7881 books

Fourth Bear (Nursery Crime, #2) by Jasper Fforde (2006)

English Mystery Fantasy
The inimitable Jasper Fforde gives readers another delightful mash-up of detective fiction and nursery rhyme, returning to those mean streets where no character is innocent. The Gingerbreadman?sadist, psychopath, cookie?is on the loose in Reading, but that?s not who Detective Jack Spratt and Sergeant Mary Mary are after. Instead, they?ve been demoted to searching for missing journalist ?Goldy? Hatchett. The last witnesses to see her alive were the reclusive Three Bears, and right away Spratt senses something furry?uh, funny?about their story, starting with the porridge. The Fourth Bear is a delirious new romp from our most irrepressible fabulist.

The Attack by Yasmina Khadra (2005)

English
Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli citizen, is a surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. Dedicated to his work, respected and admired by his colleagues and community, he represents integration at its most successful. He has learned to live with the violence and chaos that plague his city, and on the night of a deadly bombing in a local restaurant, he works tirelessly to help the shocked and shattered patients brought to the emergency room. But this night of turmoil and death takes a horrifyingly personal turn. His wife's body is found among the dead, with massive injuries, the police coldly announce, typical of those found on the bodies of fundamentalist suicide bombers. As evidence mounts that his wife, Sihem, was responsible for the catastrophic bombing, Dr. Jaafari is torn between cherished memories of their years together and the inescapable realization that the beautiful, intelligent, thoroughly modern woman he loved had a life far removed from the comfortable, assimilated existence they shared. From the graphic, beautifully rendered description of the bombing that opens the novel to the searing conclusion, The Attack portrays the reality of terrorism and its incalculable spiritual costs. Intense and humane, devoid of political bias, hatred, and polemics, it probes deep inside the Muslim world and gives readers a profound understanding of what seems impossible to understand.

Outsider by Diana Palmer (2006)

English Romance
Former black ops CIA operative Colby Lane, now retired from his wild years as a mercenary, has found his new calling as assistant chief of security for the mammoth Ritter Oil Corporation. But the past is never far behind. He's soon enmeshed in plans to trap a notorious drug trafficker, and it seems that his ex-wife, Sarina Carrington-whom he so cruelly left after one day of marriage-may be more involved than she's letting on. Not only that, but Sarina has a six-year-old dark-eyed daughter whose father is mysteriously absent-or is he?

Every Visible Thing by Lisa Carey (2006)

English
Five years after their oldest son, Hugh, disappeared, the members of the Furey family try to move on with their lives, with his mother losing herself in a new career, his father leaving behind his faith, and his two siblings, Owen and Lena, trying to come to terms with the loss of their brother and their own adolescent crises.

Plum Lucky by Janet Evanovich (2007)

English
Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum finds herself in over her head with a caper involving stolen money, a racehorse, a car chase, and a bad case of hives--not to mention her grandmother playing the slots in Atlantic City unknowingly using the stolen money! Meanwhile, the mysterious Diesel returns to once again turn Stephanie's world upside down.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (2011)

English Romance Paranormal
**An epic, richly inventive, historically sweeping, magical romance.** When historian Diana Bishop opens an alchemical manuscript in the Bodleian Library, it's an unwelcome intrusion of magic into her carefully ordered life. Though Diana is a witch of impeccable lineage, the violent death of her parents while she was still a child convinced her that human fear is more potent than any witchcraft. Now Diana has unwittingly exposed herself to a world she's kept at bay for years; one of powerful witches, creative, destructive daemons and long-lived vampires. Sensing the significance of Diana's discovery, the creatures gather in Oxford, among them the enigmatic Matthew Clairmont, a vampire genticist. Diana is inexplicably drawn to Matthew and, in a shadowy world of half-truths and old enmities, ties herself to him without fully understanding the ancient line they are crossing. As they begin to unlock the secrets of the manuscript and their feelings for each other deepen, so the fragile balance of peace unravels.

Pontoon by Garrison Keillor (2005)

English
The first new Lake Wobegon novel in seven years is a cause for celebration. And Pontoon is nothing less than a spectacular return to form—replete with a bowling ball-urn, a hot-air balloon, giant duck decoys, a flying Elvis, and, most importantly, Wally's pontoon boat. As the wedding of the decade approaches (accompanied by wheels of imported cheese and giant shrimp shish kebabs), the good-loving people of Lake Wobegon do what they do best: drive each other slightly crazy.

The Quantum thief by Hannu Rajaniemi (2010)

English Science Fiction
A breathtaking joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people who communicate via shared memory, and a race of hyper-advanced humans who originated as an MMORPG guild.

A beautiful place to die by Malla Nunn (2008)

Historical Fiction English
Cooper is dispatched to Jacob's Rest, a remote town deep in the bush, to look into a murder report. Arriving at Old Voster's farm, he finds the white police captain dead face down in a creek. Three of the Afrikaner's sons are present at the scene. Trouble comes when another son, a member of the feared Special Branch, arrives.

