation, and the love of one extraordinary man.Gold MineNorth of Johannesburg, five companies share the Kitchenerville fields, furiously blasting and digging deep into the earth. For some men, gold mining is a way of life--and death. For some it's just a business. For one man, it's the most dangerous game of all...Rod Ironsides makes love to his boss's wife and drives his miners faster and harder than anyone has ever dared. A few weeks ago, Ironsides had a passion for golf and one-night stands. Now, he has been handed a prize and a curse: to blast through rock and reap a fortune--or be destroyed.From a split-second, oxygen-sucking explosion to a looming underground wall of water, there are a dozen ways Rod can fail. But his passion and fury won't let him back down from a conspiracy he cannot see: men who want to turn his mine into a death trap--for the bloodiest pay-day of all...