Richard Deming (1915–1983) wrote prolifically for magazines (more than 200 short stories) as well as for major book publishers (more than two dozen novels, ranging from original crime novels to media tie-ins (Dragnet and The Mod Squad) to even a pseudonymous nautical series involving submarines. He was a meticulous professional who never disappointed readers

When Deborah Rudacille learned that a close friend had decided to transition from female to male, she felt compelled to understand why. Coming at the controversial subject of transsexualism from several angles–historical, sociological, psychological, medical–Rudacille discovered that gender variance is anything but new, that changing one’s gender has been met with both acceptance and hostility through the years, and that gender identity, like sexual orientation, appears to be inborn, not learned, though in some people the sex of the body does not match the sex of the brain. Informed not only by meticulous research, but also by the author’s interviews with prominent members of the transgender community, The Riddle of Gender is a sympathetic and wise look at a sexual revolution that calls into question many of our most deeply held assumptions about what it means to be a man, a woman, and a human being. “Sympathetic and well-researched…. Lively enough to be a good introduction for the educated lay reader and documented enough for the scholar.” “Amazing! This is the long-awaited fusion of science, criticism, and compassion that scholars of gender–and everybody else–have been waiting for. The Riddle of Gender is meticulous, funny, brilliant, and readable…. Not just for those interested in the enigmas of sex and gender, but for those interested in the universal mystery of how we become ourselves.”

The Owen Archer Series #5 In the year of our Lord 1369, the much-loved Queen Phillippa lies dying in Windsor Castle, the harvest has failed, and the pestilence has returned. In York, the atmosphere of fear and superstition is heightened by a series of thefts and violent deaths at St. Leonard’s Hospital – as well as rumors that these crimes are connected to the hospital’s dwindling funds. The Master of St. Leonard’s, Sir Richard de Ravenser, hurries north from the queen’s deathbed to summon Owen Archer, the soldier-spy, to investigate the scandal before it ruins him. Now, while Owen’s wife, Lucie, faces the plague-panicked townsfolk at the apothecary, he encounters a seemingly random series of clues: a riddle posed by one of the victims at the hospital, a lay sister with a scandalous past, the kidnapping of a child from the hospital orphanage, and a case of arson. The answer to the riddle of St. Leonard’s lies in the past, and as Owen’s family is caught up in the sweep of pestilence, he must abandon them to race across the countryside to save the next victim…

Once again Oxford becomes the scene of the crime as Inspector Morse investigates a baffling case involving a mysterious disappearance, an unidentified corpse, and a brutal murder

This volume of Handke's plays includes two full-length and four shorter plays by the young Austrian playwright. The first of the full-length plays, The Ride Across Lake Constance, is one of Handke's best-known works. It deals directly with one of Handke's favorite themes: the realities of theater itself, independent of the offstage world, and the way language (dialogue) and objects (props) operate in the skewed world of the stage. Therein it anticipates They Are Dying Out, Handke's most recent full-length play, which is also in this volume. In some ways more conventional than many of Handke's plays, They Are Dying Out presents one of his most fascinating protagonists, Quitt, a businessman who first induces a group of colleagues to set up a monopoly and then torpedoes the scheme. The four short plays that round out the book-Prophecy, Calling for Help, Quodlibet, and My Foot My Tutor-were written between 1966 and 1969, before The Ride Across Lake Constance (1971), and show Handke moving from the experimental mode of his early work toward the richness and complexity that have marked him as the most important dramatist since Becket; they bear witness to the truth of Richard Gilman's observation that "in Handke's theater, language, exposed, assaulted, wrestled with, driven to limits, and pursued still further, begins to take on, like the color returning to the cheeks of a nearly hanged man, the signs of a strange and unexpected resurrection."

