A chocoholic grizzly bear, a talking Christmas tree, mince pie overdoses and a very bloody murder. Will poor old Saint Nick make it out alive? Sad, strange, funny and gruesome, this overlapping, multi-genre collection of tales has a little something for every reader. Curl up with a mulled wine and some fictional festive misery, and discover what Father Christmas really likes to drink when he wriggles down your chimney. Spoiler: it isn’t milk.

    Or so they think. No one will answer their questions. And the terrifying truth may come too late....BookShotsLIGHTNING-FAST STORIES BY JAMES PATTERSONNovels you can devour in a few hours. Impossible to stop reading. All original content from James Patterson.

    This study guide includes the following sections: Plot Summary, Chapter Summaries & Analysis, Characters, Objects/Places, Themes, Style, Quotes, and Topics for Discussion.

    Detective Inspector David McClennan, sent to investigate her murder, finds himself in an unfamiliar world of students and academics, a world which contrasts starkly with the Flamingo club in the centre of town where the victim worked part-time. As two more young women are murdered and yet others disappear, and as he himself becomes increasingly fascinated by the feminist sociologist Caroline Morland, his search for the killer becomes a race against time.

    It has lain in the cold and dark of the bog, waiting patiently for a host to set it free. Now, for John Cluer and his family, nothing will ever be the same again.A novelette of approximately 10,000 words.

     Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are up to their ears in trouble once more, when a kinky, psychotherapist client and her household end up dead with a crazy, nymphomaniac niece as the main suspect. Hap is facing his own inner crisis, wavering between a shrink and a little blue pill, while his lover Brett and his best friend Leonard speculate on a colorful variety of causes and cures. When he opts for neither, ignoring his doctor's advice to call a shrink, she calls him instead and the team is off to the races, facing off with a wide array of odd relationships, crazed florists and murder. Action like only Joe R. Lansdale and Hap & Leonard can provide.

    It is an isolated Cornish fishing community, largely untouched by the modern, developing Victorian world, hanging onto its old traditions, superstitions and beliefs – a community that lives with a disturbing secret. So too does Denning. He is a reluctant visitor, and though he is supposedly joining his one-time artist friend Terrance Wilkinson to form an artists’ colony it is circumstances that force him there. Denning is still haunted by the brutal death of a young woman in Brittany, and shouldering guilt for the fact that he covered up for Wilkinson when he suspects the man of having been been involved with the murder. But Porthgarrow is haunted by its own demons and secrets. He learns about the savage murder of a woman by her husband Jowan Connoch thirteen years previously, and of Jowan’s son who has returned to Porthgarrow to uncover the truth and to clear his father’s name. Yet it is far from over. Before long three more people are destined to die in Porthgarrow before the village gives up its sinister secrets, and Stephen Denning will learn of his own family’s mysterious involvement. The house of the Wicked is peopled with larger than life characters – the powerful businessman Gerran Hendra and his beautiful daughter Jenna; the Reverend Biddle who collects photographs of the dead; Benjamin Croker, the journalist; and Tunny, the village wise man and healer. From its atmospheric Gothic undertones to its shocking and unexpected end, ‘The House of the Wicked’ is D. M. Mitchell at his darkest and most imaginative best. Some secrets will not stay buried...

    However, it also manages to capture the brink-of-the-abyss finality of falling in love along the way very well, with lots of black humour and quirky, loveable characters thrown into the mix. There's Karen, a ballsy plastic surgeon's receptionist, who pulls stick-ups on garages in her down-time; her boss, Frank, who's getting his ex-wife Madge kidnapped in order to collect on the insurance; Karen's psycho ex Rossi, who's just out of prison; and her new love interest Ray, who's a painter/decorator cum 'babysitter'. A multi-layered novel that zips along at a rate of knots, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments

    Positioned beneath a statue of Leto, the goddess of motherhood, the crime is weighted with meaning and, Ellen discovers, remarkably similar to one from a decade past.Ellen's professional duty is to protect the child, but she's not equipped to contend with a killer. As she races to connect the dots, she knows her time is running out. And the stakes are high: if she fails, another mother is sure to make the ultimate sacrifice.

    Worse, Alex wasn’t an innocent bystander but part of the gang that raided the vault and left behind numerous bodies.Simmering with rage over his loss, Will tries to let the police handle the matter. But as Alex’s killers remain at large, Will decides that it’s up to him—and a few old friends—to enact revenge in a most brutal manner.Now he’s calling on dangerous connections that have been buried for years—and should’ve stayed that way. But Will vows to do whatever it takes to see Alex’s killers repay their sins in blood, even if it means his own damnation.

    You can find The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo here.Wish you could read your favorite wiki content conveniently on your Kindle device? Now you can with the "Wiki content for your kindle" series.This book provides background information on the novel "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," written by Stieg Larsson.Read a plot summary, information about the characters, themes, and film adaptations.

    After a hushed-up scandal over his Olympics win and the death of his wife in a car accident five years ago, Ethan wants nothing more than to forget his past. Skip is not only the light of Ethan's life--she is his life. Then, Skip is kidnapped. A series of bizarre ransom demands start coming in that stretch Ethan's athletic prowess to its limits, and he realizes with growing horror that they are modern versions of the Twelve Labors of Hercules, demanded in tricky, rhyming clues by someone who seems to have followed every step of Ethan's career.

    Carlotta Wren has always wondered what her life would've been like if her parents hadn't fled town and left her to raise her younger brother Wesley...but through a twist of fate, she's about to find out!

    As the city's police force begins looking into this seemingly harmless rise in crime, darker and more dangerous issues quickly come to the fore.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W26zdj...

    His first client was a transient who just learned that he was the sole beneficiary of his estranged brother’s multi-million dollar estate. His brother was brutally murdered and the alleged killer was on trial in what appeared to be an open and shut case. Zach observed the riveting courtroom drama as the case unfolded and in the process, discovered a dark, deadly secret left by the murder victim. He soon learned that he was way over his head in his new practice and that his first case could cost him not only his career but his life.