Former pulp writer and current hack Russell Dancer invites Nameless to the first annual Western Pulp Convention in San Francisco. He wants Nameless to help him locate the person who is trying to blackmail Dancer for a purported plagiarism of a story called "Hoodwink." Arriving at the convention, Nameless discovers that a group of former friends (and now uncomfortable colleagues) who wrote for the pulps called the "Pulpeteers" have all received blackmail notes. Nameless is in seventh heaven as he meets many of his favorite pulp writers, buys pulp novels for his collection and meets a stunning younger woman who is the daughter of two famous pulp writers. For once, Nameless has some luck with the ladies. But is Kerry Wade attracted to him, or to his job as a private eye? Is he really attracted to her, or to her connection to the pulps? The convention is unexpectedly disrupted when one of the guests is found dead in a locked room while Russell Dancer is holding a gun that's been recently fired. It looks like an obvious case of murder by Dancer, who has been feuding with the man. Dancer denies his guilt, and only Nameless is willing to believe him. As Nameless tracks down the guilty party, he finds himself faced with a second locked room mystery... and a target for a murderer. 

The computer revolution brought with it new methods of getting work done—just look at today's news for reports of hard-driven, highly-motivated young software and online commerce developers who sacrifice evenings and weekends to meet impossible deadlines. Tracy Kidder got a preview of this world in the late 1970s when he observed the engineers of Data General design and build a new 32-bit minicomputer in just one year. His thoughtful, prescient book, The Soul of a New Machine, tells stories of 35-year-old "veteran" engineers hiring recent college graduates and encouraging them to work harder and faster on complex and difficult projects, exploiting the youngsters' ignorance of normal scheduling processes while engendering a new kind of work ethic. These days, we are used to the "total commitment" philosophy of managing technical creation, but Kidder was surprised and even a little alarmed at the obsessions and compulsions he found. From in-house political struggles to workers being permitted to tease management to marathon 24-hour work sessions, The Soul of a New Machine explores concepts that already seem familiar, even old-hat, less than 20 years later. Kidder plainly admires his subjects; while he admits to hopeless confusion about their work, he finds their dedication heroic. The reader wonders, though, what will become of it all, now and in the future. —Rob Lightner

Based on privileged access to the president and his private papers, this classic Cold War-era history by bestselling historian Stephen E. Ambrose gives an inside look at the way President Dwight Eisenhower managed America’s secret operations as general and as commander in chief. During his time in office, Eisenhower projected the image of a genial bureaucrat, but behind that public face, he ran the most efficient espionage establishment in the world, overseeing assassination plots, the growth of the CIA, and the overthrow of governments. This book gives a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most ambitious secret operations in American history, including the 1954 overthrow of  Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán’s government of Guatemala; Operation AJAX, which toppled Iran’s Mossadegh; and the U-2 flights over Russia. Some of Ike’s most conspicuous intelligence missteps are also discussed, including the failure to predict the German attack during the Battle of the Bulge and the tragic encouragement of freedom fighters in Hungary, Indonesia, and Cuba. Ike’s Spies is indispensible to anyone interested in the development of America’s Cold War spy operations.

The Stranger From the Sea is the eighth novel in Winston Graham's hugely popular Poldark series, and continues the story after the fifth TV series, which has become an international phenomenon, starring Aidan Turner. Cornwall 1810. The Poldark family awaits the return of Ross from his mission to Wellington's army in Portugal. But their ordered existence ends with Jeremy Poldark's dramatic rescue of the stranger from the sea. Stephen Carrington's arrival in the Poldark household changes all their lives. For Clowance and Jeremy in particular, the children of Ross and Demelza, Stephen's advent is the key to a new world – one of both love and danger. The Stranger From The Sea is followed by the ninth book in the Poldark series, The Miller's Dance.

Riding through New Mexico, bound for St Louis, Jubal Cade comes upon the remains of a bushwhacked wagon train. And the promise he makes to the last, dying survivor places the deadly doctor at the heart of the strangest mystery he has yet encountered in the savage West. A mystery that takes him through gambling joints and prison cells, to a trek across the bone-bleached flats of the Great Salt Lake, to a weird friendship with a one-legged old-timer and his murderous mastiff. And over it all hangs the specter of an albino general who believes that the Civil War is not yet over...

