Bingham's strange sense of morbid fancy collides with a gutsy realism; the result is splendid wreckage: a young man is seduced by his first cousin (or maybe it's the other way around) at her brother's wake ("The Other Family"); a bored couple plot to kill a man during their ski-resort honeymoon ("Marriage Is Murder"); a yuppie banker risks his whole perfect life for an affair with a junkie ("The Fixers"); an insurance-company bounty hunter tracks down walk-aways from drug and alcohol rehab ("Preexisting Condition"); and in the title story, an eleven-year-old boy is caught at the exquisitely uneasy intersection of the safety of childhood play and the pain of grown-up love and longing.These lean, potent stories are utterly original, and yet by turns recall Salinger, in their intellectual acuity, emotional depth, and wicked, dark humor; Fitzgerald, in their vivid chronicling of a new, restless social elite; and the work of "transgressive" writers, in their pervasive sense of the imminent possibility of danger and violence, even in the most civilized surroundings. Above all, the stories in Pure Slaughter Value mark the debut of a striking new literary voice--unsparing, bold, ironic, and true--that will haunt us for a long time to come.

    In the hit TV show on the Disney Channel, actress Miley Cyrus (daughter of Billy Ray) leads a double-life, playing a mild-mannered 8th grader by day, and famous pop sensation Hannah Montana by night. Our PVG folio features all 13 songs from the soundtrack, which was among the ten bestselling albums of 2006! Includes: The Best of Both Worlds * I Got Nerve * If We Were a Movie * Pop Princess * Who Said * more!

    With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently. Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news.Mayflies is a memorial to youth's euphorias and to everyday tragedy. A tender goodbye to an old union, it discovers the joy and the costs of love.

    But my Karma won’t let me, I have to compensate for what I’ve done.”Kolkata, 2008 Driven by a crazed love, Dev, our next door shy software engineer commits the biggest mistake of his life. Over 72 marathon hours, he loses his education, career, love, and life by a single act of madnes.Bengaluru 2012 Years later, Dev reaches Bengaluru in search of a better life. Destiny brings him face to face with his first love once again. He chases the same impossible dream only to find himself burning and failing in love. On the verge of losing everything that mattered, Dev fights his sense of practicality and his crazy, but limitless ‘Love’.Let’s find out who wins!Error Code Love takes you on an epic journey through the roads of friendship, jealousy, obsession, mistakes, redemption and love. It raises questions allied to grey areas of teen emotions and lets you find the answers within.

    You can only use the experiences you live through to make your future better, wiser. Anna and her best friend George meet every week to remember, to sigh, to laugh, to reminisce about their moments of glory, guilt and mischief and share their sorrows over a glass or three of wine. The things they've done still make them blush. Anna wanted to be a poet - a famous poet. George left home in a childish rage and years later returned with her baby.When Anna is asked to look after the boy across the road for a few hours each week, she isn't sure. She doesn't really do children. But she takes the job on and, gradually, a child's view of her world shows her a different place.George remembers a flat she stayed in when she ran away from home. It had the kitchen of all kitchens and, oh, how she'd love to see it again. Anna sets out to see if it still exists and discovers a cookbook full of recipes, intimates notes and drawings from George's life.Does all this mark an ending or the beginning of something new and marvelous for Anna and George?

    When one is finally offered to her, she realizes with alarm that the libretto is based on a hidden piece of her past. Only four could have betrayed her: one is dead, one loves her, one wants to own her. And one, she hopes, never thinks of her at all.  As she mines her memories for clues, she recalls her life as an orphan who left the American frontier for Europe and was swept up into the glitzy, gritty world of Second Empire Paris. In order to survive, she transformed herself from hippodrome rider to courtesan, from empress’s maid to debut singer, all the while weaving a complicated web of romance, obligation, and political intrigue.   Featuring a cast of characters drawn from history, The Queen of the Night follows Lilliet as she moves ever closer to the truth behind the mysterious opera and the role that could secure her reputation -- or destroy her with the secrets it reveals.

    It is 1904. When Frederick and Jette must flee her disapproving mother, where better to go than America, the land of the new? Originally set to board a boat to New York, at the last minute, they take one destined for New Orleans instead ("What's the difference? They're both new"), and later find themselves, more by chance than by design, in the small town of Beatrice, Missouri. Not speaking a word of English, they embark on their new life together. Beatrice is populated with unforgettable characters: a jazz trumpeter from the Big Easy who cooks a mean gumbo, a teenage boy trapped in the body of a giant, a pretty schoolteacher who helps the young men in town learn about a lot more than just music, a minister who believes he has witnessed the Second Coming of Christ, and a malevolent, bicycle-riding dwarf. A Good American is narrated by Frederick and Jette's grandson, James, who, in telling his ancestors' story, comes to realize he doesn't know his own story at all. From bare-knuckle prizefighting and Prohibition to sweet barbershop harmonies, the Kennedy assassination, and beyond, James's family is caught up in the sweep of history. Each new generation discovers afresh what it means to be an American. And, in the process, Frederick and Jette's progeny sometimes discover more about themselves than they had bargained for. Poignant, funny, and heartbreaking, A Good American is a novel about being an outsider - in your country, in your hometown, and sometimes even in your own family. It is a universal story about our search for home.

