Brianna did what any other decent human being would do-rescue a pair of aliens her boss was about to dissect, and get them back to their space ship. In the process, she was captured by an alien scientist and became a experiment herself-a sexual experiment. Captain Alalakan don al' Chardadon was not about to let Dr. Rodak don al' Bakom conduct his ridiculous sexual experiments on an inhabitant from a newly discovered world. Even if it meant he had to marry the Earth woman to protect her. Marriages were easily dissolved on his planet, and this alien was very beautiful. Besides, he wanted her-in his bed, on the floor, against the wall, or anywhere else he could think of. Brianna had to choose-marry the captain or try to find another way to escape Bakom. Easy choice. Even though he was an alien, Char was the most desirable man she'd ever met. So, Brianna finds herself hurtling through space married to a very sexy alien-with a very flexible tail-from a planet where hedonism is the norm and there are three sexes: male, female, and hermaphrodite. But Bakom wanted Brianna too, and is willing to do anything to get her back.

SUMMARY:This sequel to Red Sky At Morning is the fifth entry in the continuing saga of Dar Roberts and Kerry Stuart. It begins with Kerry involved in counseling a church group of girls. A teenager from the group gets jailed because her parents tossed her out onto the streets when they found out she is gay. As she and Dar assist the girl, Kerry is forced to acknowledge her own feelings toward and experience with her parents. While trying to help the teenager adjust to real word situations, Kerry gets a call concerning her father's health. She flies to her family's side as her father dies, putting the family in crisis. Caught up in an international problem, Dar abandons the issue to go to Michigan, determined to support Kerry in the face of grief and hatred. To move forward they find they must face down Kerry's extended family and Kerry must make some difficult choices for their future happiness.

Four years in the military, training for a war that never happened, left Alexander Miller disillusioned and apathetic. Now, as second in command of COBALT, a corporate bodyguard unit for the biotech giant Schaeffer-Yeager, he's little more than a glorified chauffeur to the wealthy elite. But times change.A threat from the ancient past has reawakened, and like a Biblical plague it threatens to consume every ecosystem on Earth. Hordes of parasite-infected humans riot against the increasingly powerless authorities as vast fungal blooms destroy crops and terrifying beasts stalk city streets. The last time this happened, T-Rex found itself on the menu. But mankind's got more than teeth—it's got guns.Schaeffer-Yeager CEO L. Gray Matheson has plans, and the turn-around starts now. Miller's been assigned to OPERATION HONSHU WOLF, finding essential S-Y staff in the nightmare and getting them to a safe haven...Extinction Biome is a new military-SF series about a world...

“This expensive, glossy world is where I’ve been headed all along. Limos and flowers; waxed eyebrows and designer clothes from Barneys. These are my people; this is where I'm meant to be.” — Becky Bloomwood Universally beloved by readers, Sophie Kinsella’s national bestseller, Confessions of a Shopaholic, introduced the irrepressible one-woman shopping phenomenon, Becky Bloomwood. Now, in this hilarious follow-up, Becky and her credit cards are headed across the Atlantic…. With her shopping excesses (somewhat) in check and her career as a TV financial guru thriving, Becky’s biggest problem seems to be tearing her entrepreneur boyfriend, Luke, away from work for a romantic country weekend. And worse, figuring out how to “pack light.” But packing takes on a whole new meaning when Luke announces he's moving to New York for business — and he asks Becky to go with him! Before you can say “Prada sample sale,” Becky has landed in the Big Apple, home of Park Avenue penthouses and luxury department stores. Surely it’s only a matter of time until she becomes an American TV celebrity, and she and Luke are the toast of Gotham society. Nothing can stand in their way, especially with Becky’s bills miles away in London. But then an unexpected disaster threatens her career prospects, her relationship with Luke, and her available credit line! Shopaholic Takes Manhattan — but will she have to return it?

An extended family gathers in late August to celebrate the seventy-fifth birthday of its formidable matriarch, Leonora. She is the daughter of the famous Edwardian painter Ethan Walsh, whose paintings are kept at the family home, Willow Court in Wiltshire. At Leonora's house party will be her daughters, Gwen and Rilla, whom she raised alone after she was widowed in her late twenties; Rilla's stepdaughter Beth; and Gwen's husband and three children with their spouses and lovers. One outsider joins the group: Sean Everard, a television director who's making a documentary about the life and work of Ethan Walsh. All families have their dark side and Leonora's is no exception. By the time the marquee is dismantled and all the guests have gone their separate ways, two shocking past events have come to light, to rock complacency and change for ever the lives of Leonora and her daughters.

