QUICK DELIVERY
Swift dispatch
Blood and Oil
Brief summary
Blood & Oil: A Prince's Memoir of Iran, from the Shah to the Ayatollah
Iran was the first country in the Middle East to develop an oil industry, and oil has been central to its tumultuous twentieth-century history.
A finalist for the PEN/West Award, Blood and Oil tells the epic inside story of the battle for Iranian oil. A prominent member of one of Iran's most powerful aristocratic families--so feared by Khomeini that the entire clan was blacklisted--Prince Manucher Farmanfarmaian was raised in a harem at the heart of Iran's imperial court.
With wit and provocative detail, he describes the days when he served as the Shah's oil adviser and pioneered the partnership that resulted in OPEC. Beautifully written and epic in its scope, this scintillating memoir provides a fascinating history of modern Iran.
"
ISBN:9780812975086
Author:Manucher Farmanfarmaian & Roxane Farmanfarmaian
Black Milk
Brief summary
Black Milk: On the Conflicting Demands of Writing, Creativity, and Motherhood
A thoughtful and incisive meditation on literature, motherhood, and spiritual wellbeing from Turkey's leading female author
After the birth of her first child, Elif Shafak experienced a profound personal crisis. Plagued by guilt, anxiety, and bewilderment about her new maternal role, the acclaimed novelist stopped writing for the first time in her life. As she plummeted into post-partum depression, Shafak looked to the experiences of other prominent female writers—including Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, and Alice Walker—for help navigating the conflict between motherhood and artistic creation in a male-dominated society.
Searingly honest, eloquent, and unexpectedly humorous, Black Milk will be widely embraced by writers, academics, and anyone who has undergone the identity crisis engendered by being a mother.
ISBN:9780143121084
Author:Elif Shafak
World War Two A Short History
Brief summary
After the unprecedented destruction of the Great War, the world longed for a lasting peace. The victors, however, valued vengeance even more than stability and demanded a massive indemnity from Germany in order to keep it from rearming. The results, as eminent historian Norman Stone describes in this authoritative history, were disastrous.
In World War Two, Stone provides a remarkably concise account of the deadliest war of human history, showing how the conflict roared to life from the ashes of World War One. Adolf Hitler rode a tide of popular desperation and resentment to power in Germany, promptly making good on his promise to return the nation to its former economic and military strength.
He bullied Europe into giving him his way, and in so doing backed the victors of the Great War into a corner. Following the invasion of Poland in 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany—a decision that, Stone argues, was utterly irrational. Yet Hitler had driven the world mad, and the rekindling of European hostilities soon grew to a conflagration that spread across the globe, fanned by political and racial ideologies more poisonous—and weaponry more destructive—than the world had ever seen. With commanding expertise, Stone leads readers through the escalation, climax, and mournful denouement of this sprawling conflict.
World War Two is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the twentieth century and its defining struggle.
"
ISBN:9780465013722
Author:Norman Stone
Property of a Noblewoman
Brief summary
In Danielle Steel’s thrilling new novel, a woman’s legacy—shaped by tragedy, fortitude, and undying devotion—transforms lives and hearts long after she is gone, and fulfills at last her most precious bequest.
Faded photographs of a glamorous couple in postwar Europe. Old letters hinting of tragic loss. And a breathtaking array of magnificent jewelry, spectacular stones in exquisite settings. These are the contents of a safe-deposit box long abandoned in a New York City bank. If no heir can be identified, the jewelry will be auctioned. But who was the woman who left such a fortune and no will?
Two people, drawn together by chance, begin to unravel the mystery. Jane Willoughby is a law clerk at the surrogate’s court and Phillip Lawton a fine arts expert for Christie’s auction house. They are simply doing their jobs when they come to the bank to inspect the contents of the box. But for both Jane and Phillip the search turns personal—and their efforts to reconstruct an enigmatic life will lead from New York to London and Paris, to Rome and Naples, and a series of stunning revelations.
Eighteen-year-old Marguerite Pearson left America with a broken heart in the shadow of World War II. She found a new life in Europe but forever mourned what she left behind. As the truth about Marguerite’s extraordinary history—her forbidden love affair and her family’s treachery—is slowly revealed, more people are drawn into the puzzle that Jane and Phillip have pieced together, and one among them will inherit the most unexpected gift of all.