In At Paradise Gate, Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author Jane Smiley paints with searing accuracy a portrait of a marriage at breaking point and one family's struggle for survival.While seventy-seven-year-old Ike Robison is dying in his bedroom upstairs, his wife, Anna, must defend all that they have built together through-out their lengthy marriage as their house is invaded by their three interfering - albeit loving - middle-aged daughters and their twenty-three year old grand-daughter, Christine.Set over a three-day period of family crisis, Anna reflects over all that has happened, and all that is still left to come, in this compelling and gracefully wrought depiction of a marriage.

A rare California deluge unearths a hidden body—and a decades-old crime. Rain has spoiled Masao Masuto's vacation. For six days the storm has trapped the Zen Buddhist detective and his family inside their Los Angeles cottage. By the morning of his vacation's final day, he is so stir crazy that the call to come to work is a relief. Detective Masuto knows no better cure for boredom than a puzzling murder.  Nothing remains of the deceased man but his bones. A mudslide caused by the long, punishing storm destroyed the terrace of a Beverly Hills mansion, dislodging the swimming pool and opening a grave which had been covered for three decades. The skeleton's deep stab wound suggests a professional's hand—possibly a World War II veteran with commando training. As Masuto pries into the past, the aged murderer takes deadly steps to cover up his long-forgotten crime. The detective finds himself locked in a game of cat and mouse with a brilliant and ruthless killer.

The Wolfen (1978), the debut novel by Whitley Strieber, tells the story of two police detectives in New York City who, while investigating the violent deaths of two policemen in a junk yard, discover that a pack of intelligent and savage wolf-like creatures are stalking the city. These predators are not traditional werewolves, as they are a separate race of intelligent beings descended from wolves that live secretly alongside mankind in our cities and quickly killing anyone who learns about their existence. What is unique about this novel is that some of the story is told from the point of view of the alpha creatures and this causes the reader to be sympathetic of the creatures' needs.

The entire US Army is being forced to wage war on its own people by a pontificating tent-preacher and the blonde Venus traveling as his wife. But, saints be praised, top-secret agents Remo and Chiun are immune to his evangelical indoctrination, and their unorthodox tactics leave many a zombie-eyed Christian soldier prostrate on the ground. Chaplains are dying left and right, and an army base appears out of nowhere that answers to a higher authority than even the Pentagon. Agents of CURE postulate that a Middle Eastern power may have created these apocalyptic events, but the facts are cloistered in secrecy. When Remo and Chiun look for answers, they are met with more questions. Is this finally a conspiracy too complex for the Destroyer?Breathlessly action-packed and boasting a winning combination of thrills, humour and mysticism, the Destroyer is one of the bestselling series of all time.

PLAYTHING OF THE GODS He was Perseus, son of Zeus and Danae, born in disgrace, exiled to perish at sea, fated to survive at heavenly caprice—until he met his love, defied the Gods and dared to fight them or die. She was Andromeda, enslaved by her own beauty which beggared the heavens and brought a curse upon her city, her home, her heart . . . until Perseus accepted the Devil's own challenge, answered the deadly riddle and rode forth on his winged horse Pegasus to claim his love and to face the last of the Titans, armed only with a bloody hand, a witches' curse, and a severed head . . .

SUMMARY: The planet Everon is just another planet colonized in the name of manifest destiny among the stars--or is it? Jef Robini must find out, for the cat-like malots of Everon somehow hold the key to the planet's power . . . a power that may save mankind.

Travel a time warp back to the days when prehistoric monsters roamed the earth, or reverse direction for a look through light-years of time and space at the world of the future. All things are possible in this imaginative and thought-provoking anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories by such distinguished and popular authors as Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, John Rowe Townsend and Walter de la Mare.Each of the 14 stories herein deals with an unusual aspect of time—time travel, time warps, parallels in time, for example—and investigates new and exciting possibilities. An extremely readable collection which will appeal to both young and old, TALES OUT OF TIME leads readers on an exploration of the fourth dimension and challenges conventional conceptions of space, time and the universe.