No novelist alive knows the human heart better than Scott Spencer does. No one tells stories about human passion with greater urgency, insight, or sympathy. In A Ship Made of Paper, this artist of desire paints his most profound and compelling canvas yet. Daniel Emerson lives with Kate Ellis and is like a father to her daughter, Ruby. But he cannot control his desire for Iris Davenport, the African-American woman whose son is Ruby's best friend. During a freak October blizzard, Daniel is stranded at Iris's house and they begin a sexual liaison that eventually imperils all their relationships, Daniel's profession, their children's well-being, their own race- blindness, and their view of themselves as essentially good people. A Ship Made of Paper captures all the drama, nuance, and helpless intensity of sexual and romantic yearning, and it bears witness to the age-old conflict between the order of the human community and the disorder of desire.

A number-one New York Times bestseller when it was originally published, THE SILMARILLION is the core of J.R.R. Tolkien's imaginative writing, a work whose origins stretch back to a time long before THE HOBBIT. Tolkien considered THE SILMARILLION his most important work, and, though it was published last and posthumously, this great collection of tales and legends clearly sets the stage for all his other writing. The story of the creation of the world and of the the First Age, this is the ancient drama to which the characters in THE LORD OF THE RINGS look back and in whose events some of them, such as Elrond and Galadriel, took part. The three Silmarils were jewels created by Feanor, most gifted of the Elves. Within them was imprisoned the Light of the Two Trees of Valinor before the Trees themselves were destroyed by Morgoth, the first Dark Lord. Thereafter, the unsullied Light of Valinor lived on only in the Silmarils, but they were seized by Morgoth and set in his crown, which was guarded in the impenetrable fortress of Angband in the north of Middle-earth. THE SILMARILLION is the history of the rebellion of Feanor and his kindred against the gods, their exile from Valinor and return to Middle-earth, and their war, hopeless despite all their heroism, against the great Enemy. This second edition features a letter written by J.R.R. Tolkien describing his intentions for the book, which serves as a brilliant exposition of his conception of the earlier Ages of Middle-earth.

When a struggling young single mother saves the life of an elderly woman, she sets into motion a series of events that will test her strength, loyalty, and determination, all the while setting her on the path to finding true love. Christine Eisley is the mother of seven-year-old Zach and five-year-old Haley. Her ex-husband provides little, if any, child support and makes life difficult for Christine by using the children as pawns. She works long hours as a waitress to make ends meet, but her job is in jeopardy because she's often late to work due to the unreliable teenaged sitters she's forced to use. When Christine saves the life of a woman who works in Wilson's department store, the owner of Wilson's wants to find her, to thank her, but Christine has disappeared, losing another job once again. He sets his grandson, Jason, to the task of finding the mysterious "Christy." Jason, an accountant by trade who has lost his job to downsizing, thinks he is "above" working at...