After traveling through Europe for two years, Scully and his wife Jennifer wind up in Ireland, and on a mystical whim of Jennifer's, buy an old farmhouse which stands in the shadow of a castle. While Scully spends weeks alone renovating the old house, Jennifer returns to Australia to liquidate their assets. When Scully arrives at Shannon Airport to pick up Jennifer and their seven-year-old daughter, Billie, it is Billie who emerges — alone. There is no note, no explanation, not so much as a word from Jennifer, and the shock has left Billie speechless. In that instant, Scully's life falls to pieces. The Riders is a superbly written and a darkly haunting story of a lovesick man in a vain search for a vanished woman. It is a powerfully accurate account of marriage today, of the demons that trouble relationships, of resurrection found in the will to keep going, in the refusal to hold on, to stand still. The Riders is also a moving story about the relationship between a loving man and his tough, bright daughter

When a tornado rips through Montgomery Estate Vineyard and unearths a grave in an abandoned field, police inform Lucie Montgomery that the odds are good someone in her family is responsible—possibly for murder. But she has more to worry about than buried secrets.A clash between her charming new farm manager and her winemaker, Quinn Santori, tests her complicated romantic and professional feelings for Quinn, fueling the winery’s combustible atmosphere. Meanwhile eerie ghost stories make her think twice about allowing Civil War reenactors to use a field near the grave site—until the spirits of her own family’s past converge for a most unexpected outcome

To understand what others do, you must understand how they see the world—which can be much easier said than done

In 1812 the quiet Missouri plains were split by an earthquake so powerful, it rang church bells in Boston. Two centuries later, almost no one in the Midwest knows the history of the New Madrid fault line. And no one knows that another quake is coming, a quake so massive it will kill tens of thousands, destroy cities, change the course of the Mississippi River itself. The first quake is the worst. reducing the central United States to the Stone Age. Then the fault line shakes again. And again. Fast-paced and terrifyingly real, The Rift is a blockbuster novel of destruction, heroism, and survival that’s sure to grab fans of such recent screen shockers as Deep Impact and Armageddon

John Saul has been giving readers the jitters since the publication of Suffer the Children in 1977. His 22nd twisted tale, The Right Hand of Evil is another nerve shaker. The Conway family is in deep financial trouble. Ted Conway would rather knock back bourbon than support his family, and Janet Conway's career as an artist is going nowhere. Happily, the three Conway children-toddler Molly and 15-year-old twins Jared and Kimberley-seem well adjusted. Of course happy children to not make for good horror material, so dark times are just around the corner. Ted receives an unexpected call from a Louisiana sanatorium, where his aged Aunt Cora is dying. Cora wants to convey a final message to her only surviving family members. She rasps out the ominous words, "I can see it. Stay away! Stay away from here!" Her words are futile-the financially strapped Ted moves his family into Cora's old house, a house deeded to them in a family trust. Young Kimberley instantly feels a dark presence in the dilapidated Victorian house: "Suddenly her skin was crawling, as if a large insect were creeping across her neck." Tragedy upon tragedy strikes the family. Kim's beloved cat disappears and is sacrificed in a black-magic ceremony; an evil presence takes over Jared's mind-transforming him into the most rotten of bad seeds; the wails of a dead infant fill Kim's head, driving her to the edge of insanity. The family has fallen victim to a centuries-old curse-a curse that threatens to wipe out the Conway name. Although there is nothing particularly original or earth shattering about this haunted-house story, The Right Hand of Evil is still a welcome piece of escapism. Read it at your peril

This extraordinary debut novel from Whiting Writers’ Award winner John Wray is a poetic portrait of a life redeemed at one of the darkest moments in world history. Twenty years after deserting the army in the first world war, Oskar Voxlauer returns to the village of his youth. Haunted by his past, he finds an uneasy peace in the mountains — but it is 1938 and Oskar cannot escape from the rising tide of Nazi influence in town. He attempts to retreat to the woods, only to be drawn back by his own conscience and the chilling realization that the woman whose love might finally save him is bound to the local SS commander. Morally complex, brilliantly plotted, and heartbreakingly realized, The Right Hand of Sleep marks the beginning of an important literary career

