October 2006
Monthly Archive
Tue 31 Oct 2006
Senior FBI agent Nick Pellisante is closing in on the notorious mob boss “The Electrician”, when the scheduled sting goes spectacularly awry. Two FBI agents are dead, the boss is wounded, and Pellisante vows the Electrician’s next move will be from a jail cell.
Andie Echeverra, a part-time actress and a single, full-time mom, is assigned her next role as Juror #11 in the landmark trial against Mafia Don Dominic Cavello. Everybody is on edge. No one has ever crossed the man whose orders have made entire families disappear.
Though Cavello’s influence extends across blue uniforms and black robes, the case should be open-and-shut. But the legal system fails with devastating results, and Nick and Andie are the only ones left to seek justice. To stop the Electrician, they must take matters into their own hands. They are the judge and jury now.
James Patterson spins an all-out heart-pounding legal thriller that pits two people against the most vicious and powerful mobster since John Gotti.
Tags: judge & jury, james patterson and andrew gross, arts & entertainment, mysteries & thrillers, mob, law, juries, stings, justice, nick pellisante
Other books by the same author:
Mon 30 Oct 2006
Jon Stewart, host of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning The Daily Show, and his coterie of patriots deliver a hilarious look at American government.
Termed a “political king-maker” by Newsweek, and “the Dan Rather of infotainment” by Vanity Fair, Jon Stewart, along with the writers of The Daily Show, combines his riotous wit and razor-sharp insight in this hilarious book.
American-style democracy is the world’s most beloved form of government, which explains why so many other nations are eager for us to impose it on them. But what is American democracy?
In America (The Audiobook), Jon Stewart and The Daily Show writing staff offer their insights into our unique system of government, dissecting its institutions, explaining its history and processes, and exploring the reasons why concepts like “one man, one vote”, “government by the people”, and “every vote counts” have become such popular urban myths.
Among the topics:
Ancient Rome: The First Republicans
The Founding Fathers: Young, Gifted, and White
The President: King of Democracy
The Supreme Court: 18 Legs, Four Tits, One Mission
Running for Office: What Are You Thinking?
The Media: Can It Be Stopped?
The Future of Democracy: The Constitutional Robocracy and You!
This program contains explicit language.
Tags: the daily show with jon stewart presents america : a citizen’s guide to democracy inaction, jon stewart and the writers of the daily show, arts & entertainment, comedy, history, nonfiction, students, the daily show, a citizen’s guide to democracy inaction, politics, american government, democracy
Sun 29 Oct 2006
Posted by Lady Jane under
FictionNo Comments
Olympia Crawford Rubinstein has a busy legal career, a solid marriage, and a way of managing her thriving family with grace, humor, and boundless energy. With twin daughters finishing high school, a son at Dartmouth, and a kindergartner from her second marriage, there seems to be no challenge to which Olympia cannot rise. Until one sunny day in May, when she opens an invitation for her daughters to attend the most exclusive coming-out ball in New York and chaos erupts all around her. One twin’s excitement is balanced by the other’s outrage; her previous husband’s profound snobbism is in sharp contrast to her current husband’s flat refusal to attend.
For Olympia’s husband, Harry, whose parents survived the Holocaust, the idea of a blue-blood debutante ball is abhorrent. Her daughter Veronica, a natural-born rebel, agrees, while Veronica’s identical twin, Virginia, is already shopping for the perfect dress. Then there’s Olympia’s ex, an insufferable snob, who sees the ball as the perfect opportunity for a family feud. And amid all the hubbub, Olympia’s college-age son, Charlie, is facing a turning point in his life, and may need his mother more than ever. But despite it all, Olympia is determined to steer her family through the event until, just days before the cotillion, things begin to unravel with alarming speed.
From a son’s crisis to a daughter’s heartbreak, from a case of the chicken pox to a political debate raging in her household, Olympia is on the verge of surrender. And that is when, in a series of startling choices and changes of heart, family, friends, and even a blue-haired teenager all find a way to turn a night of calamity into an evening of magic. As old wounds are healed, barriers are shattered, and new traditions are born, a debutante ball becomes a catalyst for change, revelation, acceptance, and love.
Tags: coming out, danielle steel, fiction, family, debutante, glamour
Other books by the same author:
Sat 28 Oct 2006
Posted by Liz Lewis under
History ,
NonfictionNo Comments
Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post senior Pentagon correspondant Thomas E. Ricks’ Fiasco is masterful and explosive reckoning with the planning and execution of the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq, based on the unprecedented candor of key participants.
The American military is a tightly sealed community, and few outsiders have reason to know that a great many senior officers view the Iraq war with incredulity and dismay. But many officers have shared their anger with renowned military reporter Thomas E. Ricks, and in Fiasco, Ricks combines these astonishing on-the-record military accounts with his own extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to create a spellbinding account of an epic disaster.
As many in the military publicly acknowledge here for the first time, the guerrilla insurgency that exploded several months after Saddam’s fall was not foreordained. In fact, to a shocking degree, it was created by the folly of the war’s architects. But the officers who did raise their voices against the miscalculations, shortsightedness, and general failure of the war effort were generally crushed, their careers often ended. A willful blindness gripped political and military leaders, and dissent was not tolerated.
There are a number of heroes in Fiasco; inspiring leaders from the highest levels of the Army and Marine hierarchies to the men and women whose skill and bravery led to battlefield success in towns from Fallujah to Tall Afar, but again and again, strategic incoherence rendered tactical success meaningless. There was never any question that the U.S. military would topple Saddam Hussein, but as Fiasco shows, there was also never any real thought about what would come next. This blindness has ensured the Iraq war a place in history as nothing less than a fiasco.
Fair, vivid, and devastating, Fiasco is an audiobook whose tragic verdict feels definitive.
Tags: fiasco: the american military adventure in iraq, thomas e. ricks, history, nonfiction, the american military adventure in iraq, war on terror, saddam, army, marines
Fri 27 Oct 2006
Posted by James McBride under
FictionNo Comments
On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down’s Syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret.
But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a century in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that long-ago winter night.
A brilliantly crafted, stunning debut, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter explores the way life takes unexpected turns, and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets burst into the open.
Tags: the memory keeper’s daughter, kim edwards, fiction, down syndrome, guilt, birth defect, family secret, lie
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