Kellerman returns to series hero Alex Delaware after last year's gripping stand-alone, The Conspiracy Club. The success of the long-running Delaware series is testament to both the author's skills and the reading public's hunger for mysteries featuring compassionate, intelligent protagonists, interesting secondary characters (including complex villains), strong plot lines and clear, unpretentious writing. Kellerman delivers all these once again in a tale that opens with Alex at dinner with his best friend, L.A. police lieutenant Milo Sturgis, when the sound of a police siren calls them to a nearby double homicide. The two victims are found in a Mustang convertible; the young man's zipper is open, the young woman's pants are down and each has a bullet in the brain. The man is identified as Gavin Quick, but little is known about the woman other than she's wearing Armani perfume and Jimmy Choo shoes. Milo and Alex interview Gavin Quick's nutty mother, Sheila, and his father, Jerry, a metals dealer and all-around shady character, as well as Gavin's therapist, Mary Lou Koppel. From there, the list of characters branches into an ever-widening delta of suspects and dead bodies. The investigation marches relentlessly on as Milo and Alex run each new lead to ground, slowly constructing an intricate motive that includes abusive boyfriends, eccentric ex-husbands, Medi-Cal fraud, a bent parole officer and Rwandan genocide. This one's more methodical than suspenseful and the final shoot-out and revelations feel tacked on, but fans won't mind as Alex and Milo eventually wrap everything up nicely, and Kellerman provides intriguing details of Alex's new love interest, Allison Gwynn

Written during Olsen's five-month stay at the American Academy in Berlin, There. is part critifictional meditation and part trash diary exploring what happens at the confluence of curiosity, travel, and innovative writing practices. A collage of observations, facts, quotations, recollections, and theoretical reflections, it touches on a wide range of authors, genres, and places, from Beckett and Ben Marcus to David Bowie and Wayne Koestenbaum, film and architecture to avant-garde music and hypermedia, the Venezuelan jungle and Bhutanese mountains to New Jersey mall culture and the restlessness known as Berlin. There is an always-already bracketed performance about how, by inhabiting unstable spaces, we continually unlearn and therefore relearn what thought, experience, and imagination feel like

From the author of City of Bohane, a debut collection that “could easily have been titled ‘These Are Little Masterpieces’” (The Irish Times) This award-winning story collection by Kevin Barry summons all the laughter, darkness, and intensity of contemporary Irish life. A pair of fast girls court trouble as they cool their heels on a slow night in a small town. Lonesome hill walkers take to the high reaches in pursuit of a saving embrace. A bewildered man steps off a country bus in search of his identity — and a stiff drink. These stories, filled with a grand sense of life’s absurdity, form a remarkably sure-footed collection that reads like a modern-day Dubliners. The winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and a 2007 book of the year in The Irish Times, the Sunday Tribune, and Metro, There Are Little Kingdoms marks the stunning entrance of a writer who burst onto the literary scene fully formed

Основой трехтомного собрания сочинений знаменитого аргентинского писателя Л.Х.Борхеса, классика ХХ века, послужили шесть сборников произведений мастера, часть его эссеистики, стихи из всех прижизненных сборников и микроновеллы – шедевры борхесовской прозыпоздних лет

From the award-winning author of Hotel World and The Accidental, a dazzling, funny, and wonderfully exhilarating new novel. At a dinner party in the posh London suburb of Greenwich, Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table midway through the meal, locks himself in an upstairs room, and refuses to leave. An eclectic group of neighbors and friends slowly gathers around the house, and Miles’s story is told from the points of view of four of them: Anna, a woman in her forties; Mark, a man in his sixties; May, a woman in her eighties; and a ten-year-old named Brooke. The thing is, none of these people knows Miles more than slightly. How much is it possible for us to know about a stranger? And what are the consequences of even the most casual, fleeting moments we share every day with one another? Brilliantly audacious, disarmingly playful, and full of Smith’s trademark wit and puns, There but for the is a deft exploration of the human need for separation — from our pasts and from one another — and the redemptive possibilities for connection. It is a tour de force by one of our finest writers

First love, with lightning swiftness, ended Mark’s boyhood. No longer could he walk in his father’s shadow; he was a man

Agatha's former husband James is engaged to be married to a beautiful, young woman and Agatha has been kindly invited to the wedding. To take her mind off this, Agatha decides she has fallen for Sylvan, a Frenchman she met at James' engagement party. To distract her still further she decides upon a holiday and flies to Istanbul, where unfortunately she bumps into James and his fiance not once but twice – convincing him she is stalking them. So when the bride is murdered on her wedding day, naturally Agatha is Suspect Number One – but then matters are turned on their head when the dead bride's mother engages Agatha to take on the case of her murdered daughter! And very soon Agatha's own life is in danger while she tries to solve the mystery of the corpse bride while fighting off (halfheartedly) the advances of a very attractive and determined Frenchman!

