Title: Silks Author: Dick Francis File Type: Mobi Subject:Fiction:Thriller Description:
*“Julian Trent, you have been found guilty by this court of perpetrating a violent and unprovoked attack on an innocent family including a charge of attempted murder. You have shown little or no remorse for your actions and I consider you a danger to society.”*
When defense lawyer Geoffrey Mason hears the judge’s ruling at London’s Old Bailey, he quietly hopes that a substantial sentence will be handed down to his arrogant young client. That Julian Trent only receives eight years seems all too lenient. Little does Mason realize that he’ll be looking Trent in the eyes again much sooner than that.
Setting aside his barrister’s gown and wig, Mason heads to Sandown racetrack to don his colorful racing silks. As an amateur jockey, he fulfills his true passion by pounding the turf in the heat of a steeplechase. Yet when a fellow rider is brutally murdered—a pitchfork driven through his chest—Mason’s racing hobby soon becomes too close to his work. The prime suspect is one of their brethren, champion jockey Steve Mitchell, and the evidence against him seems overwhelming.
Mason is reluctant to heed Mitchell’s plea for legal help—but he soon finds himself at the center of a sinister web of violence, threats and intimidation. Mason is left fighting a battle of right and wrong, and more immediately, a battle of life and death…his own.
Title: The Death of Faith
Author: Donna Leon
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction:Detective
Description:
Donna Leons mastery of plot, her understanding of Venetian manners and mores, and above all her philosophical, unfailingly decent protagonist have made the Commissario Brunetti mysteries bestsellers around the world, including an ever-growing American audience. In The Death of Faith, Brunetti comes to the aid of a young nursing sister who is leaving her convent following the unexpected death of five patients. At first Brunettis inquiries reveal nothing amiss, and he wonders whether the nun is simply creating a smoke screen to justify abandoning her vocation. But perhaps she has stumbled onto something very real and very sinistersomething that puts her life in imminent danger.
Title: Dust City
Author: Robert Paul Weston
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction:Young Adult
Description:FromOnce upon a time was a long time ago in Henry Whelp’s city. Now, the fairies are gone, and with them, their magical fairydust. Corporations manufacture synthetic dust to sell over the counter, while uncut nixiedust gets hawked by shady foxes in dark alleyways. But Henry never touches the stuff since his father went berserk and murdered a red-hooded girl and her granny on behalf of a golden-touch gangster named Skinner. See, dust is the stuff of miracles and fulfills destinies, which is fine if you’re a princess, but can lead to a big bad fate for a wolf like Henry. The premise is fractured fairy tale, but the play is pure noir: Chinatown via the Brothers Grimm. Henry gets in deep with Skinner’s crew to exonerate his dad and trips his way into a scheme to return the animalia (wolves, ravens, and the like) to their primitive state. The ending feels like it’s missing a twist or two, but the clever setup and gutting of fairy-tale tropes will garner plenty of enthusiasm. Grades 7-10. --Ian Chipman ReviewWeston deftly tucks his fairy-tale tropes into this thought-provoking mystery. --_Kirkus_ Weston has created a tightly paced mystery, a coming of age story, and a vivid fantasy...Dust City is a winner. --_Quill and Quire_ Dust City is so creative...As soon as I read the first page, I was hooked. --Teens Read Too
Title: A Bend in the Road
Author: Nicholas Sparks
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Romance
Description:
Miles Ryans life seemed to end the day his wife was killed in a hit-and-run accident two years ago. As deputy sheriff of New Bern, North Carolina, he not only grieves for her and worries about their young son Jonah but longs to bring the unknown driver to justice. Then Miles meets Sarah Andrews, Jonahs second-grade teacher. A young woman recovering from a difficult divorce, Sarah moved to New Bern hoping to start over. Tentatively, Miles and Sarah reach out to each other...soon they are falling in love. But what neither realizes is that they are also bound together by a shocking secret, one that will force them to reexamine everything they believe in-including their love.
