Monday, March 3, 2003

Book Description:
A serial killer takes his dead victims' portraits and sends them to the media. Lieutenant Eve Dallas counts on her husband's help to crack the case, but he's just learned a devastating truth about his past.

Book Description:
Wild and restless, Kyle Donovan has freed himself from the constraints of his family's high-powered gem-trading empire to rove the world as a treasure hunter. Now the president of Donovan International has given Kyle an assignment with explosive ramifications. A casehe must take.

When one of China's legendary cultural treasures isstolen, Lianne Blakely, a mysterious and beautiful jade expert, is accused of the theft. Its Kyle's job to get to the bottom of what could be a potential disaster for the Donovans as well as Lianne.

But Kyle finds himself irresistibly drawn to the exotic beauty and captivated by her fierce claim of innocence. Soon they are in dangerous pursuit of the real thief, drawn deeper into the perils of spiraling power plays, and linked by a passion as powerful as the lore of the ancient culture and as enduring as the splendor of the treasured jade.

Book Description:
A wanna-be jockey accepts a job in his father's campaign for Parliament--and realizes that politics can be the most perilous horse race of all.

Book Description:
Richard Baedecker thinks his greatest challenge was walking on the moon, but then he meets a mysterious woman who shows him his past. Join Baedecker as he comes to grips with the son and wife he lost in his passion for space exploration, his forgotten childhood and the loss he experienced during the death-flight of the Challenger. The most difficult exploration of his life is not the cold, rocky crevices of the moon, but the warm interior of his heart. Brilliant and beautifully written, PHASES OF GRAVITY is a masterpiece about love and loss that transports readers far beyond the confines of space and time.

Book Description:
"Disney is so good at being good that it manifests an evil; so uniformly efficient and courteous, so dependably clean and conscientious, so unfailingly entertaining that it's unreal, and therefore is an agent of pure wickedness. . . . Disney isn't in the business of exploiting Nature so much as striving to improve upon it, constantly fine-tuning God's work."
--from TEAM RODENT

TEAM RODENT
How Disney Devours America

"Revulsion is good. Revulsion is healthy. Each of us has limits, unarticulated boundaries of taste and tolerance, and sometimes we forget where they are. Peep Land is here to remind us; a fixed compass point by which we can govern our private behavior. Because being grossed out is essential to the human experience; without a perceived depravity, we'd have nothing against which to gauge the advance or decline of culture; our art, our music, our cinema, our books. Without sleaze, the yardstick shrinks at both ends. Team Rodent doesn't believe in sleaze, however, nor in old-fashioned revulsion. Square in the middle is where it wants us all to be, dependable consumers with predictable attitudes. The message, never stated but avuncularly implied, is that America's values ought to reflect those of the Walt Disney Company, and not the other way around."

Book Description:
Political provocateur Bill Maher tells it like it is in a useful and hilarious guide for the many Americans who want to do more here at home to help the war effort, but are at a loss as to what. Thirty-three dynamic new posters and several classics from our government's archive accompanied by text from one of our leading pundits and cutting-edge comedians make this the perfect book for this time in our nation's history, the zeitgeist of post-9/11 America. This is the book that will help Americans make connections between what we do and how it can help (or hurt) our troops and us.

Book Description:
Connecticut, this is a story that celebrates family, friendship, and the triumph of the human spirit.

Mallory Keswick can't imagine how her life could possibly be better. She has a wonderful, fulfilling marriage to a man who loves, supports and nurtures her. She has beautiful twins who bring joy to her days and a lovely home, to all of which she devotes herself wholeheartedly. Mallory feels she has finally found the elusive sense of family that never quite rang true in her own childhood. Life seems almost perfect until an exceptionally cruel act of violence tears apart the fabric of her happiness, leaving her wondering how to go on.

Speaking in the voice of her heroine, Barbara Taylor Bradford tells the story of a remarkable woman who has yet to discover her own strength, a woman who doesn't yet realize that if she has the courage to take it, she has everything to gain.

Book Description:
Reece is asked by one his closest friends to check on the man's daughter. Reece agrees. However, once meeting Amber, Reece has a hard time remembering that she is his friends daughter and that he is fourteen years older than her. Amber, on the other hand, has no problem with the age difference and finds herself attracted to Reece. Reece and Amber develop a very deep friendship that turns into a lot more. But, What happens when Ambers father finds out that the friend he sent to check on is little girl has fallen in love with her? What happens when Amber finds out that Reece lied to her? He never told her that he was there to check up on her at her fathers request.

