Telegraph Days

Telegraph Days

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

I've come to think that in times of crisis human beings don't have it in them to be rational. The Yazee gang was riding down upon us, six abreast. We all ran outside and confirmed that fact. The sensible thing would have been to run and hide -- but did we? Not at all. The narrator of Larry McMurtry's newest book is spunky Nellie Courtright, twenty-two years old and already wrapping every man in the West around her little finger. When she and her teenage brother Jackson are orphaned, she sweet-talks the local sheriff into hiring Jackson as a deputy, while she takes over the vacant job of town telegrapher. When, by pure blind luck, Jackson shoots down the entire Yazee gang, Nellie is quick to capitalize on his new notoriety by selling reviews to reporters. It seems wherever Nellie is, action is sure to happen, from a love affair with Buffalo Bill to a ringside seat at the O.K. Corral gunfight. Told with charm, humor, and an unparalleled zest for life, Nellie's story is the story of how the West was won.
Read online
  • 720
Grantville Gazette, Volume VIII

Grantville Gazette, Volume VIII

Eric Flint

Science Fiction & Fantasy

This edition of the Grantville Gazette Volume 8 is derived directly from the online edition at http://www.grantvillegazette.com. Stories include: The Painter's Gambit by Iver P. Cooper Capacity for Harm by Richard Evans Into the Very Pit of Hell by Douglas W. Jones Not a Princess Bride by Terry Howard Dear Sir by Chris Racciato The Sons of St. John by Jay Robison Prince and Abbot by Virginia DeMarce A Question of Faith by Anette Pedersen Grunwald Flight 19 to Magdeburg by Jose J. Clavell Rolling On by Karen Bergstralh Three Innocuous Words by Russ Rittgers Doctor Phil's Distraction by Kerryn Offord Louis de Geer by Kim Mackey A Russian Noble by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett Refrigeration and the 1632 World: Opportunities and Challenges by Mark H. Huston New France in 1634 and the Fate of North America by Michael Varhola Aluminum: Will O' the Wisp?* by Iver P. Cooper
Read online
  • 718
The Mad, Bad Duke

The Mad, Bad Duke

Jennifer Ashley

Romance / Historical Fiction / Mystery & Thrillers

London, 1820 Miss Meagan Tavistock doesn’t believe the talisman her friend purchases from a so-called witch is truly a love spell—that is, until the love spell backfires, catching her in it with the handsome, ruthless Grand Duke Alexander, ambassador to England from the far-off kingdom of Nvengaria. The last thing Alexander needs is to be swept into a wild love-spelled frenzy with an innocent miss. He has problems of his own—memory losses, strange and terrible dreams, and a shape-shifting logosh called Myn following him around. Alexander is honorable enough to ensure Meagan is not ruined by their love-spell induced encounter. He thinks to marry her, conquer his seeming madness, and carry on with his task of intimidating King George of England for the good of his beloved Nvengaria. What he doesn’t figure into the equation is Meagan—a very determined and lovely young woman who seeps into his every thought. Meagan is resolved to have a real marriage and a real family, and to see that Alexander does too. She will ensure Alexander takes up his duties as her husband and father to his nine-year-old son, even if she has to resort to some very Nvengarian intrigue to accomplish it. Alexander admires her resilience, but the secret he harbors about himself and his past is sure to endanger her and his son, two people he swears to protect and love even at the cost of his own happiness and quite probably his life. Welcome back to Nvengaria, a land of intense beauty and wild magic, where shape-shifters are real and fairy tales might just come true. Each Nvengarian story is based loosely on a well-known fairy tale: Penelope and Prince Charming—Cinderella The Mad, Bad Duke—Beauty and the Beast Highlander Ever After—Snow White and the Seven Highlanders The Longest Night—Little Red Riding Hood (and the Big, Bad Wolf)
Read online
  • 716
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Cory Doctorow

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Young Adult / Nonfiction

Alan is a middle-aged entrepeneur in contemporary Toronto, who has devoted himself to fixing up a house in a bohemian neighborhood. This naturally brings him in contact with the house full of students and layabouts next door, including a young woman who, in a moment of stress, reveals to him that she has wings--wings, moreover, which grow back after each attempt to cut them off. Alan understands. He himself has a secret or two. His father is a mountain; his mother is a washing machine; and among his brothers are a set of Russian nesting dolls. Now two of the three nesting dolls, Edward and Frederick, are on his doorstep--well on their way to starvation, because their innermost member, George, has vanished. It appears that yet another brother, Davey, who Alan and his other siblings killed years ago, may have returned...bent on revenge.Under such circumstances it seems only reasonable for Alan to involve himself with a visionary scheme to blanket Toronto with free wireless Internet connectivity, a conspiracy spearheaded by a brilliant technopunk who builds miracles of hardware from parts scavenged from the city\'s dumpsters. But Alan\'s past won\'t leave him alone--and Davey is only one of the powers gunning for him and all his friends.
Read online
  • 716
Don't Look Down

