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Petronius Arbiter

I was to learn later that in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.

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Petronius Arbiter

October 12, 2012

When we left off last week, I was in Cleveland for Bouchercon, which ended up to be a full weekend of seeing author and reader friends, as well as those from around the industry --- a real celebration of reading. Over the weekend, I heard from people who had attended this event for 30 years. As it travels from city to city each year, that is a real commitment from folks; I think this was my 8th Bouchercon.

Editorial Content for NYPD Red

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Reviewer (text)

Joe Hartlaub

I love potboilers. They were among the first adult novels I read for fun, and while I happily acquire and read more literary works, my attitude is that if you are not reading for the pleasure of taking in a good story that’s well-told, then you should be doing something else with your time. Or at least I should. Read More

Teaser

 

A special NYPD task force is charged with monitoring Hollywood on the Hudson, an event that brings more celebrities than usual to New York. A producer fatally collapses at a breakfast, and Detective Zach Jordan and his new partner/ex-girlfriend Kylie Mac Donald must solve some of the most brutal crimes they've encountered that are sending New York City into chaos.

Promo

A special NYPD task force is charged with monitoring Hollywood on the Hudson, an event that brings more celebrities than usual to New York. A producer fatally collapses at a breakfast, and Detective Zach Jordan and his new partner/ex-girlfriend Kylie Mac Donald must solve some of the most brutal crimes they've encountered that are sending New York City into chaos.

About the Book

It's the start of Hollywood on Hudson, and New York City is swept up in the glamour. Every night, the red carpet rolls out for movie stars arriving at premieres in limos; the most exclusive restaurants close for private parties for wealthy producers and preeminent directors; and thousands of fans gather with the paparazzi, hoping to catch a glimpse of the most famous and beautiful faces in the world. With this many celebrities in town, special task force NYPD Red is on high alert-and they can't afford to make a single mistake.

Then a world-renowned producer fatally collapses at his power breakfast, and top NYPD Red Detective Zach Jordan is the first one on the scene. Zach works with his beautiful new partner, Detective Kylie MacDonald --- who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend-to discover who the murderer might be. But this is only the beginning: the most brutal, public, and horrifyingly spectacular crimes they've ever encountered are about to send all of New York into chaos, putting NYPD Red on the ropes.

Zach and Kylie know there's no way of telling what a killer this deranged will do next. With the whole world watching, they have to find a way to stop a psychopath who has scripted his finale down to the last explosive detail. With larger-than-life action, relentless speed, and white-knuckle twists, NYPD RED is the next mega-blockbuster from "The Man Who Can't Miss." (TIME)

Editorial Content for Joseph Anton

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Reviewer (text)

Roz Shea

It was on Valentine’s Day in 1989 that Salman Rushdie awakened to a phone call from a BBC reporter who asked him how it felt to be sentenced to a Fatwah by the Ayatollah Khomeini. He, growing up in the Muslim culture, had never heard that wordnor had the rest of the Western world. He soon learned that it means an irrevocable death sentence that lasts through eternity as he was notified that the London police were stepping in to protect him and his family. Read More

Teaser

 

How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, how and why does he stumble, how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir, Salman Rushdie tells that story for the first time --- the story of one of the crucial battles, in our time, for freedom of speech.

Promo

How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, how and why does he stumble, how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir, Salman Rushdie tells that story for the first time --- the story of one of the crucial battles, in our time, for freedom of speech.

About the Book

On February 14, 1989, Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been “sentenced to death” by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called THE SATANIC VERSES, which was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran.”
 
So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. He was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and combinations of their names; then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov --- JOSEPH ANTON.
 
How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, how and why does he stumble, how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of one of the crucial battles, in our time, for freedom of speech. He talks about the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and of the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom.
 
It is a book of exceptional frankness and honesty, compelling, provocative, moving, and of vital importance. Because what happened to Salman Rushdie was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding somewhere in the world every day.

Editorial Content for Sweet Talk

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Hillary Wagy

Julie Garwood knows that the secret to a bestselling romance novel is a sexy man who is every woman’s type and looks better in a tux than George Clooney, promoted by a book cover that flaunts a perfectly sculpted male physique. Her latest bestselling novel is a decadent guilty pleasure that exceeds every woman’s desires. Read More

Teaser

 

Olivia MacKenzie is a beautiful and tough young attorney working for the IRS. As she tracks down bad guys related to a Ponzi scheme, she asks questions about some of the wrong people and finds her life in immediate danger. Realizing she's in over her head, she calls in handsome FBI agent Grayson Kincaid. Olivia can fight thugs and corruption, but can she battle her attraction to Kincaid?

