The bestselling author of Bee Season brilliantly explores the cruelty of children, the unreliability of memory, and the unpredictable forces that shape our adult selves. • "Haunting.... A compelling exploration of the fallibility of memory, explored through richly drawn characters.” —San Francisco Chronicle Twenty years after Celia’s best friend, Djuna, went missing, memories of that terrible day come rushing back—including the lie Celia remembers having told to conceal her role in Djuna’s disappearance. But when Celia returns to her hometown to confess the truth, her family and childhood friends recall that day very differently. As Celia learns more about what may or may not have happened, she becomes increasingly uncertain whom she should trust.
The second installment in the extraordinary Cooper Devereaux mystery thriller series, which combines the atmosphere of James Lee Burke and Craig Johnson with the noir brilliance of Robert Crais An arsonist is targeting schools in Birmingham, Alabama—with devastating effect. Detective Devereaux—a man you can’t quite trust and should never ignore—must put a stop to the elusive pyromaniac’s reign of terror before more damage is done. Or worse, before students’ lives are lost. But as Devereaux sifts through the ashes of the case, a grisly discovery at a burned-out school sends the investigation spiraling in a new, terrifying direction. The detective and his partner are dragged into a nightmare world by revelations of gruesome rituals, the disappearance of local citizens, and allegations against city officials of shocking crimes that stretch back decades. With innocent lives on the line, progress is hampered by friction between the police department and the FBI, and interference from factions of the local underworld complicate matters further. Devereaux doesn’t make excuses for his willingness to work outside the lines, but just as he needs to be at the top of his game, he’s rocked by echoes from his troubled past that threaten to engulf his daughter and girlfriend—and fracture the life he’s only recently begun to rebuild. Praise for False Friend “The second installment starring [Detective Cooper] Devereaux is a suspenseful action-packed drama that is sure to please fans of the series and mystery/thriller lovers alike. As a stand-alone, it will inspire newcomers to seek out the first book.”—Library Journal “An incendiary thriller . . . Cooper is solid—decent, flawed, and entertaining.”—Kirkus Reviews Praise for Andrew Grant’s RUN “An adrenaline-fueled thrill ride that will have your head spinning and your heart pounding.”—Joseph Finder “High stakes, high tension, and nonstop action . . . Hang on and enjoy this smart, original, and fast-paced adventure.”—Hank Phillippi Ryan “Relentless, twisty, and blistering fast, it’s a book you don’t dare start at bedtime.”—Sean Chercover “A whizbang of a novel with just the right dose of smart-ass.”—Chelsea Cain “Breathtakingly fast-paced.”—Harlan Coben “A perfect thriller—smart, fast, and blazing with nonstop surprises.”—Robert Crais
The ninth all-action thriller in the bestselling Dan 'Spider' Shepherd series. The most wanted man in the world is dead. Now those loyal to him seek revenge. When Navy Seals track down and kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, it's obvious there was a traitor on the inside. After the false friends are revealed to be two British students, Malik and Chaudhry - former Islamic fundamentalists recruited by MI5 - they become targets themselves. Dan 'Spider' Shepherd must teach the pair how to survive undercover with al-Qaeda closing in. But Spider is not used to playing the handler. And with the line between mentor and friend beginning to blur, and a terrorist plot putting thousands of lives at stake, can he protect everyone before it's too late?
Daphne explores the ups and downs of false friendship in her latest fully illustrated diary of a fourth-grader. Daphne and Kaylee are fourth-graders and best friends, but Daphne also wants to become friends with Imogen, the cool girl in their class. The trouble is, to be friends with Imogen, she’s going to have to get past Imogen’s best friend, Darla. Which means becoming fake friends with Darla. But when it comes to Daphne, things never go according to plan. Can she survive the Fake Friend Disaster and make a real friend in the process? Daphne tells it like it is and expertly details the drama of being a kid in this fully illustrated journal from the creator of the bestselling Amelia series.