ISBN:9780804179669
Author:Danielle Steel
12th of Never
Brief summary
Lindsay Boxer's beautiful baby daughter is born! While Lindsay and Joe are at home in bliss, San Francisco gets hit with multiple killings. An eccentric English professor has been having vivid nightmares about a murder that he claims is real. No one believes him-until a vicious shooting fits the man's description to the last detail.
Then the girlfriend of a star player for the San Francisco 49ers is found dead in her car, making the athlete the prime suspect. This seems like an open-and-shut case-until the body inexplicably vanishes from the morgue. When the desperate chief of police calls for help, Lindsay is forced to return to work after only one week at home with her newborn.
But all the crimes in the world will seem like nothing when she suddenly faces the most devastating loss of her life. With heart-pounding emotion and suspense, 12TH OF NEVER is James Patterson's most shocking and sensational Women's Murder Club novel yet.
ISBN:9781455515790
Author:James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
The Parsifal Mosaic
Brief summary
Michael Havelock's world ended on a moonlit beach on the Costa Brava. He stood by and watched as his partner and lover, Jenna Karas, double agent, was coldly and efficiently gunned down by his own agency. There's nothing left for Havelock but to get out, quit the game.
Until, in one frantic moment on a crowded railway platform in Rome, Havelock sees Jenna. She's alive - and suddenly Havelock is a marked man, on the run from both US and Russian assassins. A massive mosaic of treachery created by a top-level mole with the world in his fist - Parsifal...
ISBN:9780752858531
Author:Robert Ludlum
First Sight
Brief summary
First Sight is as complex and compelling as modern life itself. Careers, families, histories, losses, duty, obligation, and fear of losing control and getting hurt. It is a tale of daring to take risks, and losing control just enough to have a life, when the opportunity presents itself.
When two very different worlds and strong-willed people collide, everything changes in an instant, as they confront the age-old question of whether to lay oneself bare and risk intimacy—or not. Are they brave enough to face what comes next? And will they do it together or apart?
ISBN:9780385338301
Author:Danielle Steel
Killer
Brief summary
After thirty-five riveting, internationally acclaimed novels of psychological suspense, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman returns with his most stunning thriller to date. Killer is a mesmerizing L.A. noir portrayal of the darkest impulses of human nature carried to shocking extremes.
The City of Angels has more than its share of psychopaths, and no one recognizes that more acutely than the brilliant psychologist and police consultant Dr. Alex Delaware. Despite that, Constance Sykes, a sophisticated, successful physician, hardly seems like someone Alex needs to fear. Then, at the behest of the court, he becomes embroiled in a bizarre child custody dispute initiated by Connie against her sister and begins to realize that there is much about the siblings he has failed to comprehend.
And when the court battle between the Sykes sisters erupts into cold, calculating murder and a rapidly growing number of victims, Alex knows he’s been snared in a toxic web of pathology.
Nothing would please Alex more than to be free of the ugly spectacle known as Sykes v. Sykes. But then the little girl at the center of the vicious dispute disappears and Alex knows he must work with longtime friend Detective Milo Sturgis, braving an obstacle course of Hollywood washouts, gangbangers, and self-serving jurists in order to save an innocent life.
ISBN:9780345505750
Author:Jonathan Kellerman
You Said Forever
Brief summary
The compelling new novel from the Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling author of No Child of Mineand Don't Let Me Go.
Charlotte Goodman is living the dream.
Surrounded by family, friends and a stunning vineyard overlooking the ocean, it would be difficult for anyone to believe that she has a troubled past.
However, haunted by the theft of a young girl, Charlotte begins to realize the enormity of something she did many years ago, and soon finds herself having to make the most harrowing decision any woman would ever have to face.
ISBN:9781784756741
Author:Susan Lewis
Scorpia Rising
Overview
Scorpia has dogged Alex Rider for most of his life. They killed his parents, they did their best to con Alex into turning traitor, and they just keep coming back with more power. Now the world's most dangerous terrorist organization is playing with fire in the world's most combustible land: the Middle East. No one knows Scorpia like Alex. And no one knows how best to get to Alex like Scorpia. Until now.
The chases have never been more intense, the fights more treacherous, or the risks so perilous to mankind. And this time, Alex won't get away.
ISBN:9780399250576
Author:Anthony Horowitz
Girl Online On Tour
Overview
The sequel to the number-one bestseller Girl Online. Penny joins her rock-star boyfriend, Noah, on his European music tour.
Penny's bags are packed.
When Noah invites Penny on his European music tour, she can't wait to spend time with her rock-god-tastic boyfriend.
