Hothouse Orchid [AUDIOBOOK]

Hothouse Orchid [AUDIOBOOK] Author: Woods, Stuart MacDuffle, Carrington ISBN: 0-14-314486-3

Category: American Mystery & Suspense Fiction

Audio CD Penguin Audio

Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Bestseller Woods piles on the coincidences in his modestly entertaining fifth thriller to feature CIA agent Holly Barker (after Iron Orchid). When Holly returns home to Orchid Beach, Fla., where she was once chief of police, she's reunited with both welcome and unwelcome figures from her past. Renegade ex-CIA agent Teddy Fay, sporting a new identity, has chosen to settle in nearby Vero Beach. Lauren Cade, a former military comrade, is now a sergeant with the Florida State Patrol. Holly is shocked to learn that James Bruno, her former commanding officer who was tried and acquitted of raping Lauren and who once tried to rape Holly herself, is Orchid Beach's new police chief. Holly's not so shocked to learn that a serial killer and rapist is at work in the area. Woods glibly lets the reader stay well ahead of the legal posse tracking the killer while still keeping a card or two up his sleeve. Playful dialogue and romantic sexual escapades lighten the atmosphere. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Product Description A brand-new page-turning Holly Barker novel from the perennially entertaining New York Times-bestselling author Stuart Woods. After Special Agent Holly Barker lets international terrorist Teddy Fay slip through her fingers for a second time, the CIA thinks she might want a long vacation, at least until Teddy is captured and the bad publicity has blown over. So Holly returns to her hometown of Orchid Beach, Florida, where she had been police chief for many years. But a very unpleasant surprise awaits her. Many years earlier, Holly and another female army officer had brought charges against their commanding officer for sexual harassment, attempted rape, and rape. Holly had managed to fight him off, but the other woman, a young lieutenant, had not. The officer in question was acquitted of all charges, and has also left the army-for a job as Orchid Beach's new police chief. Will Holly return to the CIA? Or will she challenge her old nemesis for control of the Orchid Beach Police Department? --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Rough Country [AUDIOBOOK]

Rough Country [AUDIOBOOK] Author: Sandford, John Conger, Eric ISBN: 0-14-314484-7

Category: American Mystery & Suspense Fiction

Audio CD Penguin Audio

Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Near the start of bestseller Sandford's winning third thriller to feature Virgil Flowers of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (after Heat Lightning), Virgil gets a call while muskie fishing from his boss, Lucas Davenport (the hero of Sandford's long-running Prey series). Lucas orders Virgil to look into the shooting death of Erica McDill, an ad agency exec from Minneapolis and a big supporter of the Democratic Party, who was staying at the Eagle Nest Lodge in nearby Grand Rapids. A talk with lodge owner Margery Stanhope turns up unusual details: Margery's clientele is mostly lesbian; an all-female rock band is involved; guests who are so inclined can buy young men for an evening's pleasure; and financial reasons could explain the murder. It's a complicated case, but Virgil is up to the task, and, as always, he's funny, smart and tough when he needs to be--and catnip to the ladies. 500,000 first printing. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Product Description Unabridged CDs • 9 CDs, 10 hours John Sandford's "truly captivating" (Richmond Times-Dispatch) new hero goes north to solve a puzzling murder-and finds that the country is very rough indeed.

Her Fearful Symmetry: A Novel [AUDIOBOOK] [UNABRIDGED]

Her Fearful Symmetry: A Novel [AUDIOBOOK] [UNABRIDGED] Author: Niffenegger, Audrey Amato, Bianca ISBN: 0-7435-9930-6