New York City Police Detective Sigrid Harald knew something was amiss when she saw the couple. Was it the girl's bloodless face or the glittering hostility in the young man's glance? As Sigrid reached for her ID, the obscenities that streamed from the youth's mouth startled her almost as much as the flickering switchblade which appeared in his hand

Говорят, желать надо аккуратнее, а то сбудется

HUMANS OR HEMNOIDS: AN UNBEARABLE CHOICE Planet Dilbia is in a crucial location for both humans and their adversaries, the Hemnoids. Therefore making friends with the Dilbians and establishing a human presence there is of the utmost importance, which may be a problem, since the bearlike Dilbians stand some nine feet tall, and have a high regard for physical prowess. They’re not impressed by human technology, either. A real man, er, bear doesn’t need machines to do his work for him. But Dilbians “are” impressed by sharp thinking, and some have expressed a grudging admiration for the logical (and usually sneaky) mental maneuvers that the human “shorties” have used to get themselves out of desperate jams. Just maybe that old human craftiness will win over the Dilbians to the human side. If not, we lose a nexus, and the Dilbians will learn just how unbearable Hemnoids can be…

Volume One of “The Hunted Earth” sequence. Science is toil and hard work—except when it verges on miracle. When Larry O’Shawnessy Chao manages to harness the giant Ring of Charon, orbiting Pluto’s only moon, to control a field of over one million gravities, he feels a touch of the miraculous

For centuries, adventurers have sought the fabled Ring of Winter, rumored to possess the magical might to make the wearer immortal and bring a second Ice Age down upon the Realms. Artus Cimber knows where it is. After discovering the ring is hidden in the jungles of Chult, he sets off to fulfill the quest that has devoured a decade of his life. Knowing that the artifact is hidden somewhere in the danger-filled jungles and recovering it are two entirely different matters, however—especially when a lost city, rampaging dinosaurs, and the villainous Cult of Frost all stand between Artus and his goal

Shortlisted for the 1998 Los Angeles Times Book Award in Fiction: "Stunning and strange. . Sebald has done what every writer dreams of doing. . The book is like a dream you want to last forever. . It glows with the radiance and resilience of the human spirit." — Roberta Silman, The New York Times Book Review "Ostensibly a record of a journey on foot through coastal East Anglia," as Robert McCrum in the London Observer noted, The Rings of Saturn "is also a brilliantly allusive study of England's imperial past and the nature of decline and fall, of loss and decay. . The Rings of Saturn is exhilaratingly, you might say hypnotically, readable. . It is hard to imagine a stranger or more compelling work." The Rings of Saturn — with its curious archive of photographs — chronicles a tour across epochs as well as countryside. On his way, the narrator meets lonely eccentrics inhabiting tumble-down mansions and links them to Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson," the natural history of the herring, a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, the travels of Sir Thomas Browne's skull, and the massive bombings of WWII. Cataloging change, oblivion, and memories, he connects sugar fortunes, Joseph Conrad, and the horrors of colonizing the Belgian Congo. The narrator finds threads which run from an abandoned bridge over the River Blyth to the terrible dowager Empress Tzu Hsi and the silk industry in Norwich. "Sebald," as The New Yorker stated, "weaves his tale together with a complexity and historical sweep that easily encompasses both truth and fiction." The Emigrants (hailed by Susan Sontag as an "astonishing masterpiece-perfect while being unlike any book one has ever read") was "one of the great books of the last few years," as Michael Ondaatje noted: "and now The Rings of Saturn is a similar and as strange a triumph."

