Agent Harper “Shield” Kennedy’s specialty within the Elite Operatives Organization is security, although she’s long lost any gratification from babysitting most VIPs. However, her new assignment—to safeguard the U.S. president—will prove to be the biggest challenge of her career. Shield’s mission to protect the first female chief executive is complicated by threats to her own life when she begins to question the president’s orders. Loner Ryden Wagner is content with her life as a florist until she becomes a pawn in a political deception involving the highest office in the land. Trapped in a dangerous game where one false move could cost Ryden her life, she has to rely solely on the president’s new bodyguard. As an attraction between the two women grows, so does the urgency for answers, but will the truth bring them together or tear them apart? Sixth in the romantic intrigue series: Elite Operatives

From a leading US authority on a subject more timely than ever—an up-to-date, all-in-one resource on gender-nonconforming children and adolescents In her groundbreaking first book, Gender Born, Gender Made, Dr. Diane Ehrensaft coined the term gender creative to describe children whose unique gender expression or sense of identity is not defined by a checkbox on their birth certificate. Now, with The Gender Creative Child, she returns to guide parents and professionals through the rapidly changing cultural, medical, and legal landscape of gender and identity. In this up-to-date, comprehensive resource, Dr. Ehrensaft explains the interconnected effects of biology, nurture, and culture to explore why gender can be fluid, rather than binary. As an advocate for the gender affirmative model and with the expertise she has gained over three decades of pioneering work with children and families, she encourages caregivers to listen to each child, learn their particular needs, and support their quest for a true gender self. The Gender Creative Child unlocks the door to a gender-expansive world, revealing pathways for positive change in our schools, our communities, and the world. Diane Ehrensaft, PhD, is a developmental and clinical psychologist. At the University of California–San Francisco, she is the cofounder and director of mental health at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center, an associate professor of pediatrics, and an attending psychologist at the Benioff Children’s Hospital Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic. Her work with—and advocacy for—gender creative children has been widely covered, including by *The New York Times*, the Huffington Post, and NPR. She has been featured on the Los Angeles Times online, Wired online, and has appeared on Anderson, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and The Today Show

An imaginative, strange, and boldly inventive collection of stories from a singular mind, with a new introduction by Mark Harris In The General Zapped an Angel, featuring nine supremely entertaining fantasy and science fiction tales, a Vietnam general shoots down what appears to be an angel; a man sells his soul to the devil for a copy of the next day's Wall Street Journal; and a group of alien beings bestow a mouse with human thought and emotion Fast, one of the bestselling authors of the twentieth century whose career spanned decades and genres, skewers war hawks, oil speculators, and profit-at-all-costs capitalism with wit and empathy, making these stories as relevant today as when they were first published in 1970

Mafia, a secret society and the world's greatest treasures all converge in James Twining's all new jaw-dropping thriller featuring reformed art thief Tom Kirk. It begins with a young man hanging from the Ponte Sant' Angelo Rome, his pockets weighed down with lead whilst the current of the river below slowly tightens the noose around his neck. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, retired art thief Tom Kirk is asked by an old friend to investigate a case involving the theft of a long lost Caravaggio painting. When tragedy strikes Tom is left holding a blood-soaked body. Back in Rome police Lieutenant Allegra Damico has been called to the Parthenon where a second body has been found, but this time the body is surrounded by mannequins. When a third body is found crucified upside down in the middle of the ancient forum Allegra realises there is a sinister link between the murders. Someone is staging famous Caravaggio paintings. Suspecting the detective leading the case is corrupt Allegra begins her own investigation. Spurred on by grief and the desire to avenge the murder of his friend, Tom follows a trail to Rome where he finds Allegra piecing together a similar mystery. Before long they both find themselves submerged in a vast criminal conspiracy involving the police, politicians, the church and a secret society born of a pact between two Mafia families decades before

