Adrift in mist-shrouded San Francisco mornings and alcohol-fogged nights, homicide detective Kate Martinelli can't escape the void left by her departed lover, who has gone off to rethink their relationship.  But when twelve-year-old Jules Cameron comes to Kate for a professional consultation, Kate's not sure she's that desperate for distraction. Jules is worried about her friend Dio, a homeless boy she met in a park.  Dio has disappeared without a word of farewell, and Jules wants Kate to find him Reluctant as she is, Kate can't say no--and soon she finds herself forming a  friendship with the bright, quirky girl.  But the search for Dio will prove to be much more than both bargained for--and it's only the beginning.   When Jules disappears while taking a trip with Kate, a desperate search begins...and Kate knows all too well the odds of finding the child alive...

Susan had never hung up a stocking . She'd never put a tooth under her pillow in the serious expectation that a dentally inclined fairy would turn up. It wasn't that her parents didn't believe in such things. They didn't need to believe in them. They know they existed. They just wished they didn't. There are those who believe and those who don't. Through the ages, superstition has had its uses. Nowhere more so than in the Discworld where it's helped to maintain the status quo. Anything that undermines superstition has to be viewed with some caution. There may be consequences, particularly on the last night of the year when the time is turning. When those consequences turn out to be the end of the world, you need to be prepared. You might even want more standing between you and oblivion than a mere slip of a girl - even if she has looked Death in the face on numerous occasions. . .

The protagonist of Siri Hustvedt's astonishing second novel is a heroine of the old style: tough, beautiful, and brave. Standing at the threshold of adulthood, she enters a new world of erotic adventure, profound but unexpected friendship, and inexplicable, frightening acts of madness. Lily's story is also the story of a small town--Webster, Minnesota--where people are brought together by a powerful sense of place, both geographical and spiritual. Here gossip, secrets, and storytelling are as essential to the bond among its people as the borders that enclose the town. The real secret at the heart of the book is the one that lies between reality and appearances, between waking life and dreams, at the place where imagination draws on its transforming powers in the face of death.

Sometimes there's a fine line between truth and a lie. Eldwin's quest to become a dragon rider seems hopeless, but he won't let his dream to bond with a dragon die. A sell-sword job with a caravan promises a decent payment, and offers him a chance to continue his quest.The caravan he guards has a secret, and when he uncovers it, he can hardly believe his change of luck. However, despite the turn of events, his life only gets harder and a chance meeting with an enemy brings Eldwin to a moral dilemma.He must now face the truth, which will shatter everything he's believed.Fans of Sarah K.L. Wilson's Dragon School, Christopher Paolini's Eragon and Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders of Pern will feel right at home.A Bond of Flame is the second episode of the series Dragon Riders of Osnen.Dragon Riders of Osnen series:Book 1: Trial by SorceryBook 2: A Bond of...

Forget the lottery. Teenager Charlie Newell has just discovered something that will make him and his friends billionaires. What if a world existed in which no humans ever evolved? No cities. No pollution. No laws. A fantastic world filled with unimaginable riches in which everything—everything—was yours just for the taking? Charlie has found that world. And he plans to use it to make him and his friends rich. There is a problem: How do you keep something this big a secret?

The Red Badge of Courage

Led by circumstances to accept the kind of case he dislikes—a "worried mother job"—"Nameless" reluctantly agrees to investigate the strange disappearance of college student Allison McDowell and her mysterious new boyfriend while on a driving strip from Oregon to San Francisco. The young couple vanished suddenly and without a trace after their car broke down and they were forced to spend a night in the tiny village of Creekside, in the remote Northwestern corner of California.When "Nameless" travels to Creekside and begins to question the locals, he encounters apparent apathy, hostility, and mounting evidence that suggests the couple may have met with foul play. Is one or more of the inhabitants of Creekside responsible? Is it Allison's boyfriend, whose identity is unknown even to her mother? Or is it forces of a far more sinister nature? "Nameless's" search takes him to Eugene, Oregon and then back to the Northern California wilderness. And it leads him from what seems to be a simple disappearance to a complex conspiracy of evil, one which reaches far beyond this remote backwater and threatens to destroy him as well before he can expose the truth.

