Ninety-nine elite American soldiers are trapped in the middle of a hostile city. As night falls, they are surrounded by thousands of enemy gunmen. Their wounded are bleeding to death. Their ammunition and supplies are dwindling. This is the story of how they got there -- and how they fought...  more

Ninety-nine elite American soldiers are trapped in the middle of a hostile city. As night falls, they are surrounded by thousands of enemy gunmen. Their wounded are bleeding to death. Their ammunition and supplies are dwindling. This is the story of how they got there -- and how they fought their way out. This is the story of war. Black Hawk Down drops you into a crowded marketplace in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia with the U.S. Special Forces and puts you in the middle of the most intense firelight American soldiers have fought since the Vietnam war. Late in the afternoon of Sunday, October 3, 1993, the soldiers of Task Form Ranger was send on a mission to capture two top lieutenants of a renegade warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take them about an hour. Instead, they were pinned down through a long and terrible night, locked in a desperate struggle to kill or be killed. When the unit was finally rescued the following morning, eighteen American soldiers were dead and dozens more badly injured. The Somali toll was far worse; more than five hundred felled and over a thousand wounded. Award-winning literary journalist Mark Bowden's dramatic narrative captures this harrowing ordeal through the eyes of the young men who fought that day. He draws on his extensive interviews of participants from both sides -- as well as classified combat video and radio transcripts -- to bring their stories to life. Authoritative, gripping, and insightful, Black Hawk Down is a riveting look at the terror and exhilaration of combat destined to become a classic of war reporting.

A young woman reflects on her childhood and her relationship with her hard-working immigrant mother, exploring important issues about what children need from their mothers and what children are capable of giving to them in return.

This is the story of the Louis, as told in his own words, of his journey through mortal and immortal life. Louis recounts how he became a vampire at the hands of the radiant and sinister Lestat and how he became indoctrinated, unwillingly, into the vampire way of life. His story ebbs and flows...  more

This is the story of the Louis, as told in his own words, of his journey through mortal and immortal life. Louis recounts how he became a vampire at the hands of the radiant and sinister Lestat and how he became indoctrinated, unwillingly, into the vampire way of life. His story ebbs and flows through the streets of New Orleans, defining crucial moments such as his discovery of the exquisite lost young child Claudia, wanting not to hurt but to comfort her with the last breaths of humanity he has inside. Yet, he makes Claudia a vampire, trapping her womanly passion, will, and intelligence inside the body of a small child. Louis and Claudia form a seemingly unbreakable alliance and even "settle down" for a while in the opulent French Quarter. Louis remembers Claudia's struggle to understand herself and the hatred they both have for Lestat that sends them halfway across the world to seek others of their kind. Louis and Claudia are desperate to find somewhere they belong, to find others who understand, and someone who knows what and why they are. Louis and Claudia travel Europe, eventually coming to Paris and the ragingly successful Theatre des Vampires -- a theatre of vampires pretending to be mortals pretending to be vampires. Here they meet the magnetic and ethereal Armand, who brings them into a whole society of vampires. But Louis and Claudia find that finding others like themselves provides no easy answers and in fact presents dangers they scarcely imagined.

Winston Churchill's history of the cataclysm that swept the world remains the definitive history of the Second World War. The New York Public Library, in looking back on the greatest books of the past century, called Churchill's history "monumental" and said that the author "drew upon...  more

Winston Churchill's history of the cataclysm that swept the world remains the definitive history of the Second World War. The New York Public Library, in looking back on the greatest books of the past century, called Churchill's history "monumental" and said that the author "drew upon thousands of his own memoranda and documents in British archives, but in the end, this epic is structured on his personal experiences and expresses his courage and astonishing self-confidence." This is the third volume of this Nobel-Prize winning six-part chronicle of World War II. Hitler's ruthless shepherding of German military strength and threats lead to the formation of the Allies in the face of war.

