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Seven Years
Peter Robinson
A gripping novella from the New York Times–bestselling author of the Inspector Banks Mysteries and a “master of the art” (The Boston Globe)
Retired Cambridge professor Donald Aitcheson loves scouring antiquarian bookshops for secondhand treasures—as much as he loathes the scribbled marginalia from their previous owners. But when he comes upon an inscription in a volume of Robert Browning’s poetry, he’s less irritated than disturbed. This wasn’t once a gift to an unwitting woman. It was a threat—insidious, suggestively sick, and terribly intriguing.
Now Aitcheson’s imagination is running wild. Was it a sordid teacher-pupil affair that ended in betrayal? A scorned lover’s first salvo in a campaign of terror? The taunt of an obsessive psychopath? Then again, it could be nothing more than a tasteless joke between friends.
As his curiosity gets the better of him, Aitcheson can’t resist playing detective. But when his investigation leads to a remote girls’ boarding school in the Lincolnshire flatlands, and into the confidence of its headmistress, he soon discovers the consequences of reading between the lines.
The Book of the Lion
Thomas Perry
A long lost manuscript by Geoffrey Chaucer draws Professor Dominic Hallkyn through the streets of Boston and into a mysterious plot.
When Professor Dominic Hallkyn receives an anonymous phone call late one night from a voice claiming to possess a priceless Chaucerian manuscript presumed lost forever, he doesn’t know how to react. He soon finds himself scrambling to meet the caller’s demands amid uncompromising suspense that culminates in a devilish plot twist. Perry takes his readers on a mad dash through the winding streets of Boston in pursuit of the unique artifact that may be doomed to disappear from history . . . this time, for good.
The Bibliomysteries are a series of short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors.
The Gospel of Sheba
Lyndsay Faye
A librarian is tormented by a lethal volume of black magic.
When A. Davenport Lomax’s young daughter asks him whether spirits and faeries are real, the Edwardian librarian just pats the little darling on the head. But when a desperate man emerges from the winding passages of the library muttering about demonology, he gets Lomax’s attention. Theodore Grange is a member of the Brotherhood of Solomon, a secret society dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of black magic, and he believes he has found a book written by the Queen of Sheba herself. Said to hold the answers to one thousand demonic mysteries, the tome will poison any man who dares read it.
The next time Lomax sees him, Grange is at death’s door. To uncover the truth about The Gospel of Sheba, Lomax agrees to accompany Grange to a meeting of the brotherhood, where he will encounter darkness that threatens his life, his family, and his soul.
The Last Honest Horse Thief
Michael Koryta
A BOY COMES OF AGE AMONG A FAMILY OF GRIFTERS IN THIS POWERFUL STORY
Never knowing a real home, Markus Novak’s only constant in life is his passion for paperback westerns. The child of a family of outlaws, he moves through the West town by town with his mother and two uncles, staying in a place just long enough to run a short con and move along. After one job goes south and his mom gets locked up, Markus finds himself in the foster care of a rancher and his wife—with whom he’s strangely comfortable, yet torn by loyalty to the family he’s lost.
To distract himself, he spends his days working the farm and his nights fixing a rusty old ’55 Chevy. Then he discovers a note from his uncles hidden in a book at a local pawnshop and learns that they are hiding out in a mountain town near Yellowstone. Restoring the car soon becomes Markus’s only hope of finding them, and maybe finally finding himself, too.
Dead Dames Don't Sing
John Harvey
The stylish tale of a dead poet, a rediscovered pulp novel, and a lovely lady with a story to sell from the author of the Charles Resnick Mysteries.
Ex–Metropolitan Police Officer Jack Kiley spent his career discerning fact from fiction. Now a private detective, Kiley has agreed to investigate the provenance of a newly discovered manuscript. Lost for decades, Dead Dames Don’t Sing is typical pulp fodder: “Hard, fast, and deadly,” according to Daniel Pike, the rare book dealer who hires Kiley. What makes it unusual—and potentially valuable—is that the novel appears to have been written by the late poet William Pierce before he made a name for himself. Pierce’s bewitching socialite-cum-model daughter, Alexandra, insists that it’s genuine, but Kiley isn’t so sure. Something doesn’t feel right, but the deeper he digs, the more he wonders if poetry and pulp really are such strange bedfellows.
Hailed as “one of our most accomplished writers” by The Daily Telegraph, John Harvey brings swinging London—both past and present—to life in this gripping novella.
The Bibliomysteries are a series of short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors.
The Girl Who Did Say No
David Handler
Ex-bestselling author Stewart Hoag is after a tell-all Hollywood diary in this short mystery from the Edgar Award–winning author.
Once upon a time, Stewart “Hoagy” Hoag was a celebrity author married to a famous actress. But after a serious case of writer’s block, Hoagy lost it all. Now, with nobody but his loyal basset hound, Lulu, by his side, Hoagy intends to get back on top by transcribing the salacious tell-all diary of recently deceased actress Anna Childress.
It was a foolproof plan—except that Hoagy isn’t the only one after the legendary journal. Suddenly, he and Lulu are up against a who’s who of powerful studio execs, all clamoring to keep a generation’s worth of Hollywood dirt from reaching the public.
Every Seven Years
Denise Mina
Elsa finds a book with strange powers and must face her tortured past.
