Joe Wilder is focused on turning a successful bodybuilding career into a billion-dollar international health and fitness conglomerate. He thinks he’s safely left behind his dangerous past as a CIA field agent—except for nightmares about gunfire, screams, and holding the lifeless body of a boy he cannot save. Facing massive price increases that could bankrupt his company, Joe travels to China for a confrontation with the ministry of trade. To his surprise, the deputy minister offers a deal in exchange for Joe helping her twelve-year-old son, Charley, travel to America. But when the minister is murdered within hours of signing the new contracts, Joe becomes both a suspect and the guardian of a boy with a secret. Relying on skills from his former life to stay alive, Joe has just four days to get Charley to safety before the most powerful criminal gang in China tracks them down. Hunted by every drug dealer, thug, and petty criminal who owes allegiance to the gang, can Joe and Charley survive long enough to see America? The Secret Empress is the gripping tale of an American entrepreneur’s dangerous quest to fulfill the last wish of a Chinese official before she is brutally murdered.
Long ago, war ravaged the lands of Estrana, until an agreement was set. A tentative peace is now on the verge of collapse from centuries-old prejudices. Verena never sought to conquer, nor rule, but betrayal forced her hand. To protect the forsaken, she must attend the quarter century meeting. And assume her place at the demon High Lord's table, just as her parents before. The blood in Verena's veins determined her path, but other's secrets will decide her fate. A lineage she has always denounced now weighs heavy upon her shoulders. The power of an Empress was never a weapon she wanted to wield, but for her people, she will take what is hers, by battle and blood. High Lady she was born, but an Empress she was destined to become.
Where Theodora went, trouble followed…. In sixth-century Constantinople, one woman, Theodora, defied every convention and all the odds and rose from common theater tart to empress of a great kingdom, the most powerful woman the Roman Empire would ever know. The woman whose image was later immortalized in glittering mosaic was a scrappy, clever, conniving, flesh-and-blood woman full of sensuality and spirit whose real story is as surprising as any ever told…. After her father dies suddenly, Theodora and her sisters face starvation and a life on the streets. Determined to survive, Theodora makes a living any way she can—first on her back with every man who will have her, then on the stage in a scandalous dramatization of her own invention. When her daring performance grants her a backdoor entry into the halls of power, she seizes the chance to win a wealthy protector—only to face heartbreak and betrayal. Ever resilient, Theodora rises above such trials and, by a twist of fate, meets her most passionate admirer yet: the emperor’s nephew. She thrives as his confidant and courtesan, but many challenges lie ahead. For one day this man will hand her a crown. And all the empire will wonder—is she bold enough, shrewd enough, and strong enough to keep it? READERS GUIDE INCLUDED
The Empress's Secret is a sixteen-point scientific program based on traditional Chinese medicine that calls on the body's own natural healing resources to completely rejuvenate the facial appearance. This method of light fingertip massage of certain points on the face and body results in an increase of circulation of blood and energy, or chi, to the face. This not only makes you feel better-more relaxed-it allows the lines of the face to soften while it tones the skin and supports the muscles of the face, so that you actually look younger and more vibrant. It is, in effect, an energetic facelift, right in your own fingertips.By following this ten-to-fifteen-minute regime daily for thirty days, you will most definitely see significant improvements, based on your age. At first these changes will be small and incremental. Within one month of starting this regime, with daily practice, you will notice considerable improvement in the tone of your face and the texture of the skin. The overall effect will be one of great rejuvenation. Over time, these youthening effects will continue, as this program derives its greatest benefits from its ongoing practice.
The Empress Eugénie was one of the most glamorous, celebrated and ultimately tragic figures of the nineteenth century. Wife of Napoleon III and close friend of Queen Victoria, she suffered the loss of her beloved sister, her only son, and her adopted country. But did Eugénie take her greatest secret-an illegitimate child, conceived when she was a teenager in Spain and fathered by the only man she ever truly loved-to the grave with her? And if so, what became of the child? After half a lifetime's research Joyce Cartlidge has pieced together evidence from historic records and clues in correspondence from Eugénie and her family and friends, some of it never printed before, to tell a compelling story of love and motherhood that ties the Spanish house of Montijo and the French throne to a small family in Victorian Lancashire. 'An extraordinary odyssey into family history' -The Mail on Sunday
FROM THE PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF A NAKED SINGULARITY Led by a renegade young owner out for revenge against her traitorous family, the Paterson Pork—New Jersey’s only Indoor Football League franchise—is challenging the Dallas Cowboys for championship glory. Meanwhile, a brilliant and lethal mastermind has gotten himself intentionally thrown into prison on Rikers Island with plans to commit the most audacious crime of all time. And is the world ending? Maybe. Filled with impossible triumphs and grave injustices, Lost Empress is another brilliant, hilarious, and eccentric masterpiece from Sergio de la Pava: a vibrant exultation of a novel, populated by a cast of unforgettable characters—immigrants, exiles, and outsiders—who will have you rooting for them, right up until the end.
