Death of an Avid Reader

Author: Frances Brody
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466875704
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
An intricate plot set in the 1920s English countryside and Frances Brody's "refreshingly complex heroine" (Kirkus) Kate Shackleton make Death of an Avid Reader an absorbing 6th installment in this mystery, perfect for fans of Jacqueline Winspear and Agatha Christie. The Search for a Daughter Lady Coulton gave up the baby that would have ruined her marriage, born when Lord Coulton was abroad. Now that her husband is dying, she asks Kate to find Sophia. A Haunted Library It is forty years since the ghost of a dead librarian haunted the old library, yet the stories have begun again. Kate does not believe in ghosts but obligingly takes part in a ceremony to expel the restless spirit. Shockingly, there is a body in the basement, strangled, and covered in dusty volumes from a fallen bookcase. It is Dr. Potter, a mathematician. A Killer on the Loose Dr. Potter’s body is taken away. The police find a sick man sheltering in the basement. He is an Italian, Umberto, an organ grinder and owner of a lively Capuchin monkey. Umberto becomes the prime suspect and will be charged with murder. Kate goes with Umberto to the infirmary. But he is too weak to be a suspect. And now Kate must set out to find the real culprit...

Avid Reader

Author: Robert Gottlieb
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374713901
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
Winner of the Anne M. Sperber Prize A spirited and revealing memoir by the most celebrated editor of his time. After editing The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon and Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited Catch-22 and The American Way of Death, among other bestsellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited an astonishing list of authors, including Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, John le Carré, Michael Crichton, Lauren Bacall, Katharine Graham, Robert Caro, Nora Ephron, and Bill Clinton--not to mention Bruno Bettelheim and Miss Piggy. In Avid Reader, Gottlieb writes with wit and candor about succeeding William Shawn as the editor of The New Yorker, and the challenges and satisfactions of running America's preeminent magazine. Sixty years after joining Simon and Schuster, Gottlieb is still at it--editing, anthologizing, and, to his surprise, writing. But this account of a life founded upon reading is about more than the arc of a singular career--one that also includes a lifelong involvement with the world of dance. It's about transcendent friendships and collaborations, "elective affinities" and family, psychoanalysis and Bakelite purses, the alchemical relationship between writer and editor, the glory days of publishing, and--always--the sheer exhilaration of work. Photograph of Bob Gottlieb © by Jill Krementz

In The Sleep of Death

Author: Kimberly van Ginkel
Publisher: Genz Publishing
ISBN: 9781952919176
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Book Description
The man of her dreams turned out to be a necromancer's illusion. Now she's stranded in the Old West, falsely accused of murder, hunted by Death himself, and determined to wrest her lover's soul back from the gods.Her impulsive marriage to decrepit-but-rich Master Adalwolf turned sour when the old man's death fixation led him to stolen tribal magic. He learned to invade Lorena's dreams and distort her reality. Then the old coot got his hands on Death's Dearest, an ancient artifact with the power to bring back the dead.The gods were not pleased.Ancient deities, notably Sleep, Death, and Revenge, grew wrathful at Adalwolf's fledgling attempts at necromancy and whisked him from the living world. His eerie disappearance framed Lorena for his murder and plastered her across the headlines with the nickname "The Hellfire Witch." Armed only with her wits, two squabbling servants, and Adalwolf's book of gods and magic written in a language she cannot understand, Lorena fled the city with a posse on her trail.Now she must evade the noose while feverishly seeking to reclaim her husband's soul or this nightmare may span an eternity. Her time on Earth is running out. And Death holds a grudge.In the Sleep of Death blends the Weird West genre with the magical realism of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I channeled my Midwestern pride and passion for research into crafting this historical world.

Secrets in Death

Author: J. D. Robb
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250123186
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
A new novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series: Lt. Eve Dallas must separate rumors from reality when a woman who traffics in other people’s secrets is silenced. The chic Manhattan nightspot Du Vin is not the kind of place Eve Dallas would usually patronize, and it’s not the kind of bar where a lot of blood gets spilled. But that’s exactly what happens one cold February evening. The mortally wounded woman is Larinda Mars, a self-described “social information reporter,” or as most people would call it, a professional gossip. As it turns out, she was keeping the most shocking stories quiet, for profitable use in her side business as a blackmailer. Setting her sights on rich, prominent marks, she’d find out what they most wanted to keep hidden and then bleed them dry. Now someone’s done the same to her, literally—with a knife to the brachial artery. Eve didn’t like Larinda Mars. But she likes murder even less. To find justice for this victim, she’ll have to plunge into the dirty little secrets of all the people Larinda Mars victimized herself. But along the way, she may be exposed to some information she really didn’t want to know...

