Bon, que je te dise… Tu vas trouver relatée ici la première affaire de la « Paris Détective Agency » que je dirige avec le brio dont tu me sais capable. Et cette première affaire, c'est pas la première venue, espère ! A cause de toutes les amazones qui la composent, moi, franchement, j'ai cru devenir chèvre. Ou plutôt bouc, ce qui est davantage dans mes emplois. Avec les frangines, tu sais jamais où tu en es. D'autant que cette fois-ci, je suis tombé sur un lot de luronnes qui ont des choses au chose (ne serait-ce que les miennes !). Tu vas voir ces Jeanne d'Arc, mon neveu, vérolières et ignifugées ! Pour reconnaître le bon grain de l' ivresse, dans un pareil cheptel, faut le télescope géant du mont Palomar. Et surtout pas craindre l'insomnie. Heureusement que Béru et Pinuche sont là pour me tenir la chandelle par les deux bouts !

What if you woke up tomorrow and discovered everyone disappeared — that you were the only person left on Earth? Andrew wakes up, only to discover his wife isn’t home and the power is out. There are no cars on the road either. Soon, he realizes the entire town has been deserted overnight and he’s the only person left for miles. While he has enough food and resources to survive for months if not years at home, his yearning to find his wife, Abby, compels him to search for her. The more he looks, though, the more he discovers things aren’t as they should be. Where did everyone go? How did this happen? Follow Andrew’s journey as he struggles in a world gone missing. A world that’s disappeared

It is early September 1942 and the German commander of the Sixth Army, General Paulus, assisted by the Fourth Panzer Army, is poised to advance on the Russian city of Stalingrad. His primary mission was to take the city, crushing this crucial centre of communication and manufacturing, and to secure the valuable oil fields in the Caucasus. What happens next is well known to any student of modern history: a brutal war of attrition, characterised by fierce hand-to-hand combat, that lasted for nearly two years, and the eventual victory by a resolute Soviet Red Army. A ravaged German Army was pushed into full retreat. This was the first defeat of Hitler’s territorial ambitions in Europe and a critical turning point of WWII. But the outcome could have been very different, as Peter Tsouras demonstrates in this fascinating alternate history of this fateful battle. By introducing minor — and realistic — adjustments, Tsouras presents a scenario in which the course of the battle runs quite differently, which in turn throws up disturbing possibilities regarding the outcome of the whole war

Finding a mysterious novel at her bedside plunges documentary filmmaker Catherine Ravenscroft into a living nightmare. Though ostensibly fiction, The Perfect Stranger recreates in vivid, unmistakable detail the terrible day Catherine became hostage to a dark secret, a secret that only one other person knew-and that person is dead. Now that the past is catching up with her, Catherine’s world is falling apart. Her only hope is to confront what really happened on that awful day even if the shocking truth might destroy her

From “one of his generation’s most inventive and gifted writers” (The New York Times) , intimate and sharply observed commentary on life, art, politics, and “the war on terror.” Mohsin Hamid’s brilliant, moving, and extraordinarily clever novels have not only made him an international bestseller, they have earned him a reputation as a “master critic of the modern global condition” (Foreign Policy). His stories are at once timeless and of-the-moment, and his themes are universal: love, language, ambition, power, corruption, religion, family, identity. Here he explores this terrain from a different angle in essays that deftly counterpoise the personal and the political, and are shot through with the same passion, imagination, and breathtaking shifts of perspective that gives his fiction its unmistakable electric charge. A “water lily” who has called three countries on three continents his home — Pakistan, the birthplace to which he returned as a young father; the United States, where he spent his childhood and young adulthood; and Britain, where he married and became a citizen — Hamid writes about overlapping worlds with fluidity and penetrating insight. Whether he is discussing courtship rituals or pop culture, drones or the rhythms of daily life in an extended family compound, he transports us beyond the scarifying headlines of an anxious West and a volatile East, beyond stereotype and assumption, and helps to bring a dazzling diverse global culture within emotional and intellectual reach

When Evie Walker goes home to spend time with her dying father, she discovers that his creaky old house in Hope's Fort, Colorado, is not the only legacy she stands to inherit. Hidden behind the old basement door is a secret and magical storeroom, a place where wondrous treasures from myth and legend are kept safe until they are needed again. The magic of the storeroom prevents access to any who are not intended to use the items. But just because it has never been done does not mean it cannot be done. And there are certainly those who will give anything to find a way in. Evie must guard the storeroom against ancient and malicious forces, protecting the past and the future even as the present unravels around them. Old heroes and notorious villains alike will rise to fight on her side or to undermine her most desperate gambits. At stake is the fate of the world, and the prevention of nothing less than the apocalypse

