A haunting collection of short stories of the living and the dead by the Victorian Era Scottish author of Hester and Miss Marjoribanks.   Margaret Oliphant’s stories “of the seen and the unseen” are now considered some of the most remarkable explorations of the supernatural to appear in Victorian times. A prolific novelist, Oliphant said she could produce her supernatural tales “only when they came to me.” And indeed, they carry the eerie power of a visitation.   Twilight uncertainties mingle with philosophical depth in ‘The Library Window’; an extraordinary vision of purgatory is presented as modern city life mixed with metaphysical terror in ‘The Land of Darkness’; and the visitations come en masse in A Beleaguered City, Oliphant’s short novel of the returning dead.   Like the old Scottish ballads where the dead and the living rub shoulders,...

Sara Donati's debut novel, Into the Wilderness, was hailed as "epic in scope, emotionally intense...an enrapturing, grand adventure" * (BookPage)  and "a captivating saga...definitely the romance of the year when it comes to transcending genre boundaries" (Booklist)*. Author Diana Gabaldon called it "one of those rare stories that let you breathe the air of another time, and leave your footprints on the snow of a wild, strange place." Now, in her second novel, this award-winning master storyteller once again blends fact and fiction, and re-creates her beloved characters from Into the Wilderness in an eloquent, enthralling tale of romance and adventure. Elizabeth and Nathaniel Bonner have settled into their life together at the edge of the New-York wilderness in the winter of 1794 when Elizabeth gives birth to healthy twins. But soon the events in Canada draw Nathaniel far away from his new family. Word has reached them that Nathaniel's father has been arrested by crown officials in British Canada. Nathaniel reluctantly leaves Hidden Wolf Mountain to set out for the distant city, determined to see his father freed. Instead Nathaniel is imprisoned and finds himself in imminent danger of being hanged as an American spy. In a desperate bid to save her husband, Elizabeth bundles her infants and sets out on the long trek to Montreal. Accompanied by her stepdaughter, Hannah, their wise friend Curiosity Freeman, and Runs-from-Bears, a Mohawk warrior and lifelong friend of Nathaniel's, Elizabeth journeys through the snowy wilderness and across treacherous waterways. But she soon discovers that freeing Nathaniel will take every ounce of her courage and inventiveness. It is a struggle that threatens her with the loss of what she loves most: her children. Torn apart, the Bonners must embark on yet another perilous voyage...this time all the way across the ocean to the heart of Scotland, where a wealthy earl claims kinship with Nathaniel's father, Hawkeye. In his heart, the Mahican tribe of Hawkeye's youth is the truest kin he will ever know, just as Nathaniel will always remain loyal to the Mohawk nation. But with this journey a whole new world opens up to Nathaniel and Elizabeth--and a destiny they could never have imagined awaits them.... A sweeping epic of romance and adventure, Dawn on a Distant Shore establishes Sara Donati as one of today's most gifted storytellers. With well-drawn characters and an evocative love story that is intricately woven into the rich history of our nation's past, this extraordinary novel will enthrall readers like few others--and sweep them away to a whole other time and place. A sweeping epic of romance and adventure, Dawn on a Distant Shore establishes Sara Donati as one of today's most gifted storytellers. With well-drawn characters and an evocative love story that is intricately woven into the history of our nation's past, this extraordinary novel will enthrall readers like few others--and sweep them away to a whole other time and place. --> From the Hardcover edition.

Millions of people around the world have found inspiration and enlightenment in the wise words of Kahlil Gibran. One of the great philosophers of the last Century and bestselling author of The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran's writings have touched the hearts and souls of people across many nations and generations. The Little Book of Life's Wisdom is a unique and accessible collection of his thoughts and meditations offering spiritual insights and guidance. It provides an essential and inspiring source of understanding and comfort to anybody involved with the stresses and strains of modern life.

Slovenian-American Jericho Paich finds himself under arrest by snarling Cleveland police cop Keenan Mayo and forced to be a non-paid confidential informant, setting up friends and strangers to be hauled in for illegal drug use. He turns for help to his mother's live-in lover, ex-marine officer Laird Janiver. The two have never gotten along, but Jerry has nowhere else to turn. Janiver, a studious African American major who recalls how to kill, decides to help. That brings the two men into contact with a cruelly efficient albino drug lord, the suicidal memory of a lovely young college girl at OSU, and a beautiful woman with what might be a very dangerous past.

