James Patterson--Max_ The Greatest Air and Sea Battle Is
Title: Max_ The Greatest Air and Sea Battle Is Author: James Patterson File Type: Mobi Subject:Fiction:Young Adult Description: Nobody said saving the world would be easy. Until now, Max and the flock have lived a lonely existence: hunted down, tortured and pushed to the fringe of society; always on the run they have never been able to live a normal life. But things are changing. The flock have finally found acceptance for their unusual skills. Together, they have taken on new challenges and used their extraordinary powers to fight for the greater good on a global scale. The avian hybrids don t have to hide away any longer, far from it, now everyone wants to see just what they can do. But fame and fortune always come at a price and Max isn t ready for all the glitz and glamour just yet. The action figures and memorabilia can wait, they have more important tasks at hand. Will the flock be able to survive the trappings of a Hollywood lifestyle? When tensions start to run high can the group stick together? Meanwhile sinister forces are plotting their attack, putting more than just the flock in danger. Something deadly is lurking in the depths of the ocean. As the flock uncover a terrible secret set to threaten the world can they save the day or is this a disaster too tough to tackle, even for them? Max must also come to terms with the fact that none of them is invincible. With her new-found vulnerability comes the realisation of emotions that have been buried deep. The lives of those she holds close to her have been threatened many times before and although they have survived everything that has been thrown at them so far, Max knows that her time will come and her days are numbered. The greatest air and sea battle is about to commence.
Title: Soft Come the Dragons
Author: Dean Koontz
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Science-Fiction
Description:Dean Koontz is in league with the future.
Follow him as he leads you down the gnarled paths of night descending into the ever-present and terror-filled tomorrow. Come trod the byways to hell and to hope when you journey with:
Mutilated, mutant by-products of America's Artificial Wombs created by attempts at producing human weapons . . .
An American team of doctors sent to China to combat the runaway ultimate in biological warfare . . .
The genetically mutated daughter of LSD users, hiding her powers in order to survive society . . .
And Gabe, the vital, young man mistakenly locked in an antiseptic old-age ward . . .
Title: The Ruins of Gorlan
Author: John Flanagan
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fantasy
Description:
He had always wanted to be a warrior. The Rangers, with their dark cloaks and shadowy ways, made him nervous. The villagers believe the Rangers practice magic that makes them invisible to ordinary people. And now fifteen year-old Will, always small for his age, has been chosen as a Ranger’s apprentice. What he doesn’t realize yet is that the Rangers are the protectors of the kingdom. Highly trained in the skills of battle and surveillance, they fight the battles before the battles reach the people. And as Will is about to learn, there is a large battle brewing. The exiled Morgarath, Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night, is gathering his forces for an attack on the kingdom. This time, he will not be denied . . . .
Title: Kennedy_ The Classic Biography
Author: Ted Sorensen
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Autobiography
Description:
Ted Sorensen knew Kennedy the man, the senator, the candidate, and the president as no other associate did. From his hiring as a legislative assistant to Kennedys death in 1963, Sorensen was with him during the key crises and turning points—including the spectacular race for the vice presidency at the 1956 convention, the launching of Kennedys presidential candidacy, the TV debates with Nixon, and election night at Hyannis Port. The first appointment made by the new president was to name Ted Sorensen his Special Counsel. In Kennedy, Sorensen recounts failures as well as successes with surprising candor and objectivity. He reveals Kennedys errors on the Bay of Pigs, and his attitudes toward the press, Congress, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sorensen saw firsthand Kennedys actions in the Cuban missile crises, and the evolution of his beliefs on civil rights and arms control. First published in 1965 and reissued here with a new preface, Kennedy is an intimate biography of an extraordinary man, and one of the most important historical accounts of the twentieth century.