Don't Look Down

Jennifer Crusie

Romance / Literature & Fiction / Humor

SHE is a director of dog food commercials who's just been recruited to finish a four-day movie shoot. But as soon as Lucy Armstrong arrives on set, she discovers that the staff is in chaos, the make-up artist is suicidal, and the stunt director just happens to be her ex-husband. That, and the temperamental lead actor has just acquired as an advisor a Green Beret who has the aggravating habit of always being right. HE thought that hiring on as a military consultant for a movie star was a to-die-for deal: easy work, easy money, easier starlets. But his first day on the job, Captain J.T. Wilder ends up babysitting a bumbling comedian, dodging low-flying helicopters, and trying to find out who's taking "shooting a movie" much too literally.
Read online
  • 714
Cold Cold Heart

Cold Cold Heart

Karin Slaughter

Mystery & Thrillers / Fiction / Thriller

A chilling Valentine digital short story from the No.1 bestselling author of the Will Trent series. Pam is a fifty-two-year-old teacher who has let herself go for the first time in her life. It's two years since her husband - ex husband - John died and she's heading from Georgia to California for the third and - she hopes - final time. But just what lies in store for her there...? Previously in a collection edited by No. 1 bestseller Lee Child, "First Thrills," and now available on its own.
Read online
  • 713
The Tenderness of Wolves

The Tenderness of Wolves

Stef Penney

Fiction / Historical / Historical Fiction

A brilliant and breathtaking debut that captivated readers and garnered critical acclaim in the United Kingdom, The Tenderness of Wolves was long-listed for the Orange Prize in fiction and won the Costa Award (formerly Whitbread) Book of the Year. The year is 1867. Winter has just tightened its grip on Dove River, a tiny isolated settlement in the Northern Territory, when a man is brutally murdered. Laurent Jammett had been a voyageur for the Hudson Bay Company before an accident lamed him four years earlier. The same accident afforded him the little parcel of land in Dove River, land that the locals called unlucky due to the untimely death of the previous owner. A local woman, Mrs. Ross, stumbles upon the crime scene and sees the tracks leading from the dead man's cabin north toward the forest and the tundra beyond. It is Mrs. Ross's knock on the door of the largest house in Caulfield that launches the investigation. Within hours she will regret that knock with a mother's love -- for soon she makes another discovery: her seventeen-year-old son Francis has disappeared and is now considered a prime suspect. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the crime and to the township -- Andrew Knox, Dove River's elder statesman; Thomas Sturrock, a wily American itinerant trader; Donald Moody, the clumsy young Company representative; William Parker, a half-breed Native American and trapper who was briefly detained for Jammett's murder before becoming Mrs. Ross's guide. But the question remains: do these men want to solve the crime or exploit it? One by one, the searchers set out from Dove River following the tracks across a desolate landscape -- home to only wild animals, madmen, and fugitives -- variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for seventeen years, and a forgotten Native American culture before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good. In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly weaves adventure, suspense, revelation, and humor into an exhilarating thriller; a panoramic historical romance; a gripping murder mystery; and, ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her storytelling, an epic for the ages.
Read online
  • 711
Screaming Science Fiction

Screaming Science Fiction

Brian Lumley

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Horror

Gleefully mixing SF, fantasy, and horror, Screaming Science Fiction is a full-length collection of nine thrilling, chilling, spine-tingling stories by horror master Brian Lumley (Necroscope), including "No Way Home," "Snarker's Son," "The Strange Years," and a nearly 20,000 word novella ("Feasibility Study") appearing for the first time anywhere. Contents: Snarker's son -- Man who felt pain -- Strange years -- No way home -- Man who saw no spiders -- Deja viewer -- Feasibility study -- Gaddy's gloves -- Big "C".
Read online
  • 709
The Bobbsey Twins at Home

The Bobbsey Twins at Home

Laura Lee Hope

Children's

The Bobbsey Twins are the principal characters of what was, for many years, the longest-running series of children\'s novles. The books related the adventures of the children of the middle-class Bobbsey family, which included two sets of fraternal twins: Bert and Nan, who where 12 years old, and Flossie and Freddie, who where six. Share the stories of your childhood with your children and grandchildren! Here are the original Bobbsey Twin adventures
Read online
  • 705
183