Gifts of Asti by Andre Norton (2006)

English Science Fiction Fantasy
Varta, last of the virgin Maidens of Asti, shivered. The scaled and wattled creature who crouched beside her thigh turned his reptilian head so that golden eyes met the aquamarine ones set slantingly at a faintly provocative angle in her smooth ivory face."We go—?"She nodded in answer to that unvoiced question Lur had sent into her brain and turned toward the dark cavern which was the mouth of Asti's last dwelling place. Once, more than a thousand years before, when the walls of Memphir were young, Asti had lived among men below. But in the richness and softness which was trading Memphir, empire of empires, Asti found no place. So He and those who served Him had withdrawn to this mountain outcrop. And she, Varta, was the last, the very last to bow knee at Asti's shrine and raise her voice in the dawn hymn—for Lur, as were all his race, was mute.

The alchemist's daughter by Katharine McMahon (2006)

English Victorian/Regency Coming of Age Death & Loss
There are long-held secrets at the manor house in Buckinghamshire, England, where Emilie Selden has been raised in near isolation by her father. A student of Isaac Newton, John Selden believes he can turn his daughter into a brilliant natural philosopher and alchemist. Secluded in their ancient house, with only two servants for company, he fills Emilie with knowledge and records her progress obsessively.In the spring of 1725, father and daughter begin their most daring alchemical experiment to date--they will attempt to breathe life into dead matter. But their work is interrupted by the arrival of two strangers: one a researcher, the other a dazzling young merchant. During the course of a sultry August, while her father is away, Emilie experiences the passion of first love. Listening to her heart rather than her head, she makes a choice.Banished to London and plunged headlong into a society that is both glamorous and ruthless, Emilie discovers that for all her extraordinary education she has no insight into the workings of the human heart. When she tries to return to the world of books and study, she instead unravels a shocking secret that sets her on her true journey to enlightenment.The Alchemist's Daughter is a gripping, evocative tale. Set against the backdrop of eighteenth-century London society, it is an unforgettable story of one woman's journey through a world of mystery, passion, and obsession.Selden Manor was the crucible in which my father, the Gills, and I lived together. I peer into it now with the respectful caution with which I was taught to approach any volatile experiment. I am searching for a day to illustrate our life before 1725, the year when everything changed. And unlike the blacksmith's daughter, I am an expert in observation. I know what I am looking for--bubbles of gas, a rise in temperature, an alteration in texture--small indications of chemical change that mean something significant is happening. --from The Alchemist's Daughter From the Hardcover edition.

Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie (2005)

English
Fourteen years ago, famous Pakistani activist Samina Akram disappeared. Two years earlier, her lover, Pakistan's greatest poet, was beaten to death by government thugs. In present-day Karachi, her daughter Aasmaani has just discovered a letter in the couple's private code—a letter that could only have been written recently. Aasmaani is thirty, single, drifting from job to job. Always left behind whenever Samina followed the Poet into exile, she had assumed that her mother's disappearance was simply another abandonment. Then, while working at Pakistan's first independent TV station, Aasmaani runs into an old friend of Samina's who gives her the first letter, then many more. Where could the letters have come from? And will they lead her to her mother? Merging the personal with the political, Broken Verses is at once a sharp, thrilling journey through modern-day Pakistan, a carefully coded mystery, and an intimate mother-daughter story that asks how we forgive a mother who leaves.

This Storm by James Ellroy (2019)

English War
"From "one of the great American writers of our time" (Los Angeles Times Book Review)--a brilliant historical crime novel, a pulse-pounding, as-it-happens narrative that unfolds in Los Angeles and Mexico in the wake in Pearl Harbor. New Year's Eve 1941, war has been declared and the Japanese internment is in full swing. Los Angeles is gripped by war fever and racial hatred. Sergeant Dudley Smith of the Los Angeles Police Department is now Army Captain Smith and a budding war profiteer. He's shacked up with Claire De Haven in Baja, Mexico, and spends his time sniffing out fifth column elements and hunting down a missing Japanese Naval Attache. Hideo Ashida is cashing LAPD paychecks and working in the crime lab, but he knows he can't avoid internment forever. Newly arrived Navy Lieutenant Joan Conville winds up in jail accused of vehicular homicide, but Captain William H. Parker squashes the charges and puts her on Ashida's team. Elmer Jackson, who is assigned to the alien squad and to bodyguard Ashida, begins to develop an obsession with Kay Lake, the unconsummated object of Captain Parker's desire. Now, Conville and Ashida become obsessed with finding the identity of a body discovered in a mudslide. It's a murder victim linked to an unsolved gold heist from '31, and they want the gold. And things really heat up when two detectives are found murdered in a notorious dope fiend hang-out"--

The Third Brother by Nick McDonell (2005)

English Family Drama
Mike, coming from a privileged family, is on a summer internship to Hong Kong. His older brother Lyle has always looked out for him. He receives word that after the September 11th attack Lyle is 'seeing things', and hurries back to care for him.

Rainbow Magic Books 1-7 Boxset by Daisy Meadows (2005)

English
After Rachel and Kirsty accidentally rescue Ruby the red fairy from under the pot at the end of the rainbow, they decide to help return color to Fairyland by rescuing her sisters from where they are trapped on Rainspell Island.

The Nobodies by N. E. Bode (2005)

English
Now reunited with her real family, eleven-year-old Fern goes to a camp to learn to practice the Anybody magic, where she unexpectedly faces the evil Mole, who has imprisoned the mysterious Nobodies in his factory basement.