Promo

Olivia MacKenzie is a beautiful and tough young attorney working for the IRS. As she tracks down bad guys related to a Ponzi scheme, she asks questions about some of the wrong people and finds her life in immediate danger. Realizing she's in over her head, she calls in handsome FBI agent Grayson Kincaid. Olivia can fight thugs and corruption, but can she battle her attraction to Kincaid?

About the Book

In the new contemporary romance from #1 New York Times bestselling author Julie Garwood, a detective and a lawyer are falling in love --- and making a federal case out of it.

When FBI agent Grayson Kincaid first encounters Olivia MacKenzie, she makes quite an impression.
 
The beautiful, tough, young attorney has stumbled into the middle of an FBI sting operation and has reduced it to chaos. Months of surveillance and careful planning down the drain, Kincaid’s partner is furious and lets Olivia know that she’s ticked off the wrong guy. After all, he’s FBI.

Olivia isn’t intimidated by his partner’s bullying because she’s something even scarier...she’s IRS.

And working for the IRS isn’t for the faint of heart. She’s on the trail of an elaborate Ponzi scheme, one that threatens to ruin the lives of naive and unsuspecting victims, and one she has personal reasons to be angry about. But after she asks questions of the wrong people, her life is suddenly endangered. She’s accustomed to fighting for the underdog but being vulnerable herself is a very different story. Smart enough to know when to call for reinforcements, she contacts Grayson Kincaid.

Together they make an excellent team to fight corruption but Olivia is also fighting the immediate and intense attraction she feels for Agent Kincaid, and that may be a battle she is bound to lose.

Editorial Content for Illuminations

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Donna Volkenannt

ILLUMINATIONS is a fascinating work of historical fiction about the life and times of a saintly woman whose vision that the divine is present in all of God’s creation resonates across the centuries and is relevant today. Read More

Teaser

 

Offered to the Church at the age of eight, Hildegard von Bingen was entombed in a small room where she was expected to live out her days in silent submission. Instead, she found comfort and grace in studying books, growing herbs, and rejoicing in her own secret visions of the divine. Some 30 years later, Hildegard broke out of her prison with the heavenly calling to speak and write about her visions and to liberate her sisters and herself from the soul-destroying anchorage.

Promo

Offered to the Church at the age of eight, Hildegard von Bingen was entombed in a small room where she was expected to live out her days in silent submission. Instead, she found comfort and grace in studying books, growing herbs, and rejoicing in her own secret visions of the divine. Some 30 years later, Hildegard broke out of her prison with the heavenly calling to speak and write about her visions and to liberate her sisters and herself from the soul-destroying anchorage.

About the Book

A triumphant portrait of a resilient and courageous woman and the life she might have lived...

Skillfully interweaving historical fact with psychological insight and vivid imagination, Sharratt’s redemptive novel, ILLUMINATIONS, brings to life one of the most extraordinary women of the Middle Ages: Hildegard von Bingen, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath.

Offered to the Church at the age of eight, Hildegard was entombed in a small room where she was expected to live out her days in silent submission as the handmaiden of a renowned but disturbed young nun, Jutta von Sponheim. Instead, Hildegard rejected Jutta’s masochistic piety and found comfort and grace in studying books, growing herbs, and rejoicing in her own secret visions of the divine. When Jutta died some thirty years later, Hildegard broke out of her prison with the heavenly calling to speak and write about her visions and to liberate her sisters and herself from the soul-destroying anchorage. Riveting and utterly unforgettable, ILLUMINATIONS is a deeply moving portrayal of a woman willing to risk everything for what she believed.

Editorial Content for Goldberg Variations: A Novel

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Reviewer (text)

Jennifer McCord

In GOLDBERG VARIATIONS, New York Times bestselling author Susan Isaacs writes about how family and business relationships can become intertwined. An aging matriarch is beginning to worry about who will pick up where she leaves off. Years before, when her husband did not resist the Mafia’s demands on his trucking company, Gloria took their two sons and left him. With the two trucks she got from her husband’s company, Gloria started her own business in New Mexico: Glory Inc. Read More

Teaser

 

Elegant, amusing and profoundly nasty tycoon Gloria Garrison is shocked that none of her three grandchildren are interested in inheriting her brilliant, booming beauty business. What’s so grand about their lives that they would reject such a kingdom? Memories have a way of intruding at the most inopportune times. Is Gloria’s tough hide as impenetrable as she has always believed?