Ghoulies. Ghosties. Long-legged beasties. Things that go bump in the night... The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity-and humanity from them. Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she'd rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. Sounds pretty simple, right? It would be, if it weren't for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family's old enemies, the Covenant of St. George. When a Price girl meets a Covenant boy, high stakes, high heels, and a lot of collateral damage are almost guaranteed. To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone's spreading rumors about a dragon sleeping underneath the city

The Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius is one of the masterpieces by Machiavelli. This work narrates the writer’s comments as to how a democratic government should be established. Through the comparison of Venice and Rome a detailed analysis of different kinds of governments is given. Machiavelli has ingeniously presented different aspects of his own contentions. Thought-provoking!

The suburbs of Denver were no place to stay during a zombie outbreak, even worse the nuclear fallout was making the place downright uninhabitable. Max and his companions needed to get out of town fast, before they joined the ranks of the living dead or the just good old fashioned dead. This is book two in the Zombie Chronicles Trilogy, not a stand alone novel

Hugo Hamilton, the internationally acclaimed author of ‘The Speckled People’ and ‘Sailor in the Wardrobe’, turns his hand back to fiction with a compelling drama tracing Berlin’s central historical importance throughout the twentieth century. 1945. At the end of the second world war in Berlin, a young mother loses her two-year-old boy in the bombings. She flees to the south, where her father finds a young foundling of the same age among the refugee trains to replace the boy. He makes her promise never to tell anyone, including her husband—still fighting on the Russian front—that the boy is not her own. Nobody will know the difference. 2008. Gregor Liedmann is a Jewish man now in his sixties. He’s an old rocker who ran away from home, a trumpet player, a revolutionary stone-thrower left over from the 1968 generation. On a single day spent gathering fruit in an orchard outside Berlin with family and friends, Gregor looks back over his life, sifting through fact and memory in order to establish the truth. What happened on that journey south in the final days of the war? Why did his grandfather Emil disappear, and why did the gestapo torture Uncle Max? Here, in the calmness of the orchard, along with his ex-wife Mara and son Daniel, Gregor tries to unlock the secrets of his past. In his first novel since the best-selling memoir ‘The Speckled People’, Hugo Hamilton has created a truly compelling story of lost identity, and a remarkable reflection on the ambiguity of belonging

A psychopath… an empath… a genius. Three siblings who will save the world – or destroy it. They know nothing of each other. They know nothing of the Telling. But they’ll need to learn fast if they’re going to survive… A gripping new series about a collision of worlds, the power of destiny, and the darkness in us all…

Дауд, легендарный убийца, вернулся в Дануолл, на улицах которого царят беспорядки. Он ищет магическое оружие – говорят, оно настолько сильно, что им можно уничтожить Чужого, и убийца ни перед чем не остановится, чтобы завладеть артефактом. Но есть те, кто следит за каждым его движением. Путешествуя по Островам во время своей миссии, Дауд вскоре поймет, что старые враги только и ждали его возвращения. Но и новые враги времени не теряют…

В Дануолле появляется странный человек, закутанный с ног до головы в тяжелые, диковинные одежды. Он владеет силами, которыми некогда обладал ассасин, известный под именем Дауд. Опасаясь, что вернулся их смертный враг, Эмили и Корво, очертя голову, бросаются в схватку со временем. Если им не удастся выяснить всю правду об этом таинственном человеке, последствия могут быть невообразимо чудовищны