    She is spiritual. She is powerful. To become a detective was her passion. Honey is working with the most famous and intelligent detective in her city. Through a quirk of fate, she ends up investigating a case of human trafficking. Her interactions with the victims are thrilling and terrifying. Working on this case she comes to know how deep, barbaric and inhumane the web of powerful people is. Will she be able to solve this case? Can her spirituality help her make sense of this dark world? ENCOUNTER WITH SOUL Rasbeen is intelligent, smart and ambitious. She has dreams to fulfill, but her father has something else in mind for her. His negative pressure and attitude hold power over her life. Will she be able to survive? One day, she has an encounter with her soul. Can the soul lift her from her deathbed and make her a confident girl?

    His father, Patrick Riley, is a New York City cop. His grandfather, a fireman for thirty years, is a man who firmly believes that all of life’s great lessons are explained in baseball lore. In the wake of the assassinations of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, as the neighborhood changes around him, Scooter is forced to see that life, like baseball, is a game in which a few extraordinary moments–moments of either courage or cowardice–will define the man he becomes.

    Unable to resume his normal life, he flies south to North Carolina to visit his aged father, a widowed Episcopal priest who is cared for by live-in nurse Audrey Thornton and her grown son, Marcus. During his stay -- with help from his cantankerous father, Audrey, Marcus, and an alluring old flame named Gwyn -- Mabry is compelled to explore his tormented relationship with his father and a world he fondly remembers but has long since abandoned. Back in New York a week later, Mabry faces his old life, which lies in ruins before his eyes. There, he must once again confront change and uncertainty -- and a daunting disease that may prove fatal. In an elegantly crafted and profoundly moving novel, Reynolds Price follows one man's wrenching journey to come to terms with two familiar worlds that have been radically altered.

    His two children work abroad and he is alone after the funeral and grows deliberately recluse. A few weeks later he’s puzzled and annoyed when a lady arrives at his home delivering a schnauzer puppy. Called Rosie, it was ordered by his wife to be delivered to him after her death, together with a note from her. His wife had always wanted a dog but Will didn’t like them and had never agreed. But after a very difficult initial spell, he gradually grows to love Rosie and appreciate the companionship his little new friend brings to his life. Rosie also helps him overcome his grief and appreciate more than ever the wise and loving foresight of his wife. Two travel adventures follow in Switzerland and Austria where doggie-centred dramas ensue - including the injury and loss of Rosie. All dogs have a small monetary market value and many are worth nothing at all. But to their loving owners they are priceless.

    

    As the gathered family settle in to their first Christmas together for some years, the grown siblings - Rodney, Johnny and Gwen - are surprised when they are invited to each put stickers on the furniture and items they wish to inherit from their parents.Disputed Land is narrated by Leonard and Rosemary's thirteen-year-old grandson, Theo, who observes how from these innocent beginnings age-old fissures open up in the relationships of those around him. Looking back at this Christmas gathering from his own middle-age - a narrator at once nostalgic and naïve - Theo Cannon remembers his imperious grandmother Rosemary, alpha-male uncle Johnny, abominable twin cousins Xan and Baz; he recalls his love for his grandfather Leonard and the burgeoning feelings for his cousin Holly. And he asks himself the question: if a single family cannot solve the problem of what it bequeaths to future generations, then what chance does a whole society have of leaving the world intact?

    Sure, age isn't a problem. Neither are her looks. Heaven knows that plenty of perfectly respectable men would consider themselves lucky to end up with someone like her. Then again, the last perfectly respectable man to end up with her - her ex-husband - ended their marriage, not to mention Jane's belief in happy endings...But she just can't muster the cynicism to resist William Andrews - a dashing, debonair widower with two children of his own. Soon, Jane's doing what she swore she'd never do: Marching down the aisle, promising to have, hold, serve, and protect, 'til death do them part. But why does Andrew seem so obsessed with his dead wife? And why do the children seem to hate Jane so passionately?As Jane struggles to understand the nature of the powerful hold Andrews's first wife still exerts over the husband and children she left behind, her day-to-day life grows increasingly more dangerous. During a family outing, she is suddenly thrown violently from her horse. Had someone deliberately spooked the horse? As she takes a midnight swim, the mechanical dome over the pool closes on her. Did it short circuit, or was it sabotage? Are these just coincidences, or are the stakes and risks getting higher the closer Jane gets to the truth? Someone would clearly like to see her follow the first Mrs. Andrews to the grave. Why?In a thriller that moves from New York to Paris to the Caribbean, a plot filled with relentless suspense, and a witty and intelligent heroine worth cheering for, this latest from Diana Diamond is her best yet, an unputdownable romance of deadly proportions.

    Failing out of school, picking up shifts at Margo’s diner, she’s left fending for herself in a town where she’s never quite felt at home. When she “borrows” her neighbor’s car to perform at an open mic night, she realizes her life could be much bigger than where she came from. After a fight with her dad, April packs her stuff and leaves for good, setting off on a journey to find a life that’s all hers.As April moves through the world, meeting people who feel like home, she chronicles her life in the songs she writes and discovers that where she came from doesn’t dictate who she has to be. This lyrical, unflinching tale is for anyone who has ever yearned for the fierce power of found family or to grasp the profound beauty of choosing to belong.