THE CONTAGION IS IN YOUR MIND In this science fiction thriller, brothers are pitted against each other as a pandemic threatens to destabilize world governments by exerting a subtle mind control over survivors. Neil Johns has just started his dream job as a code breaker in the NSA when his brother, Paul, a mycologist, goes missing on a trip to collect samples in the Amazon jungle. Paul returns with a gap in his memory and a fungal infection that almost kills him. But once he recuperates, he has enhanced communication, memory, and pattern recognition. Meanwhile, something is happening in South America; others, like Paul, have also fallen ill and recovered with abilities they didn’t have before. But that’s not the only pattern—the survivors, from entire remote Brazilian tribes to American tourists, all seem to be working toward a common, and deadly, goal. Neil soon uncovers a secret and unexplained alliance between governments that have traditionally been enemies. Meanwhile Paul becomes increasingly secretive and erratic. Paul sees the fungus as the next stage of human evolution, while Neil is convinced that it is driving its human hosts to destruction. Brother must oppose brother on an increasingly fraught international stage, with the stakes: the free will of every human on earth. Can humanity use this force for good, or are we becoming the pawns of an utterly alien intelligence?

The dejected Surgeon-Captain Lioren is disappointed that his Court-martial has rejected the death penalty for him, and instead has assigned him to O’Mara at Sector General. He is plagued with guilt, because he is responsible for the genocide of an entire race. At moments during his new tasks, he ponders the individual events that led up to the alien deaths. First contact with the Cromsag planet was quickly followed by the discovery that their entire population was wasting away from some unidentified disease. They were starving, and their birth rate was absymal. Additionally, they were continually in hand-to-hand combat with each other, presumably competing for food. The Sector General ships hurriedly provided food to malnourished people everywhere, along with medical aid for combat injuries, and tried to determine the cause of the mysterious disease. Despite their best efforts, deaths from the plague continued to increase. Lioren grew frustrated with the slow process of sending samples back to Sector General and awaiting diagnostics and full tests to ensure the effectiveness of potential cures. In his arrogance, he administered a treatment to the entire population… and they rose up and slaughtered each other, wiping out their own race. Interspersed with recalling these events, he shares some of his story with people at Sector General. Lioren speaks to the terminally ill Dr. Mannen, eventually reviving Mannen’s interest in life. Lioren also offers encouragement to the isolated alien Khone (see Star Healer.) Next he is asked to speak to a gigantic Groalterri, whose race is so advanced they have until now refused all contact with the federated planets. The humans are desperate to make any sort of progress with this race, but the Groalterri patient won’t communicate with anyone. Bit by bit, Lioren shares his own guilty history and talks the suicidal alien into lowering its emotional barriers. From its story he manages to figure out the Groalterri’s hitherto unknown injury and arrange surgery that will change its life. Finally, at the end, Lioren meets with the handful of Cromsag survivors

This spectacular novel established Thomas M. Disch as a major new force in science fiction. First published in 1965, it was immediately labeled a masterpiece reminiscent of the works of J.G. Ballard and H.G. Wells In this harrowing novel, the world's cities have been reduced to cinder and ash and alien plants have overtaken the earth.  The plants, able to grow the size of maples in only a month and eventually reach six hundred feet, have commandeered the world's soil and are sucking even the Great Lakes dry. In northern Minnesota, Anderson, an aging farmer armed with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, desperately leads the reduced citizenry of a small town in a daily struggle for meager existence. Throw into this fray Jeremiah Orville, a marauding outsider bent on a bizarre and private revenge, and the fight to live becomes a daunting task

A science fiction thriller by the author of Night Watch, the hit novel that inspired two major motion pictures Five months after the horrific accident that left him near death and worried that he’d never fly again, master-pilot Alex Romanov lands a new job: captaining the sleek passenger vessel Mirror. Alex is a spesh—a human who has been genetically modified to perform particular tasks. As a captain and pilot, Alex has a genetic imperative to care for passengers and crew—no matter what the cost. His first mission aboard Mirror is to ferry two representatives of the alien race Zzygou on a tour of human worlds. His task will not be an easy one, for aboard the craft are several speshes who have reason to hate the Others. Dark pasts, deadly secrets, and a stolen gel-crystal worth more than Alex’s entire ship combine to challenge him at every turn. And as the tension escalates, it becomes apparent that greater forces are at work to bring the captain’s world crashing down