Title: The Manual of Detection_ A Novel
Author: Jedediah Berry
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Mystery
Description:From Publishers Weekly
Set in an unnamed city, Berry's ambitious debut reverberates with echoes of Kafka and Paul Auster. Charles Unwin, a clerk who's toiled for years for the Pinkerton-like Agency, has meticulously catalogued the legendary cases of sleuth Travis Sivart. When Sivart disappears, Unwin, who's inexplicably promoted to the rank of detective, goes in search of him. While exploring the upper reaches of the Agency's labyrinthine headquarters, the paper pusher stumbles on a corpse. Aided by a narcoleptic assistant, he enters a surreal landscape where all the alarm clocks have been stolen. In the course of his inquiries, Unwin is shattered to realize that some of Sivart's greatest triumphs were empty ones, that his hero didn't always come up with the correct solution. Even if the intriguing conceit doesn't fully work, this cerebral novel, with its sly winks at traditional whodunits and inspired portrait of the bureaucratic and paranoid Agency, will appeal to mystery readers and nongenre fans alike. (Feb.) br
Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
From
The comparisons used by critics in describing The Manual of Detection—Borges! Chesterton! Bradbury! Kafka! Lynch! Gilliam!—may seem overblown. But this list of literary (and cinematic) heavy hitters may not be hyperbolic praise so much as the only means available to explain how a book that initially seems to be a private eye novel can also be a work of absurdist art, “a surreal transmogrification of a genre” (Wall Street Journal). The critics might not have been able to categorize it, but they were also unable to put it down. However, as more than one reviewer pointed out, this may not be the best book for those who like their gumshoes straight, no chaser.br
2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC
Title: Acts of Nature
Author: Jonathon King
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Mystery
Description:From Publishers WeeklyFlorida, hurricanes and crime make a potent mix, as shown in Edgar-winner King's fifth entry in his Max Freeman PI series (_The Blue Edge of Midnight_, etc.). The vacation trip that Max and his cop girlfriend, Sherry Richards, take to his Everglades cabin and then to a friend's even more remote fishing camp turns into a struggle for survival when hurricane Simone shifts course unpredictably. A trio of unscrupulous thieves scavenging in the hurricane's wake and a pair of deadly security guards out to protect an illegal asset compound the danger. King vividly describes the hurricane's force and the different ways people respond to it. Sherry displays her grit and Max his ingenuity in a series of desperate gambles as the story builds to an explosive climax. This is a worthy addition to a Florida subgenre that includes Carl Hiaasen's Stormy Weather and Tim Dorsey's Hurricane Punch. (Aug.) br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. FromStarred Review The latest entry in the Max Freeman series (King won an Edgar with the debut of cop-turned-recluse Freeman in 2002's Blue Eye of Midnight) is every bit as polished and absorbing as its four predecessors, and it trumps King's own standards for description with a stunning depiction of a hurricane and its aftermath. A longtime Philadelphia crime reporter, King knows cops well, and it shows in the hero he has crafted. Ex-cop Freeman has been holed up in a former research shack deep in the Florida Everglades, accepting some detective work from an old lawyer friend but mostly hiding himself away from his horror at having killed a 12-year-old boy in a robbery attempt. Each novel inches Freeman away from his grief and into life; King is both a master plotter and an able psychologist. In his latest, Freeman and his new love, a South Florida detective, are enjoying a break at Max's retreat when a hurricane rips apart the shack, nearly killing Freeman's girlfriend. This novel is more adventure-suspense tale than mystery, as the couple struggles to survive, first against the hurricane and then against the villains who flood into the Everglades. King juxtaposes Max's first-person narration with third-person accounts of criminals in a breathtaking series of survival moves. Gripping. Fletcher, Connie
Title: Cloud Atlas_ A Novel
Author: David Stephen Mitchell
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Contemporary