Category: Fiction

Audio CD Simon & Schuster Audio

Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review Amazon Best of the Month, September 2009: Following her breakout bestseller, The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger returns with Her Fearful Symmetry, a haunting tale about the complications of love, identity, and sibling rivalry. The novel opens with the death of Elspeth Noblin, who bequeaths her London flat and its contents to the twin daughters of her estranged twin sister back in Chicago. These 20-year-old dilettantes, Julie and Valentina, move to London, eager to try on a new experience like one of their obsessively matched outfits. Historic Highgate Cemetery, which borders Elspeth's home, serves as an inspired setting as the twins become entwined in the lives of their neighbors: Elspeth's former lover, Robert; Martin, an agoraphobic crossword-puzzle creator; and the ethereal Elspeth herself, struggling to adjust to the afterlife. Niffenegger brings these quirky, troubled characters to marvelous life, but readers may need their own supernatural suspension of disbelief as the story winds to its twisty conclusion. --Brad Thomas Parsons --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From Publishers Weekly Niffenegger follows up her spectacular The Time Traveler's Wife with a beautifully written if incoherent ghost story. When Elspeth Noblin dies, she leaves everything to the 20-year-old American twin daughters of her own long-estranged twin, Edie. Valentina and Julia, as enmeshed as Elspeth and Edie once were, move into Elspeth's London flat bordering Highgate Cemetery in a building occupied by Elspeth's lover, Robert, and the novel's most interesting character, Martin, whose wife is long suffering due to his crushing and beautifully portrayed OCD. The girls are pallid and incurious; they wander around London and spend time with Robert and Martin and Elspeth's ghost. Valentina's developing relationship with Robert arouses mild jealousy, and when Valentina pursues her interest in fashion design, Julia disapproves, which leads Valentina and Elspeth to concoct an extreme plan to allow Valentina to lead her own life. The plan, unsurprisingly, goes awry, followed by weakly foreshadowed and confusing twists that take the plot from dull to silly. While Niffenegger's gifted prose and past success will garner readers, the story is a disappointment. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

A Separate Country [AUDIOBOOK] [UNABRIDGED]

A Separate Country [AUDIOBOOK] [UNABRIDGED] Author: Hicks, Robert Howard, Sherman Keating, Isabel Collins, Kevin T. ISBN: 1-60024-762-8

Category: Historical fiction

Audio CD Hachette Audio

Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Hicks follows his bestselling The Widow of the South with the grand, ripped-from-the-dusty-archives epic of Confederate general John Bell Hood. The story begins with Hood, on his deathbed with yellow fever, dispersing a stack of papers to former war nemesis Eli Griffin, urging him to publish the general's secret memoir. Hood's story picks up in 1878 as he, nearly broke, reflects on the past 10 years' dwindling fortunes. Now, with an artificial leg, a bum arm and nearly no money, he and his wife, Anna Marie, live in diminished circumstances in New Orleans. Over time, their once passionate relationship grows mundane as Hood watched the years wrench devilry and lust and joy from her face. Things are also complicated by the violent death of Anna Marie's best friend and the reappearance of former comrade Sebastien Lemerle, who holds a nasty secret he holds about Hood's past. Meanwhile, Hood's marriage and business failures pale in comparison to the yellow fever epidemic that decimates the area. Hicks's stunning narrative volleys between Hood, Anna Marie and Eli, each offering variety and texture to a story saturated in Southern gallantry and rich American history. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From The Washington Post From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Charlotte Hays After one-legged Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood led his men to crushing defeat in the bloody Franklin-Nashville campaign of 1864, soldiers sang -- to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" -- a ditty about how "the gallant Hood of Texas / He played hell in Tennessee." Robert Hicks's riveting new novel takes up Hood's life after the war. In New Orleans, he married Anna Marie Hennen, a Creole society girl, fathered 11 children and ultimately failed in business. Like the Hood of history, the Hood of this novel is engaged in writing a self-serving memoir designed to redeem his tarnished military reputation. Hicks's Hood, however, also has a second, secret memoir: Though filled with chilling adventure, it is really about the more important campaign for personal redemption. Dying of yellow fever, Hood summons a friend named Eli Griffin, whose history has intertwined tragically with his own. He wants Griffin to publish his secret memoir, but only if his former comrade, now working as a hit man, approves of the project. The action unfolds through Hood's diary, letters from Anna Marie to their oldest daughter, and Griffin's account of his adventures while fulfilling the general's strange, last commission. Hood made reckless decisions that cost thousands of lives during the Civil War, but Hicks depicts a scene before secession when, as a young officer in Texas, Hood orders his troops to commit an atrocity against the Comanche at the aptly named Devil's River. This horrific, well-written episode introduces Hood's diabolical protege, Sebastien Lemerle, another New Orleans Creole who plays a major role in the novel. Anyone who has ever lived in New Orleans must be prepared to be made homesick, and the bizarre cast of characters, including a dwarf, a burly priest and a boy of mixed and mysterious parentage, wouldn't seem right in any city but this one. I read "A Separate Country" with breakneck speed for that most old-fashioned of reasons: I wanted to see what happened next. And then I eagerly read it a second time to make sure I got the complicated twists and turns. Is there a better recommendation? Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Blood's A Rover [AUDIOBOOK] [UNABRIDGED]

