Big Girl: A Novel

Big Girl: A Novel Author: Steel, Danielle McInerney, Kathleen ISBN: 1-4233-8824-0

Category: American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +

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Household name Steel (Going Home) falls short of her best in her latest. Victoria Dawson has always felt like an outcast. When her little sister Grace is born, father Jim tells Victoria she was the tester cake, and they finally got it right with the beautiful Gracie. Victoria grows up in her sister's shadow, and though she loves Gracie dearly, she's anxious to leave home. The pain doesn't stop there, though. Her father calls her first job at a prestigious private school in Manhattan pathetic, and Victoria begins a battle with her weight and her belief that she is unlovable (even though men pursue her). The premise of the story is sound, but it doesn't ring true: the parents are two-dimensional, cruel monsters and Victoria seems to have everything: fantastic job, amazing apartment, perfect best friends. It's hard to believe that her parents would still wield such power.

Hard Rain

Hard Rain Author: Rollins, David Foster, Mel ISBN: 1-4233-3262-8

Category: Australian Novel And Short Story

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 Starred Review. Maj. Vin Cooper, a special agent, or internal affairs cop, for the United States Air Force office of special investigations, and special agent Anna Masters, who recently broke up with Vin and is now swinging from the chandelier for some attorney from the JAG corps, deal with one lethal threat after another in Rollins's rip-roaring third novel to feature the tough, wisecracking Cooper (after The Death Trust and A Knife Edge). Vin and Anna have come to Istanbul to investigate the murder of Col. Emmet Portman, the U.S. air attaché to Turkey, who's been chopped into small pieces and laid out like a model airplane kit that requires assembly. As the pair seek answers in Turkey and later Paris and Iraq, they leave behind a lot of bodies, both friend and foe. The convoluted trail leads them to a plot involving many countries, none of which has America's best interests at heart. The exciting, violent ending promises more thrills to come.

Fantasy in Death

Fantasy in Death Author: Robb, J.D. Ericksen, Susan ISBN: 1-4233-8368-0

Category: American Mystery & Suspense Fiction

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Lt. Eve Dallas, a top homicide cop for the New York Police and Security Department (the law enforcement agency for a mid 21st-century New York City), faces one of the more challenging cases of her career in bestseller Robb's exciting 31st in death novel (after Kindred in Death). When someone cuts off the head of Bart Minnock, the genius founder of the computer gaming company U-Play, apparently while he was role-playing against an imaginary opponent in a prototype of a fantasy adventure that could rock the industry, Eve investigates. Security logs show no one entered Minnock's building around the time of his murder, presenting a futuristic variation on the classic locked-room mystery. Aided by her husband, Roarke, who was a potential business rival of the victim, Dallas focuses on who would benefit from Minnock's death.

Winter Garden: A Novel

Winter Garden: A Novel Author: Hannah, Kristin Ericksen, Susan ISBN: 1-4233-2519-2

Category: American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +

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 Female bonding is always good for a good cry, as Hannah (True Colors ) proves in her latest. Pacific Northwest apple country provides a beautiful, chilly setting for this family drama ignited by the death of a loving father whose two daughters have grown apart from each other and from their acid-tongued, Russian-born mother. After assuming responsibility for the family business, 40-year-old empty-nester Meredith finds it difficult to carry out her father's dying wish that she take care of her mother; Meredith's troubled marriage, her troubled relationship with her mother and her mother's increasingly troubled mind get in the way. Nina, Meredith's younger sister, takes a break from her globe-trotting photojournalism career to return home to do her share for their mother. How these three women find each other and themselves with the help of vodka and a trip to Alaska competes for emotional attention with the story within a story of WWII Leningrad. Readers will find it hard not to laugh a little and cry a little more as mother and daughters reach out to each other just in the nick of time.

A Cold Day in Paradise

A Cold Day in Paradise Author: Hamilton, Steve Miller, Dan John Miller, Dan John (Read by) ISBN: 1-4418-1740-9

Category: American Mystery & Suspense Fiction

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 Alex McKnight was an athlete in his youth--but a minor league baseball player, not a top pro forced out by injury. And yes, he was a cop in Detroit before he moved up to the town of Paradise on the shores of Lake Superior--but even this overused genre icon is made believable by the details of a particularly bloody shootout. In Paradise, Alex runs a hunting camp built by his late father and only drifts into private investigations because of two friends, a persuasive lawyer and a local millionaire with a gambling problem who needs his help. When two bookmakers are murdered and the millionaire disappears, all the signs point to the psychopath who killed McKnight's partner and left a slug near Alex's heart 14 years before. The only problem is that this man has definitely, positively been in prison ever since. You might figure out the plot twists a page or two before McKnight does, but don't bet the farm on it.

The Wild Zone

The Wild Zone Author: Fielding, Joy Cummings, Jeffrey ISBN: 1-4233-6274-8

Category: Mystery And Suspense Fiction

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The Wild Zone, a South Beach (Miami Beach, Fla.) bar filled with lusty men--specifically, charismatic personal trainer Jeff Rydell; his cute visiting half-brother, Will, a Princeton graduate student; and Jeff's married best friend, Tom Whitman, a dishonorably discharged Afghanistan war veteran with some serious problems--provides the starting point for bestseller Fielding's nonstop thrill ride. A sexy bar patron, Suzy Bigelow, inspires the trio to make a wager on who can bed her first, and they even ask Jeff's live-in girlfriend, a Wild Zone bartender, for help. Suzy chooses Will for a platonic date, which has some distinctly unpleasant repercussions that involve not only wide-eyed Will but desperate, gun-loving Tom, whose wife takes their children and files for divorce.