Promo

Elegant, amusing and profoundly nasty tycoon Gloria Garrison is shocked that none of her three grandchildren are interested in inheriting her brilliant, booming beauty business. What’s so grand about their lives that they would reject such a kingdom? Memories have a way of intruding at the most inopportune times. Is Gloria’s tough hide as impenetrable as she has always believed?

About the Book

Imagine King Lear as a comedy...

Elegant, amusing, and profoundly nasty tycoon Gloria Garrison, née Goldberg, has a kingdom to bequeath to one of the grandchildren she barely knows. They’re all twentysomethings who foolishly believe money isn’t everything. Just shy of 80, Gloria doesn’t wish to watch the minutes tick by while the three dither over the issues of their generation --- love, meaning, identity. She has summoned them all from New York for a weekend at her palatial home in Santa Fe. She has a single question to ask them: “Which one of you most deserves to inherit my business?” Gloria never anticipates the answer will be “not interested” times three. She created a brilliant, booming beauty business, Glory, Inc., that not only does well, but does good. And they say “no”? What’s so grand about their lives that they would reject such a kingdom?

Daisy Goldberg is not only mad for movies, she’s part of the film industry: East Coast story editor for one of the biggest studios. Her brother, Matt, the über–sports buff, has a great job in public relations with Major League Baseball. And their cousin Raquel Goldberg, half-Latina, all Catholic, is a Legal Aid lawyer. They may like their work, but do they really like their lives? Would they be so foolish as to hold against their grandmother the pain she inflicted on every member of the family? As far as Gloria is concerned, this isn’t about tender feelings. It’s about millions of dollars; it’s about living a life the 99 percent dream of and the one percent know.

The weekend is full of surprises, not only for Daisy, Matt and Raquel but also for Gloria. Memories have a way of intruding at the most inopportune times. And is Gloria’s tough hide as impenetrable as she has always believed? Susan Isaacs is at her formidable best in GOLDBERG VARIATIONS, a novel that is both wickedly witty and a deeply moving tale of family and reconciliation.

Editorial Content for Marvel Comics: The Untold Story

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Reviewer (text)

Joe Hartlaub

Comic books were arguably the most important part of my childhood, a period that stretched from approximately 1959 to 2000. Back in the day, as they say, you could trot down to the local drugstore with three or four dollars every week and come away with 20-30 comics, enough to last until the following week when you could do it all again. Read More

Teaser

 

Drawing on more than 100 original interviews with Marvel insiders then and now, MARVEL COMICS is a story of fertile imaginations, lifelong friendships, action-packed fistfights, reformed criminals, unlikely alliances, and third-act betrayals --- a narrative of one of the most extraordinary, beloved and beleaguered pop cultural entities in America's history.

Promo

Drawing on more than 100 original interviews with Marvel insiders then and now, MARVEL COMICS is a story of fertile imaginations, lifelong friendships, action-packed fistfights, reformed criminals, unlikely alliances, and third-act betrayals --- a narrative of one of the most extraordinary, beloved and beleaguered pop cultural entities in America's history.

About the Book

An unvarnished, unauthorized, behind-the-scenes account of one of the most dominant pop cultural forces in contemporary America.

Operating out of a tiny office on Madison Avenue in the early 1960s, a struggling company called Marvel Comics presented a cast of brightly costumed characters distinguished by smart banter and compellingly human flaws. Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, the Avengers, Iron Man, Thor, the X-Men, Daredevil --- these superheroes quickly won children's hearts and sparked the imaginations of pop artists, public intellectuals, and campus radicals. Over the course of a half century, Marvel's epic universe would become the most elaborate fictional narrative in history and serve as a modern American mythology for millions of readers.

Throughout this decades-long journey to becoming a multibillion-dollar enterprise, Marvel's identity has continually shifted, careening between scrappy underdog and corporate behemoth. As the company has weathered Wall Street machinations, Hollywood failures, and the collapse of the comic book market, its characters have been passed along among generations of editors, artists, and writers --- also known as the celebrated Marvel "Bullpen." Entrusted to carry on tradition, Marvel's contributors --- impoverished child prodigies, hallucinating peaceniks, and mercenary careerists among them --- struggled with commercial mandates, a fickle audience, and, over matters of credit and control, one another.