Book Description:
When dotty Mrs. Lancaster disappears without a trace, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford discover that something wicked has come to the Sunny Ridge Rest Home.

Book Description:
Alice Ascher, a shopkeeper in Andover, is bludgeoned to death at her place of work. Next to die is Miss Bernard in Bexhill, then Mr. Clarke in Churston. More disturbing than the alphabetic sequence of the killings or the ABC Railway guide that the killer leaves at the scene of each crime are the taunting notes Hercule Poirot receives each time the killer is about to strike again. It is one of Poirot’s most challenging cases yet.

Book Description:
It was an unusual predicament for Sir Stafford Nye-to awaken in a stupor after being drugged, only to find his passport stolen. There was also no trace of the fascinating woman he encountered in Frankfurt who begged him to help save her life. But Sir Stafford's troubles are only just beginning. The target of two murder attempts, he now seeks the help of the stranger who so urgently sought his. If he can locate her. What he finds is a woman of numerous identities and twice as many secrets, who ushers him into the shadows of an international conspiracy that could well prove to be the death of them.

Book Description:
Recovering from amnesia, Dr. Arthur Calgary discovers that he alone could have provided an alibi in a scandalous murder trial. It ended in the conviction of Jacko Argyle. The victim was Jacko's own mother. To make matters worse, he died in prison. But the young man's innocence means that someone else killed the Argyle matriarch, and would certainly kill again to remain in the shadows. Shaded in the moral ambiguities of murder, this provocative psychological puzzler of guilt, vengeance, and blood secrets is among Agatha Christie's personal favorites.

Book Description:
Strapped by a chauffeur's wages, Michael Rogers' want of a better life seems out of reach. Especially elusive is a magnificent piece of property in Kingston Bishop--unil a chance meeting with a beautiful heiress makes his dreams possible. Marrying her is the first step. Building the perfect home is the next. Unfortunately, Michael ignored the local warnings about the deadly curse buried in the tract of land, and living out his dreams may exact a higher price than he ever imagined. Praised as one of Agatha Christie's most unusual forays into gothic, psychological suspense, this novel of fate, chance, and the nature of evil was a personal favorite of the author's as well.

Book Description:
Agatha Christie is more than the most popular mystery writer of all time. In a career that spans over half a century, her name is synonymous with brilliant deception, ingenious puzzles, and the surprise denouement. By virtually inventing the modern mystery novel she has earned her title as the Queen of Crime. Curious? Then you're invited to read...DEATH COMES AS THE ENDIn this startling historical mystery, unique in the author's canon, Agatha Christie investigates a deadly mystery at the heart of a dissonant family in ancient Egypt. Imhotep, wealthy landowner and priest of Thebes, has outraged his sons and daughters by bringing a beautiful concubine into their fold. And the manipulative Nofret has already set about a plan to usurp her rivals' rightful legacies. When her lifeless body is discovered at the foot of a cliff, Imhotep's own flesh and blood become the apparent conspirators in her shocking murder. But vengeance and greed may not be the only motives...AUTHORBIO: AGATHA CHRISTIE is the world's best known mystery writer. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another billion in 44 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her writing career spanned more than half a century, during which she wrote 80 novels and short story collections, as well as 14 plays, one of which, The Mousetrap, is the longest-running play in history. Two of the characters she created, the brilliant little Belgian Hercule Poirot and the irrepressible and relentless Miss Marple, went on to become world-famous detectives. Both have been widely dramatized in feature films and made-for-TV movies.Agatha Christie also wrote under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. As well, she wrote four non-fiction books including an autobiography and an entertaining account of the many expeditions she shared with her archaeologist husband, Sir Max Mallowan. Agatha Christie died in 1976.

Book Description:
In a sprawling, half-timbered mansion in the affluent suburb of Swinley Dean, Aristide Leonides lies dead from barbiturate poisoning. An accident? Not likely. In fact, suspicion has already fallen on his luscious widow, a cunning beauty fifty years his junior, set to inherit a sizeable fortune, and rumored to be carrying on with a strapping young tutor comfortably ensconced in the family estate. But criminologist Charles Hayward is casting his own doubts on the innocence of the entire Leonides brood. He knows them intimately. And he's certain that in a crooked house such as Three Gables, no one's on the level...

Book Description:
Nearly a quarter-century after her death, Agatha Christie remains the most popular mystery writer of all time. Now, in a celebrated publishing event, fans and newcomers alike are treated to another Christie novel. Created in 1930 as a stage play and faithfully adapted by Charles Osborne, Black Coffee brings back beloved detective Hercule Poirot to exercise his "little grey cells" one more deliciously deductive time...

