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Twilight in Delhi
Ahmed Ali - 1940
As Bonamy Dobree said, "It releases us into a different and quite complete world. Mr. Ahmed Ali makes us hear and smell Delhi...hear the flutter of pigeons’ wings, the cries of itinerant vendors, the calls to prayer, the howls of mourners, the chants of qawwals, smell jasmine and sewage, frying ghee and burning wood." The detail, as E.M. Forster said, is "new and fascinating," poetic and brutal, delightful and callous. First published by the Hogarth Press in 1940. Twilight in Delhi was widely acclaimed by critics and hailed in India as a major literary event. Long since considered a landmark novel, it is now available in the U.S. as a New Directions Classic. Twilight in Delhi has also been translated into French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Urdu.
Inheritance
Lan Samantha Chang - 2004
The two girls are inseparable—until Junan enters into an arranged marriage and finds herself falling in love with her soldier husband. When the Japanese invade China, Junan and her husband are separated. Unable to follow him to the wartime capital, Junan makes the fateful decision to send her sister after him. Inheritance traces the echo of betrayal through generations and explores the elusive nature of trust.
The Tightrope Men / The Enemy
Desmond Bagley - 2009
But it is only the beginning of a hair-raising adventure in which Denison finds himself trapped with no way to escape. One false move and the whole delicately balanced power structure between East and West will come toppling down…THE ENEMYWealthy, respectable George Ashton flees for his life after an acid attack on his daughter. Who is his enemy? Only Malcolm Jaggard, his future son-in-law, can guess, after seeing Ashton's top secret government file. In a desperate manhunt, Jaggard pits himself against the KGB and stalks Ashton to the silent, wintry forests of Sweden. But his search for the enemy has barely begun…Includes a unique bonus - Desmond Bagley's pen portrait, written for the original publication of The Tightrope Men.
Wall of Silence
Tracy Buchanan - 2020
Can she uncover it before the police do?
Melissa Byatt’s life in Forest Grove seems as perfect as can be: a doting husband, three loving children and a beautiful house in a close-knit community. But appearances can be deceiving.One evening, Melissa arrives home to the unimaginable: her husband lies stabbed on the kitchen floor, their children standing calmly around him…With horror, she realises that one of them is to blame. But which one? And why would they attack their own father?Her loyalties torn, in a split second she decides to protect her children at all costs—even if that means lying to the police. But when someone in the neighbourhood claims to know more than they should, Melissa discovers that some secrets are beyond her control…Can she find out the truth of what happened before the rumours spread? And can the family unite to escape the spotlight of scandal—or are none of them as innocent as Melissa insists?
Blank: Life or Nothing
Richard C. Hale - 2014
My name is Lincoln Delabar. I was born without a face. Yes, you heard that right. Smooth, clear skin from my forehead to my chin.I see the world differently, yet it is still a place that holds wonder. At least most of the time. With my uniqueness comes a burden. My mind is powerful. Very powerful. And I have an obligation, a purpose, to see things in my own special way. Some of the things I see are frightening. The evil in this world is beyond anyone’s control. Or so you might think. There is a violence in me. I’m not afraid. I can control it. But should I?
Seventeen
Hideo Yokoyama - 2003
Kazumasa Yuuki, a seasoned reporter at the North Kanto Times, runs a daily gauntlet of the power struggles and office politics that plague its newsroom. But when an air disaster of unprecedented scale occurs on the paper’s doorstep, its staff is united by an unimaginable horror and a once-in-a-lifetime scoop.2003. Seventeen years later, Yuuki remembers the adrenaline-fueled, emotionally charged seven days that changed his and his colleagues’ lives. He does so while making good on a promise he made that fateful week—one that holds the key to its last solved mystery and represents Yuuki’s final, unconquered fear.From Hideo Yokoyama, the celebrated author of Six Four, comes Seventeen—an investigative thriller set amid the aftermath of disaster.