Description:From Publishers WeeklyAt once audacious, dazzling, pretentious and infuriating, Mitchell's third novel weaves history, science, suspense, humor and pathos through six separate but loosely related narratives. Like Mitchell's previous works, Ghostwritten and number9dream (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize), this latest foray relies on a kaleidoscopic plot structure that showcases the author's stylistic virtuosity. Each of the narratives is set in a different time and place, each is written in a different prose style, each is broken off mid-action and brought to conclusion in the second half of the book. Among the volume's most engaging story lines is a witty 1930s-era chronicle, via letters, of a young musician's effort to become an amanuensis for a renowned, blind composer and a hilarious account of a modern-day vanity publisher who is institutionalized by a stroke and plans a madcap escape in order to return to his literary empire (such as it is). Mitchell's ability to throw his voice may remind some readers of David Foster Wallace, though the intermittent hollowness of his ventriloquism frustrates. Still, readers who enjoy the novel as puzzle will find much to savor in this original and occasionally very entertaining work. br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. FromMitchell's virtuosic novel presents six narratives that evoke an array of genres, from Melvillean high-seas drama to California noir and dystopian fantasy. There is a naïve clerk on a nineteenth-century Polynesian voyage; an aspiring composer who insinuates himself into the home of a syphilitic genius; a journalist investigating a nuclear plant; a publisher with a dangerous best-seller on his hands; and a cloned human being created for slave labor. These five stories are bisected and arranged around a sixth, the oral history of a post-apocalyptic island, which forms the heart of the novel. Only after this do the second halves of the stories fall into place, pulling the novel's themes into focus: the ease with which one group enslaves another, and the constant rewriting of the past by those who control the present. Against such forces, Mitchell's characters reveal a quiet tenacity. When the clerk is told that his life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean, he asks, Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops? br 2005
Title: The Heroes
Author: Joe Abercrombie
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fantasy
Description:From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. This blood-drenched, thought-provoking dissection of a three-day battle is set in the same world as Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy (The Blade Itself, etc.), but stands very well alone. Union commander Lord Marshal Kroy coordinates the fight with the aid of a motley group of incompetent, self-important officers. The strangely sympathetic Col. Bremer dan Gorst is officially a royal observer who nurses a burning desire to kill or be killed. Leading a much smaller army against the Union is Black Dow, whose grip on the throne of the Northmen is tenuous and based on fear and brutality. Calder, a slippery and cunning egotist, advocates peace while plotting to take Black Dow's place. Abercrombie never glosses over a moment of the madness, passion, and horror of war, nor the tribulations that turn ordinary people into the titular heroes. (Feb.) br (c) PWxyz, LLC. ReviewThe Heroes is an indictment of war and the duplicity that corrupts men striving for total power: bloody and violent, but never gratuitously so, it's imbued with cutting humour, acute characterisation and world-weary wisdom about the weaknesses of the human race. Brilliant. -- Eric Brown THE GUARDIAN An action-packed novel full of brutality, black-humour and razor sharp characterisation. -- Dave Bradley SFX The Heroes is the first major fantasy release of 2011, and it looks like the new year is already off to a cracking start. The Heroes is Joe Abercrombie doing what he does best but better than ever before: gritty, violent, morally ambiguous and darkly funny fantasy with a streak of intelligent cynicism. THE WERTZONE A well-constructed, absorbing war novel that returns to a familiar stamping ground. There's satisfying character development, exploration of the ironies of war, and of course plenty of blood and treachery, all delivered with Abercrombie's trademark wry humour. SPECULATIVE HORIZONS Abercrombie's take on fantasy has always been dark, almost nihilistic, yet shot through with black humour. The deliberate irony of the title of this book is that he does not write about heroes, he writes about ordinary people thrust in to extraordinary situations who seldom, if ever, acquit themselves heroically. Highly recommended both for fantasy readers and lovers of Cornwell and Iggulden. BOOK GEEKS
Title: Mrs. Dalloway
Author: Virginia Woolf
File Type: Mobi
Subject:classics
Description:
Harcourt is proud to introduce new annotated editions of three Virginia Woolf classics, ideal for the college classroom and beyond. For the first time, students reading these books will have the resources at hand to help them understand the text as well as the reasons and methods behind Woolfs writing. Weve commissioned the best-known Woolf scholars in the field to provide invaluable introductions, editing, critical analysis, and suggestions for further reading. These much-awaited volumes are the first of many annotated Woolf editions Harcourt plans on publishing in the coming years. This brilliant novel explores the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a womans life. Direct and vivid in her account of the details of Clarissa Dalloways preparations for a party she is to give that evening,Woolf ultimately managed to reveal much more for it is the feeling behind these daily events that gives Mrs. Dalloway its texture and richness and makes it so memorable. Annotated and with an introduction by Bonnie Scott