It’s been seven years since Else visited her tiny hometown on an isolated island off the coast of Scotland. After years of suffering bullying at the hands of the few other residents, she left to make a new life. But now that her mother has passed, Else has returned. And when her old tormentor Karen Little hands her the very book that sent her running all those years ago, the cruelties of her past have Else seeing red.
The Bibliomysteries are a series of short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors.
Hoodoo Harry
Joe R. Lansdale
A long-lost bookmobile opens a wild new chapter in the lives of dysfunctional Texas detectives Hap and Leonard—stars of the hit Sundance TV series.
Hap Collins is a straight, white, liberal, blue-collar tough guy. Leonard Pine is a gay, black, Republican combat veteran. Together, they’re the truest Lone Stars living in America’s most independently minded state. Best friends who’ve shared a succession of low-wage odd jobs that have gotten them into even odder situations dealing with lowlifes, now the duo delivers their own brand of ass-kicking justice as private investigators.
In this brand-new story, a day’s fishing lands Hap and Leonard their biggest catch ever: the Rolling Literature bookmobile. A pillar of rural African American communities in East Texas, the renovated school bus vanished fifteen years ago—along with its driver, Harriet Hoodalay, aka Hoodoo Harry—reappearing just in time to crash Leonard’s pickup into a creek. Behind the wheel was a twelve-year-old boy who didn’t survive the accident.
Mystery, Inc.
Joyce Carol Oates
A book lover’s lust for acquisition drives him to murder in this short tale from the New York Times–bestselling author of Beautiful Days.
Identified only by the hastily—and clumsily—chosen alias Charles Brockden, the narrator of this story finds a bookstore that instantly piques his desire. He must call it his own; he must add it to his already-extensive collection of bookstores. But surely the owner of such a fine shop wouldn’t easily part with it. Brockden forms a plan to acquire the store in such a way that no one would ever suspect foul play: untraceable murder. And he knows he will be successful—because he has done it before.
The Bibliomysteries are a series of short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors.
Walking the Woods and the Water
Nick Hunt
In 1933, the eighteen year old Patrick Leigh Fermor set out in a pair of hobnailed boots to chance and charm his way across Europe, like a tramp, a pilgrim or a wandering scholar. The books he later wrote about this walk, A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water, and the posthumous The Broken Road are a half-remembered, half-reimagined journey through cultures now extinct, landscapes irrevocably altered by the traumas of the twentieth century. Aged eighteen, Nick Hunt read A Time of Gifts and dreamed of following in Fermor’s footsteps.
In 2011 he began his own great trudge – on foot all the way to Istanbul. He walked across Europe through eight countries, following two major rivers and crossing three mountain ranges. Using Fermor’s books as his only travel guide, he trekked some 2,500 miles through Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. His aim? To have an old-fashioned adventure. To slow down and linger in a world where we pass by so much, so fast. To discover for himself what remained of hospitality, kindness to strangers, freedom, wildness, adventure, the mysterious, the unknown, the deeper currents of myth and story that still flow beneath Europe’s surface.
Opportunity
Rob Moore
Opportunities are limitless and abundant.
The problem is, many people can’t recognize them.
It can feel like opportunity doesn’t knock for you, or other people get more opportunities, or you have bad luck and timing.
You just need to know where to look. How to ask. When to ACT.
Opportunity can be a window or a door; sometimes it opens right in front of you and sometimes it knocks. You need to be ready: windows, doors and eyes open.
Are you waiting for that once-in-a-lifetime or business opportunity to change your life? How will you know when it comes? How will you be sure it’s right for you?
This book is not about waiting for an opportunity. It’s a book containing strategies that can be employed immediately, ensuring you attract opportunities abundantly, both big and small, and you’re ready to recognize and take them. To turn ideas into opportunities.
Successful people often make their own luck – they find success because they have trained their minds to recognize great opportunities and make the most of them, rather than freezing with uncertainty or lacking the vision to see them through. They know the opportunity cost of not taking them.
In this book you’ll learn how to spot, seize and implement the right opportunities, and how to say NO to the wrong ones. You’ll learn to take fast and slow opportunities. When opportunity appears you’ll be ready to take advantage, seize the day, and win at life.
Why the Dutch Are Different
Ben Coates
*A SCOTSMAN TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR*
Stranded at Schiphol airport, Ben Coates called up a friendly Dutch girl he’d met some months earlier. He stayed for dinner. Actually, he stayed for good.
In the first book to consider the hidden heart and history of the Netherlands from a modern perspective, the author explores the length and breadth of his adopted homeland and discovers why one of the world’s smallest countries is also so significant and so fascinating. It is a self-made country, the Dutch national character shaped by the ongoing battle to keep the water out from the love of dairy and beer to the attitude to nature and the famous tolerance.
Ben Coates investigates what makes the Dutch the Dutch, why the Netherlands is much more than Holland and why the colour orange is so important. Along the way he reveals why they are the world’s tallest people and have the best carnival outside Brazil. He learns why Amsterdam’s brothels are going out of business, who really killed Anne Frank, and how the Dutch manage to be richer than almost everyone else despite working far less. He also discovers a country which is changing fast, with the Dutch now questioning many of the liberal policies which made their nation famous.
A personal portrait of a fascinating people, a sideways history and an entertaining travelogue, Why the Dutch are Different is the story of an Englishman who went Dutch. And loved it.