Blood's A Rover [AUDIOBOOK] [UNABRIDGED] Author: Ellroy, James Wasson, Craig ISBN: 0-307-57667-1

Category: American Mystery & Suspense Fiction

Audio CD Random House Audio

Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review Amazon Best of the Month, September 2009: James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet novels chronicled a cynic's take on Los Angeles cops and robbers, carving a dark and creepy nook for the author in the world of crime fiction. With Blood's a Rover, Ellroy completes his Underworld USA trilogy, an epic reinvention of American history, politics, and corruption. This book comes out firing: Ellroy's hipster prose--inimitable for its high style and spectacular energy--snaps and surges through more than 600 pages like black electricity, shocking the gentle reader from page one. Opening with a heist scene rendered as coldly violent as anything from Sam Peckinpah's most sociopathic fantasies, the story hurls itself across an improbable crazy quilt plot, including Howard Hughes's Vegas power-play, political abuses and machinations in Hoover's FBI, and the mob's ubiquitous shadow, darkening everything from JFK's assassination to Nixon's 1968 Presidential campaign. Another audacious effort from a one-of-a-kind talent, Blood's a Rover is thrilling and exhausting, a gloriously guilty pleasure. --Jon Foro --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Ellroy concludes the scorching trilogy begun with 1995's American Tabloid with a crushing bravura performance. As ever, his sentences are gems of concision, and his characters--many of whom readers will remember from The Cold Six Thousand and from American history classes--are a motley crew of grotesques often marked by an off-kilter sense of honor: stone bad-asses, in other words, though the women are stronger than the men who push the plot. The violence begins with an unsolved 1964 L.A. armored car heist that will come to have major repercussions later in the novel, as its effects ripple outward from a daring robbery into national and international affairs. There's Howard Hughes's takeover of Las Vegas, helped along by Wayne Tedrow Jr., who's working for the mob. The mob, meanwhile, is scouting casino locations in Central America and the Caribbean, and working to ensure Nixon defeats Humphrey in the 1968 election. Helping out is French-Corsican mercenary Mesplede, who first appeared in Tabloid as the shooter on the grassy knoll and who now takes under his wing Donald Crutchfield, an L.A. peeping Tom/wheelman (based, curiously, on a real-life private eye). Mesplede and Crutchfield eventually set up shop in the Dominican Republic, where the mob begins casino construction and Mesplede and Crutchfield run heroin from Haiti to raise money for their rogue nocturnal assaults on Cuba. In the middle and playing all sides against one another is FBI agent Dwight Holly, who has a direct line to a rapidly deteriorating J. Edgar Hoover (the old girl) and a tormented relationship with left-wing radical Karen Sitakis, and, later, Joan Klein, whose machinations bring the massive plot together and lead to more than one death. Though the book isn't without its faults (Crutchfield discovers a significant plot element because something told him to get out and look; Wayne's late-book transformation is too rushed), it's impossible not to read it with a sense of awe. The violence is as frequent as it is extreme, the treachery is tremendous, and the blending of cold ambition and colder political maneuvering is brazen, all of it filtered through diamond-cut prose. It's a stunning and crazy book that could only have been written by the premier lunatic of American letters. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The Scarpetta Factor [AUDIOBOOK]

The Scarpetta Factor [AUDIOBOOK] Author: Cornwell, Patricia Reading, Kate ISBN: 0-14-314547-9