Morgens um drei Uhr wird Captain Cathcart tot aufgefunden. Für den ebenso eleganten wie scharfsinnigen Amateurdetektiv Lord Peter Wimsey ein besonders heikler Fall. Denn des Mordes verdächtigt wird der Herzog von Denver - sein eigener Bruder. Und die überaus diskreten Zeugen tragen mehr zur Vernebelung als zur Aufklärung der merkwürdigen Affäre bei. In neuer Übersetzung liegt hiermit endlich ein großer Kriminalroman der Weltliteratur ungekürzt vor - der Roman wurde auch als Fernsehserie ein Welterfolg. Zu diesem Buch Dorothy Leigh Sayers, geboren am 13. Juni 1893 als Tochter eines Pfarrers und Schuldirektors aus altem englischem Landadel, war eine der ersten Frauen, die an der Universität ihres Geburtsortes Oxford Examen machte. Sie wurde Lehrerin in Hull, wechselte dann aber für zehn Jahre zu einer Werbeagentur über. 1926 heiratete sie den Kapitän Oswald Atherton Fleming. Als Schriftstellerin begann sie mit religiösen Gedichten und Geschichten. Auch ihre späteren Kriminalromane schrieb sie in der christlichen Grundanschauung von Schuld und Sühne. Schon in ihrem 1926 erschienenen Erstling »Der Tote in der Badewanne« führte sie die Figur ihres eleganten, finanziell unabhängigen und vor allem äußerst scharfsinnigen Amateurdetektivs Lord Peter Wimsey ein, der aus moralischen Motiven Verbrechen aufklärt. Ihre über zwanzig Detektivromane, die sich durch psychologische Grundierungen, eine Fülle bestechender Charakterstudien und eine ethische Haltung auszeichnen, sind inzwischen in die Literaturgeschichte eingegangen. Dorothy L. Sayers gehört mit Agatha Christie und P. D. James zur Trias der großen englischen Kriminalautorinnen. 1950 erhielt sie in Anerkennung ihrer literarischen Verdienste um den Kriminalroman den Ehrendoktortitel der Universität Durham. Dorothy L. Sayers starb am 17. Dezember 1957 in Witham/Essex. Von Dorothy L. Sayers erschienen als rororo-Taschenbücher außerdem: »Der Glocken Schlag« (Nr. 4547), »Fünf falsche Fährten« (Nr. 4614), »Keines natürlichen Todes« (Nr. 4703), »Mord braucht Reklame« (Nr. 4895), »Starkes Gift« (Nr. 4962), »Zur fraglichen Stunde« (Nr. 5077), »Ärger im Bellona-Club« (Nr. 5179), »Aufruhr in Oxford« (Nr. 5271), »Die Akte Harrison« (Nr. 5418) und »Ein Toter zuwenig« (Nr. 5496). Die englische Originalausgabe erschien 1926 unter dem Titel »Clouds of Witness« im Verlag Victor Gollancz Ltd. London. Die deutsche Erstausgabe erschien 1961 unter dem Titel »Lord Peters schwerster Fall« im Scherz Verlag, Bern/München. 1979 erschien der Band in neuer Übersetzung unter dem Titel »Diskrete Zeugen« im Rainer Wunderlich Verlag. Umschlagentwurf Manfred Waller (Foto aus der Fernsehverfilmung der BBC mit Ian Carmichael als Lord Peter Wimsey/BBC Copyright photographs)

A Soviet political prisoner is ordered to use her unique talents to explore a strange scientific phenomenon. It could be a trap… or a way out

PEACE, LOVE AND DESTRUCTION. JUST ANOTHER DAY IN SUNNY CALIFORNIA Barkley, California, has always been a counterculture kind of a place, but now, its local historical society has decided they've had enough of Washington's politically incorrect ways.  They are seceding from the union...and they've hire an ex-KGB general with a supersecret particle beam weapon to blow up anything that moves so they can live in harmony and nonviolence. The news of some weird - the term being relative - scene happening in Barkley gives Dr. Smith an excuse to dispatch Remo and Chiun, who have been hanging around CURE headquarters far too long.  Ironically, from across the former Iron Curtain, another secret specter is hunting the Russian mad dog as well - someone Remo believes to be dead. The first great war of the 21st century promises to be a wild scene for all, including Smith, who just received a special gift from an ex-president: an assistant director for CURE

When a new art-talent fairy name Scarlett arrives, Bess thinks she needs to teach her a thing or two. But in the end it might be Bess who has something to learn!

In this brilliant exploration of the post-9/11 world, leading Lebanese novelist and intellectual Amin Maalouf sets out to understand how we have arrived at such disorder. He explores three different but related aspects of disorder: intellectual (manifested in an unleashing of statements on identity that allow no possibility of peaceful co-existence or debate), economic and financial (that is exhausting the earth’s resources), and climatic (the result of turning a blind eye to the consequences of rampant industrialization). Instead of seeing the current disorder of the post-9/11 world as ‘a clash of civilisations’ Maalouf sees it as the ‘exhaustion of two civilisations’, a period in which humanity has reached its threshold of ‘moral incompetence’. Islam and the West have theoretical coherence, he says, but in practice each betrays its true ideals: the West is unfaithful to its own enlightenment values, which has discredited it in the eyes of the people to whom it has introduced democracy by force; while Islam finds itself condemned to a headlong rush into radicalism. These symmetrical disorders are only some of the elements in a global disorder that requires humanity as a whole to take responsibility for its future and face up to the urgent tasks such as climate change and the global financial crisis that threaten us all. Disordered World is a plea by one of the major writers of the last twenty years for intelligence, tolerance and a sense of urgency in order that we develop an adult vision of our patrimony, our beliefs, our differences and the future of the planet which is our common home