Sandry, Daja, Briar, and Tris, are older now and back together again, in an exciting and much-awaited, stand-alone novel by everyone's favorite mage, Tamora Pierce. For years the Empress of Namorn has pressed her young cousin, Lady Sandrilene fa Toren, to visit her vast lands within the Empire's borders. Sandry has avoided the invitation for as long as it was possible. Now Sandry has agreed to pay that overdue visit. Sandry's uncle promises guards to accompany her. But they're hardly a group of warriors! They're her old friends from Winding Circle: Daja, Tris, and Briar. Sandry hardly knows them now. They've grown up and grown apart. Sandry isn't sure they'll ever find their old connection again - or if she even wants them to. When they arrive at the pala
Oscar Hijuelos vividly brings to life the joys, desires, and disappointment of American life witnessed through the experience of a formerly prosperous Cuban émigré named Lydia Espana--now a cleaning woman in New York. In magnetic prose, he juxtaposes Lydia's tale with the stories of her clients, contrasting her experiences with the secret lives of those for whom she works. No one writes better of love or the pulse of a city, nor has any writer better captured the complexity inherent in the emigration experience; how assimilation is at once the achievement of dreams, yet also a loss of the past. Empress of the Splendid Season is Hijuelos at his masterful best, a novel filled with incantatory, rhythmic prose and rich in heartfelt vision.
NOW A LOCUS AWARD FINALIST! “A classic space opera...a universe we’ve never seen before.” —Delilah S. Dawson, New York Times bestselling author From Hugo Award finalist Max Gladstone comes a smart, swashbuckling, wildly imaginative adventure; the saga of a rag-tag team of brilliant misfits, dangerous renegades, and enhanced outlaws in a war-torn future. A wildly successful innovator to rival Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Vivian Liao is prone to radical thinking, quick decision-making, and reckless action. On the eve of her greatest achievement, she tries to outrun people who are trying to steal her success. In the chilly darkness of a Boston server farm, Viv sets her ultimate plan into motion. A terrifying instant later, Vivian Liao is catapulted through space and time to a far future where she confronts a destiny stranger and more deadly than she could ever imagine. The end of time is ruled by an ancient, powerful Empress who blesses or blasts entire planets with a single thought. Rebellion is literally impossible to consider--until Vivian Liao arrives. Trapped between the Pride—a ravening horde of sentient machines—and a fanatical sect of warrior monks who call themselves the Mirrorfaith, Viv must rally a strange group of allies to confront the Empress and find a way back to the world and life she left behind. A magnificent work of vivid imagination and universe-spanning action, Empress of Forever is a feminist Guardians of the Galaxy crossed with Star Wars and spiced with the sensibility and spirit of Iain M. Banks and William Gibson. “Empress of Forever is tense and vast, complex and twisty, a space opera epic that’s a lot faster on the draw than Star Wars or Star Trek ever dreamed of being. But at its core, it’s an epic about the value of empathy and the importance of compassion. It’s amazingly good.”—Locus “With Empress of Forever, Max Gladstone’s remarkable talent is operating at full stretch, demonstrating the strength, power, and originality at his command. This unique and propulsive novel yields a deep, cellular-level enchantment filled at every turn with curiosity and delight.”—Peter Straub “Empress of Forever is a story that will make you weep with wonder. The whole book is filled with the kind of snark that I love and an endless majesty of stars. It broke me to pieces and then stitched me back together with golden thread. Simply glorious.”—K.B. Wagers, author of Behind the Throne “Galaxy-saving space opera with cool original settings and a unique band of adventurers that change each other for the better. It was a wild ride and I really enjoyed it.”—Martha Wells, Hugo Award-winning author of The Murderbot Diaries “Incorporates wonder and wit to create a feminist, humanist playground. Introduces one mind-blowing concept after another, capitalizing on the concept of personal power while candidly addressing personal failure. This feast for the imagination intelligently captures the complexities of a variety of relationships in an adrenaline-fueled series of escapades and will leave readers both exhausted and elated.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review “A fantastic tale of adventure on the grandest scale of epic space opera, spanning galaxies full of battles and traps as well as trade and negotiation, all told with humor as the crew seeks allies, weapons, and ships to fight back against The Empress to save the galaxy—and so Viv can find her way home.”—Booklist, starred review “Vivian is an amazing woman: with no more than her sharp wit in a universe of AIs and enhanced beings, she still ends up being the key to the truth. Gladstone's epic space opera and fast-paced adventure will thrill readers.”—Library Journal, starred review At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
