Isabel Allende evokes the magnificent landscapes of her country; a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and an indomitable spirit; and the politics, religion, myth, and magic of her homeland that she carries with her even today.The book circles around two life-changing moments. The assassination of her uncle Salvador Allende Gossens on September 11, 1973, sent her into exile and transformed her into a literary writer. And the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on her adopted homeland, the United States, brought forth an overdue acknowledgment that Allende had indeed left home. My Invented Country, mimicking the workings of memory itself, ranges back and forth across that distance between past and present lives. It speaks compellingly to immigrants and to all of us who try to retain a coherent inner life in a world full of contradictions.

Curvaceous Kate Winters can't sleep...but not by choice. Pounding walls and wails of pleasure keep her up at all hours of the night, thanks to her impossibly horny and incredibly loud sex-crazed neighbors. Desperate for a break, Kate heads out for a nightcap...but she doesn't count on the sexiest man she has ever seen approaching her out of the darkness. Soon discovering that the man of her dreams is also a wolf by night, Kate's long for hot, dirty, animalistic sex takes her over the edge.  Find out what happens when the wolf takes over the man, and Kate is taken to new, howling heights! WARNING!!! This 6,200 word story contains white-hot scenes of erotic romance between a BBW and her beautiful werewolf-shifter lover, alpha male domination, paranormal wolf sex, and a furious alpha-wolf finish that will have you howling too!  

This novel, described by the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review as "nothing short of miraculous," is the story of Zebra Wong, a Chinese girl whose pragmatic mind conflicts with her passionate heart; Lion Head, her classmate, whose penchant for romantic intrigue belies his political ambitions, and Katherine, the seductive American with the red lipstick and the wild laugh who teaches them English and other foreign concepts: individualism, sensuality, the Beatles. In Katherine's classroom, repression and rebellion meet head-on-and the consequences are both tragic and liberating.

When tycoon, Charles Povey, is killed in a bizarre boating accident, his corrupt, look-alike brother, Arthur, adopts his identity and his financial empire. But the charade becomes complicated when one of Charles's many mistresses sees through the guise and blackmails Arthur. Enter retired detective, Sir John Appleby.

Muslims who explore sources of morality other than Islam are threatened with death, and Muslim women who escape the virgins' cage are branded whores. So asserts Ayaan Hirsi Ali's profound meditation on Islam and the role of women, the rights of the individual, the roots of fanaticism, and Western policies toward Islamic countries and immigrant communities. Hard-hitting, outspoken, and controversial, The Caged Virgin is a call to arms for the emancipation of women from a brutal religious and cultural oppression and from an outdated cult of virginity. It is a defiant call for clear thinking and for an Islamic Enlightenment. But it is also the courageous story of how Hirsi Ali herself fought back against everyone who tried to force her to submit to a traditional Muslim woman's life and how she became a voice of reform. Born in Somalia and raised Muslim, but outraged by her religion's hostility toward women, Hirsi Ali escaped an arranged marriage to a distant relative and fled to the Netherlands. There, she learned Dutch, worked as an interpreter in abortion clinics and shelters for battered women, earned a college degree, and started a career in politics as a Dutch parliamentarian. In November 2004, the violent murder on an Amsterdam street of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, with whom Hirsi Ali had written a film about women and Islam called Submission, changed her life. Threatened by the same group that slew van Gogh, Hirsi Ali now has round-the-clock protection, but has not allowed these circumstances to compromise her fierce criticism of the treatment of Muslim women, of Islamic governments' attempts to silence any questioning of their traditions, and of Western governments' blind tolerance of practices such as genital mutilation and forced marriages of female minors occurring in their countries. Hirsi Ali relates her experiences as a Muslim woman so that oppressed Muslim women can take heart and seek their own liberation. Drawing on her love of reason and the Enlightenment philosophers on whose principles democracy was founded, she presents her firsthand knowledge of the Islamic worldview and advises Westerners how best to address the great divide that currently exists between the West and Islamic nations and between Muslim immigrants and their adopted countries. An international bestseller -- with updated information for American readers and two new essays added for this edition -- The Caged Virgin is a compelling, courageous, eye-opening work.

The explosive final novel in the Endgame trilogy, by New York Times bestelling author, James Frey. Two keys have been found. The strongest Players are left. One final key remains to win Endgame and save the world. For Sarah, Jago, Aisling, Maccabee, Shari, An, and Hilal, Endgame has reached its final phase. The third key, Sun Key, is all that stands between one Player saving their line - or perishing along with the rest of the world. And only one can win. West Bengal, India: Maccabee is Playing to win. He has Earth Key and Sky Key and he is determined to find Sun Key. But in Endgame, fate can turn in the blink of an eye. He must Play carefully. He must watch his back. Kolkata, India: An Liu is Playing for death. His goal: stop Endgame, and take the world down with him. Sikkim, India: For Aisling, Sarah, Jago, Shari, and Hilal, their mission is to stop Endgame. Sun Key must not be found. No matter what they're Playing for, all of the remaining Players have one thing in common: they will end the game, but on their own terms.

Book description to come.

Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character--a "difficult" woman. By no means is she conventionally "nice," but she will never be forgotten.Ruth's story is told in three parts, each focusing on a crucial time in her life. When we first meet her--on Long Island, in the summer of 1958--Ruth is only four.The second window into Ruth's life opens in the fall of 1990, when Ruth is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. She distrusts her judgment in men, for good reason.A Widow for One Year closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She's about to fall in love for the first time.Richly comic, as well as deeply disturbing A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Both ribald and erotic, it is also a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief.From...

Author, publisher, traveller, cricketer, lover of wine: Alec Waugh has been all these in the course of a life which has brought him a host of friends around the world. He is a warm person who knows a good friend when he sees one and is revered by all those with whom there has been mutual acceptance. This book contains his memories of many famous writers and some figures no longer so well remembered in the period between the wars. The section which will, no doubt, command the most attention is that devoted to the youth of his younger brother Evelyn. This throws invaluable light on the early years of a great but difficult man and reveals an insight which only one so close as a brother could have. Further, Alec Waugh as friend, admirer and critic writes of many literary figures of the same period-describing, in passing, the social scene, the setting in which their lives were lived. Included are: Sir Edmund Gosse, E. Temple Thurston, Desmond Coke, Ernest Rhys, Grant Richards, Frank...

Based on the author's own experience as an officer in the British Intelligence and packed with the most closely observed detail of the people, places and costumes of the Levant, The Mule on the Minaret is a long, colourful, fascinating story of wartime intelligence centred on Beirut and Baghdad.It is the story, primarily, of Noel Reid, a professor of History and Philosophy, (married, but not very happily) who is posted in 1941 to the Intelligence unit operating in the Lebanon. Here, he joins forces with Nigel Farrar, boss of MI5 in Beirut, and is soon involved in complex plans to suborn hand-picked Lebanese for service in the Allied cause, mainly to relay misleading information to the Germans in Istanbul. Woven into this complex business is also the story of his turbulent affair with Diana, a young woman who works for Farrar.The whole of Noel Reid's wartime adventures are seen in retrospect as he revisits the scene seventeen years later and meets again both Farrar...