Private investigator Julianne McCarren would give anything to have her husband alive again but settles for the occasional comment he makes in her head. His wedding gift to her, a blue diamond necklace named Angel Falls, goes missing from her safety deposit box in New York, with only a replica in its place. Aided by Security Specialist Macklin Pierce and her niece, Julianne sorts through obsessed in-laws, a grieving bank vault escort, a scheming mistress, and a threatening gang member, all with Russian ties. Who made the replica, why was a bicycle messenger killed, and will Julianne recover her necklace before it's lost forever?
Julianne McCarren and her niece, Rippa, are in New Orleans to attend a wedding and enjoy Mardi Gras. Their visit takes a peculiar turn at the bridal shower when they discover their hostess's gardener had requested upon his death that he be embalmed and displayed in her back garden. Even stranger—the body turns out not to be the right one. The gardener has been replaced by the murdered body of the hostess's next-door neighbor. Julianne and Rippa embark on a quest to find out why. Was his death a random killing, or are the rumors of hidden treasure in his house true?
Melody, a young single mother, discovers she's descended from the last Tsar, Nicholas II. She becomes the best hope of a secret global society, Guardians of the Romanov Legacy, dedicated to restoring a Romanov to the throne of a New Russia. A diary and an heirloom necklace inherited from her murdered grandmother hold the key to her identity and to the location of the Tsar's lost shipment of gold. She must accept the sacrifices her birth demands and trust the machinations of the estranged father of her child. To refuse means turning her back on her heritage, her daughter's legacy, and the long line of her family's women who were keepers of the secret. Will her longing for true love have world-changing consequences?
The tale begins over three-hundred years ago, when the Fair People—the goblins, fairies, dragons, and other fabled and fantastic creatures of a dozen lands—fled the Old World for the New, seeking haven from the ways of Man. With them came their precious jewels: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls... But then the Fair People vanished, taking with them their twelve fabulous treasures. And they remained hidden until now... Across North America, these twelve treasures, over ten-thousand dollars in precious jewels, are buried. The key to finding each can be found within the twelve full color paintings and verses of The Secret. Yet The Secret is much more than that. At long last, you can learn not only the whereabouts of the Fair People's treasure, but also the modern forms and hiding places of their descendants: the Toll Trolls, Maitre D'eamons, Elf Alphas, Tupperwerewolves, Freudian Sylphs, Culture Vultures, West Ghosts and other delightful creatures in the world around us. The Secret is a field guide to them all. Many "armchair treasure hunt" books have been published over the years, most notably Masquerade (1979) by British artist Kit Williams. Masquerade promised a jewel-encrusted golden hare to the first person to unravel the riddle that Williams cleverly hid in his art. In 1982, while everyone in Britain was still madly digging up hedgerows and pastures in search of the golden hare, The Secret: A Treasure Hunt was published in America. The previous year, author and publisher Byron Preiss had traveled to 12 locations in the continental U.S. (and possibly Canada) to secretly bury a dozen ceramic casques. Each casque contained a small key that could be redeemed for one of 12 jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York. The key to finding the casques was to match one of 12 paintings to one of 12 poetic verses, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging. Since 1982, only two of the 12 casques have been recovered. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1984 by a group of students. The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005, but the hunt for his casques continues.
Heartsick unpacks the destruction of love by following the true stories of three lives altered by a major heartbreak. I wrote this book for the person who doesn’t want to be told that this too shall pass. Not yet. Who wants to sit with it. And see it for what it is. Who wants to know they’re not alone. That their pain is at once unique and universal. Belonging to them and everyone. When we’re thrown into the chaos of heartsickness, we focus so much on the end. The fact we are now unloved seems so much more important than the reality that we once were. This book was born in the hours I’ve waited for men to message me back and who never did... In the years full of almost-relationships, I thought, “I cannot handle another rejection,” and then found myself turned down by someone I wasn’t even sure I liked. I wrote this book because I know what it is to feel fundamentally unlovable. I knew when I was looking for Ana, Patrick, and Claire that their stories had to be true, because within them would be nuances I’d never noticed before and realities I couldn’t have invented. I didn’t want to be limited by what I happened to know about love and loss. I wanted to learn from people as I wrote, injecting wisdom from different places and genders and ages into this book. Weaving together these three true stories, Jessie Stephens captures the painful but wholeheartedly universal experience of heartbreak. Deeply relatable, addictive to the very last page, and powerfully human, Heartsick reminds us that emotional pain can make us as it breaks us and that storytelling has the ultimate healing power. In the solitude that reading a book demands, one is forced to reflect on one’s own life. After all, every time we explore others, we’re mostly just exploring ourselves. These are their stories—Ana’s and Patrick’s and Claire’s. But it is also my story and our story. I trust within it you will find echoes of yourself.
“A funny, savage appraisal of a totally automated American society of the future.”—San Francisco Chronicle Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul’s rebellion is vintage Vonnegut—wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality. Praise for Player Piano “An exuberant, crackling style . . . Vonnegut is a black humorist, fantasist and satirist, a man disposed to deep and comic reflection on the human dilemma.”—Life “His black logic . . . gives us something to laugh about and much to fear.”—The New York Times Book Review
It's time for the littles of Enchanted Brook to become aquatic problem solvers! Beckett is anxious about learning to swim because he's not a water-loving animal like his friends. Along the way, Beckett learns some important lessons about swimming, water safety, and life in general, by realizing that if he puts his mind to it, he can do hard things. Caregivers will also learn about drowning prevention, and the critical layers of protection recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to provide a system of increased security in an aquatic environment.
Reinaldo Arenas was born to a poverty-stricken family in rural Cuba. By the time of his death in New York four decades later, he had become one of Cuba's most important poets, an outspoken critic of Castro's regime and one of the leading gay voices of the twentieth century. In Before Night Falls, Arenas tells of his odyssey from young rebel fighting for the Revolution, through his suppression as a writer, his disillusionment with Castro, his imprisonment and torture, to his eventual exile from Cuba to New York, where in 1987 he was diagnosed with AIDS. He committed suicide in 1990, ending a life of constant struggle against repression. In a farewell note, Arenas wrote: Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression that causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life ... I do not want to convey to you a message of defeat, but of continued struggle and hope. Cuba will be free. I already am. (signed) Reinaldo Arenas