In her acclaimed debut Blind Run, Patricia Lewin proved her brilliant command of heart-stopping tales of suspense—and the staggering human emotions that go with them. Now in Out of Reach, Lewin returns with a gripping new thriller—a beguiling story of a man and a woman entering a battle against an unseen evil . . . the kind that targets the most innocent among us.A rising star in the CIA, Erin Baker is driven by a tragedy from her past. When she was a child, her eight-year-old sister, Claire, was kidnapped. Though Claire was miraculously found, she was changed forever. As was Erin, who now just might get what she’s always wanted most: the chance to make a difference in someone’s life. But she must be willing to risk everything she holds dear.A covert officer overseas, Erin now works stateside in the world’s most sophisticated intelligence-gathering organization. But her life takes an unexpected turn when she spots an ice cream vendor performing magic tricks for kids. She has seen this man before—the day her sister disappeared. Obtaining access to records few are allowed to see, Erin pries open her sister’s cold kidnapping case. With her arsenal of data banks and espionage techniques, Erin hopes to finally bring the criminal to justice. When a boy disappears near her home, Erin is certain there is a link between the two cases. She meets Alec Donovan, an FBI agent on the hunt to find the missing child, whose record for locating missing children is unquestioned. Suddenly Alec and Erin find themselves on a desperate pursuit—from the streets of America’s most peaceful neighborhoods to a horrifying underworld where children are stolen and trafficked. And as they get closer to the truth, they make their own lives, and the lives of everyone they love, into perfect targets for a killer.With its deeply-drawn characters, relentless pace, and powerful depiction of human courage in the face of danger, Out of Reach is a gritty, terrifying novel of a nerve-wracking race against time. With echoes of today’s most shocking headlines, this is fiction at its most passionate and suspenseful.From the Hardcover edition.From Publishers WeeklySpunky kids at the mercy of bad guys are once again the focus of this second suspense novel by Lewin (Blind Run), in which a covert CIA operative and martial arts expert goes up against a child kidnapping ring. Erin Baker is on assignment in D.C., keeping an eye on the city's embassies, when she spots a magician she saw the day her seven-year-old sister, Claire, was snatched 19 years before. Convinced that she can help find a boy who was recently kidnapped, Erin joins FBI agent Alec Donovan, working with him to dismantle an international child-slavery ring operating under diplomatic immunity. Meanwhile, the story shifts focus to follow the kidnapper as he dons disguises to match wits with his pursuers, and describes abuse through the eyes of Ryan, a boy imprisoned on a German diplomat's Middleburg, Va., estate. Tension builds as Erin confronts the kidnapper on a jogging path and the evil German at an embassy ball, coming to a head when Alec's team storms the Virginia mansion. There is no shortage of twists and surprises, but the fast-paced plot can't make up for the cardboard-cutout characters (pretty Erin is a single parent and demonstrates martial arts to CIA recruits in her spare time; tough yet sensitive Alec falls for her right away; the evil German loves his guard dogs) or the uninspired prose ("The following ten days were particularly intense"). An action movie in print, this thriller offers recognizable characters, a few surprises, a little romance and the chance for the heroine to wear a variety of outfits to face down the villains. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistErin Baker's life changed drastically the day her sister Claire was kidnapped. Even though her sister was found four years later, Erin has always blamed herself for not looking after her. Now, years later, Erin has become a CIA agent, and cares for Claire, who has been committed to a mental institution, and Claire's young daughter. Working in Washington, D.C., Erin reads about a child's abduction in Baltimore, and all her painful memories resurface, especially after she sees an ice cream seller performing magic for children in the park. She then realizes that she saw the same man before her sister disappeared, and contacts the FBI. Special agent Alec Donovan believes Erin's far-fetched theory because he's heard rumors about a magician who kidnaps children. The two become rogue agents searching for a kidnapping ring that leads them to a high-ranking diplomat. Fans of Lewin's first book, Blind Run [BKL Ja 1&15 03], will find this white-knuckle chase through a murky world where children are the prey of adult monsters a worthy successor. Patty EngelmannCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Andy Buckland is determined that nothing will interrupt her first Christmas with Malcolm Jones and her last holiday spent in her childhood home. When the family recipe book disappears from the Bowtie Angel, and Aunt Cecily threatens to put “The Eye” on the entire population of Beaverton if it isn’t returned, Andy and Jones decide to put the eggnog on hold for a little old fashioned sleuthing.

Why did investigative journalist Jamie Maxden have to die? Did someone need to stop him revealing the scandalous secrets of the food industry?In the sixth Trish Maguire novel, the coroner says Jamie's death was suicide. His family agree. The case is closed. Only one man fights to re-open it, but he's known as a conspiracy theorist and he can't make anyone believe him until he turns to Trish.Felled by food poisoning in the middle of a big trial, she is ready to believe almost any story about the adulteration of meat on sale in London. Even though she has more than enough to do with her work as a barrister, the fight to protect a child in terrible danger, and plenty of emotional complications of her own, she agrees to help. The investigation takes her deep into the countryside, showing that cruelty and intimidation can flourish in a ravishing landscape just as they do in the grimmest of inner-city housing estates.Moving between the two, trying to save lives and sanity, inexhaustible Trish is driven into a crusade that combines excitement, drama and agonising human tragedy.