Dai Wei lies in his bedroom, a prisoner in his body, after he was shot in the head at the Tiananmen Square protest ten years earlier and left in a coma. As his mother tends to him, and his friends bring news of their lives in an almost unrecognisable China, Dai Wei escapes into his memories, weaving together the events that took him from his harsh childhood in the last years of the Cultural Revolution to his time as a microbiology student at Beijing University. As the minute-by-minute chronicling of the lead-up to his shooting becomes ever more intense, the reader is caught in a gripping, emotional journey where the boundaries between life and death are increasingly blurred

Lying in the sand dunes of Baritone Bay are the bodies of a middle-aged couple. Celice and Joseph, in their mid-50s and married for more than 30 years, are returning to the seacoast where they met as students. Instead, they are battered to death by a thief with a chunk of granite. Their corpses lie undiscovered and rotting for a week, prey to sand crabs, flies, and gulls. Yet there remains something touching about the scene, with Joseph's hand curving lightly around his wife's leg, "quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet." ""Their bodies had expired, but anyone could tell-just look at them-that Joseph and Celice were still devoted. For while his hand was touching her, curved round her shin, the couple seemed to have achieved that peace the world denies, a period of grace, defying even murder. Anyone who found them there, so wickedly disfigured, would nevertheless be bound to see that something of their love had survived the death of cells. The corpses were surrendered to the weather and the earth, but they were still a man and wife, quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet."" From that moment forward, "Being Dead" becomes less about murder and more about death. Alternating chapters move back in time from the murder in hourly and two-hourly increments. As the narrative moves backward, we see Celice and Joseph make the small decisions about their day that will lead them inexorably towards their own deaths. In other chapters the narrative moves forward. Celice and Joseph are on vacation and nobody misses them until they do not return. Thus, it is six days before their bodies are found. Crace describes in minute detail their gradual return to the land with the help of crabs, birds, and the numerous insects that attack the body and gently and not so gently prepare it for the dust-to-dust phase of death

The sexy second installment in the Inside Out erotic romance trilogy, following If I Were You—in the seductive tradition of Fifty Shades of Grey. Fascinated by the dark fantasies in the journals she’s discovered, and the two men who have now found a place in her life, Sara McMillan finds herself torn between her new life and her past. Now, more than ever, Sara identifies with the lost journal writer, Rebecca, and is certain that something sinister has happened. In the arms of the sexy, tormented artist Chris Merit, Sara seeks answers about Rebecca and ends up discovering things about herself she never knew existed. Chris forces Sara to reconsider who she is and what she truly wants from life, but not before his dark desires threaten to tear them apart. Her boss, Mark Compton, offers her the shelter to understand just what those needs mean to her, and what they might have meant to Rebecca, but can she trust him to lead her to a final conclusion to Rebecca’s story?

A new army of killers was being recruited in Sicily by the Dons in the States. Young, tough, ruthless men were being smuggled into America, trained to wage brutal war within the underworld. The government wanted to hasten the butchery and let the Brotherhood strangles its own blood. Someone had to infiltrate the Mob, go right to the top and assassinate the Number One Don. It was an impossible assignment. So AXE gave it to Killmaster N3, Nick Carter!

Featuring brand-new stories by: Rawi Hage, Muhammad Abi Samra, Leila Eid, Hala Kawtharani, Marie Tawk, Bana Baydoun, Hyam Yared, Najwa Barakat, Alawiyeh Sobh, Mazen Zahreddine, Abbas Beydoun, Bachir Hilal, Zena El Khalil, Mazen Maarouf, and Tarek Abi Samra. Most of the writers in this volume are still living in Beirut, so this is an important contribution to Middle East literature — not the “outsider’s perspective” that often characterizes contemporary literature set in the region

Mack Bolan learns that archenemy Greb Strakhov is in Lebanon. The Executioner has a personal vendetta with the KGB terror merchant. Bolans mission is twofold: to settle the score with Strakhov, and to avenge the 240 U.S. Marines who lie dead in the wake of a suicide-bomber attack. A single life lost is unacceptable to Bolan. But not even the combat-hardened Executioner is prepared for the utter carnage he finds in Beirut. There, Death respects no barriers. In a conflict in which none of the warrior factions seem to want peace, Bolan knows what he has to do. Make sure that the savages instigating the strife are silenced — forever!

A city — known for its light-heartedness, vibrancy and capacity for fun — is ripped apart by war. A young man — full of the vim, vigour and desires of youth — refuses to allow his spirit to be dampened… November, 1980. An Egyptian writer has chosen the wrong time to come to Beirut in search of a publisher for his controversial book. Men with machine guns are on every street corner. When the writer meets an old friend from his revolutionary student days, he is introduced to two fascinating women: idealistic film-maker Antoinette and Lamia, the seductive wife of his would-be publisher. His attentions inevitably turn towards the two women, but the background rumble of strife and struggle becomes increasingly hard to ignore. Based on the author's real-life experience of the civil war in Lebanon, Beirut, Beirut is an exploration of how, even in the midst of chaos and violence, universals such as love, desire and yearning are still always our guiding forces