A professor returns to work after Christmas to find a colleague's been shot. The much-disliked colleague is soon connected to dubious goings-on with students, a mercenary, a mysterious blonde, and an odd list of books. Next someone else is killed. Two women emerge as suspects, but the prof can't figure out the book list. Then the prof is threatened and he knows he's getting close.Early on, Pamela Jones realized she had an unusual talent for putting two people together. Over the years, she's turned it into a successful matchmaking service for the ultra wealthy: Billionaire Marriage Brokers. While she specializes in "business" marriages -- paring people off because of their skills, education, or training -- she can spot a potential love match a mile away. When Pamela has a "good feeling" about a bride and groom - a business marriage can become so much more.Janel Fendrick is a go-getter. Her dream of excavating a Mayan temple is within reach -- until the funding is pulled and she's left scrambling for an alternative. Pamela Jones comes along with a proposal...and a groom! Janel hesitates, until she realizes that one year of marriage is a small price to pay to have all her dreams come true. What she doesn't realize, is that she's about to get more than she ever dreamed of.

This remarkable new translation of the Nobel Prize-winner’s great masterpiece is a major literary event. Thomas Mann regarded his monumental retelling of the biblical story of Joseph as his magnum opus. He conceived of the four parts–The Stories of Jacob, Young Joseph, Joseph in Egypt, and Joseph the Provider–as a unified narrative, a “mythological novel” of Joseph’s fall into slavery and his rise to be lord over Egypt. Deploying lavish, persuasive detail, Mann conjures for us the world of patriarchs and pharaohs, the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, and the universal force of human love in all its beauty, desperation, absurdity, and pain. The result is a brilliant amalgam of humor, emotion, psychological insight, and epic grandeur. Now the award-winning translator John E. Woods gives us a definitive new English version of Joseph and His Brothers that is worthy of Mann’s achievement, revealing the novel’s exuberant polyphony of ancient and modern voices, a rich music that is by turns elegant, coarse, and sublime. --front flap

Adam Rothstein's series of essays interviewing thinkers about what technology means for the future, the present, and for our understanding of history.There are two poems here, the first of which is The Reign of Drops: I am a memory of my birth, and the sea of my being yearns for union with others people's seas.The second poem is The Dynamics of Growth: Will we water one another's buds so that they may blossom, or will we withhold and wilt in the light of being?No adult-only content.

This important and timely book delivers a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in today's world. Harris offers a vivid historical tour of mankind's willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are used to justify harmful behavior and sometimes heinous crimes. He asserts that in the shadow of weapons of mass destruction, we can no longer tolerate views that pit one true god against another. Most controversially, he argues that we cannot afford moderate lip service to religion—an accommodation that only blinds us to the real perils of fundamentalism. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris also draws on new evidence from neuroscience and insights from philosophy to explore spirituality as a biological, brain-based need. He calls on us to invoke that need in taking a secular humanistic approach to solving the problems of this world.

A moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us. We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence. Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter. Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renée's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.

Everything is complicated now. Except for Max. He knows exactly what he wants....Beth is just settling down to being a finder. But everything is about to change.Something is going down in Madison City. Someone's shipping more D 20 in, and they want Beth to help. When they kidnap her, Beth is pushed into a fight for her friends, her life, and, critically, her future. You see, it's time to find her future husband. Or will he find her?

Four of these stories are set on the shimmering desert fringes of Albert Camus' native Algeria. All of them first appeared in 1957, the year when he became the youngest French writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

A short story about being lost and trying to find yourself; set to the background music of a famous psychedelic rock band. Nothing to do with knights or medieval times.After Nathan is dumped by his girlfriend, he encounters a strange Taoist priest, and has many interesting debates throughout the night, but the next morning he finds that he has been transported fifteen years into the future. A revolutionary technology enables people to live and work in cyber space. People no longer want or need to drive cars, fly overseas, take drugs, smoke, eat junk food or worry about casual sex, because they can now do all of these things in a digital paradise. Nathan has a difficult time adjusting to the new world order. During a night out in a bar in cyber space a group of people attack a pretty girl and her mates. Nathan helps the girl fight off her attackers and discovers that he not only has super fighting skills but the girl he saved is Mary, the most wanted terrorist in the world. Now Nathan’s life is in turmoil. He has to decide whether to help the government destroy the terrorist organization that is responsible for the threat of global warming returning, or assist Mary in destroying the digital world that could ultimately lead to the end of humanity. The line between right and wrong is no longer clear and Nathan possesses the ultimate power to change the future. This story blends adventure, Kung-Fu and gun battles, and a heart-wrenching romance all mixed together in a new science fiction romance like you have never read before. Experience Nathan’s happiness, sadness, self-discovery and the struggle between life and death in this astonishing futuristic world.

Gerhard Self, the dour private detective, returns in this riveting crime novel about terrorism, governmental cover-up, and the treacherous waters where they mix. Leo Salger, the daughter of a powerful Bonn bureaucrat, is missing, and Self has been hired to find her. His investigation initially leads him to a psych ward at a local hospital, where he is made to believe that Leo fell from a window and died. Self soon discovers, however, that Leo is alive and well and that she was involved in a terrorist incident the government is feverishly trying to keep under wraps. The result is a wildly entertaining, superbly nuanced thriller that follows one detective’s desire to uncover the truth, wherever it may lead.

She must save the world. He must help her....Yin and Yang is a four-part fantasy adventure, subtly blended with sci-fi and romance.She must save the world. He must help her....Yin is the Savior of the ages. A young woman chosen to protect the world on its final day. A fighter, a sorcerer, a loner. She lives in the mountains, away from the prying eyes of the Kingdom and under the watchful protection of her guardian, Castor.No one knows she’s the Savior, and she must keep it that way.Then the army comes. With them is the handsome but cold Captain Yang. He takes Yin and Castor back to the capital, where she’s drafted into the army. If she can’t hold onto her secret and keep herself safe, she’ll die, and the world will die with her.Captain Yang has never met a woman like her. Impetuous, powerful, and determined, she’s too much to handle. But the army need her. Especially with war on the horizon. She has a secret though, one he’s determined to reveal. Yet time is against him, and he must fight to find out the truth before it’s too late.….Yin and Yang is a four-part fantasy adventure, subtly blended with sci-fi and romance.

A series of bizarre truck hijackings leads Ian's Gang to uncover an plot for alien invasion - by mind-controlling pimples!A series of bizarre truck hijackings leads Ian's Gang to uncover an plot for alien invasion - by mind-controlling pimples!This deranged comic adventure is the 23rd story in the Ian's Gang library.