Butler's inventive third book is dedicated "For no one" and begins with an eerie prologue about the saturation of the world with a damaging light. Suitably forewarned, the reader is introduced to an unexceptional no-name family. All should be idyllic in their newly purchased home, but they are shadowed by an unwelcome "copy family." In the face of the copy mother, the mother sees her heretofore unrealized deterioration. Things only get worse as the father forgets how to get home from work; the mother starts hiding in the closet, plagued by an omnipresent egg; while the son gets a female "special friend" and receives a mysterious package containing photos of dead celebrities. The territory of domestic disillusion and postmodern dystopia is familiar from other tales, but Butler's an endlessly surprising, funny, and subversive writer. This subversion extends to the book's design: very short titled chapters with an abundance of white space. Not so much a novel as a literary tapestry, the book's eight parts are separated by blank gray pages. To Butler (Scorch Atlas), everything in the world, even the physical world, is gray and ever-changing, and potentially menacing

Henry and Catherine Tilney are content with their married life: a comfortable parsonage, their dogs, and one another. The idea of returning to Bath a year after they first met there seems like it can only add to their happiness; but Catherine finds that Bath still carries social dangers that she must learn to navigate. What is the nature of Henry's past relationship with a beautiful young woman? Why is a rakish baronet paying Catherine such particular attention? Is General Tilney going to marry the woman known in Bath as The Merry Widow — and what did she have to do with her husband's death? And will Henry ever be able to keep his Newfoundland out of the river? Revisit the winter pleasures of Georgian Bath with your favorite characters from Jane Austen's hilarious Northanger Abbey, and prepare for a bit of romance, a bit of mystery, and a very nice story indeed!

Love stories, with a twist: the eagerly awaited follow-up to the great Russian writer’s New York Times bestselling scary fairy tales By turns sly and sweet, burlesque and heartbreaking, these realist fables of women looking for love are the stories that Ludmilla Petrushevskaya—who has been compared to Chekhov, Tolstoy, Beckett, Poe, Angela Carter, and even Stephen King—is best known for in Russia. Here are attempts at human connection, both depraved and sublime, by people across the life span: one-night stands in communal apartments, poignantly awkward couplings, office trysts, schoolgirl crushes, elopements, tentative courtships, and rampant infidelity, shot through with lurid violence, romantic illusion, and surprising tenderness. With the satirical eye of Cindy Sherman, Petrushevskaya blends macabre spectacle with transformative moments of grace and shows just why she is Russia’s preeminent contemporary fiction writer. Ludmilla Petrushevskaya has published stories in the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and n + 1. Born in 1938, she is one of Russia's most celebrated contemporary authors. She lives in Moscow. Anna Summers is the coeditor and co-translator of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby and the literary editor of the Baffler. Born in Moscow, she now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts

The literary event of Halloween: a book of otherworldly power from Russia 's preeminent contemporary fiction writer Vanishings and aparitions, nightmares and twists of fate, mysterious ailments and supernatural interventions haunt these stories by the Russian master Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, heir to the spellbinding tradition of Gogol and Poe. Blending the miraculous with the macabre, and leavened by a mischievous gallows humor, these bewitching tales are like nothing being written in Russia – or anywhere else in the world – today

Before the last echo of the shot had trailed down Riverside Drive, Ellery Queen realized that he had just witnessed a murder. Robert Potts lay shot through the heart. Not only had Ellery Queen been a witness but also Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie. Yet not one of them knew who committed the murder. This is the story of the Old Woman (Cornelia Potts), who lived with all her children (six) in the incredible Potts “palace” on Riverside Drive — on its front lawn a great, bronze Oxford complete with trailing bronze shoelaces. Over the household hovers a ruthless killer who fits his cold-blooded crimes into the pattern of a Mother Goose rhyme. There are amusing and queer characters galore Thurlow, who spent his life bringing fruitless lawsuits; Louella, the would-be inventor; Horatio, the Philosopher of Escapism. And in addition there is the lovely, red-haired Sheila, revolted by the actions of her family. Here is murder as weird and baffling as Ellery Queen has yet encountered — a stiff dose of murder in the best Queen fashion

Also appeared as “In Gratitude”