Category: American Mystery & Suspense Fiction

Audio CD Penguin Audio

Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review Patricia Cornwell and James Patterson: Author One-on-One In this Amazon exclusive, we brought together blockbuster authors Patricia Cornwell and James Patterson and asked them to interview each other. Find out what two of the top authors of their genres have to say about their characters, writing process, and more. James Patterson is one of the bestselling writers of all time, with more than 170 million copies of his books sold worldwide. He is the author of two of the most popular detective series of the past decade, featuring Alex Cross and the Women's Murder Club, and he also writes nonfiction and The Maximum Ride series for young readers. Read on to see James Patterson's questions for Patricia Cornwell, or turn the tables to see what Cornwell asked Patterson. Patterson: Here's a chance to say all the great things the critics would about The Scarpetta Factor, if there were any newspapers left that still reviewed books. Or, as they say in the TV interviews: Tell us about this one, Patricia. Cornwell: As was true in the last book (Scarpetta), the new one is set in New York City, and it begins with Kay Scarpetta working on the autopsy of a young woman who presumably was murdered the night before in Central Park. While the apparent circumstances of the violent crime say one thing, the body is telling Scarpetta a very different and incredibly disturbing story that causes the prosecutor, the police, other officials, and even Scarpetta's friends and colleagues, to wonder if she's making mistakes or has begun to believe her own legend. While others are questioning and criticizing her, she begins to doubt herself and her decision to be the senior forensic analyst for CNN--an exposure that possibly leads to her BlackBerry disappearing and a suspicious package being left for her at her apartment building. As the intrigue unfolds, the past is no longer past, and she is soon faced with an old nemesis who threatens to be her final undoing. Patterson: This book is set in New York again--what do you like about the Big City? What don't you like? Cornwell: Certainly New York City is the ultimate Big City. By placing Scarpetta in the midst of NYC within its medical examiner's office, I've positioned her on an international stage where anything can and does happen. The machinery is huge (NYPD and the FBI field office, for example), yet the private lives of the characters remain intimate and small. Not only is this a big story about a big-city case that captivates the world, it's also a very close look at the characters and who and what they are to one another in contemporary times. In terms of what I like and don't like about NYC? The only thing I don't like about it is driving there. Patterson: I often get asked what I have in common with Alex Cross. What would you say you have in common with Kay Scarpetta? Cornwell: Scarpetta and I share the same values and sensibilities. We approach cases the same way (which should be rather obvious, since I work the cases by taking on her persona). Beyond that, there are many differences. I'm not Catholic or Italian or married to Benton Wesley. I'm not a forensic pathologist with a law degree. I don't have her emotional discipline or inhibitions, nor do I have her professional dazzle. (I always remind people I was an English major who started working at age eleven, first as a babysitter, then in food service!) I don't have Scarpetta's pedigree. But then, she isn't a writer, unless she's writing professional journal articles or autopsy reports. Patterson: What's your routine like when it comes to writing? Do you do write every day? On the road? Do you need vacations from your writing? Cornwell: I wish I had more of a routine. I begin each book with research that continues up to the very end of the process. But gradually, as I approach the deadline, I sink deeper into seclusion until eventually I don't even answer e-mails or the phone anymore (unless it's my partner, Staci). I just write morning, noon, and night. The pulling together and completion of

Breaking the Rules [AUDIOBOOK] [CD]

Breaking the Rules [AUDIOBOOK] [CD] Author: Bradford, Barbara Taylor Kellgren, Katherine ISBN: 1-4272-0848-4

Category: Bradford, Barbara Taylor - Prose & Criticism

Audio CD Macmillan Audio

Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly For the 30th anniversary of her first novel, A Woman of Substance, Bradford delivers her 25th book. The riches-to-more-riches tale features beloved matriarch Emma Harte's plucky great-granddaughter, M, who, at 23, moves to New York to start a modeling career, banking on her intelligence and business savvy, her Audrey Hepburn looks and her well-connected friends to help her. A violent attack had compelled M to leave behind a life of privilege in London, and from her new home in a shared Chelsea brownstone, M begins her ascent, eventually landing on the catwalks of Paris and falling in love with a famous British actor, though her successes soon attract the attention of family enemies. The plot, while contrived, satisfies on the fashion-and-passion front, and, as always, at the heart of the action stands a determined heroine scrambling up the ladder of success supported by minor characters, each with a complicated backstory. Fans will not mind if the connections holding them together seem tenuous. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Product Description Following a terrifying encounter in the quiet English countryside, a young woman flees to New York in search of a new life. Adopting the initial M as her name, and reinventing herself, she embarks on a journey that will lead her to the catwalks of Paris, where she becomes the muse and star model to France's iconic designer Jean-Louis Tremont. When M meets the charming and handsome actor, Larry Vaughan in New York they fall instantly in love and marry. Soon, they become the most desired couple on the international scene, appearing on the cover of every celebrity magazine, adored by millions. With a successful career and a happy marriage, M believes she has truly put the demons of her past behind her. But M's fortunes are about to take another dramatic twist. A series of bizarre events turn out not to be accidents at all, but assaults on M and her family. The dark figure from M's past, a psychopath with deadly intent, has made a vow: to shatter M's world forever. But M also makes a vow: she will do everything to keep them all safe. When those you love are threatened and at risk, there's nothing you won't do to protect them... you'll even resort to breaking the rules! Moving from New York to the chic fashion capitals of London and Paris, to the exotic locations of Istanbul and Hong Kong, this new tale from a renowned storyteller is a genuine pageturner