Private detective Spenser is on the case of a serial killer with an unusual calling card - he leaves a red rose on the body of each of his victims. And when the madman targets Spenser's girlfriend Susan Silverman, his resolve is strengthened and he determines to find the murderer - no matter what the risk. 'One of the great series in the history of the American detective story' New York Times
From the acclaimed author of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns comes a fantastical new tale of darkness and love, in which magical bonds are stronger than blood. Will love break the spell? After cruelly rejecting Bao, the poor physician's apprentice who loves her, Lan, a wealthy nobleman's daughter, regrets her actions. So when she finds Bao's prized flute floating in his boat near her house, she takes it into her care, not knowing that his soul has been trapped inside it by an evil witch, who cursed Bao, telling him that only love will set him free. Though Bao now despises her, Lan vows to make amends and help break the spell. Together, the two travel across the continent, finding themselves in the presence of greatness in the forms of the Great Forest's Empress Jade and Commander Wei. They journey with Wei, getting tangled in the webs of war, blood magic, and romance along the way. Will Lan and Bao begin to break the spell that's been placed upon them? Or will they be doomed to live out their lives with black magic running through their veins? In this fantastical tale of darkness and love, some magical bonds are stronger than blood.
Rose and Stanley are an elderly couple, the sort of neighbours you'd trust to feed your cat and water your plants while you're away. Not the sort of people you'd imagine rutting like animals on your freshly laundered sheets the minute you've gone.Was it the bed that seduced them? The ornate four poster bed, with the intricate carvings and erotic tapestries, that appeared out of nowhere in Peter and Bethany's spare room. The bed that keeps reappearing, no matter how many times it's dismantled and taken away.Is the bed linked to a dark secret from Peter and Bethany's past? Is that why it's haunting them? And what effect has all this had on poor Rose, stricken with the strangest malady since her frenzied tryst with Stanley?At turns eerie, unsettling and poetic, Bed of Crimson Joy is one of the most dark and deeply disturbing erotic horror stories you'll ever read.
Yearning to escape her life of prostitution in 1870s London, Sugar finds her fate entangled in the complicated family life of patron William, an egotistical perfume magnate.
The most dangerous man to cross is one who isn't afraid to die. But the most deadly is one who doesn't want to live. And Spenser has just lost the woman who made life his #1 priority. So when a religious sect kidnaps a pretty young dancer, no death threat can make Spenser cut and run. Now a hit man's bullet is wearing Spenser's name. But Boston's big boys don't know Spenser's ready and willing to meet death more than halfway.
Fans of Divergent will love Diana Peterfreund’s take on Jane Austen’s Persuasion set in a post-apocalyptic world. In the dystopian future of For Darkness Shows the Stars, a genetic experiment has devastated humanity. In the aftermath, a new class system placed anti-technology Luddites in absolute power over vast estates—and any survivors living there. Elliot North is a dutiful Luddite and a dutiful daughter who runs her father’s estate. When the boy she loved, Kai, a servant, asked her to run away with him four years ago, she refused, although it broke her heart. Now Kai is back. And while Elliot longs for a second chance with her first love, she knows it could mean betraying everything she’s been raised to believe is right. For Darkness Shows the Stars is a breathtaking YA romance about opening your mind to the future and your heart to the one person you know can break it.
The essays in this collection are concerned with the philosophical problems that arise in connection with the understanding and evaluation of literature - such problems as the relationship between the work and the author (authorial intention), between the work and the world (reference and truth), the definition of a literary work, and the nature of literary theory itself. Professor Olsen attacks many of the orthodoxies of modern literary theory, in particular the enterprise to build a comprehensive systematic literary theory. His own work is informed by a consistent perspective: the assumption that literature is a social institution governed by conventions, and that answers to problems of interpretation and appreciation can be found only through an analysis of these conventions. This is an important book for scholars and students of literary theory and philosophy, especially for those who see an ever-increasing cross-fertilization between the two disciplines.
From a beloved master of crime fiction, Free Fall in Crimson is one of many classic novels featuring Travis McGee, the hard-boiled detective who lives on a houseboat. He was rich, mean, and slowly succumbing to cancer—until someone hastened the inevitable by beating him to death at a Florida truck stop. Now Ellis Esterland’s son wants Travis McGee to find out who killed his estranged father. The why seems obvious: Esterland’s multimillion-dollar estate. “The Travis McGee novels are among the finest works of fiction ever penned by an American author.”—Jonathan Kellerman Though he had been reassured that he would receive a substantial inheritance, Ron Esterland was disowned by his wealthy father years ago. But upon dear old Dad’s conveniently timed murder, the family fortune winds up in the hands of Ellis’s ex-wife instead. The quest to recover Ron’s money takes McGee from Hollywood to the Midwest, where he confronts prostitution rings and drug deals gone wrong. In the haze of violence surrounding him, McGee starts to lose sight of who he really is. But one thing remains crystal clear: McGee is on the trail of a killer conjured from his worst nightmares. Features a new Introduction by Lee Child
“And Never Know the Joy” : Sex and the Erotic in English Poetry promises the reader much to enjoy and to reflect on: riddles and sex games; the grammar of relationships; the cunning psychology of bodily fantasies; sexuality as the ambiguous performance of words; the allure of music and its instruments; the erotics of death and remembrance, are just a few of the initial themes that emerge from the twenty-five articles to be found in this volume, with many an invitation “to seize the day”. Reproduction, pregnancy, and fear; discredited and degraded libertines; the ventriloquism of sexual objects; the ease with which men are reduced to impotence by the carnality of women; orgasm and melancholy; erotic mysticism and religious sexuality; the potency and dangers of fruit and flowers; the delights of the recumbent male body and of dancing girls; the fertile ritual use of poetic texts; striptease and revolution; silent women reclaimed as active vessels, are amongst the many engaging topics that emerge out of the ongoing and entertaining scholarly discussion of sex and eroticism in English poetry.