Historical fact and startling literary invention converge in this stunning novel by "America's principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers" (The Boston Book Review). Praised by Caleb Carr for his "brilliantly detailed and above all riveting" true-crime writing, Harold Schechter...  more

Historical fact and startling literary invention converge in this stunning novel by "America's principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers" (The Boston Book Review). Praised by Caleb Carr for his "brilliantly detailed and above all riveting" true-crime writing, Harold Schechter brings his expertise to a marvelous work of fiction in the tradition of Carr's own The Alienist. Superbly rendering the 1830s Baltimore of Edgar Allan Poe, Schechter taps into the dark genius of that legendary author -- and follows a labyrinthine path into the heart of a most heinous crime. He is an aspiring writer, plagued by dreadful ruminations -- a man whose troubled nights are haunted by dreams of his angelic cousin Virginia. He is Edgar Allan Poe, a literary critic known for his uncompromising standards and scathing pen. His recently published attack on the autobiography of Colonel David Crockett, U.S. congressman and celebrated American hero, has brought the indignant frontiersman -- unexpected, uninvited -- to the chamber door of Poe's private sanctum. Neither man is prepared for where this fateful meeting will take them: on a quest for a killer through the city's highest and lowest streets and byways. In a modest boarding house, an elderly widow of sad circumstance has been found murdered by an unknown assailant. On the wall above her bed, scrawled in the victim's blood, is a single, cryptic word. But the meaning of the chilling clue is merely one piece in a complex puzzle that ensnares the writer and the politician in a twisted and deadly game. For the ghastly crimes, each more bizarre than the last, have only just begun. Combining the phantasmagoric voice of Poe's legendary tales with an historian's exactness, Harold Schechter hovers between fact and fiction, horror and passion, destiny and doom, while conjuring historical detail with uncanny precision. Published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Poe's death, Nevermore is both a tour de force of narrative suspense and a dazzling secret history of one of American literature's unique and enduring figures.

It's December in the Park, and a ranger is missing. It's no great loss to the rest of the Park rats, they figure he's stumbled into a snowbank and will re-emerge come breakup, just in time for the ground to thaw and them to bury him. But when the man sent to look for him also...  more

It's December in the Park, and a ranger is missing. It's no great loss to the rest of the Park rats, they figure he's stumbled into a snowbank and will re-emerge come breakup, just in time for the ground to thaw and them to bury him. But when the man sent to look for him also disappears, Kate Shugak, ex-investigator for the Anchorage D.A. and Park homesteader, is sent in search of them both.   First in the Kate Shugak series.

Her roguish husband now dead, Lady Appleton, travels with a new suitor to Maidstone. While there, she learns that two gentlewomen, Constance Crane and her elderly cousin Lucy, are being jailed for bewitching two men to death-and face execution if convicted. Although Constance happens to be a...  more

Her roguish husband now dead, Lady Appleton, travels with a new suitor to Maidstone. While there, she learns that two gentlewomen, Constance Crane and her elderly cousin Lucy, are being jailed for bewitching two men to death-and face execution if convicted. Although Constance happens to be a former mistress of Robert, Susanna puts the past to rest and vows to help. Using her vast knowledge of herbs-and the talents of her gossiping housekeeper-Lady Appleton soon deduces that the deaths are the work of a mysterious poisoner. But can she root out the killer before Constance and Lucy face the gallows-and before Susanna's own life is threatened? Emerson once again "makes the early stages of the reign of Elizabeth I come gloriously to life" (The Midwest Book Review) in the fifth installment of this sparkling series.

There are two ways out of the spy game. Heads you run. Tails you die. It starts and ends with a coin flip. In between, Good News, Bad News turns the rules of the spy game upside down with a story of intrigue and suspense that is chock-full of delicious surprises right up until the final...  more

There are two ways out of the spy game. Heads you run. Tails you die. It starts and ends with a coin flip. In between, Good News, Bad News turns the rules of the spy game upside down with a story of intrigue and suspense that is chock-full of delicious surprises right up until the final spin. First, there’s the good news: George and Charlie are on their last posting for the Agency before retiring from the spy game. But in this business, the bad news is never far away. And in this case, the bad news could not be worse. In the blink of an eye, these two friends become lethal enemies—until it occurs to them that some orders just aren’t meant to be followed. The two are catapulted into a gauntlet of international espionage to uncover secrets that lie in the heart of the Agency—secrets that no one wants them to find. Using their spy tools against their old masters, George and Charlie live on their wits, fight for answers—and soon realize that the only people they can trust are each other. But in a world where no one is to be trusted, how much can you trust a fellow spy? Offering surprises on every page, pitch-perfect dialogue, and two unforgettable heroes, Good News, Bad News heralds the coming of the next great spy writer in David Wolstencroft.