Featured Book – The Drowning House: A Novel by Elizabeth Black

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Our Tech Guy | Permalink 0

The Drowning House A Novel by Elizabeth BlackA gripping suspense story about a woman who returns to Galveston, Texas after a personal tragedy and is irresistibly drawn into the insular world she’s struggled to leave.

Photographer Clare Porterfield’s once-happy marriage is coming apart, unraveling under the strain of a family tragedy. When she receives an invitation to direct an exhibition in her hometown of Galveston, Texas, she jumps at the chance to escape her grief and reconnect with the island she hasn’t seen for ten years. There Clare will have the time and space to search for answers about her troubled past and her family’s complicated relationship with the wealthy and influential Carraday family. 

Soon she finds herself drawn into a century-old mystery involving Stella Carraday. Local legend has it that Stella drowned in her family’s house during the Great Hurricane of 1900, hanged by her long hair from the drawing room chandelier. Could Stella have been saved? What is the true nature of Clare’s family’s involvement? The questions grow like the wildflower vines that climb up the walls and fences of the island. And the closer Clare gets to the answers, the darker and more disturbing the truth becomes.

Steeped in the rich local history of Galveston, The Drowning House portrays two families, inextricably linked by tragedy and time.

“The Drowning House marks the emergence of an impressive new literary voice. Elizabeth Black’s suspenseful inquiry into dark family secrets is enriched by a remarkable succession of images, often minutely observed, that bring characters, setting, and story sharply into focus.” —John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

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Featured Book – Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Our Tech Guy | Permalink 0

New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini illuminates the extraordinary friendship between Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, a former slave who won her freedom by the skill of her needle, and the friendship of the First Lady by her devotion.

In Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, novelist Jennifer Chiaverini presents a stunning account of the friendship that blossomed between Mary Todd Lincoln and her seamstress, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Keckley, a former slave who gained her professional reputation in Washington, D.C. by outfitting the city’s elite. Keckley made history by sewing for First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln within the White House, a trusted witness to many private moments between the President and his wife, two of the most compelling figures in American history.
 
In March 1861, Mrs. Lincoln chose Keckley from among a number of applicants to be her personal “modiste,” responsible not only for creating the First Lady’s gowns, but also for dressing Mrs. Lincoln in the beautiful attire Keckley had fashioned. The relationship between the two women quickly evolved, as Keckley was drawn into the intimate life of the Lincoln family, supporting Mary Todd Lincoln in the loss of first her son, and then her husband to the assassination that stunned the nation and the world.

Keckley saved scraps from the dozens of gowns she made for Mrs. Lincoln, eventually piecing together a tribute known as the Mary Todd Lincoln Quilt. She also saved memories, which she fashioned into a book, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Upon its publication, Keckley’s memoir created a scandal that compelled Mary Todd Lincoln to sever all ties with her, but in the decades since, Keckley’s story has languished in the archives. In this impeccably researched, engrossing novel, Chiaverini brings history to life in rich, moving style.

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Featured Book – Footprints in the Sand: A Piper Donovan Mystery (Piper Donovan Mysteries) by Mary Jane Clark

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Our Tech Guy | Permalink 0

Footprints in the Sand A Piper Donovan Mystery (Piper Donovan Mysteries) by Mary Jane ClarkIt’s the dead of winter and struggling actress and wedding-cake decorator Piper Donovan is thrilled to be in warm and romantic Sarasota, Florida, enjoying the powdery white beaches, soothing seas, and golden sunsets over the Gulf of Mexico. She and her family are there to celebrate her beloved cousin’s wedding. Not only is Piper creating the sugar-sand-dollar-festooned wedding cake, she’s also the maid of honor.

But a cloud seems to be hovering over the whole affair. Shortly after a bridesmaid mysteriously disappears, a kindly neighbor’s car is run off the road and a prospective witness, an innocent Amish teenager, is threatened to keep silent. Then a body is found on the beach where the wedding will take place. With the nuptials threatened, it falls to Piper to unmask a killer. Could it be the wedding planner with something to hide? A doctor and his wife who collect unusual Japanese figurines? The best man, an ex–drug dealer with lecherous eyes and roving hands? What about her cousin’s future stepfather—or even the bridegroom himself?

As Piper gets close to figuring out who’s been covering his guilty footprints in the sand, the cunning killer has already set his sights on Piper as his next victim!

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Featured Book – The Wrath of Angels: A Charlie Parker Thriller by John Connolly

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Our Tech Guy | Permalink 0

The Wrath of Angels A Charlie Parker Thriller by John ConnollyIn the depths of the Maine woods, the wreckage of a plane is discovered. There are no bodies, and no such plane has ever been reported missing, but men both good and evil have been seeking it for a long, long time.
What the wreckage conceals is more important than money. It is power: a list of names, a record of those who have struck a deal with the devil. Now a battle is about to commence between those who want the list to remain secret and those for whom it represents a crucial weapon in the struggle against the forces of darkness.

The race to secure the prize draws in private detective Charlie Parker, a man who knows more than most about the nature of the terrible evil that seeks to impose itself on the world, and who fears that his own name may be on the list. It lures others, too: a beautiful, scarred woman with a taste for killing; a silent child who remembers his own death; and a serial killer known as the Collector, who sees in the list new lambs for his slaughter. But as the rival forces descend upon this northern state, the woods prepare to meet them, for the forest depths hide other secrets.

Someone has survived the crash. Something has survived the crash.

And it is waiting. . . .