Long before the world of the Ganymeans blew apart, millennia ago, the strange race of giants had vanished. All that remained of them was a wrecked ship, abandoned on a frozen moon of Jupiter. Now Earth's scientists were there, determined to ferret out the secret of the lost race. Then suddenly the Ganymeans returned, bringing with them answers that would alter all Mankind's knowledge of human origins

"The Gentle Grafter" by O. Henry, Author of "The Four Million," "The Voice of the City," "The Trimmed Lamp," "Strictly Business," "Whirligigs," Etc

Danny Watson should have known that there was something wrong with this fighter, Leslie, considering how he had obtained him

A funny, fantastically entertaining debut novel, in the spirit of Wodehouse and Monty Python, about a famous poet who inadvertently sells his wife to the devil-then recruits a band of adventurers to rescue her. When Lionel Savage, a popular poet in Victorian London, learns from his butler that they're broke, he marries the beautiful Vivien Lancaster for her money, only to find that his muse has abandoned him. Distraught and contemplating suicide, Savage accidentally conjures the Devil — the polite "Gentleman" of the title — who appears at one of the society parties Savage abhors. The two hit it off: the Devil talks about his home, where he employs Dante as a gardener; Savage lends him a volume of Tennyson. But when the party's over and Vivien has disappeared, the poet concludes in horror that he must have inadvertently sold his wife to the dark lord. Newly in love with Vivian, Savage plans a rescue mission to Hell that includes Simmons, the butler; Tompkins, the bookseller; Ashley Lancaster, swashbuckling Buddhist; Will Kensington, inventor of a flying machine; and Savage's spirited kid sister, Lizzie, freshly booted from boarding school for a "dalliance." Throughout, his cousin's quibbling footnotes to the text push the story into comedy nirvana. Lionel and his friends encounter trapdoors, duels, anarchist-fearing bobbies, the social pressure of not knowing enough about art history, and the poisonous wit of his poetical archenemy. Fresh, action-packed and very, very funny, The Gentleman is a giddy farce that recalls the masterful confections of P.G. Wodehouse and Hergé's beautifully detailed Tintin adventures

Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they're rescued, they spend a single night together, wandering the darkened streets and marveling at the rare appearance of stars above Manhattan. But once the power is restored, so is reality. Lucy soon moves to Edinburgh with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father. Lucy and Owen's relationship plays out across the globe as they stay in touch through postcards, occasional e-mails, and -- finally -- a reunion in the city where they first met. A carefully charted map of a long-distance relationship, Jennifer E. Smith's new novel shows that the center of the world isn't necessarily a place. It can be a person, too

Histories of the German army on the Eastern Front generally focus on battlefield exploits on the war as it was fought in the front line. They tend to neglect other aspects of the army’s experience, particularly its participation in the racial war demanded by the leadership of the Reich. This ground-breaking book aims to correct this incomplete, often misleading picture. Using a selection of revealing extracts from a wide range of wartime documents, it looks at the totality of the Wehrmacht’s war in the East. The documents have previously been unpublished or have never been translated into English, and they offer a fascinating inside view of the army’s actions and attitudes. Combat is covered, and complicity in Hitlers war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. There are sections on the conduct of the war in the rear areas logistics, medical, judicial and the army’s tactics, motivation and leadership. The entire text is informed by the latest research into the reality of the conflict as it was perceived and understood by those who took part. [Contains tables.]

Clara Falkenberg, once Germany’s most eligible and lauded heiress, earned the nickname “the Iron Fräulein” during World War II for her role operating her family’s ironworks empire. It’s been nearly two years since the war ended and she’s left with nothing but a false identification card and a series of burning questions about her family’s past. With nowhere else to run to, she decides to return home and take refuge with her dear friend, Elisa. Narrowly escaping a near-disastrous interrogation by a British officer who’s hell-bent on arresting her for war crimes, she arrives home to discover the city in ruins, and Elisa missing. As Clara begins tracking down Elisa, she encounters Jakob, a charismatic young man working on the black market, who, for his own reasons, is also searching for Elisa. Clara and Jakob soon discover how they might help each other—if only they can stay ahead of the officer determined to make Clara answer for her actions during the war. Propulsive, meticulously researched, and action-fueled, The German Heiress is a mesmerizing page-turner that questions the meaning of justice and morality, deftly shining the spotlight on the often-overlooked perspective of Germans who were caught in the crossfire of the Nazi regime and had nowhere to turn