An urgent call from physicist Sir Claud Amory sends famed detective Hercule Poirot rushing from London to a sprawling country estate. Sir Claud fears a member of his own household wants to steal a secret formula destined for the Ministry of Defense. But Poirot arrives too late. The formula is missing. Worse, Sir Claud has been poisoned by his after-dinner coffee. Poirot soon identifies a potent brew of despair, treachery, and deception amid the mansion's occupants. Now he must find the formula and the killer...while letting no poison slip 'twix his low lips.

Book Description:
Agatha Christie is more than the most popular mystery writer of all time. In a career that spans over half a century, her name is synonymous with brilliant deception, ingenious puzzles, and the surprise denouement. By virtually inventing the modern mystery novel she has earned her title as the Queen of Crime. Curious? Then you're invited to read...TOWARDS ZERO"I love a good detective story, but they begin in the wrong place! They begin with the murder. But the murder is the end. The story begins long before that." So remarks esteemed criminologist Mr. Treves. Truer words have never been spoken, for a psychopathic killer has insinuated himself, with cunning manipulation, into a quiet village on the river Tern. But who is his intended victim? What are his unfathomable motives? And how and when will he reach the point of murder...the zero point?In this ingenious and noteworthy departure for Agatha Christie, it's the intricate workings of a pathological mind that become the stuff of startling mystery as a group of friends at a seaside resort remain blithely unaware that their weekend will be the death of them all...AUTHORBIO: AGATHA CHRISTIE is the world's best known mystery writer. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another billion in 44 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her writing career spanned more than half a century, during which she wrote 80 novels and short story collections, as well as 14 plays, one of which, The Mousetrap, is the longest-running play in history. Two of the characters she created, the brilliant little Belgian Hercule Poirot and the irrepressible and relentless Miss Marple, went on to become world-famous detectives. Both have been widely dramatized in feature films and made-for-TV movies.Agatha Christie also wrote under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. As well, she wrote four non-fiction books including an autobiography and an entertaining account of the many expeditions she shared with her archaeologist husband, Sir Max Mallowan. Agatha Christie died in 1976.

Book Description:
A grand treasure for fans of the grande dame of mystery, this collection brings together nine rare and brilliant Christie tales of murder and detection that span nearly half a century of storytelling genius.

Book Description:
As a condemned murderess stands before the court, her eyes meet those of the only man who believes in her innocence. But Hercule Poirot must prove it before it's too late.

Book Description:
A collection of classic stories featuring multiple victims, multiple mysteries, multiple suspects, and a multitude of talent to solve it all: Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple, and Mr. Parker Pyne.

Book Description:
A cocktail party ends in murder, but who did it? Why? And for that matter, how? No real cause of death has been established. It's a real baffler and it's prompting Hercule Poirot to ask another question...who's next?

Book Description:
On the verge of retirement, Hercule Poirot can't resist the lure of a seemingly unsolvable series of recent crimes--from a lost Pekinese to a man driven mad by love to a gentleman poisoned by gossip.

Book Description:
In this "crime puzzle of the first order" (New York Times), an ordinary flight to London turns extraordinary when a female passenger is shot to death with a venom-tipped dart. Even more bizarre is that the murder went unnoticed by everyone on board-- including the brilliant Hercule Poirot.

Book Description:
When Richard Abernethie, the master of Enderby Hall, dies his heirs assemble at the vast Victorian mansion to hear the reading of the will. It is then that Cora, Abernethie's sister, comes out with an alarming proposal: "But he was murdered, wasn't he?" The next day Cora is found brutally bludgeoned to death in her home.

None other than Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot is summoned to Enderby in pursuit of the murderer. Suspects abound including a wayward nephew unlucky with women and horses, a favorite and seemingly blameless sister-in-law, two feuding nieces, a nosey housekeeper, and a disingenuous art collector.

Poirot must conjure all of his deductive powers in order to unmask the killer and his final conclusion is a brilliant and unexpected as ever. After the Funeral is classic Christie at her best.

Book Description:
Bound for the Riviera, detective Hercule Poirot has boarded Le Train Bleu, an elegant, leisurely means of travel, free of intrigue. Then he meets Ruth Kettering. The American heiress—bailing out of a doomed marriage—is en route to reconcile with her former lover. But by morning, her private affairs are made public when she is found murdered in her luxury compartment. The rumour of a strange man loitering in the victim's shadow is all Poirot has to go on. Until Mrs. Kettering's secret life begins to unfold...

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