But, between Noah's jam-packed schedule, less-than-welcoming bandmates and threatening messages from jealous fans, Penny wonders whether she's really cut out for life on tour. She can't help but miss her family, her best friend Elliot . . . and her blog, Girl Online.
Can Penny learn to balance life and love on the road, or will she lose everything in pursuit of the perfect summer?
ISBN:9780141359953
Author:Zoe Sugg
The High Mountains of Portugal
Brief summary
In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named Tomás discovers an old journal. It hints at the existence of an extraordinary artifact that—if he can find it—would redefine history. Traveling in one of Europe’s earliest automobiles, he sets out in search of this strange treasure.
Thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist devoted to the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie finds himself at the center of a mystery of his own and drawn into the consequences of Tomás’s quest.
Fifty years on, a Canadian senator takes refuge in his ancestral village in northern Portugal, grieving the loss of his beloved wife. But he arrives with an unusual companion: a chimpanzee. And there the century-old quest will come to an unexpected conclusion.
The High Mountains of Portugal—part quest, part ghost story, part contemporary fable—offers a haunting exploration of great love and great loss. Filled with tenderness, humor, and endless surprise, it takes the reader on a road trip through Portugal in the last century—and through the human soul.
ISBN:9781782114758
Author:Yann Martel
Seven Gothic Tales
Brief summary
Originally published in 1934, Seven Gothic Tales, the first book by "one of the finest and most singular artists of our time" (The Atlantic), is a modern classic.
Here are seven exquisite tales combining the keen psychological insight characteristic of the modern short story with the haunting mystery of the nineteenth-century Gothic tale, in the tradition of writers such as Goethe, Hoffmann, and Poe.
ISBN:9780679736417
Author:Isak Dinesen & Karen Blixen
The Games
Brief summary
Rio has spent years preparing to host the world during the Olympic Games--but they didn't prepare for this...
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil--home to beautiful white-sand beaches, gorgeous women, stunning natural beauty, and the world's largest Carnival celebration--knows how to throw a party.
So it's a natural choice to host the biggest spectacles in sports--the World Cup and the Olympics. To ensure that the games go off without a hitch, the organizers turn to Jack Morgan, the unflappable head of the renowned international security and consulting firm Private. But when events are this exclusive, someone's bound to get left off the guest list.
Two years after the action nearly spilled from the field to the stands during soccer's championship match, Jack is back in Rio for the Olympics. But before the cauldron is even lit, the only thing more intense than the competition is the security risks.
When prominent clients he's supposed to be protecting disappear, and bodies mysteriously start to litter the streets, Jack is drawn deep into the heart of a ruthless underworld populated by disaffected residents trying to crash the world's biggest party.
As the opening ceremonies near, with the world watching in horror, Jack must sprint to the finish line to defuse a threat that could decimate Rio and turn the games from a joyous celebration into a deadly spectacle.
ISBN:9780316407113
Author:James Patterson & Mark Sullivan
The Bone Collection
Brief summary
A collection of pulse-pounding tales featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan—including the untold story of her first case!
The #1 New York Times bestselling author behind the hit Fox series Bones, Kathy Reichs is renowned for chilling suspense and fascinating forensic detail. The Bone Collection presents her trademark artistry in this collection of thrilling short fiction.
In First Bones, a prequel to Reichs’s first novel, Déjà Dead, she at last reveals the tale of how Tempe became a forensic anthropologist. In this never-before-published story, Tempe recalls the case that lured her from a promising career in academia into the grim but addictive world of criminal investigation.
(It all began with a visit from a pair of detectives—and a John Doe recovered from an arson scene in a trailer.) The collection is rounded out with three more stories that take Tempe from the low country of the Florida Everglades, where she makes a grisly discovery in the stomach of an eighteen-foot Burmese python, to the heights of Mount Everest, where a frozen corpse is unearthed. No matter where she goes, Tempe’s cases make for the most gripping reading.
ISBN:9780399593222
Author:Kathy Reichs
The Fireman
Brief summary
From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle to save it, led by one powerful and enigmatic man known as the Fireman.
The fireman is coming. Stay cool.
No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle.
The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin.
When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.
Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore.
But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.
In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.
ISBN:9780062200631
Author:Joe Hill
Taming the Infinite
Brief Summary
Taming the Infinite: The Story of Mathematics from the First Numbers to Chaos Theory
From ancient Babylon to the last great unsolved problems, an acclaimed mathematician and popular science writer brings us his witty, engaging, and definitive history of mathematics
In his famous straightforward style, Ian Stewart explains each major development—from the first number systems to chaos theory—and considers how each affected society and changed everyday life forever.