Civilized to Death

Author: Christopher Ryan
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1451659113
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Sex at Dawn explores the ways in which “progress” has perverted the way we live—how we eat, learn, feel, mate, parent, communicate, work, and die—in this “engaging, extensively documented, well-organized, and thought-provoking” (Booklist) book. Most of us have instinctive evidence the world is ending—balmy December days, face-to-face conversation replaced with heads-to-screens zomboidism, a world at constant war, a political system in disarray. We hear some myths and lies so frequently that they feel like truths: Civilization is humankind’s greatest accomplishment. Progress is undeniable. Count your blessings. You’re lucky to be alive here and now. Well, maybe we are and maybe we aren’t. Civilized to Death counters the idea that progress is inherently good, arguing that the “progress” defining our age is analogous to an advancing disease. Prehistoric life, of course, was not without serious dangers and disadvantages. Many babies died in infancy. A broken bone, infected wound, snakebite, or difficult pregnancy could be life-threatening. But ultimately, Christopher Ryan questions, were these pre-civilized dangers more murderous than modern scourges, such as car accidents, cancers, cardiovascular disease, and a technologically prolonged dying process? Civilized to Death “will make you see our so-called progress in a whole new light” (Book Riot) and adds to the timely conversation that “the way we have been living is no longer sustainable, at least as long as we want to the earth to outlive us” (Psychology Today). Ryan makes the claim that we should start looking backwards to find our way into a better future.

The Man Who Died

Author: Antti Tuomainen
Publisher: Orenda Books
ISBN: 1495628175
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
DIVWhen Finnish mushroom entrepreneur Jaakko discovers that he has been slowly poisoned, he sets out to find his would-be murderer ... with dark and hilarious results. The critically acclaimed standalone thriller from the King of Helsinki Noir... ***Shortlisted for the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year*** ***Shortlisted for the CrimeFest Last Laugh Award*** 'Right up there with the best' Times Literary Supplement 'Deftly plotted, poignant and perceptive in its wry reflections on mortality and very funny' Irish Times 'Told in a darkly funny, deadpan style ... The result is a rollercoaster read in which the farce has some serious and surprisingly philosophical underpinnings' Guardian ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– A successful entrepreneur in the mushroom industry, Jaakko Kaunismaa is a man in his prime. At just thirty-seven years of age, he is shocked when his doctor tells him that he's dying. What's more, the cause is discovered to be prolonged exposure to toxins; in other words, someone has slowly but surely been poisoning him. Determined to find out who wants him dead, Jaakko embarks on a suspenseful rollercoaster journey full of unusual characters, bizarre situations and unexpected twists. With a nod to Fargo and the best elements of the Scandinavian noir tradition, The Man Who Died is a page-turning thriller brimming with the blackest comedy surrounding life and death, and love and betrayal, marking a stunning new departure for the King of Helsinki Noir. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 'The deadpan icy sensibility of Nordic noir is combined here with warm-blooded, often surreal, humour. Like the death cap mushroom, Tuomainen's dark story manages to be as delicious as it is toxic' Sunday Express 'An offbeat jewel ... relentlessly funny' Don Crinklaw, Publishers Weekly 'A bizarre, twisty, darkly comic novel about a man investigating his own murder ... a tightly paced Scandinavian thriller with a wicked sense of humour' Foreword Reviews 'Smart, sensitive, and engaging, and guaranteed to be unlike anything else in your crime fiction library ... the perfect blend of thrills, investigation, character development, and comedy' Crime by the Book 'Hugely entertaining and satisfying ... like Carl Hiassen transported to Finland. It's full of black comedy and has an unlikely hero in Jaakko, who you'll root for to the very end' Kevin Wignall, author of A Death in Sweden 'A delightful mad caper of a story, which will make readers snort out loud with laughter and would have made an excellent 1930s screwball comedy directed by Frank Capra' Crime Fiction Lover 'Combines a startlingly clever opening, a neat line in dark humour and a unique Scandinavian sensibility. A fresh and witty read' Chris Ewan, author of Safe House 'Dark and thrilling, funny and intelligent, this Fargo-like novel contains lethal doses of humour ... and mushrooms' Sofi Oksanen, author of Purge ‘A book I will never forget’ Matt Wesolowski ‘This one is a winner right from the first sentence’ Booklist ‘Antti Tuomainen is a wonderful writer, whose characters, plots and atmosphere are masterfully drawn’ Yrsa Sigurðardóttir ‘An original and darkly funny thriller with a Coen Brothers-esque feel & tremendous style’ Eva Dolan/div

Starving To Death On 200 Million

Author: James Ledbetter
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 9781586481292
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
Chronicles the short life and quick demise of the "Business Week of the Internet economy," the publishing phenomenon founded in 1998 that generated more than $200 million in revenue but was gone, along with the dot-com boom, by 2001.

Avid Reader

Author: Robert Gottlieb
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374279926
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
"The editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster writes with wit and candor about becoming the editor of The New Yorker, and the challenges and satisfactions of running America's preeminent magazine, "--NoveList.

Death All Around:

Author: S. T. Meier
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 150492939X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
Ten-year old Grace recounts to the psychologist her woeful tale of becoming an orphan. Grace describes each of her family members and discusses how the tragedy unfolded. In an already unhappy household, evil comes alive when Graces father, Luke discusses with her, at the hanging site the specifics of the deplorable event resulting in the death of hundreds. The hateful act of hanging has led the town into being a hotbed for holding the earthbound dead as prisoners for eternity. Each situation leads to another darker, more sinister event when the dead come alive.

The Time Before Death

Author: Constantin V. Ponomareff
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9401208832
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Book Description
This collection of fifteen essays deals with the literary memoirs of major twentieth-century writers and focuses on the spiritual, physical and moral devastation of 20th century life. They are comparative and cross-cultural. There is no other collection of essays with this range brought under one cover.