July 2006
Monthly Archive
Mon 31 Jul 2006
Some mistakes can change your life forever. For Matt Hunter, that mistake came in one terrible moment when his attempt to help a friend and stop a fight resulted in an accidental death. Matt was convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison. Time that his peers spent in college, Matt endured behind bars.
Now, nine years after his release from prison, his innocence long forgotten, he’s an ex-con who takes nothing for granted. With his wife Olivia pregnant, and the two of them closing on a house in his hometown, things are looking up. Until the day Matt gets a shocking, inexplicable video call from Olivia’s phone. And in an instant, the unraveling begins.
A mysterious man who begins tailing Matt turns up dead. A beloved nun is murdered. And local and federal authorities, including homicide investigator Loren Muse, a childhood schoolmate of Matt’s with a troubled past of her own, see all signs pointing to a former criminal with one murder already under his belt…Matt Hunter. Unwilling to lose everything for a second time, Matt and Olivia are forced outside the law in a desperate attempt to save their future together.
An electrifying thrill-ride of a novel that peeks behind the white picket fences of suburbia, The Innocent is at once a twisting, turning, emotionally-charged story and a compelling tale of the choices we make and the repercussions that never leave us.
Tags: the innocent, harlan coben, mysteries & thrillers, convicted criminal, ex-con, murder suspect
Sun 30 Jul 2006
Posted by Lady Jane under
FictionNo Comments
It is New Year’s Eve when the storm of the century hits northern California. In a quiet neighborhood in San Francisco, amid the chaos of fallen trees and damaged homes, the lives of three strangers are about to collide. For Quinn Thompson, what happens in the storm’s wake will bring down a barrier he has built around himself since his wife’s death. For neighbor Maggie Dartman, it will spark friendship at a time when she needs it most. And for Jack Adams, a carpenter who will repair Quinn’s and Maggie’s homes, the storm brings an opportunity: to help two people and to be repaid with the greatest gift of all.
As three lives come together and a unique friendship is forged, something extraordinary begins to happen. Maggie, still grieving a loss, slowly comes alive again and Jack finally shares a painful secret he has hidden for years. But at the center of the friendship is Quinn. A man who has scaled heights of success in business, Quinn is now adrift, waiting as builders put the finishing touches on his newest passion, a 180-foot yacht he plans to sail around the world. Looking back at all he missed with his family while he built his empire, Quinn is consumed by guilt, focused only on escaping to the sea. But as his plans near completion, and his friendship with Maggie begins to change, Quinn faces a choice between a safe haven and an adventure of the heart. The choice he makes will affect other lives as powerfully as his own. And it will take him on an extraordinary journey and into a second, terrifying storm, one that will bring him danger…or deliverance.
Danielle Steel brings us miracles big and small, the kind we are blessed with and those we give to others. With a subtle hand and a flawless touch, she has written a novel that soars with hope, and makes us laugh, cry, and care.
Tags: miracle, danielle steel, fiction, storm, friendship
Other books by the same author:
Sat 29 Jul 2006
The “Big Three” are a trio of inmates locked up in the Minnesota Security Hospital over the years, each a particularly vicious serial killer, each with his own distinct style and propensities. Everybody feels much safer knowing that they’re behind bars. Except…there’s a new killer on the loose. And his handiwork bears a disturbing resemblance to some of the finer points practiced by the Big Three, details that never even made the papers.
Lucas Davenport and his team quickly hone in on a possible suspect, a man named Charlie Pope, who was released from the same hospital prison a few weeks earlier, and who now seems to have cut himself free from his court-imposed ankle bracelet and disappeared. But is he really the one? And why do the Big Three look so agitated?
Brilliantly suspenseful, consistently surprising, once again, Sandford has outdone himself.
Tags: broken prey, john sandford, mysteries & thrillers, lucas davenport, serial killer
Other books by the same author:
Fri 28 Jul 2006
The only book about the war in Iraq by a soldier on the ground, destined to become a classic of war literature.
John Crawford joined the Florida National Guard to pay for his college tuition; it had seemed a small sacrifice to give up one weekend a month and two weeks a year in exchange for a free education. But one semester short of graduating, and newly married, he was called to active duty, to serve in Kuwait, then on the front lines of the invasion of Iraq, and ultimately in Baghdad. While serving in Iraq, Crawford began writing short nonfiction stories, his account of what he and his fellow soldiers experienced in the war. At the urging of a journalist embedded with his unit, he began sending his pieces out of the country via an anonymous Internet e-mail account.
In a voice at once raw and immediate, Crawford’s work vividly chronicles the daily life of a young soldier in Iraq: the excitement, the horror, the anger, the tedium, the fear, the camaraderie. Altogether, the stories slowly uncover something more: the transformation of a group of young college students, innocents, into something entirely different.
Tags: the last true story i’ll ever tell: an accidental soldier’s account of the war in iraq, john crawford, biographies and memoirs, nonfiction, iraq, war, gulf war, america, arab-american, arab, islam, muslim, journalism
Thu 27 Jul 2006
Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of being Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain.
Suddenly, at age 12, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian house in perfect squalor. The doctor’s bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard shed completed the tableau. Here, there were no rules. There was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer, and Valium was eaten like Pez. And when things went dull, there was always the vintage electroshock-therapy machine under the stairs…
Running with Scissors is at turns foul and harrowing, compelling and maniacally funny. But above all, it is a truly amazing chronicle of an ordinary boy’s survival under the most extraordinary circumstances.
Tags: running with scissors: a memoir, augusten burroughs, bios & memoirs, history, nonfiction, child abuse, susie selects, susie bright
Other books by the same author:
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