A riveting new thriller from the award-winning author of Ghost Story. Nora, a bored housewife, married to a weakling of a husband, is kidnapped at gunpoint by Dick Dart, a man who is suspected of committing four recent murders. Now Nora can stay alive only by feeding Dart's ego and outwitting him without seeming to do so.

Barely escaping with his life after his first mission, young Fitz returns to the chaotic royal court. With King Shrewd near death and Fitz's only ally off on a futile quest, the throne is ripe for the taking. And as the Red Ship Raiders brutalize the Six Duchies, the kingdom's fortunes-and Fitz's own fate — hang in the balance.

Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force — a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.

They had been inseparable in college, Mary Stuart, Tanya, and Zoe. But in the more than twenty years that followed, the three had moved on with their lives, settled in different cities, and found successful careers and new roles as mothers and wives. By chance, each would find herself alone for a few weeks one summer, wrestling with the present and the past. At a sprawling ranch in the foothills of Wyoming's Grand Teton Range, the three women come together and find courage, healing, and truth, and reach out to each other once again. Despite the honesty they once shared, now pretense between them runs high. Mary Stuart Walker, married for twenty-two years to a Manhattan lawyer, kept herself busy with volunteer work, and now masks the loneliness that consumes her life. A year has past, and Mary Stuart still hasn't gotten over the guilt, or the fear that her husband will never forgive her for their son's death... Tanya Thomas, an award winning singer and rock star, enjoys all the trappings of fame and success-a mansion in Bel Air, legions of fans, and a broken heart. All the Grammy awards in the world can't make up for the children she wanted but never had, the men who have taken advantage of her, and just gone along for the ride, and still are... Dr. Zoe Phillips has her hands full as a single mother to an adopted two-year-old, and as a doctor at an AIDS clinic in San Francisco. Predictably, as they all know, she is as liberal as she ever was, and marriage was never a dream she coveted or shared with them. Tending to her patients is a full-time job that leaves Zoe little time for herself-until unexpected news forces her to reevaluate both her future, and her current life. But despite the changes in their lives, their friendship is still a bond they all treasure and share. For each of the women, a few weeks at the ranch will bring healing and release, as old hurts are buried, ancient secrets revealed, and love replaced or renewed. In The Ranch, bestselling novelist Danielle Steel brings reality to the meaning of friendship, with dramas whose truths we all share.

«Instead of nostalgia, Binchy evokes contemporary life; instead of Christmas homilies, she offers truth; and instead of sugarplums, she brings us the nourishment of holidays that precipitate change, growth, and new beginnings. The stories in This Year It Will Be Different powerfully evoke many lives — step-families grappling with exes, long-married couples faced with in-law problems, a wandering husband choosing between «the other woman» and his wife, a child caught in grown-up tugs-of-war — during the one holiday when feelings cannot be easily hidden.»

In A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin has created a genuine masterpiece, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill the pages of the first volume in an epic series sure to delight fantasy fans everywhere. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the North of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom's protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

Records case studies of parapsychology and the contacts made with entities throughout the New England states and presents historical research attesting to the actual lives of these spirits.

As president of a major pharmaceutical empire, Peter Haskell has everything. Power, position, a career and a family, which mean everything to him, and for which he has sacrificed a great deal. Compromise has been key in Peter Haskell's life, and integrity is the base on which he lives. Olivia Thatcher is the wife of a famous senator. She has given to her husband's ambitions and career until her soul is bone dry. She is trapped in a web of duty and obligation, married to a man she once loved and no longer even knows. When her son died, a piece of Olivia died too. Accidentally, on the night of a bomb threat, they meet in Paris, at the Ritz. Their totally different lives converge for one magical moment in the Place Vendome, as Olivia carefully, silently, steps out of her life and walks away. As the two strangers meet, their lives become briefly enmeshed. In a cafe in Montmartre, their hearts are laid bare. Peter, once so sure of his path, so certain of his marriage and success, but suddenly faced with his professional future in jeopardy. Olivia, no longer sure of anything except that she can't go on anymore. When Olivia disappears, only Peter suspects that it may not be foul play. And if he finds her again, where will they go from there? Five days in Paris is all they have. They go back to their separate lives, but nothing is the same. At home again, they both must pursue their lives, despite challenges, compromise, and betrayal. Everything they believe is put on the line, until they each realize they must stand fast against compromise and face life's challenges head-on.

If Nero Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie, would ever admit to an Achilles' heel-which they wouldn't-it would be a weakness for damsels in distress. In these three charming chillers the duo answer the call of helpless heroines with nothing to lose-except their lives. First a beautiful young Aphrodite comes to Nero looking for a hero-and the answer to the mystery of her father's death... Then an old flame of Archie's reignites with a plan that may corner him into a lifetime commitment-behind bars... And finally a detective's work is never done, as a hot tip leads the team into the sizzling center of a sexy scandal that could leave them cold-dead cold.

This book contains the first ever selection of her stories, from her earliest published work in 1968 to her latest in 1994. Her star is in the ascendant — winner of the 1994 W. H. Smith Award, shortlisted for the second time in 1995 for the Irish Times International Fiction Award. This wonderful selection of the greatest stories will demonstrate her genius, her versatility, her extraordinary humanity, and will delight new readers as well as her fans.