A DECEMBER 2019 INDIE NEXT PICK! Set against the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963, Annette Hess’s international bestseller is a harrowing yet ultimately uplifting coming-of-age story about a young female translator—caught between societal and familial expectations and her unique ability to speak truth to power—as she fights to expose the dark truths of her nation’s past. If everything your family told you was a lie, how far would you go to uncover the truth? For twenty-four-year-old Eva Bruhns, World War II is a foggy childhood memory. At the war’s end, Frankfurt was a smoldering ruin, severely damaged by the Allied bombings. But that was two decades ago. Now it is 1963, and the city’s streets, once cratered are smooth and paved. Shiny new stores replace scorched rubble. Eager for her wealthy suitor, Jürgen Schoormann, to propose, Eva dreams of starting a new life away from her parents and sister. But Eva’s plans are turned upside down when a fiery investigator, David Miller, hires her as a translator for a war crimes trial. As she becomes more deeply involved in the Frankfurt Trials, Eva begins to question her family’s silence on the war and her future. Why do her parents refuse to talk about what happened? What are they hiding? Does she really love Jürgen and will she be happy as a housewife? Though it means going against the wishes of her family and her lover, Eva, propelled by her own conscience, joins a team of fiery prosecutors determined to bring the Nazis to justice—a decision that will help change the present and the past of her nation

Based on a true story and inspired by the work of Primo Levi, The German Mujahid is a heartfelt reflection on guilt and the harsh imperatives of history. The two brothers Schiller, Rachel and Malrich, couldn't be more dissimilar. They were born in a small village in Algeria to a German father and an Algerian mother, and raised by an elderly uncle in one of the toughest ghettos in France. But there the similarities end. Rachel is a model immigrant — hard working, upstanding, law-abiding. Malrich has drifted. Increasingly alienated and angry, his future seems certain: incarceration at best. Then Islamic fundamentalists murder the young men's parents in Algeria and the event transforms the destinies of both brothers in unexpected ways. Rachel discovers the shocking truth about his family and buckles under the weight of the sins of his father, a former SS officer. Now Malrich, the outcast, will have to face that same awful truth alone. Banned in the author's native Algeria for of the frankness with which it confronts several explosive themes, The German Mujahid is a truly groundbreaking novel. For the first time, an Arab author directly addresses the moral implications of the Shoah. But this richly plotted novel also leaves its author room enough to address other equally controversial issues; Islamic fundamentalism and Algeria's "dirty war" of the early 1990s, for example or the emergence of grim Muslim ghettos in France's low-income housing projects. In this gripping novel, Boualem Sansal confronts these and other explosive questions with unprecedented sincerity and courage

The ultimate alternative history. World War II never happens. The German Army defeats the Allies at Dunkirk, after which it occupies France. Germany now controls a vast swathe of Europe. An unexpected event then changes the course of history forever. This book is also an indictment of the world's weak, incompetent or corrupt ruling elites

 Sandman Slim must save himself — and the entire world — from the wrath of some enraged and vengeful ancient gods in this sixth high-octane adventure in the New York Times bestselling series. Being a half-human, half-angel nephilim with a bad rep and a worse attitude — not to mention temporarily playing Lucifer — James Stark aka Sandman Slim has made a few enemies. None, though, are as fearsome as the vindictive Angra Om Ya — the old gods. But their imminent invasion is only one of Stark's problems right now. LA is descending into chaos, and a new evil — the Wildfire Ripper — is stalking the city. No ordinary killer, The Ripper takes Stark deep into a conspiracy that stretches from Earth to Heaven and Hell. He's also the only person alive who may know how to keep the world from going extinct. The trouble is, he's also Stark's worst enemy . . . the only man in existence Stark would enjoy killing twice

A Nebula Award-winning author presents a powerful novel of intergalatic travel, allies from another world, and a mad scientist that follows Allen Meisner, a member of INSANE (International Network of Scientists Against Nuclear Extermination) who develops a powerful hyperdrive engine that is used to save humanity. The beginning of this books was written as a short story and published in Analog Science Fiction and Facts magazine in April 1985. The complete book was first published in 2001