For the first time, MARVEL COMICS reveals the outsized personalities behind the scenes, including Martin Goodman, the self-made publisher who forayed into comics after a get-rich-quick tip in 1939; Stan Lee, the energetic editor who would shepherd the company through thick and thin for decades; and Jack Kirby, the World War II veteran who'd co-created Captain America in 1940 and, twenty years later, developed with Lee the bulk of the company's marquee characters in a three-year frenzy of creativity that would be the grounds for future legal battles and endless debates.

Drawing on more than one hundred original interviews with Marvel insiders then and now, MARVEL COMICS is a story of fertile imaginations, lifelong friendships, action-packed fistfights, reformed criminals, unlikely alliances, and third-act betrayals --- a narrative of one of the most extraordinary, beloved, and beleaguered pop cultural entities in America's history.

Editorial Content for How I Came to Sparkle Again

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Terry Miller Shannon

Nurse Jill Anthony is having a day that defines the word "nightmare." She has just returned to her job after recuperating from a miscarriage. She believed she was ready to work at the hospital again, but she just can’t handle it. Her supervisor sends her home, and that is when, four blocks from her house, her car dies. Dressed in stork-printed scrubs that appear to be pajamas, she walks home, crying all the way. She approaches her house, ready to be comforted by familiar surroundings, but instead she finds her husband in bed with another woman. Read More

Teaser

 

Jill Anthony finds her husband in bed with another woman; Lisa Carlucci is sick and tired of having meaningless sex; and 10-year-old Cassie Jones no longer believes in anything anymore after losing her mother to cancer. The lives of these three people, who are at the crossroads of heartbreak and healing, will be changed one winter in Sparkle.

Promo

Jill Anthony finds her husband in bed with another woman; Lisa Carlucci is sick and tired of having meaningless sex; and 10-year-old Cassie Jones no longer believes in anything anymore after losing her mother to cancer. The lives of these three people, who are at the crossroads of heartbreak and healing, will be changed one winter in Sparkle.

About the Book

Set in a Colorado ski town, Kaya McLaren's HOW I CAME TO SPARKLE AGAIN is a remarkable breakout novel that chronicles three people and their journey from loss to love; heartbreak to hope

Jill Anthony spent her young adulthood in the ski town of Sparkle, Colorado. But more than a decade has passed since she left when, only weeks after a very late miscarriage, she finds her husband in bed with another woman, she flees Austin, Texas for the town she knows: Sparkle. 

Lisa Carlucci wakes up one morning after another night of meaningless sex, looks in the mirror and realizes that she no longer wants to treat her body like a Holiday Inn. She’s going to hold out for love. The only problem is, love might come in the form of her ski bum best friend, who lives next door with his ski bum friends in a trailer known as “the Kennel.” 

Cassie Jones, at age ten, has lost her mother to cancer and no longer believes in anything anymore. She knows her father is desperately worried about her, and she constantly looks for messages from her deceased mother through the heart-shaped rocks they once collected in the streams and hills of Sparkle. 

Three people at the crossroads of heartbreak and healing. Three lives that will be changed one winter in Sparkle. One tender, funny, tear-jerking novel you won’t soon forget.

Editorial Content for Dodger

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Reviewer (text)

Norah Piehl

Terry Pratchett takes a surprising --- and undoubtedly delightful --- departure from Discworld with DODGER, a reimagining of Victorian history and literature. Read More

Teaser

 

Seventeen-year-old Dodger may be a street urchin, but he gleans a living from London's sewers, and he knows a jewel when he sees one. He's not about to let anything happen to the unknown girl --- not even if her fate impacts some of the most powerful people in England.

Promo

Seventeen-year-old Dodger may be a street urchin, but he gleans a living from London's sewers, and he knows a jewel when he sees one. He's not about to let anything happen to the unknown girl --- not even if her fate impacts some of the most powerful people in England.

About the Book

A storm. Rain-lashed city streets. A flash of lightning. A scruffy lad sees a girl leap desperately from a horse-drawn carriage in a vain attempt to escape her captors. Can the lad stand by and let her be caught again? Of course not, because he's...Dodger.

Seventeen-year-old Dodger may be a street urchin, but he gleans a living from London's sewers, and he knows a jewel when he sees one. He's not about to let anything happen to the unknown girl --- not even if her fate impacts some of the most powerful people in England.

From Dodger's encounter with the mad barber Sweeney Todd to his meetings with the great writer Charles Dickens and the calculating politician Benjamin Disraeli, history and fantasy intertwine in a breathtaking account of adventure and mystery.

Beloved and bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett combines high comedy with deep wisdom in this tale of an unexpected coming-of-age and one remarkable boy's rise in a complex and fascinating world.