Ringworld, the most celebrated work in Niven’s “Known Space” sequence, posited a vast body of matter — enough for an entire solar system — spinning around a sun in the form of a single giant artifact of unknown origin: a continuous million-mile-wide ribbon provided with oceans, atmosphere, and vast flat projections (life-size “maps”) of Earth and other inhabited planets. The present book takes up the puzzle some 20 years after Louis Wu’s escape from the Ringworld. Kidnapped by the mate of Nessus, their two-headed alien companion of the previous voyage, Louis and his catlike ally Chmeee are transported to the Ringworld — now spinning dangerously off-center — in an attempt to discover the cause of the aberrant rotation before the world grazes its sun. Searching for clues to the design of the structure’s long-vanished original engineers, they encounter various hominid and other races before finding the barely feasible, wholly appalling solution hidden beneath the “Map of Mars.” Niven, a longstanding favorite with “hard” SF buffs, commands an impressive vein of invention, but his plotting here is limp and threadbare; the idea was more striking the first time around. Nominated for Hugo and Locus awards for best novel in 1981

An honored SF writer returns to his best-known creation: the artificial world, built far from Earth by aliens over a half million years ago, in the form of a ring 600 million miles in diameter, hosting an astonishing multitude of inhabitants and cultures. This third fictional voyage to the Ringworld (after Ringworld, 1970, which won both the Hugo and the Nebula for best SF novel of that year, and Ringworld Engineers, 1980) offers two stories crowded into one. A motley array of hominid inhabitants are seeking to defeat a plague of vampires. Meanwhile, returning hero Louis Wu is battling what effectively is a plague of Protectors (superbeings common to many Niven novels) whose rivalries threaten Ringworld’s existence. The battle against the vampires is the more exciting of the two stories, filled with action, scenes of the Ringworld and explorations of ritualistic interspecies sex. Wu’s pursuit of the Protectors displays Niven;s deft hand at portraying aliens, but the dialogue that fills in the backstory slows the narrative. Niven still ranks near the top of the SF field, but this outing is likely to satisfy determined Ringworld fans more than other readers

The Rise & Fall of Great Powers begins in a dusty bookshop. What follows is an abduction, heated political debate, glimpses into strangers’ homes, and travel around the globe. It’s a novel of curious personalities, mystery, and lots of books: volumes that the characters collect, covet, steal. Tooly Zylberberg, owner of a bookshop in the Welsh countryside, spends most of her life reading. Yet there’s one tale that never made sense: her own life. In childhood, she was spirited away from home, then raised around Asia, Europe and the United States. But who were the people who brought her up? And what ever happened to them? There was Humphrey, a curmudgeon from Russia; there was the charming but tempestuous Sarah, who hailed from Kenya; and there was Venn, the charismatic leader who transformed Tooly forever. Until, quite suddenly, he vanished. Years later, she has lost hope of ever knowing what took place. Then, the old mysteries stir again, sending her — and the reader — on a hunt through place and time, from Wales to Bangkok to New York to Italy, from the 1980’s to the Year 2000 to the present, from the end of the Cold War, to the rise and wobbles of U.S. power, to the digital revolution of today. Gradually, all secrets are revealed…

It was a dynasty with more wealth, passion, and power than the houses of Windsor, Kennedy, and Rockefeller combined. It shaped all of Europe and controlled politics, scientists, artists, and even popes, for three hundred years. It was the house of Medici, patrons of Botticelli, Michelangelo and Galileo, benefactors who turned Florence into a global power center, and then lost it all.The House of Medici picks up where Barbara Tuchman's Hibbert delves into the lives of the Medici family, whose legacy of increasing self-indulgence and sexual dalliance eventually led to its self-destruction. With twenty-four pages of black-and-white illustrations, this timeless saga is one of Quill's strongest-selling paperbacks

It was a dynasty with more wealth, passion, and power than the houses of Windsor, Kennedy, and Rockefeller combined. It shaped all of Europe and controlled politics, scientists, artists, and even popes, for three hundred years. It was the house of Medici, patrons of Botticelli, Michelangelo and Galileo, benefactors who turned Florence into a global power center, and then lost it all.The House of Medici picks up where Barbara Tuchman's Hibbert delves into the lives of the Medici family, whose legacy of increasing self-indulgence and sexual dalliance eventually led to its self-destruction. With twenty-four pages of black-and-white illustrations, this timeless saga is one of Quill's strongest-selling paperbacks

