A hardboiled novel about life in the American underground, from the pool halls of Portland to the cells of San Quentin. Simply one of the finest books ever written about being down on your luck. Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling is a tough-as-nails account of being down and out, but never down for good—a Dostoyevskian tale of crime, punishment, and the pursuit of an ever-elusive redemption. The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black runaway and pool hustler extraordinaire. A heist gone wrong gets Jack sent to reform school, from which he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary confinement. In the meantime Billy has joined the middle class—married, fathered a son, acquired a business and a mistress. But neither Jack nor Billy can escape their troubled pasts, and they will meet again in San Quentin before their strange double drama comes to a violent and revelatory end.
THE STORY: It's raining. Gabriel York is awaiting the arrival of his grown son whom he hasn't seen since he was seven. I know what he wants. He wants what all young men want from their fathers. He wants to know who he is. Where he comes from. Wher
CBS camera-man Mike Marriott was on the last plane to escape from Danang before it fell in the spring of 1975. The scene was pure chaos: thousands of panic-stricken Vietnamese storming the airliner, soldiers shooting women and children to get aboard first, refugees being trampled to death. Marriott remembers standing at the door of the aft stairway, which was gaping open as the plane took off. "There were five Vietnamese below me on the steps. As the nose of the aircraft came up, because of the force and speed of the aircraft, the Vietnamese began to fall off. One guy managed to hang on for a while, but at about 600 feet he let go and just floated off--just like a skydiver.... What was going through my head was, I've got to survive this, and at the same time, I've got to capture this on film. This is the start of the fall of a country. This country is gone. This is history, right here and now." In Tears Before the Rain, a stunning oral history of the fall of South Vietnam, Larry Engelmann has gathered together the testimony of seventy eyewitnesses (both American and Vietnamese) who, like Mike Marriott, capture the feel of history "right here and now." We hear the voices of nurses, pilots, television and print media figures, the American Ambassador Graham Martin, the CIA station chief Thomas Polgar, Vietnamese generals, Amerasian children, even Vietcong and North Vietnamese soldiers. Through this extraordinary range of perspectives, we experience first-hand the final weeks before Saigon collapsed, from President Thieu's cataclysmic withdrawal from Pleiku and Kontum, (Colonel Le Khac Ly, put in command of the withdrawal, recalls receiving the order: "I opened my eyes large, large, large. I thought I wasn't hearing clearly") to the last-minute airlift of Americans from the embassy courtyard and roof ("I remember when the bird ascended," says Stuart Herrington, who left on one of the last helicopters, "It banked, and there was the Embassy, the parking lot, the street lights. And the silence"). Touching, heroic, harrowing, and utterly unforgettable, these dramatic narratives illuminate one of the central events of modern history. "It was like being at Waterloo," concludes Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes. "It was so important, so historical. And today it is still very obvious that we Americans have not recovered from Vietnam....Nothing else in my lifetime was as important as that--as important as Vietnam."
A Japanese-American assassin who specializes in "natural cause" killings finds his carefully ordered world coming under siege in the wake of a government official's murder, with which he has been falsely connected, a situation that is complicated by his attraction to the victim's daugher. Reprint.
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Fish in a Tree comes a compelling story about perspective and learning to love the family you have. Delsie loves tracking the weather--lately, though, it seems the squalls are in her own life. She's always lived with her kindhearted Grammy, but now she's looking at their life with new eyes and wishing she could have a "regular family." Delsie observes other changes in the air, too--the most painful being a friend who's outgrown her. Luckily, she has neighbors with strong shoulders to support her, and Ronan, a new friend who is caring and courageous but also troubled by the losses he's endured. As Ronan and Delsie traipse around Cape Cod on their adventures, they both learn what it means to be angry versus sad, broken versus whole, and abandoned versus loved. And that, together, they can weather any storm.
A delightful picture book about a wonderfully wet walk. Simple text and colourful illustrations introduce the science of rain to very young children. This is a highly illustrated ebook that can only be read on the Kindle Fire or other tablet.
A poignant story of two estranged sisters from the New York Times bestselling author of the Tradd Street novels. At twenty Cassie Madison left her hometown of Walton, Georgia, for New York City, where she has reinvented herself—from losing herself in her career to squashing her accent. But one night a single phone call brings back everything she's tried to forget. She hasn't spoken to her sister since Harriet stole Cassie's fiancé and married him. But now Harriet's on the line with news that their father is dying. As she makes the trip back, the only thing that frightens Cassie more than losing her father is seeing Harriet and the family that should have been hers. But she can't help loving her nephews and nieces any more than she can help feeling at home again in Walton. As she fights a surprising reaction to a forgotten friend, and faces an unexpected threat to the family she'd once left behind, Cassie comes to realize that moving on doesn't always mean moving away from who you are.
Jack Chambers was all the way across the country-separated from his family-when life as he knew it came to a screeching halt. A virus straight out of a horror movie has been unleashed, turning friends, neighbors, and family members into a walking nightmare. Jack must fight to make his way back home to his wife and son from Florida all the way to Oregon in a world that is determined to kill them all. Sara Chambers considered herself to be a strong-minded military wife and mother. When her husband is called away for temporary duty, she never thought that her quiet, small-town life would be turned upside down. Following her husband's frantic instructions, Sara must protect their son, Freddie, and the last remaining members of the small town of Sandy, Oregon, and get them somewhere safe, get them to the one place Jack told her to take them-their cabin at Clear Lake. The world is no longer safe. It's kill or be killed. With the odds stacked against them, Jack and Sara fight to not only survive but to hold on to hope that their family can be reunited even against such incredible odds.
Luke believes in a quote he found in one of his favorite author’s book—that if you want something so bad, the universe will conspire to help you get it. Luke must have wanted to find love so much that Eureka, the girl of his dreams and the heroine of his favorite book, comes to life and falls in love with him. There is just one catch: Once Eureka reaches the end of her book’s storyline in the real world, then her story with Luke will end, too. Will the universe conspire to help the starcrossed lovers find true happiness with each other? One thing is for sure, Luke will do everything he can to keep Eureka forever.