Moving from the Allied zones of postwar Germany to New York City, an astonishing novel of grief and anger, memory and survival witnessed through the experiences of "displaced persons" struggling to remake their lives in the decades after World War II In May 1945, Pavel Mandl, a Polish Jew recently liberated from a concentration camp, lands near a displaced persons camp in the British occupation zone of newly defeated Germany. Alone, possessing nothing but a map, a few tins of food, a toothbrush, and his identity papers, he must scrape together a new life in a chaotic community of refugees, civilians, and soldiers. Gifted with a talent for black-market trading, Pavel soon procures clothing, false documents, and a modest house, where he installs himself and a pair of fellow refugees – Fela, a young widow who fled Poland for Russia at the outset of the war, and Chaim, a resourceful teenage boy whose smuggling skills have brought him to the Western zones. The trio soon form a makeshift family, searching for surviving relatives, railing against their circumscribed existence, and dreaming of visas to America. Fifteen years later, haunted by decisions they made as "DPs," Pavel and Fela are married and living in Queens with their young son and daughter, and Chaim has recently emigrated from Israel with his wife, Sima. Pavel opens a small tailoring shop with his scheming brother-in-law while Fela struggles to establish peace in a loosely traditional household; Chaim and Sima adapt cheerfully to American life and its promise of freedom from a brutal past. Their lives are no longer dominated by the need to endure, fight, hide, or escape. Instead, they grapple with past trauma in everyday moments: taking the children to the municipal pool, shopping for liquor, arguing with landlords. For decades, Pavel, Fela, and Chaim battle over memory and identity on the sly, within private groups of survivors. But as the Iron Curtain falls in the 1990s, American society starts to embrace the tragedy as a cultural commodity, and survivor politics go public. Clever and stubborn, tyrannical and generous, Pavel, Fela, and Chaim articulate the self-conscious strivings of an immigrant community determined to write its own history, on its own terms. In Displaced Persons, Ghita Schwarz reveals the interior despairs and joys of immigrants shaped by war – ordinary men and women who have lived through cataclysmic times – and illuminates changing cultural understandings of trauma and remembrance

Matthew Shardlake series #1 Dissolution is an utterly riveting portrayal of Tudor England. The year is 1537, and the country is divided between those faithful to the Catholic Church and those loyal to the king and the newly established Church of England. When a royal commissioner is brutally murdered in a monastery on the south coast of England, Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s feared vicar general, summons fellow reformer Matthew Shardlake to lead the inquiry. Shardlake and his young protégé uncover evidence of sexual misconduct, embezzlement, and treason, and when two other murders are revealed, they must move quickly to prevent the killer from striking again. A ‘remarkable debut’ (P. D. James), Dissolution introduces a thrilling historical series that is not to be missed by fans of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

It is 1537 and Thomas Cromwell has ordered that all monasteries should be dissolved. Cromwell's Commissioner is found dead, his head severed from his body. Dr Shardlake is sent to uncover the truth behind what has happened. His investigation forces him to question everything that he himself believes

Book 1 of War of the Spider Queen By R. A. Salvatore. The War of the Spider Queen begins here. The first novel in an epic six-part series from the fertile imaginations of R.A. Salvatore and a select group of the newest, most exciting authors in the genre. Join them as they peel back the surface of the richest fantasy world ever created, to show the dark heart beneath

Delancy Sullivan has always known there’s more to reality than what people see. Every time someone makes a choice, a new, parallel world branches off from the existing one. Eating breakfast or skipping it, turning left instead of right, sneaking out instead of staying in bed ~ all of these choices create an alternate universe in which an echo self takes the road not travelled and makes the opposite decision. As a Walker, someone who can navigate between these worlds, Del’s job is to keep all of the dimensions in harmony. Normally, Del can hear the dissonant frequency that each world emits as clear as a bell. But when a training session in an off-key world goes horribly wrong, she is forbidden from Walking by the Council. But Del’s not big on following the rules and she secretly starts to investigate these other worlds. Something strange is connecting them and it’s not just her random encounters with echo versions of the guy she likes, Simon Lane. But Del’s decisions have unimaginable consequences and, as she begins to fall for the Echo Simons in each world, she draws closer to a truth that the Council of Walkers is trying to hide ~ a secret that threatens the fate of the entire multiverse

A man lives in total solitude in an abandoned mountain village. But each night, at the same hour, a mysterious distant light appears on the far side of the valley and disturbs his isolation. What is it? Someone in another deserted village? A forgotten street lamp? An alien being? Finally the man is driven to discover its source. He finds a young boy who also lives alone, in a house in the middle of the forest. But who really is this child? The answer at the secret heart of this novel is both uncanny and profoundly touching. Antonio Moresco's "Little Prince" is a moving meditation on life and the universe we inhabit. Moresco reflects on the solitude and pain of existence, but also on what we share with all around us, living and dead