A brief and brilliant satire of magazine hacks and fashionistas, The Sweet Smell of Psychosis shows Will Self—a writer hailed by Time as “brilliant, iconoclastic . . . one of Britain’s most original young writers”—at the top of his form. It looks like it’s going to be quite a Christmas for Richard Hermes, powdered with cocaine and whining with the white noise of urban derangement. Not so much enfolded as trapped in the bosom of the most venal media clique in London, Richard is losing it on all fronts: he’s losing his heart to Ursula Bentley, a nubile and vacuous magazine columnist; he’s in danger of losing his job at the pretentious listings magazine Rendezvous; he’s losing his mind courtesy of Colombia’s chief illegal export; and, worst of all, he’s losing his soul . . . to the king-of-all-media and sinister purveyor of opportunities—sexual, chemical, and professional—known only as Bell. Murky, paranoid, and...

From Publishers WeeklyAs a former officer of the USS Hammerhead, DiMercurio knows his submarines, and the high-tech detail that he brings to his fourth undersea thriller (after Phoenix Sub Zero) should delight fans of the genre. Especially impressive here are the futuristic methods employed by a Japanese spy infiltrating a new nation's atomic missile site, and the unique means employed by Japan to try to render that site useless. When those means backfire, events escalate into a U.N. blockade of Japan and a confrontation between the U.S. and the Imperial sub fleet. All this takes place early in the next century, as the first female president follows the lead of a returning DiMercurio hero, the maverick Admiral Michael Pacino, in agreeing to the step that puts the world at the brink of war. The initial confrontation with Japan leaves Pacino in charge of a minimal fleet against overwhelming odds, but a lone, specially armed American sub may save the day?if it can reach the Sea of China in time. DiMercurio's matter-of-fact style squeezes much of the tension out of the story, and some readers may find his characters' sub-speak awfully dry. Those who thrill to the blip of sonar and the thud of torpedoes, however, will relish the author's latest deep-water dive. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Product DescriptionIn this acclaimed undersea thriller, Michael DiMercurio, a veteran submarine officer and author of Threat Vector and Piranha Firing Point, takes readers behind the scenes of a naval crisis-and below the surface... A new independent nation has emerged in Asia-with a nuclear arsenal. And its most powerful geographic neighbor has launched a preemptive strike against them. The result: worldwide outrage. When a U.N. blockade against the aggressors is met with underwater attacks, Admiral Michael Pacino is forced to take on one of the world's strongest nations-and destroy one of the greatest submarine fleets.

Milo March heads for the historic mining boomtowns of Nevada, but he's planning to dig at people, not rocks. The case involves three men who bought an old gold mine outside Reno. Though it had been abandoned for a century, the mine has miraculously started producing again. Armed with a glowing assay report, the owners persuaded the insurance company to issue a large policy against the mine's running out of gold before they have taken two million dollars in gold from it. You guessed it—a few months later the owners claim the mine has run dry, and they want their payout. The insurance company screams at once for its top investigator, Milo March. Milo first has to solve a riddle: How do you get gold out of a mine that has no gold in it? The easy explanation is the old con job known as salting, but that only involves a sprinkling of gold around a mine to deceive buyers. This mine had a helluva lot more gold than that. So the answer to the riddle must be that you...

The Hardys look to put a gang of armed robbers on ice!Frank and Joe have volunteered to do undercover security work at the Bayport winter festival. Their main assignment is to act as bodyguards for the star performer, Olympic gold medal figure skater David Kennedy. Although put on for a good cause—charity—the festival is soon plagued by bad vibes: Money intended for the local children's hospital is ending up in the hands of masked, gun-wielding thugs, and its up to the Hardys to stop the robbers cold.

In the ninth century b.c., the Phoenician princess Jezebel orders the execution of all the prophets who refuse to worship the pagan god Baal. Commanded by an angel of God to flee Israel, Elijah seeks safety in the land of Zarephath, where he unexpectedly finds true love with a young widow. But this newfound rapture is to be cut short, and Elijah sees all of his hopes and dreams irrevocably erased as he is swept into a whirlwind of events that threatens his very existence. Written with the same masterful prose and clarity of vision that made *The Alchemist *an international phenomenon, *The Fifth Mountain* is a quietly moving account of a man touched by the hand of God who must triumph over his frustrations in a soul-shattering trial of faith.