Title: Disintegration_ The Splintering of Black
Author: Eugene Robinson
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Non-fiction
Description:From Publishers WeeklyIn this clear-eyed and compassionate study, Robinson (Coal to Cream), Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist for the Washington Post, marshals persuasive evidence that the African-American population has splintered into four distinct and increasingly disconnected entities: a small elite with enormous influence, a mainstream middle-class majority, a newly emergent group of recent immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, and an abandoned minority with less hope of escaping poverty than at any time since Reconstruction's end. Drawing on census records, polling data, sociological studies, and his own experiences growing up in a segregated South Carolina college town during the 1950s, Robinson explores 140 years of black history in America, focusing on how the civil rights movement, desegregation, and affirmative action contributed to the fragmentation. Of particular interest is the discussion of how immigrants from Africa, the best-educated group coming to live in the United States, are changing what being black means. Robinson notes that despite the enormous strides African-Americans have made in the past 40 years, the problems of poor blacks remain more intractable than ever, though his solution--a domestic Marshall Plan aimed at black America--seems implausible in this era of cash-strapped state and local governments. br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. FromBased on his years of reporting and observation of changes in black America, journalist Robinson finds that the black community has evolved to the point where it has disintegrated into distinct sectors: the mainstreamers, or black middle-class majority, who have made tremendous but often understated progress; the abandoned minority with little hope of escaping poverty; transcendental elites of such wealth and power that whites can’t deny; and an emergent group of biracial blacks and recent black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean who are challenging an essentially native black American experience. In the age of Obama, Robinson notes the advancement of the black elites, with wealth and power, into “full ownership stake” in the U.S., distancing them economically from the middle and lower classes. The emergent group identifies with a different notion of the black experience, making them ideologically and politically unreliable. All are in strong contrast to the abandoned, who are at the center of the black disintegration. Readers don’t have to agree with Robinson’s observations to appreciate the undeniable differences within black America and to maybe want further analysis. --Vernon Ford
Title: Consider the Lobster_ And Other Essays
Author: David Foster Wallace
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Non-fiction:Humor
Description:
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.
Title: Dog Blood
Author: David Moody
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Horror
Description:
***On the heels of *Patient Zero *and *Pride and Prejudice with Zombies— *the electrifying sequel to *Hater *where humanity fights itself to the death against a backdrop of ultimate apocalyptic destruction
***The Earth has been torn into two parts by an irreversible division. Whether due to nature, or the unknown depths of the mind itself, everyone is now either Human or Hater. Victim or killer. Governments have fallen, command structures have collapsed, and relationships have crumbled. Major cities have become refugee camps where human survivors cower together in fear. Amidst this indiscriminate carnage, Danny McCoyne is on a mission to find his daughter Ellis, convinced that her shared Hater condition means her allegiance is to people like him. Free of inhibitions, unrestricted by memories of peace, and driven by instinct, children are pure Haters, and may well define the future of the Hater race. But, as McCoyne makes his way into the heart of human territory, an incident on the battlefield sets in place an unexpected chain of events, forcing him to question everything he believes he knows about the new order that has arisen, and the dynamic of the Hate itself.
Title: The Blood Knight
Author: J. Gregory Keyes
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fantasy
Description:From Publishers WeeklyAt the start of the third book in Keyes's Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series (_The Briar King_, etc.), princess Anne Dare's father, the king of Crotheny, is dead and her mother, Muriele, is the prisoner of her mad uncle, Robert Dare, who now rules the kingdom. Anne does her best to elude her uncle's clutches as she flees across a well-developed landscape reminiscent of Renaissance northern Italy (rugged terrain and priests who belong to an established church) and medieval Germany (thick forests and ogres). The scenes and viewpoints shift often enough to be somewhat confusing, but the occasional well-handled erotic episode or magic duel can startle with its originality. This volume closes with a climactic grand battle in which Anne's cohorts appear to be victorious. Readers curious about the fate of Robert Dare, who has vanished, must await the fourth and final volume in this sophisticated and intelligent high fantasy epic. (July) br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. ReviewPraise for Greg Keyes and his novels of The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone The Charnel Prince “There is adventure and intrigue, swordplay and dark sorcery aplenty.”br –Realms of Fantasy “Keyes’s world is rich, detailed and always believable; the twisty plot is delightful and frightening in turns.”br –Locus “Strong world building and superior storytelling.”br –Library Journal The Briar King “A wonderful tale . . . It crackles with suspense and excitement from start to finish.”br –Terry Brooks “A graceful, artful tale from a master storyteller . . . [The novel] starts off with a bang, spinning a snare of terse imagery and compelling characters that grips tightly and never lets up.”br –Elizabeth Haydon, bestselling author of Prophecy: Child of Earth “Epic high fantasy . . . Keyes mixes cultures, religions, institutions, and languages with rare skill.”br –Publishers Weekly (starred review)br _ _
Title: Cleaving
Author: Julie Powell
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Autobiography
food
Description:
Julie Powell thought cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking was the craziest thing she'd ever do-- until she embarked on the voyage recounted in her new memoir, CLEAVING. Her marriage challenged by an insane, irresistible love affair, Julie decides to leave town and immerse herself in a new obsession: butchery. She finds her way to Fleischer's, a butcher shop where she buries herself in the details of food. She learns how to break down a side of beef and French a rack of ribs--tough, physical work that only sometimes distracts her from thoughts of afternoon trysts. The camaraderie at Fleischer's leads Julie to search out fellow butchers around the world-- from South America to Europe to Africa. At the end of her odyssey, she has learned a new art and perhaps even mastered her unruly heart.