The Borrowed
Chan Ho-Kei - 2014
Along the way we meet Communist rioters, ultraviolent gangsters, stallholders at the city’s many covered markets, pop singers enmeshed in the high-stakes machinery of star-making, and a people always caught in the shifting balance of political power, whether in London or Beijing.A gripping and brilliantly constructed novel from a talented new voice in crime fiction, The Borrowed paints a dynamic portrait of Hong Kong and reveals just how closely the past and present are connected in this fascinating city.
Red Sparrow
Jason Matthews - 2013
In present-day Russia, ruled by blue-eyed, unblinking President Vladimir Putin, Russian intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the post-Soviet intelligence jungle. Ordered against her will to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a young CIA officer who handles the Agency’s most important Russian mole.Spies have long relied on the “honey trap,” whereby vulnerable men and women are intimately compromised. Dominika learns these techniques of “sexpionage” in Russia’s secret “Sparrow School,” hidden outside of Moscow. As the action careens between Russia, Finland, Greece, Italy, and the United States, Dominika and Nate soon collide in a duel of wills, tradecraft, and—inevitably—forbidden passion that threatens not just their lives but those of others as well. As secret allegiances are made and broken, Dominika and Nate’s game reaches a deadly crossroads. Soon one of them begins a dangerous double existence in a life-and-death operation that consumes intelligence agencies from Moscow to Washington, DC.Page by page, veteran CIA officer Jason Matthews’s Red Sparrow delights and terrifies and fascinates, all while delivering an unforgettable cast, from a sadistic Spetsnaz “mechanic” who carries out Putin’s murderous schemes to the weary CIA Station Chief who resists Washington “cake-eaters” to MARBLE, the priceless Russian mole. Packed with insider detail and written with brio, this tour-de-force novel brims with Matthews’s life experience, including his knowledge of espionage, counterintelligence, surveillance tradecraft, spy recruitment, cyber-warfare, the Russian use of “spy dust,” and covert communications. Brilliantly composed and elegantly constructed, Red Sparrow is a masterful spy tale lifted from the dossiers of intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Authentic, tense, and entertaining, this novel introduces Jason Matthews as a major new American talent.
Con Law
Mark Gimenez - 2013
He rides a Harley and wears jeans and cowboy boots and his hair too long to suit the conservative dean. He’s thirty-five, handsome and unmarried but seldom without a female companion. He teaches karate and Con Law, law school vernacular for Constitutional Law. He is a recognized constitutional law expert, debates senators on political talk shows and reduces them to blithering fools, writes scathing op-eds, and is often mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee. He is famous for taking on lost causes and winning. Consequently, when he arrives at the law school each Monday morning, hundreds of letters await him, letters from lost causes around the country seeking his help. Some letters are funny, others are sad, most are hopeless. But every now and then, one letter captures his attention. Then, with only his latest law school intern in tow, Professor Bookman takes off on yet another adventure—not in search of ancient artifacts like Indiana Jones, but in search of truth and justice—"or as close thereto as the law allows." In this first installment of a new series, Book investigates a murder in the world of art and fracking in Marfa, Texas.Daily Mail (UK): "There cannot be any dispute. Gimenez has taken over John Grisham's mantle. This is his seventh legal thriller, and his work is now faster and fresher than Grisham, his characters are stronger, and his plot lines reek of tomorrow's headlines. This one centres on 'fracking'; the removal of gas from shale oil deposits, which is now the subject of fierce political debate in Britain as well as America. . . . It takes a positive delight in the intricacies of the law, but with a good helping of action thrown in, and it underlines just how much Gimenez has taken over Grisham's territory."Weekend Sport (UK): Same brilliant storyteller, brand new character to follow. Gimenez does law mysteries every bit as good as John Grisham, and this latest effort won't disappoint fans of that master. . . . Gimenez is a great and growing writer who hasn't let his readers down yet, and doesn't look likely to."
The Woman He Loved Before
Dorothy Koomson - 2011
But over time she is becoming more unsure if Jack has ever loved her ? and if he is over the death of Eve, his first wife. When fate intervenes in their relationship, Libby decides to find out all she can about the man she hastily married and the seemingly perfect Eve. Eventually Libby stumbles across some startling truths about Eve, and is soon unearthing more and more devastating family secrets. Frightened by what she finds and the damage it could cause, Libby starts to worry that she too will end up like the first woman Jack loved...Tense and moving, The Woman He Loved Before explores if the love you want is always the love you need ? or deserve.