Amazon.com ReviewWhen it comes to the weaving of tangled webs, you'll find none finer nor more deceptive than those on the loom of Margaret Maron's Storm Track, the seventh entry in her critically acclaimed Judge Deborah Knott mystery series. Colleton County, North Carolina, is home to Judge Knott, her moonshining daddy (the series opener, 1992's Bootlegger's Daughter, swept the Edgar Allen Poe, Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity awards in unprecedented fashion), and more brothers and cousins than hairs on a big dog's back. Likable young lawyer Jason Bullock lives there too, as does his lovely and--unbeknownst to him--extraordinarily unfaithful wife--an awkward situation all around, which turns even more so when she turns up dead in a local motel, wearing little more than whimsy and a wink:"Who would kill her, Reid?""Hell, I don't know. Usually you'd say the husband, but Bullock was on the ball field, right? Millard King, too.""She slept with Millard King? When?"He shrugged. "Before me, after me, during me--I don't keep tabs."Clues abound, suspects emerge, and chief among them is the judge's cousin, Reid; a cad, certainly, but a killer? Judge Knott thinks not and sets out to prove it, as the body count rises and Hurricane Fran commences to lower the boom.A native North Carolinian, Maron opens a window onto the New South by concerning herself more with her multilayered characters and their intertwined lives than with overstyled prose or plot contrivances. An altogether satisfying mystery, Storm Track will surely propel readers straight through this series and into the prolific Maron's other series featuring Lt. Sigrid Harald, NYPD. --Michael HudsonFrom Publishers WeeklyJudge Deborah Knott of the Colleton County (N.C.) District Court is one of the most delightful and original of contemporary amateur detectives. The youngest of 12 children--and the only girl--she knows everyone in the county and is never shy about poking her nose in all manner of suspicious happenings. Then she sits readers down for a cosy chat about her adventures, as though they were old friends. In the series's seventh novel (Homes Fires), when promiscuous Lynn Bullock is found strangled in the Orchid Motel wearing black lace underwear, suspects include several local men as well as the deceased's attorney husband, Jason, and Deborah's womanizing cousin Reid Stephenson. But Deborah saw all of these men playing softball at the time of the murder. The judge helps investigate the crime, but soon she has to confront another killer--ferocious Hurricane Fran, fast approaching from the coast. Maron immerses the reader in the down-home, inbred world of the rural South, where intertwined family histories are common knowledge and some old-timers, like Deborah's unrepentant bootlegger father, still live by obsolete customs. Colleton County also has a growing population of black and female professionals, as well as spreading residential development to accommodate suburbanites from the coastal cities 150 miles away. One of Maron's many skills is her ability to weave into her story the social changes coming to this region with the speed of that hurricane. Agent, Vicky Bijur. Mystery Guild main selection. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The streets of 1893 New York are full of life: crowded, filthy, dangerous. If you are a newsboy like thirteen-year- old Maks Geless, you need to watch out for Bruno, leader of the Plug Ugly Gang whose shadowy, sinister boss is plotting to take control of all the newsies on the lower East Side. With Bruno’s boys in fierce pursuit, Maks discovers Willa, a strange girl who lives alone in an alley. It is she, stick in hand, who fights off the Plug Uglies--but further dangers await. Maks must find a way to free his sister Emma from The Tombs, the city jail where she has been imprisoned for stealing a watch at the glamorous new Waldorf Hotel. Maks, believing her innocent, has only four days to prove it. Fortunately, there is Bartleby Donck, the eccentric lawyer (among other employments) to guide Maks and Willa in the art of detection. Against a backdrop alive with the sights and sounds of tenement New York, Maks, as boy detective, must confront a teeming world of wealth and crime, while struggling against powerful forces threatening new immigrants and the fabric of family love. 

Maine lobster fisherman Amos Coombs knows that German U-boats are hiding out along the coast by day and sinking American merchant vessels at night. Until one terrifying day, however, he is unaware that the enemy is quite literally in his backyard or that the presence of a Nazi submarine is about to change his life and those of his fellow islanders forever. More than just a war novel, this excitingly original novel presents a vivid portrayal of a community and a way of life.