During a long, lingering lunch at the Automobile Club de France, the elderly Comte de Branly tells a story to a friend, unnamed until the closing pages, who is in fact the first-person narrator of the novel. Branly's story is of a family named Heredia: Hugo, a noted Mexican archaeologist, and his young son, Victor, whom Branly met in Cuernavaca and who became his house guest in Paris. There they are gradually drawn into a mysterious connection with the French Victor Heredia and his son, known as Andre. There is a hard-edged emphasis on the theme of relations between the Old World and the New, as Branly's twilit, Proustian existence is invaded and overcome by the hot, chaotic, and baroque proliferation of the Caribbean jungle

During an intense storm in Dark Harbor, Maine, a perplexing murder lands a dead man on Stone Barrington’s doorstep. As secrets swirl around this mystery man’s identity, Stone quickly sets out to unravel a web of cunning misdirections and lies. Soon enough, he is embroiled in an elaborate game of cat and mouse between the CIA and nefarious foreign forces, including a bewitching new companion who comes under his protection. But when Stone’s actions draw the attention of an old enemy, one who will stop at nothing to prevent the truth from getting out, Stone realizes he may have finally met his match

Haunting and disturbingly powerful, these stories established Ann Beattie as the most celebrated new voice in American fiction and an absolute master of the short-story form. Beattie captures perfectly the profound longings that came to define an entire generation with insight, compassion, and humor

It’s the year 2044, and America has gone to hell. A disenfranchised U.S. Air Force base has turned to highway robbery in order to pay the bills. Vast chunks of the population live nomadic lives fueled by cheap transportation and even cheaper computer power. Warfare has shifted from the battlefield to the global networks, and China holds the information edge over all comers. Global warming is raising sea level, which in turn is drowning coastal cities. And the U.S. government has become nearly meaningless. This is the world that Oscar Valparaiso would have been born into, if he’d actually been born instead of being grown in vitro by black market baby dealers. Oscar’s bizarre genetic history (even he’s not sure how much of him is actually human) hasn’t prevented him from running one of the most successful senatorial races in history, getting his man elected by a whopping majority. But Oscar has put himself out of a job, since he’d only be a liability to his boss in Washington due to his problematic background. Instead, Oscar finds himself shuffled off to the Collaboratory, a Big Science pork barrel project that’s run half by corruption and half by scientific breakthroughs. At first it seems to be a lose-lose proposition for Oscar, but soon he has his “krewe” whipped into shape and ready to take control of events. Now if only he can straighten out his love life and solve a worldwide crisis that no one else knows exists. Won Clarke Award in 200. Nominated for Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards in 1999

As distributed computer systems become more pervasive, so does the need for understanding how their operating systems are designed and implemented. Andrew S. Tanenbaum's Distributed Operating Systems fulfills this need. Representing a revised and greatly expanded Part II of the best-selling Modern Operating Systems, it covers the material from the original book, including communication, synchronization, processes, and file systems, and adds new material on distributed shared memory, real-time distributed systems, fault-tolerant distributed systems, and ATM networks. It also contains four detailed case studies: Amoeba, Mach, Chorus, and OSF/DCE. Tanenbaum's trademark writing provides readers with a thorough, concise treatment of distributed systems

William Gibson is known primarily as a novelist, with his work ranging from his groundbreaking first novel, Neuromancer, to his more recent contemporary bestsellers Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. During those nearly thirty years, though, Gibson has been sought out by widely varying publications for his insights into contemporary culture. Wired magazine sent him to Singapore to report on one of the world's most buttoned-up states. The New York Times Magazine asked him to describe what was wrong with the Internet. Rolling Stone published his essay on the ways our lives are all "soundtracked" by the music and the culture around us. And in a speech at the 2010 Book Expo, he memorably described the interactive relationship between writer and reader. These essays and articles have never been collected-until now. Some have never appeared in print at all. In addition, Distrust That Particular Flavor includes journalism from small publishers, online sources, and magazines no longer in existence. This volume will be essential reading for any lover of William Gibson's novels. Distrust That Particular Flavor offers readers a privileged view into the mind of a writer whose thinking has shaped not only a generation of writers but our entire culture

An assignment brings Vincent – permanent student and budding young writer – into the world of Sebastian Wells and the Prometheus League. Under the guise of a Victorian gaming society it operates extremist and covert activities. Threatening exposure, Vincent is thrown into a game of life or death