The Fourth K
Mario Puzo - 1990
AN ARAB TERRORIST ATTACK. DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE. Mario Puzo envisioned it all in his eerily prescient 1991 novel, The Fourth K.President Francis Xavier Kennedy is elected to office, in large part, thanks to the legacy of his forebears– good looks, privilege, wealth–and is the very embodiment of youthful optimism. Too soon, however, he is beaten down by the political process and, disabused of his ideals, he becomes a leader totally unlike what he has been before. When his daughter becomes a pawn in a brutal terrorist plot, Kennedy, who has obsessively kept alive the memory of his uncles’ assassinations, activates all his power to retaliate in a series of violent measures. As the explosive events unfold, the world and those closest to him look on with both awe and horror.
The Tracker
Chad Zunker - 2017
With the past behind him and his future staked on law school, he is moonlighting as a political tracker, paid to hide in crowds and shadow candidates, recording their missteps for use by their opponents. One night, after an anonymous text tip, Sam witnesses a congressional candidate and a mysterious blonde in a motel indiscretion that ends in murder, recording it all on his phone.Now Sam is a target. Set up to take the fall and pursued by both assassins and the FBI, he is forced to go on the run. Using the street skills forged during his troubled youth — as well as his heightened mental abilities — Sam goes underground until he can uncover who is behind the conspiracy and how far up it goes. (Revised edition: This edition of The Tracker includes editorial revisions.)
Exclusive
Sandra Brown - 1996
Then, suddenly, she receives an invitation from First Lady Vanessa Merritt for an off-the-record conversation. Barrie's reporter's instincts are instantly aroused. During a furtive, emotionally charged meeting, Barrie sees that the President's beautiful wife is stunned by grief after the crib death of her infant son. Vanessa's motive for meeting Barrie seems to be to share her heartache with another woman. What Barrie overlooks in her excitement at hearing the confidences of the First Lady are the questions she should be asking: Why would Vanessa Merritt call her? And why would the President's wife hint to an unknown reporter that her child may have been murdered? Blind to everything but getting her exclusive, Barrie is determined to investigate the death of the President's child. But she soon realizes that getting her story will test her ethics and her patriotism. Would she expose information that could topple the presidency? She confronts this problem when she tracks down Gray Bondurant, a former presidential aide and war hero who shunned the politics of Washington in favor of life on a remote Wyoming ranch. And when they both begin to follow a trail of lies and intrigue right to the White House door, Barrie's exclusive puts at least three people on the firing line: the First Lady, Gray, and herself - as crimes and ambitions combine to endanger their lives and the future of the nation.
Hand Me a Fig Leaf
James Hadley Chase - 1981
As they prove to be uninterested, he turns instead to Colonel Parnell of the Parnell Detective Agency. It seems at first to be a simple case of a missing person but they soon find themselves in the middle of a complicated web of deceit, intrigue and murder.
Garcia's Heart
Liam Durcan - 2007
In García’s Heart, neurologist Patrick Lazerenko travels to The Hague to witness the war crimes trial of his beloved mentor, Hernan García, a Honduran doctor accused of involvement in torture. Driven by his own youthful memories of the man and his family, Lazerenko is determined to get to the truth behind the shocking accusations, even as the prosecution and a relentless journalist suspect Patrick of hiding information. The defense has its own ideas for Patrick, hoping to use his latest research to help vindicate García. As Patrick struggles with his conscience, and the pressures from the neuroeconomics company he abandoned in Boston, he must also contend with seeing García’s daughter, his former lover, and the surprising influence a shady advocacy group seems to have over her, and with the fact García himself is refusing to speak, to anyone.Taut, probing, highly intelligent, skillfully written, García’s Heart delves into the central issues of today, from terrorism to bioethics, and the age-old dilemmas of loyalty and betrayal.From the Hardcover edition.