In these classic mystery tales, literature is a matter of life or deathOf crime fiction's many sub-genres, none is so reflexive and so intriguing as the "bibliomystery": stories that involve crimes set, somehow, in the world of books. In Vincent Starrett's "A Volume of Poe," a bookseller is murdered; in Ellery Queen's "The Adventure of the Three R's," the detective tracks the disappearance of a local Missouri author; and a killer stalks the stacks of the New York Public Library in Robert L. Blochman's "Death Walks in Marble Halls."With fourteen tales of bibliophilic transgression from the Golden Age of the mystery genre (the decades between the two World Wars), this volume collects stories guaranteed to entertain, featuring work from well-remembered authors such as Cornell Woolrich and Anthony Boucher and from those that are lesser-known today, such as Carolyn Wells and James Gould Cozzens.Edgar Award-winning anthologist, editor,...

The plagues of Egypt to the parting of the Red Sea, the story of Moses is one of the most interesting and colorful in the Old Testament. Now that story is brought vividly to life in a fictional setting. Stone Tables explores how God could take ordinary men like Moses and Aaron, with all their weaknesses, and transform them into prophet and priest. Nationally renowned author Orson Scott Card brings new insights to an age-old story. His creative fictionalization of the events of scripture and history lends a fresh and fascinating perspective. But this is more than just an entertaining tale. "My effort is to make sure that those who read this story emerge with an understanding of how good people struggle with each other and with their understanding of God's will as they try to make some decent use of their years of life," writes Card. It's a message as timely today as it was when Moses led Israel to freedom more than two millennia ago.

By the year 2660, science has transformed and conquered the world, rescuing humanity from itself. Spectacular inventions from the farthest reaches of space and deep beneath the earth are available to meet every need, providing antidotes to individual troubles and social ills. Inventors are highly prized and respected, and they are jealously protected and lavishly cared for by world governments. That support and acclaim, however―as the most brilliant of scientists, Ralph 124C 41+, discovers―is not without its price. This visionary novel of the twenty-seventh century was written by Hugo Gernsback (1887–1964), founder of the influential magazine Amazing Stories. Marvelously prophetic and creative, Ralph 124C 41+ celebrates technological advances and entrances readers with an exuberant, unforgettable vision of what our world might become. This commemorative edition makes this landmark tale widely available for the first time in decades and features the prized Frank R. Paul illustrations from the rare first edition, a list of inventions and technological devices, and Hugo Gernsback's prefaces to the first and second editions.

As the country prepared for war, Gabriella's summer held enchantment. Though her father pressured her to marry a man of his choice, Gabriella found her own love. But an unexpected decision could change everything. An unconventional love story that reflects the love and heartbreak going into America's Civil War. A standalone short story in Kathryn Kaleigh's Wildflower Kisses collection.

Award-winning author William J. Mann blends fact and fiction in this unconventional novel about the nature of celebrity The Biograph Girl is Florence Lawrence, who gets her first big break in vaudeville as a tiny tot who can whistle like a man. By 1910 she's a legendary movie star, pursued by thousands of rabid fans. Just a few short decades later, she's all but forgotten, reduced to walk-ons at MGM. In 1938 she kills herself by ingesting a lethal dose of ant paste. Fast-forward fifty-nine years. A 107-year-old woman named Flo Bridgewood is discovered in a Catholic nursing home in Buffalo. Could the feisty chain smoker with the red satin bow in her hair be America's former sweetheart? Florence Lawrence is dead . . . isn't she? And if not, then whose body is in her grave? That's what journalist Richard Sheehan wants to find out as he and his identical twin brother, Ben, a documentary filmmaker, decide to cash in on a decades-old mystery. Sharing the...

Welcome back to Shakespeare -- a charming Arkansas town with endless back roads, an eclectic mix of residents, and a dollop of noir. Featuring cleaning woman/karate expert Lily Bard, Charlaine Harris\'s series puts a unique spin on the traditional cozy to create mysteries that "work on every level". — In the latest installment, Lily discovers lifelong Shakespeare resident Deedra Dean murdered inside a car parked in a woodsy area outside town. Determined not to get involved, Lily wants to leave the police work to Sheriff Marta Schuster and her team of deputies, and concentrate on cleaning, high kicks, and her boyfriend Jack\'s impending visit. But when Deedra\'s notoriously promiscuous lifestyle provides an extensive list of suspects but very few clues, Lily has no choice but to resume the roll of amateur detective and join the investigation. In this fourth book in Charlaine Harris\'s highly acclaimed and darkly compelling series, Lily Bard delivers a hard-hitting mix of Southern charm and street smarts, a combination so alluring that long-time readers and newcomers will be dying to visit Shakespeare again.