Maintaining a personal touch, he introduces all of the outstanding mathematicians of history, from the key Babylonians, Greeks, and Egyptians, via Newton and Descartes, to Fermat, Babbage, and Godel, and demystifies math's key concepts without recourse to complicated formulae.
Written to provide a captivating historic narrative for the non-mathematician, this book is packed with fascinating nuggets and quirky asides, and contains plenty of illustrations and diagrams to illuminate and aid understanding of a subject many dread, but which has made the world what it is today.
ISBN:9781847247681
Author:Ian Stewart
W is for Wasted
Brief Summary
Two dead men changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I’d never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue.
The first was a local PI of suspect reputation. He’d been gunned down near the beach at Santa Teresa. It looked like a robbery gone bad. The other was on the beach six weeks later. He’d been sleeping rough. Probably homeless.
No identification. A slip of paper with Millhone’s name and number was in his pants pocket. The coroner asked her to come to the morgue to see if she could ID him.
Two seemingly unrelated deaths, one a murder, the other apparently of natural causes.
But as Kinsey digs deeper into the mystery of the John Doe, some very strange linkages begin to emerge. And before long at least one aspect is solved as Kinsey literally finds the key to his identity. "And just like that,” she says, "the lid to Pandora’s box flew open. It would take me another day before I understood how many imps had been freed, but for the moment, I was inordinately pleased with myself.”
In this multilayered tale, the surfaces seem clear, but the underpinnings are full of betrayals, misunderstandings, and outright murderous fraud. And Kinsey, through no fault of her own, is thoroughly compromised.
W is for . . . wanderer . . . worthless . . . wronged . . .
W is for wasted.
ISBN:9780399158988
Author:Sue Grafton
The Secrets We Keep
Brief summary
Four years ago Erin Joyce left Dublin under a cloud and bought a guesthouse in the remote, beautiful village of Dunbarra. The Gatehouse attracts a strange clutch of guests who, once ensconced, never want to leave.
There's Hazel, a shy artist, and her sweet, silent daughter Gracie. Sandra, a brash American, wants to know everything about everyone. Then there's wise old easy-going PJ, who's seemingly part of the furniture. But Erin's fragile happiness is thrown off-balance by the arrival of A-list Hollywood actor Sebastian Grey.
Erin finds herself drawn to this handsome enigmatic man, who used to walk with a swagger but now prowls the country lanes with haunted eyes. What trauma could have brought about this devastating change? Sebastian isn't the only one in the Gatehouse with a secret.
Why is Hazel cast so adrift? Where does PJ go each week without fail, and what really brought Sandra to Dunbarra? As Erin finds herself embroiled in her guests' secrets she starts to ask herself: will she be ready to reveal her own?
ISBN:9781847393340
Author:Colette Caddle
The Second Opinion
Brief summary
Dr. Thea Sperelakis, diagnosed as a teen with Asperger’s syndrome, has always been an outsider. She has a brilliant medical mind, and a remarkable recall of details, but her difficulty in dealing with hidden agendas and interpersonal conflicts have led her to leave the complex, money-driven dynamics of the hospital, and to embrace working with the poor, embattled patients of Doctors Without Borders.
Her father, Petros, is one of the most celebrated internal medicine specialists in the world, and the founder of the cutting-edge Sperelakis Center for Diagnostic Medicine at Boston’s sprawling, powerful Beaumont Clinic.
Thea’s rewarding life in Africa is turned upside-down when Petros is severely injured by a hit-and-run driver. He is in the Beaumont ICU, in a deep coma. No one thinks he will survive. Thea must return home. Two of Petros’ other children, both physicians, battle Thea and her eccentric brother, Dimitri, by demanding that treatment for their father be withheld.
As Thea uncovers the facts surrounding the disaster, it seems more and more to be no accident. Petros, himself, is the only witness. Who would want him dead? The answers are trapped in his brain . . . until he looks at Thea and begins slowly to blink a terrifying message.
In The Second Opinion, Michael Palmer has created a cat-and-mouse game where one woman must confront a conspiracy of doctors to uncover an evil practice that touches every single person who ever has a medical test. With sympathetic characters and twists and betrayals that come from the most unlikely places, The Second Opinion will make you question…everything.
ISBN:9780312343552
Author:Michael Palmer