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Featured Book – Mr. Monk Gets Even by Lee Goldberg

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Our Tech Guy | Permalink 0
An all-new original mystery starring Adrian Monk, the brilliant investigator who always knows when something’s out of place….It may be a foggy San Francisco summer, but for Adrian Monk the future is looking bright. Natalie is off working as a cop in Summit, his brother Ambrose and Yuki are a week away from their wedding, Monk has a new assistant—Natalie’s daughter Julie—and even a girlfriend, Ellen Morse.All this change doesn’t keep Monk from work, though. He’s investigating a string of accidental deaths and suicides that he quickly determines are actually murders. But when the man Monk pegs for the murder is killed, Monk is forced to face the fact that, for the first time, he might actually be wrong. Have stability, domesticity, and happiness robbed Monk of his special skills? Has Monk lost his mojo?

Meanwhile, Monk’s imprisoned arch nemesis, the morbidly obese criminal mastermind Dale the Whale, is being transferred from prison to San Francisco General Hospital for an operation. But when Dale escapes and all signs point to Captain Stottlemeyer as his accomplice, Monk will have to reboot his detective skills to clear the captain’s name—and prove that he’s still the one and only Monk.

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Featured Book – The Road to Cardinal Valley by Earlene Fowler

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Our Tech Guy | Permalink 0
In this heartfelt and poignant follow-up to Earlene Fowler’s national bestseller, The Saddlemaker’s Wife, Ruby McGavin returns to the small town of Cardinal, California, where a year ago she brought her husband’s ashes back to his family’s ranch, and discovered safety, peace, and a love…
 
Ruby never thought she’d return to Cardinal, but she’s hoping the place and people who gave her so much can give her brother Nash—who’s been drowning in drink in Nashville—the fresh start he so desperately needs.
 

Saddlemaker Lucas McGavin is thrilled that Ruby has come back. He hasn’t given up on his love for her, despite the awkward fact that she is his brother’s widow, and he’s well aware that this may be his last chance to win Ruby’s heart.

When Nash starts drinking again and ends up in a devastating accident, Ruby decides she must find her estranged mother to help with an intervention. Two states away, Etta Walker harbors a horrible secret that keeps her from reconnecting with the children she deserted so many years ago.

 

As they struggle with the present and confront the past, Ruby, Lucas, and Etta learn the power of forgiveness…and reach for a new future filled with hope, grace, and love.

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Featured Book – Empire and Honor (Honor Bound) by W. E. B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Our Tech Guy | Permalink 0
October 1945: The Germans and Japanese have surrendered. For Cletus Frade and his colleagues in the OSS, it should be time to pack up, but they have far more important things to do.

In the closing months of the war, the United States made a secret deal with the head of German intelligence’s Soviet section. In exchange for a treasure trove of intelligence, including the identity of the Soviet spies in the American atomic bomb program, his people would be spirited to safety. If word got out, all hell would break loose, and the United States would lose some of its best sources, not to mention its most valuable secrets.

It is up to Frade and company to keep them all safe. But some people have other ideas.

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Featured Book – Collateral Damage (Stone Barrington) by Stuart Woods

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Our Tech Guy | Permalink 0
Stone Barrington returns in the thrilling new novel from the New York Times–bestselling author.

After a productive trip to Bel-Air, Stone Barrington is back in Manhattan—and back in his element, ready to return to the world of deluxe fine dining and elegant high society that New York does best.

But then an unexpected visit from his friend and periodic lover, CIA assistant director Holly Barker, draws Stone into a dangerous game of murder and vengeance, against an enemy with plans bigger than they could ever imagine. . . .

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Featured Book – The Lawgiver: A Novel by Herman Wouk

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Our Tech Guy | Permalink 0

For more than fifty years, legendary author Herman Wouk has dreamed of writing a novel about the life of Moses. Finally, at age ninety-seven, he has found an ingeniously witty way to tell the tale in The Lawgiver, a romantic and suspenseful epistolary novel about a group of people trying to make a movie about Moses in the present day. The story emerges from letters, memos, e-mails, journals, news articles, recorded talk, Skype transcripts, and text messages.
At the center of The Lawgiver is Margo Solovei, a brilliant young writer-director who has rejected her rabbinical father’s strict Jewish upbringing to pursue a career in the arts. When an Australian multibillionaire promises to finance a movie about Moses if the script meets certain standards, Margo does everything she can to land the job, including a reunion with her estranged first love, an influential lawyer with whom she still has unfinished business.

Two other key characters in the novel are Herman Wouk himself and his wife of more than sixty years, Betty Sarah, who, almost against their will, find themselves entangled in the Moses movie when the Australian billionaire insists on Wouk’s stamp of approval.

As Wouk and his characters contend with Moses and marriage, and the force of tradition, rebellion, and reunion, The Lawgiver reflects the wisdom of a lifetime. Inspired by the great nineteenth-century novelists, one of America’s most beloved twentieth-century authors has now written a remarkable twenty-first-century work of fiction.

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Featured Book – Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Our Tech Guy | Permalink 0

Former Los Angeles homicide detective Jack Sawyer, now living in a small Wisconsin town, is called on by the local police chief: Can Jack help his inexperienced force solve a string of gruesome murders that has struck the region? Although Jack cannot recall the events twenty years ago that led him to a parallel universe to save his dying mother, he senses an otherworldly force behind the killings. Drawn back to the Territories and his hidden past, Jack must now encounter the ferocious evils sheltered inside a terrifying house at the end of a deserted tract of forest.

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