It is the mid-1800s. At Sweet Home in Kentucky, an era is ending as slavery comes under attack from the abolitionists. The worlds of Halle and Paul D. are to be destroyed in a cataclysm of torment and agony. The world of Sethe, however, is to turn from one of love to one of violence and death — the death of Sethe's baby daughter Beloved, whose name is the single word on the tombstone, who died at her mother's hands, and who will return to claim retribution.

A raw, powerful first novel, The Football Factory centres on Tom Johnson, a seasoned 'Chelsea hooligan' who represents a disaffected society operating by brutal rules. We are shown the realities of life — social degradation, unemployment, racism, casual violence, excessive drink and bad sex — and, perhaps more importantly, how they fall into a political context of surveillance, media manipulation and division. Graphic and disturbing, occasionally very funny, and deeply affecting throughout, The Football Factory is a vertiginous rush of adrenaline — the most authentic book yet on the so-called English Disease.

«Bob Lee Swagger has seen — and delivered — dozens of deaths. As a United States Marine sniper in Vietnam, his astonishing accuracy with a rifle earned him the nickname Bob the Nailer; twenty years later he was forced to kill again to unravel a brutal conspiracy (in Stephen Hunter's classic Point of Impact). Now happily secluded with his wife and young daughter in the Arizona desert, Swagger believes all the killing is behind him. Until a young writer, Russ Pewtie, arrives at his door with troubling questions about the past. Forty years earlier, Swagger's father, a dedicated state trooper, was gunned down by two robbers in a sensational shoot-out just outside of Blue Eye, Arkansas. Faced with Russ's persistence and a desire to make peace with a father he never really knew, Swagger decides to discover what really happened that long-ago Arkansas night. But as soon becomes clear, powerful people don't want the truth uncovered — and Swagger must use all his combat skills and ruthless cunning to survive. Like the infrared «black light» that exposes a sniper's target in the dead of night, Swagger homes in on the shadowy figures desperate to keep the secret of his father's murder buried.»

Turner, high-corporate commando, is abruptly reactivated by the Hosaka Corporation for a mission even more dangerous than the one he's still recovering from. Maas-Neotek's chief of R&D is defecting, and Turner must get him out, intact, along with the biochip he's perfected. With voodoo on the Net, he thinks he's only trying to get out alive. But he hasn't met the angel...

Horrified by the misuse of magic they had witnessed during the First War of the Races, the Druids at Paranor devoted themselves to the study of the old sciences, from the period before the collapse of civilization a thousand years before. Only the Bremen and a few trusted associates still studied the arcane arts. And for his persistence, Bremen found himself outcast, avoided by all but the few free-thinkers among the Druids. But his removal from Paranor was not altogether a terrible thing, for Bremen learned that dark forces were on the move from the Northlands. That seemingly invincible armies of trolls were fast conquering all that lay to their south. That the scouts for the army — and its principal assassins — were Skull Bearers, disfigured and transformed Druids who had fallen prey to the seductions of the magic arts. And that at the heart of the evil tide was an archmage and former Druid named Brona! Using the special skills he had acquired through his own study of Magic, Bremen was able to penetrate the huge camp of the Troll army and learn many of its secrets. And he immediately understood that if the peoples of the Four Lands were to escape eternal subjugation they would need to unite. But, even united, they would need a weapon, something so powerful that the evil magic of Brona, the Warlock Lord, would fail before its might...

At the top of his class at Harvard Law, he had his choice of the best in America. He made a deadly mistake. When Mitch McDeere signed on with Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis, he thought he and his beautiful wife, Abby, were on their way. The firm leased him a BMW, paid off his school loans, arranged a mortgage and hired him a decorator. Mitch McDeere should have remembered what his brother Ray — doing fifteen years in a Tennessee jail — already knew. You never get nothing for nothing. Now the FBI has the lowdown on Mitch's firm and needs his help. Mitch is caught between a rock and a hard place, with no choice — if he wants to live. Издание полностью на английском языке.

Deep in the Hausruck Mountains of Austria, there is a remote hideaway — the fortress-like nerve center of an ominous movement, the Brotherhood of the Watch. American agent Harry Latham has penetrated the movement, a neo-Nazi organization that was born in the days after the Third Reich's defeat and whose deadly tentacles have spread to the United States and beyond. Now, after three years in deep cover, and on the eve of his most spectacular success, Harry Latham has disappeared. Drew Latham, Special Officer for Consular Operations in Paris, is frantic to discover his older brother's fate. But when he receives the sudden good news that Harry has surfaced, gut-twisting doubts arise. Has Harry's cover been blown? And if so, why has the Brotherhood of the Watch let him live? For Harry Latham has emerged with an explosive list: the secret supporters of the movement, among them some of the highest-ranking officials in the United States and its allies, names synonymous with honorable service to their nations. It is a document that could topple governments — but is the list legitimate? Can Drew Latham trust his own brother? To find the answer, Drew Latham decides to take on his brother's identity, stepping directly into the crossfire between the assassins gunning for Harry Latham — and those who want Drew himself dead. From a hushed Alpine valley to the backstreets of Paris, from the ruling chambers of Washington and London to the casinos of Monte Carlo, “The Apocalypse Watch” is vintage Robert Ludlum, a superb international thriller from the writer who created the standard for a new kind of entertainment.