False Friends is the first full-length poetry collection from Stephen Cain in more than ten years. In it, he takes inspiration from the linguistic term "false friends"--two words from different languages that appear to be related, but have fundamentally different meanings. In this book are poems both humourous and unforgiving that Cain uses to explore errors, misapprehensions, and mistranslations and offer insights into the "secret operations" hiding within everyday language. These poems spin punk with pastoral, comic book with lyric, the misunderstood with the obvious. And at its core, False Friends is a thought-provoking investigation of the power of poetry as political dicourse. Praise for False Friends "In False Friends, Cain revels in a play of sound and meaning, bouncing his narrative as a pinball across the field of language." --rob mclennan's blog
The King James Version has shaped the church, our worship, and our mother tongue for over 400 years. But what should we do with it today? The KJV beautifully rendered the Scriptures into the language of turn-of-the-seventeenth-century England. Even today the King James is the most widely read Bible in the United States. The rich cadence of its Elizabethan English is recognized even by non-Christians. But English has changed a great deal over the last 400 years—and in subtle ways that very few modern readers will recognize. In Authorized Mark L. Ward, Jr. shows what exclusive readers of the KJV are missing as they read God's word.#In their introduction to the King James Bible, the translators tell us that Christians must "heare CHRIST speaking unto them in their mother tongue." In Authorized Mark Ward builds a case for the KJV translators' view that English Bible translations should be readable by what they called "the very vulgar"—and what we would call "the man on the street."
Various emerging technologies, from social robotics to social media, appeal to our desire for social interactions, while avoiding some of the risks and costs of face-to-face human interaction. But can they offer us real friendship? In this book, Alexis Elder outlines a theory of friendship drawing on Aristotle and contemporary work on social ontology, and then uses it to evaluate the real value of social robotics and emerging social technologies. In the first part of the book Elder develops a robust and rigorous ontology of friendship: what it is, how it functions, what harms it, and how it relates to familiar ethical and philosophical questions about character, value, and well-being. In Part II she applies this ontology to emerging trends in social robotics and human-robot interaction, including robotic companions for lonely seniors, therapeutic robots used to teach social skills to children on the autism spectrum, and companionate robots currently being developed for consumer markets. Elder articulates the moral hazards presented by these robots, while at the same time acknowledging their real and measurable benefits. In the final section she shifts her focus to connections between real people, especially those enabled by social media. Arguing against critics who have charged that these new communication technologies are weakening our social connections, Elder explores ways in which text messaging, video chats, Facebook, and Snapchat are enabling us to develop, sustain, and enrich our friendship in new and meaningful ways.
"Detective [Devereaux] and his temporary partner, Jan Loflin, seek a missing [seven]-year-old foster child. [Devereaux], himself a survivor of the foster system, is haunted by his own brutal childhood and the death of his father. He labors under a cloud of suspicion, determined to find the missing boy before it's too late. But are his motives really pure? His record is a minefield of red flags and question marks: how is a Birmingham cop able to afford a Porsche, a penthouse, and a summer cabin?"--
Princess and heir to the throne of Thorvaldor, Nalia has led a privileged life at court. But everything changes when she learns, just after her sixteenth birthday, that she is a false princess, a stand-in for the real Nalia, who has been hidden away for her protection. Cast out with little more than the clothes on her back, the girl now called Sinda must leave behind the city, her best friend, Kiernan, and the only life she's ever known. Sent to live with her only surviving relative—a cold, scornful woman with little patience for her newfound niece—Sinda proves inept at even the simplest tasks. Then she discovers that magic runs through her veins—long-suppressed, dangerous magic that she must learn to control—and she realizes that she will never learn to be just a simple village girl. Sinda returns to the city to seek answers. Instead, she rediscovers the boy who refused to forsake her, and uncovers a secret that could change the course of Thorvaldor's history forever. An intricately plotted and completely satisfying adventure, The False Princess is both an engaging tale in the tradition of great fantasy novels and a story never before told that will enchant—and surprise—its readers.
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING NAOMI WATTS “A beautiful book . . . a world of insight into death, grief, art, and love.” —Wall Street Journal “A penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory . . . Nunez has a wry, withering wit.” —NPR “Dry, allusive and charming . . . the comedy here writes itself.” —The New York Times The New York Times bestselling story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog. When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building. While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them. Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.
