The Usual Rules

The Usual Rules

Joyce Maynard

Joyce Maynard

It's a Tuesday morning in Brooklyn—-a perfect September day. Wendy is heading to school, eager to make plans with her best friend, worried about how she looks, mad at her mother for not letting her visit her father in California, impatient with her little brother and with the almost too-loving concern of her jazz musician stepfather. She's out the door to catch the bus. An hour later comes the news: A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center—-her mother's office building.Through the eyes of thirteen-year-old Wendy, we gain entrance to the world rarely shown by those who documented the events of that one terrible day: a family's slow and terrible realization that Wendy's mother has died, and their struggle to go on with their lives in the face of such a crushing loss.Absent for years, Wendy's real father shows up without warning. He takes her back with him to California, where she re-invents her life: Wendy now lives...
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A Perfect Universe

A Perfect Universe

Scott O'Connor

Scott O'Connor

Scott O'Connor's novels have been hailed as "astonishing" (Library Journal), and "so insistently stirring, you want to lean in close to catch every word" (The New York Times Book Review). Now, from the author of Untouchable and Half World comes A Perfect Universe, a piercingly emotional cycle of stories in the tradition of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad and Annie Proulx's Close Range.Welcome to the often-overlooked corners of sun-bleached Los Angeles, where a teenaged bicycle thief searches for a kidnapped boy, a young musician emerges as the lone survivor of a building collapse, and an aging actor faces the erasure of his past. There, far from the Hollywood spotlight, we also meet two sisters locked in a destructive cycle of memory and illness, coffee-shop regulars whose lives are torn apart by a stunning moment of violence, and the desperate, fraudulent writer whose fictions connect these unforgettable characters...
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Liquid Desires

Liquid Desires

Edward Sklepowich

Edward Sklepowich

Summer in Venice is brutal, and the heat is beginning to drive the people of this quiet city mad. A woman storms into the galleries at the Biennale art fair and slashes a painting with a knife. A young girl is found raped and murdered in her own bed. And a model named Flavia Brollo appears at the home of Urbino Macintyre's closest friend, the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini, to declare that she is the noblewoman's illegitimate daughter. It is an outrageous declaration, and it will mean the contessa's doom. When Flavia is found floating in the canal, Macintyre dedicates himself to finding the person who murdered this poor, disturbed woman. His inquiries lead him back to the Biennale, where the art world's most powerful figures congregate to buy, sell, and indulge their darkest desires. Before the fair is over, Macintyre will discover that even murder can be a work of art.
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The Shadow of Tyr

The Shadow of Tyr

Glenda Larke

Glenda Larke

Continuing the exciting trilogy from the author of the acclaimed Isles of Glory series. While Ligea struggles to start a rebellion against the Exaltarch, her young son, Arrant, struggles with his own inadequacies. He believes himself rejected by his father, and is alienated from his mother because of her relationship with her one-time slave, Brand. At the same time, he is unable to control his own Magor powers predictably Arrant's only companion is his half-brother, tarran, a member of the Mirage Makers, who has little idea of what it is like to be human. this unlikely pair do their best to grow up in a changing, hostile world, but when the Ravage once again threatens the Mirage Makers, tarran disappears. Without his brother, Arrant is vulnerable to the plotting of the Brotherhood and Falmon. He is tricked into placing Brand and his mother in danger. While Demitra and her son have the power to save themselves - and each other - the price they will pay for their lives may be too high.
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Where There is Evil

Where There is Evil

Sandra Brown

Sandra Brown

Sandra Brown was eight when her friend and neighbour, twelve-year-old Moira Anderson, disappeared from the small town of Coatbridge near Glasgow in 1957. Moira has never been seen since. Twenty-seven years later, at a family funeral, Sandra's estranged father confessed to her that he had been involved in the girl's disappearance. Appalled and fascinated by his curious half confession, Sandra began to delve into the case and in so doing discovered that her father was an acknowledged child molester whose activities were known not just to everyone in Coatbridge but also to the police. The horrifying jigsaw she pieced together, along with the admission her father had made, ultimately convinced Sandra that he had indeed been responsible for Moira's disappearance nearly fifty years ago. Where There Is Evil is the remarkable story of Sandra's quest to unravel the mystery and see justice done. 'Completely gripping...Sandra Brown found evil in the person of her own father; and she...
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