Рассказ вошёл в сборники: Dark Carnival (Тёмный карнавал) The October Country (Октябрьская страна) The Stories of Ray Bradbury (И грянул гром: 100 рассказов)

In the future there is no want, no war, no disease or ill-timed death. The world is a paradise — and then, in a moment, it ends. The council that controls the Net fragments and goes to war, leaving people who have never known a moment of want or pain wondering how to survive

Jack Havig, a man born with the ability to move at will through the past and the future of mankind, must save the world from a doomed future of tyranny before his time runs out. Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973

INHERIT THE STARS! What you’re holding is a book about the struggle for peace—about what it means to be human, about how an honest, thoughtful recognition of what we are as human beings can show us the way toward a real peace. Not an easily dreamt peace, no—not one where men and women lie down lobotomized in the garden of Eden with lambs and lions and somehow, in the process, lose their very humanity—but a peace achieved in the face of their humanity ... apples, serpents, fear, rage, prejudice, and all. Intelligence is the key, of course—but so are trust, compassion, respect, and a very real recognition of the paradoxes, the conflicts within us, that make us human. The struggle isn’t easy, but then it shouldn’t be

Виктор видел мощь своего создания, безжалостную силу, с которой Калибан мог свернуть человеку шею одним быстрым движением. И Виктор боится Калибана; конечно же, он должен

From a contemporary master of the short story: a dazzling new collection-his first in fifteen years-that explores the unpredictable and mysterious in seemingly ordinary experience. These interrelated stories are arranged in two sections, one devoted to virtues ("Bravery," "Loyalty," "Chastity," "Charity," and "Forbearance") and the other to vices ("Lust," "Sloth," "Avarice," "Gluttony," and "Vanity"). They are cast with characters who appear and reappear throughout the collection, their actions equally divided between the praiseworthy and the loathsome. They take place in settings as various as Tuscany, San Francisco, Ethiopia, and New York, but their central stage is the North Loop of Minneapolis, alongside the Mississippi River, which flows through most of the tales. Each story has at its center a request or a demand, but each one plays out differently: in a hit-and-run, an assault or murder, a rescue, a startling love affair, or, of all things, a gesture of kindness and charity. Altogether incomparably crafted, consistently surprising, remarkably beautiful stories

It seemed like a good idea at the time to ex-paratrooper sergeant Harry Mitchell, home after three years in the deadly jungles of Vietnam. Head south to Florida, get a summer job, soak up some sun, relax a bit. But when he got to Paradise City he found himself drawn into a lethal set-up where dumped corpses, smuggling operations, over-ambitious cops, hired killers and a sexy little double-crosser called Nina combined to make life very unhealthy. It was just as well for Harry Mitchell that he’d learned to look after himself in Vietnam

All are familiar with the well-known plot of the man who commits murder and then attempts to make the crime appear to be suicide. In There’s Always a Price Tag, James Hadley Chase turns this old plot inside out and gives us a new and electrifying reverse of the coin: the man who attempts to make a suicide appear to be murder, in order to lay his hands on the victim’s insurance money. Here is a thriller that will quicken your heart-beats. It is by far the most ingenious story that this “Master of the art of deception” has yet given us

Acclaimed novelist Cecelia Ahern's There's No Place Like Here tells the story of Sandy Shortt, an obsessive-compulsive Missing Persons investigator who suddenly finds herself in the mystical land of the missing, desperate to return to the people and places from whom she has spent her life escaping. With this imaginative fourth novel, Ahern, whose P.S. I Love You was made into a major motion picture, continues to establish herself as not only an icon of Irish chick lit, but also a bold and creative thinker. Continuing the whimsical trend she started with If You Could See Me Now, Ahern asks readers to step outside the boundaries of reality, and enter a world where missing people (and possessions) from all over the globe congregate to start anew. When Sandy goes on an early morning jog and strays too far into the forest, she too finds herself "Here," the aptly named home of the missing. In addition to finding her lost socks, diaries, and stuffed animals, she also finds many of the people she has searched for throughout her career. From Bobby Stanley, who disappeared from his mother's house at the age of sixteen, to Terrence O'Malley, a librarian who disappeared on his way home from work at age 55, Sandy is quickly reunited with the people she has come to know only through photos and heartbreaking memories shared by devastated loved ones who enlisted her services. Of course, finding these people and possessions only makes Sandy realize how much she has missed out on in her real life, most notably her concerned parents and her on again off again boyfriend Greg. There's No Place Like Here is often predictable and the premise is a bit hard to swallow at times. Still, readers who take the leap will be rewarded with what is ultimately a witty, compassionate, and captivating love story