Simon Vance
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Agrand treasure for fans of the grande dame of mystery, The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories brings together nine rare and brilliant Christie tales of murder and detection that span nearly half a century of her storytelling genius. In "The Mystery of the Spanish Chest," Hercule Poirot unravels the psychological conundrums that motivate a killer. . . . In "The Actress," a great star's shady past becomes the plaything of a blackmailer. . . . In "The...
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At the age of sixty-one, George Hall settles to a comfortable retirement. His tempestuous daughter, Katie, then announces that she is getting remarried to the deeply inappropriate Ray to her family's displeasure. Her mother, Jean, is disgusted with the huge preparation the wedding entails, which also disrupts her late-life affair with one of her husband's ex-colleagues. The seemingly neat and pleasant life of George and Jean's son, Jamie, disintegrates...
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It was 1786 when Arthur Phillip, an ambitious captain in the Royal Navy, was assigned the formidable task of organizing an expedition to Australia in order to establish a penal colony. The squalid and turbulent prisons of London were overflowing, and crime was on the rise. Even the hulks sifting at anchor in the Thames were packed with malcontent criminals and petty thieves. So the English government decided to undertake the unprecedented move of...
64) The wonderling
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Wonderling, a one-eared, fox-like creature, has toiled most of his eleven years at an institute run by villainous Miss Carbunkle, but Trinket, a young bird, gives him a real name, Arthur, and her friendship as they seek to escape together.
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Commissioned to rescue Governor Bligh of Bounty fame, Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend, surgeon Stephen Maturin, sail the Leopard to Australia with a hold full of convicts. Among them is a beautiful and dangerous spy--and a treacherous disease that decimates the crew. With a Dutch man-of-war to windward, the undermanned, outgunned Leopard sails for her life into the freezing waters of the Antarctic, where, in mountainous seas, the Dutchman closes...
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"In the half a square mile of decay and demolition that was England's Saxon capital, eternity is loitering between the firetrap housing projects. Embedded in the grubby amber of the district's narrative among its saints, kings, prostitutes, and derelicts a different kind of human time is happening, a soiled simultaneity that does not differentiate between the petrolcolored puddles and the fractured dreams of those who navigate them. Fiends last mentioned...
68) The secret river
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In 1806 William Thornhill, an illiterate English bargeman and a man of quick temper but deep compassion, steals a load of wood and, as a part of his lenient sentence, is deported, along with his beloved wife, Sal, to the New South Wales colony in what would become Australia. The Secret River is the tale of William and Sal's deep love for their small, exotic corner of the new world, and William's gradual realization that if he wants to make a home...
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International bestselling author Guy Gavriel Kay's latest work is set in a world evoking early Renaissance Italy and offers an extraordinary cast of characters whose lives come together through destiny, love, and ambition. In a chamber overlooking the nighttime waterways of a maritime city, a man looks back on his youth and the people who shaped his life. Danio Cerra's intelligence won him entry to a renowned school even though he was only the son...
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In The Letter of Marque, Jack is once again aboard his beloved Surprise but stripped of his post captaincy for a crime he did not commit. Bought by Stephen, the Surprise has become a privateer. Sailing into French waters, the two concoct a desperate mission which, if successful, may redeem Aubrey from his state of disgrace. A nighttime battle with an unusual climax, a jewel of great value and Stephen's fondness for opium make this segment of O'Brian's...
71) Heretics of Dune
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Dune chronicles volume 5
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Several millennia after the 3500 year rule of the God Emperor Leto II, various forces contend for power, and the freedom of humanity rests on avoiding Leto's grand design.
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A journey into one of the most fascinating minds alive today--guided by its owner. Daniel Tammet sees numbers as shapes, colors, and textures, and he can perform extraordinary calculations in his head. He can learn new languages from scratch, in a week. He has savant syndrome, a rare condition that gives him almost unimaginable mental powers. But in one crucial way Daniel is not at all like the Rain Man: he is virtually unique among autistic people...
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A down-on-his-luck Roman army doctor, Gaius Petreius Ruso has made the rash decision to seek his fortune in one of the inclement outposts of the Roman Empire, journeying to the far reaches of Britannia, where he rescues an injured slave girl, Tilla, from her abusive owner, an ill-advised decision that leads to nothing but trouble.
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Under suspicion for murder, a British war veteran is forced to confront the issues behind his desperate existence before it's too late: Has he always been the duplicitous chameleon that his ex-fiancaee accuses him of being? Can he control this newly apparent sinister side of his personality? And why, if he truly hates women, does he in the end seek help from a woman--someone as straightforward and self-disciplined as he is unsure and seemingly out...
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"Preparing you for an education you'll never forget, this introduction to The McMasters Conservatory, dedicated to the consummate execution of homicidal arts, follows students as they prepare for graduation by getting away with the perfect murder of someone whose death will make the world a much better place to live"--
Who hasn't wondered for a split second what the world would be like if a person who is the object of your affliction ceased to exist?...
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After nearly thirty years in the same job, Inspector Kurt Wallander is tired, restless, and itching to make a change. He is taken with a certain old farmhouse, perfectly situated in a quiet countryside with a charming, overgrown garden. There he finds the skeletal hand of a corpse in a shallow grave. Wallander?s investigation takes him deep into the history of the house and the land, until finally the shocking truth about a long-buried secret is brought...
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The espionage activities of cunning ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin have kept him at odds with the most important French agent in the Mediterranean, Lesueur-a man with a long memory and a taste for revenge. When that revenge takes the shape of the delicate and distracting Mrs. Fielding, who also attracts the ever-wandering eye of Jack Aubrey, Stephen's sensibilities are severely tested.
79) River of stars
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"Ren Daiyan was still just a boy when he took the lives of seven men while guarding an imperial magistrate of Kitai. That moment on a lonely road changed his life-- in entirely unexpected ways, sending him into the forests of Kitai among the outlaws. From there he emerges years later-- and his life changes again, dramatically, as he circles towards the court and emperor, while war approaches Kitai from the north. Lin Shan is the daughter of a scholar,...
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When last seen, Jack and Stephen had been shipwrecked on a desert island in the glittering South China Sea. The Nutmeg of Consolation opens as the castaways fashion a makeshift vessel from the wreckage, only to have it destroyed in a fiery attack by Malay pirates. Only the wondrous ingenuity of Stephen, along with the unexpected appearance of one of Jack's oldest allies, leads them to escape-and to dubious safety in a penal colony at New South Wales....