by Barbara Vine
Ruth Rendell's alter ego, Barbara Vine crushes a sleazy politician down to size in this dramatic story a bout a ex game that backfires
Best Price $19.95
or Buy New $24.00
by Kathy Lette
When Lucy's husband of eighteen years runs out on her, she'll do anything to win him back...
Jasper has left Lucy for her best friend, the chic and thin interior decorator Renee. To make matters worse, her teenage daughter Tally, blames her Mum. "Dad left because you've let yourself go, you're overweight and you nagged him. No wonder he buggered off."
Although a signed-up member of Underachievers Anonymous, in Lucy's quest to win back her husband she learns to be a surf life saver, loses weight and gets a job. She also falls in lust, finding herself torn between an older and a much younger man... But it's not until Lucy makes the Freudian discovery that her toy boy is also dating her daughter - and that he's been paid to do so by her conniving ex as ammunition for a custody battle, that she finally learns to stand on her own two stilettos.
£14.99 £7.52
... or request it free*
by Sue Gaulke
There's nothing worse than sitting in the audience while an inept speaker stumbles through an ill-conceived business presentation-- unless, of course, you're the one floundering in the spotlight. In 101 Ways to Captivate a Business Audience, Sue Gaulke, founder of the Speaker's Training Camp, strips the mysteries from the process by showing how to prepare and present an effective address that will successfully involve your audience and deliver your message. (more …)
Buy it from Amazon or request it for free if you are a Pivotal Gold member
by Jane Austen"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye.
And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she first began to love him: "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print". Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree.
$7.95
... or request it free*
by Cassandra Clare
The past few weeks have been hectic for Clary Fray to say the least, and they only seem to get even more so in the sequel to Cassandra Clare's popular debut City of Bones. Clary's mother still hasn't awoken from her strange sleep induced by Jace and Clary's father, Valentine, and Jace is having troubles coming to terms with his true parentage.
Things only get more complicated when an Inquisitor is sent to the Institute to question Jace's loyalty to the Clave, and he doesn't make a good impression. Suspicion is further aroused when children of magical descent are found dead all over the city, making everyone suspect that Valentine is up to something more sinister than they have anticipated.
The second book in the Mortal Instruments series is full of fast paced action and twists and turns that you won't see coming. Clary gets more and more involved in the supernatural world as she and Jace struggle to accept their relationship, while at the same time fending off attacks from all sides. In between it all is exhilarating excitement, the awkwardness of being a teenager, and intriguing mysteries. Readers looking for more breathless adventure and a spectacular battle against evil will delight in City of Ashes.
Read an excerpt from the City of Ashes
...................................................................
$17.99 $12.23
... or request it free*
by Terry Pratchett
The sea has taken everything.
Mau is the only one left after a giant wave sweeps his island village away. But when much is taken, something is returned, and somewhere in the jungle Daphne—a girl from the other side of the globe—is the sole survivor of a ship destroyed by the same wave.
Together the two confront the aftermath of catastrophe. Drawn by the smoke of Mau and Daphne's sheltering fire, other refugees slowly arrive: children without parents, mothers without babies, husbands without wives—all of them hungry and all of them frightened. As Mau and Daphne struggle to keep the small band safe and fed, they defy ancestral spirits, challenge death himself, and uncover a long-hidden secret that literally turns the world upside down. . . .
Internationally revered storyteller Terry Pratchett presents a breathtaking adventure of survival and discovery, and of the courage required to forge new beliefs.
$16.99 $11.55
... or request it free*
Chris Cleave
'A powerful piece of art... shocking, exciting and deeply affecting...[a] superb novel... Besides sharp, witty dialogue, an emotionally charged plot and the vivid characters' ethical struggles, THE OTHER HAND delivers a timely challenge to reinvigorate our notions of civilized decency.' (Independent 20080804)
'Searingly eloquent.' (Daily Mail 20080803)
'It would be hard not to romp through it.' (Financial Times 20080828)
'An ambitious and fearless gallop from the jungles of Africa via a shocking encounter on a Nigerian beach to the media offices of London and domesticity in leafy suburbia...Cleave immerses the reader in the worlds of his characters with an unshakable confidence. ' (Guardian 20080728)
'In a novel that tackles serious and uncomfortable subject matter, Cleave's writing makes one laugh and despair in equal measure. (4 stars)' (Time Out )
'Stunning... a haunting work of art.' (Newsweek on INCENDIARY )
PDF Download: Read an excerpt from The Other Hand
£12.99 £9.09
... or request it free*
by Kathy Reichs
Dr. Temperance Brennan's quest to identify two corpses pits her against citizen vigilantes intent on a witch-hunt in bestseller Reichs's exciting 11th thriller to feature the forensic anthropologist (after 2007's Bones to Ashes). While working in Charlotte, N.C., Brennan investigates remains unearthed during a housing renovation and discovers disturbing clues possibly pointing to voodoo or Santeria. She must determine if the bones, including the skull of a teenage girl, are linked to an unidentified headless torso found in a nearby lake. Intent on using the deaths as the cornerstone of his crusade against immorality, fundamentalist preacher turned politician Boyce Lingo claims that the bodies bear the mark of devil worshippers. With the help of Det. Erskine Skinny Slidell, Brennan unearths a tangled web of dirty politics, religious persecution and male prostitution. Reichs, whose work inspired the hit TV series Bones, once again expertly blends science and complex character development.
Buy Now!
... or request it free*
by David McCullough
Hollywood has made John Adams and American history sexy again, but don't cheat! Read this meticulously researched biography before watching the miniseries starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. Here a preeminent master of narrative history takes on the most fascinating of our founders to create a benchmark for all Adams biographers. The author is likewise brilliant in portraying Adams's complex relationship with Jefferson, who ousted him from the White House in 1800 and with whom he would share a remarkable death date 26 years later: July 4, 1826, 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration.
$38.00 $25.08
... or request it free*
by Gregory Maguire
"Hardly more than a kitten . . . I had thought to call it Prrr, but it shivers more often than it purrs, so I call it Brrr instead."
—From Wicked
Since Wicked was first published in 1995, millions of readers have discovered Gregory Maguire's fantastically encyclopedic Oz, a world filled with characters both familiar and new, darkly conceived and daringly reimagined. In the much-anticipated third volume of the Wicked Years, we return to Oz, seen now through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion—the once tiny cub defended by Elphaba in Wicked.
At once a portrait of a would-be survivor and a panoramic glimpse of a world gone shrill with war fever, Gregory Maguire's new novel is written with the sympathy and power that have made his books contemporary classics.
In this much-anticipated third volume of the Wicked Years, we return to Oz, seen now through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion - the once tiny cub defended by Elphaba in Wicked.
While civil war looms, a tetchy oracle named Yackle prepares for death.
Before her final hour, an enigmatic figure known as Brrr - the Cowardly Lion - arrives searching for information about Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West. As payment, Yackle demands some answers of her own. Brrr surrenders his story: abandoned as a cub, his earliest memories are gluey hazes, and his life's path is no Yellow Brick Road. A Lion Among Men chronicles a battle of wits hastened by the Emerald City's approaching armies. At once a portrait of a would-be survivor and a panoramic glimpse of a world gone shrill with war fever, Gregory Maguire's new novel is written with the sympathy and power that have made his books contemporary classics.
$26.95 $17.79