‘Everitt takes [listeners] on a remarkable journey into the creation of the great civilization's political institutions, cultural traditions, and social hierarchy…. [E]ngaging work that will captivate and inform from beginning to end.” From Anthony Everitt, the bestselling author of acclaimed biographies of Cicero, Augustus, and Hadrian, comes a riveting, magisterial account of Rome and its remarkable ascent from an obscure agrarian backwater to the greatest empire the world has ever known. Emerging as a market town from a cluster of hill villages in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., Rome grew to become the ancient world’s preeminent power. Everitt fashions the story of Rome’s rise to glory into an erudite page-turner filled with lasting lessons for our time. He chronicles the clash between patricians and plebeians that defined the politics of the Republic. He shows how Rome’s shrewd strategy of offering citizenship to her defeated subjects was instrumental in expanding the reach of her burgeoning empire. And he outlines the corrosion of constitutional norms that accompanied Rome’s imperial expansion, as old habits of political compromise gave way, leading to violence and civil war. In the end, unimaginable wealth and power corrupted the traditional virtues of the Republic, and Rome was left triumphant everywhere except within its own borders. Everitt paints indelible portraits of the great Romans—and non-Romans—who left their mark on the world out of which the mighty empire grew: Cincinnatus, Rome’s George Washington, the very model of the patrician warrior/aristocrat; the brilliant general Scipio Africanus, who turned back a challenge from the Carthaginian legend Hannibal; and Alexander the Great, the invincible Macedonian conqueror who became a role model for generations of would-be Roman rulers. Here also are the intellectual and philosophical leaders whose observations on the art of government and “the good life” have inspired every Western power from antiquity to the present: Cato the Elder, the famously incorruptible statesman who spoke out against the decadence of his times, and Cicero, the consummate orator whose championing of republican institutions put him on a collision course with Julius Caesar and whose writings on justice and liberty continue to inform our political discourse today. Rome’s decline and fall have long fascinated historians, but the story of how the empire was won is every bit as compelling. With The Rise of Rome, one of our most revered chroniclers of the ancient world tells that tale in a way that will galvanize, inform, and enlighten modern readers

The heart-stopping final book in the Darkness Rising trilogy, from New York Times-bestselling author Kelley Armstrong!  Things are getting desperate for Maya and her friends. Hunted by two powerful Cabals, they're quickly running out of places to hide. And with the whole world thinking they died in a helicopter crash, they can't simply go to the authorities for help. All they have is the name and number of someone who might be able to give them a few answers. Answers to why they're so valuable to the Cabals, and why their supernatural powers are getting more out of control. Maya is unprepared for the truths that await her, but she'll have to face them if she ever hopes to move on with her life. Because she can't keep running forever.  With all the twists, thrills, and romance that have made Kelley Armstrong an international bestseller—plus the surprising return of some favourite characters—The Rising will keep you under its spell long after the last page is turned. 

Grace Chu is an American-educated Chinese national now working as a forensic accountant after serving in the Chinese army as an intelligence officer. John Knox is an American who parlayed his military service during the first Iraqi war into a lucrative import/export business – which now provides him the official access he needs to work freelance undercover operations throughout the world. Both are highly skilled operatives capable of deft subterfuge or extreme violence, if circumstances require. They meet for the first (but not last) time in Shanghai when the security firm they work for is hired to retrieve a kidnapped employee critical to the success of a multi-billion dollar real-estate deal. But the stakes are high and Grace and Knox find themselves at the center of a deadly international imbroglio

(c) Christopher Evans 1983, 1997 This story first appeared in Lands of Never edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Unwin Paperbacks, 1983)

The Rithmatist, Brandon Sanderson’s New York Times bestselling epic teen adventure is now available in paperback. More than anything, Joel wants to be a Rithmatist. Rithmatists have the power to infuse life into two-dimensional figures known as Chalklings. Rithmatists are humanity’s only defense against the Wild Chalklings. Having nearly overrun the territory of Nebrask, the Wild Chalklings now threaten all of the American Isles. As the son of a lowly chalkmaker at Armedius Academy, Joel can only watch as Rithmatist students learn the magical art that he would do anything to practice. Then students start disappearing—kidnapped from their rooms at night, leaving trails of blood. Assigned to help the professor who is investigating the crimes, Joel and his friend Melody find themselves on the trail of an unexpected discovery—one that will change Rithmatics—and their world—forever

When four old University friends set off into the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle, they aim to briefly escape the problems of their lives and reconnect with one another. But when Luke, the only man still single and living a precarious existence, finds he has little left in common with his well-heeled friends, tensions rise. With limited experience between them, a shortcut meant to ease their hike turns into a nightmare scenario that could cost them their lives. Lost, hungry, and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, Luke figures things couldn’t possibly get any worse. But then they stumble across an old habitation. Ancient artefacts decorate the walls and there are bones scattered upon the dry floors. The residue of old rites and pagan sacrifice for something that still exists in the forest. Something responsible for the bestial presence that follows their every step. As the four friends stagger in the direction of salvation, they learn that death doesn’t come easy among these ancient trees…

Sergeant Decker is called to investigate a rape charge in an isolated Orthodox Jewish Community. Rina Lazarus, a young widow who found the victim, guides Decker through her suspicious community as all the signs point to the rapist's first crime not being their last

In their latest adventure, precocious 14-year-old reporters Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson get a chance to help major Washington newspapers cover the Army-Navy football game and stumble across an illegal gambling racket, perpetrated by the game’s officiating squad. Along the way, the cub reporters meet a number of actual famous people (Bob Woodward and Barack Obama, among others). Some of the dropped names of retired players and other old guys will have little resonance with young readers, and fans of the series will recognize that the mystery here isn’t as compelling as those in previous installments. Still, sports fans, especially college football followers, will enjoy the behind-the-scenes look at the famous game

From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, this is a masterful tale of wilderness survival in the vein of Into the Wild and The Call of the Wild. It is the story of two college friends on a wilderness canoe trip—a gripping tale of a friendship tested by fire, whitewater, starvation, and brutality. Wynn and Jack have been best friends since freshman orientation, bonded by their shared love of mountains, books, and fishing. Wynn is a gentle giant, a Vermont kid never happier than when his feet are in the water. Jack is more rugged, raised on a ranch in Colorado where sleeping under the stars and cooking on a fire came as naturally to him as breathing. When they decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate long days of leisurely paddling and picking blueberries, and nights of stargazing and reading paperback Westerns. But a wildfire making its way across the forest adds unexpected urgency to the journey. When they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank and decide to warn them about the fire, their search for the pair turns up nothing and no one. But: The next day a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the man they heard? And, if he is, where is the woman? From this charged beginning, master storyteller Peter Heller unspools a headlong, heart-pounding story of desperate wilderness survival

Because of his success surviving alone in the wilderness for fifty-four days, fifteen-year-old Brian, profoundly changed by his time in the wild, is asked to undergo a similar experience to help scientists learn more about the psychology of survival. Sequel to Hatchet

The first kiss occurred in a dimly lit hallway on the upper floor of Elwin Hastings's grand house. Louisa Bryce never saw it coming. Of course, handsome, wealthy Anthony Stalbridge couldn't possibly have had romantic intentions. The kiss was merely meant to distract the armed guard about to catch the two unlikely sleuths. After all, the only thing these two interlopers have in common is a passionate interest in uncovering the dastardly secrets of Mr. Hastings—a prominent member of Society whom they suspect of murder. Brought together by their desire for the truth, Anthony and Louisa finally discover the incriminating evidence they're looking for. But bringing Hastings to justice will be more perilous than they anticipate, especially since their thrilling attraction to danger—and, it turns out, to each other—might very well get in the way