As the old gods awaken and satrapies splinter, the Chromeria races to find the only man who can still end a civil war before it engulfs the known world in the third novel of the NYT bestselling Lightbringer series by Brent Week. As the old gods awaken and satrapies splinter, the Chromeria races to find the only man who can still end a civil war before it engulfs the known world. But Gavin Guile has been captured by an old enemy and enslaved on a pirate galley. Worse still, Gavin has lost more than his powers as Prism -- he can't use magic at all. Without the protection of his father, Kip Guile will face a master of shadows as his grandfather moves to choose a new Prism and put himself in power. With Teia and Karris, Kip will have to use all his wits to survive a secret war between noble houses, religious factions, rebels, and an ascendant order of hidden assassins called The Broken Eye. Read the third book in Brent Weeks's blockbuster epic fantasy series that had Peter V. Brett saying, "Brent Weeks is so good, it's starting to tick me off!".

This book recalls an era when criticism could change the way we look at the world. In the tradition of Matthew Arnold and Edmund Wilson, James Wood reads literature expansively, always pursuing its role and destiny in our lives. In a series of essays about such figures as Melville, Flaubert, Chekhov, Virginia Woolf, and Don DeLillo, Wood relates their fiction to questions of religious and philosophical belief. He suggests that the steady ebb of the sea of faith has much to do with the revo- lutionary power of the novel, as it has developed over the last two centuries. To read James Wood is to be shocked into both thinking and feeling how great our debt to the novel is. In the grand tradition of criticism, Wood's work is both commentary and literature in its own right--fiercely written, polemical, and richly poetic in style. This book marks the debut of a masterly literary voice.

This story, and a perusal of the accompanying chronology, reveals how a fierce and united people have achieved their freedom against superior forces. The author retired from the federal government, as a senior intelligence analyst, after thirty-six years of service. He served three years in the Army during the Korean War but was assigned to the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) in the District of Columbia area in late 1952. Shortly after his assignment, the agency was renamed the National Security Agency (NSA). After his enlistment was up, he converted to civilian service with the NSA. He was sent to Germany as an adviser to a military intelligence battalion (Army Security Agency), that was deployed along the East-West German border and then returned to the headquarters NSA. The writer has traveled extensively in Vietnam. He has visited places on the coast from just south of Hue to Vung Tau, the mountains around Kontum and Pleiku, the Saigon area including Ben Hoa Cholon, and in the Vietnamese delta, My Toe and all the way to the town of Ha Tien on the Vietnam/Cambodian border on the Gulf of Thailand. He met and conversed with many native Vietnamese, vacationed with a Vietnamese family (a girlfriend, her mother and a young son) in the old French beach vacation town of Vung Tau, and for a brief time taught English to some young Vietnamese monks who gave him a tour of their residence and introduced him to their ways of life. After returning to NSA he used his off duty time to volunteer in the attempt to get Vietnamese refugee families together. He assisted at one of the refugee camps and for a time sponsored one, three-generation, family providing them with a residence and trying to familiarize them with the American ways of life. He has obtained official correspondences from the Truman library concerning Vietnam, including a message from Ho Chi Minh.

Man and beast exert themselves to surviveby fight, flight, or submission. Respecting the pecking order prevents conflict, but when leaders are challenged, lethal fights for dominance may occur. However, the survival of the fittest is sometimes thwarted by the sheer tenacity of the underdog. In first century Corinth, nine-year-old Jason is teased and bullied by his pugnacious rival, Krato, who is two years older. Jasons grandfather urges him to take the submissive role until he and his rival are both adults. Then the two year difference will vanish, enabling Jason to throw off Krato's reign by beating him in the discus and javelin events at the Isthmian Games. When that long anticipated day arrives, Jason is both winner and loser. His dream turns into a nightmare. He flees for his life, bringing immense hardship on himself and his beloved Tabitha. Sexy Diana tries luring Jason in the wrong direction. The apostle Paul arrives with the holy gospel in their wicked city. The Christian message is woven into the fabric of choices and consequences. Circumstances beyond their control eventually bring the four Corinthians together in a place of horror. In the face of death, old beliefs are turned upside down. They only have a broken spear for defense.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1941. The sudden death of seventeen-year-old Canadian Patrick MacQueen’s little sister has wrecked his idyllic world and tore his family apart. Still clinging to his boyhood ideals of honor and glory, he lies about his age to enlist and go off to war. He never could have imagined what lay ahead. The Broken Sword opens with Patrick MacQueen fighting to keep his head above water as a fledgling signalman in the Canadian Army. An accident on the firing range dashes his hopes and he returns to the sultry shores of his Bermuda home to recover. There he falls under the spell of a seductive Nazi sympathizer, Lady Lemonton, and just as things begin to spin out of control, he gets a second chance to get back into the war. Commissioned a Royal Canadian Navy lieutenant, he plunges into vicious battles with German U-boats on the icy North Atlantic. But even as he struggles for sanity and survival, his journey takes another unexpected turn when he meets Lady Lemonton while on leave in Ireland who promises him glory and riches—and herself—if only he will join the enemy. Does he have the strength to resist? What will become of his boyhood ideals? And where do his loyalties really lie when he emerges as a key conspirator in an attempted coup d’état to defend the Dominion of Newfoundland’s sovereignty from a transatlantic power play? Inspired by the author’s own wartime experiences, The Broken Sword is a riveting coming-of-age story that offers a never before seen worm’s-eye view of the chaotic underbelly of a nation hopelessly unprepared for war and its destructive aftermath. A novel told with Norman Mailer muscle and F. Scott Fitzgerald flair, MacQueen’s arresting saga plumbs the uncharted waters of a world struggling to survive the ruthless machinations of the great powers, and lifts the veil on untold histories.

Susan Perabo's short-story collection, Who I Was Supposed to Be, was named a Best Book of 1999 by the Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Boston Globe proclaimed the debut "a stunning introduction to a fresh new literary talent." Now Susan Perabo returns with The Broken Places, her eagerly anticipated novel about love and honor and how the aftermath of one terrifying night -- and one heroic act -- affects a close-knit family. Twelve-year-old Paul Tucker knows his family is something akin to royalty in small-town Casey, Pennsylvania. His father, Sonny, is a dedicated career fireman, in line for the position of chief, long held by Paul's late grandfather, a local legend whose heroics continue to occupy the hearts and minds of all who knew and worked with him. Paul's mother, Laura, is a math teacher at the high school; Paul is sometimes annoyed by her worries over him (and her apparent lack of worry over his father), but his life is generally untroubled, his future bright, his time measured by sport seasons. But on a windy October day, the collapse of an abandoned farmhouse forever alters the fates and perceptions of Paul, his family, and those closest to them. Sonny and the other Casey firemen attempt a dangerous rescue to reach a teenager buried under the rubble, and when Sonny himself is trapped by a secondary collapse, Paul, his mother, and the crowd of onlookers believe the worst. The wait is excruciating; it's baby Jessica all over again, but this time the "innocent victim" is sixteen-year-old Ian Finch, a swastika-tattooed hoodlum who may have brought the house down on himself while building bombs. Still, when Sonny emerges from the rubble hours later, the maimed teenager in his arms, the rescue becomes a minor miracle and a major public relations event, a validation of all things American and true. Sonny is immediately hailed as a national hero. And Paul's life is suddenly, and irrevocably, changed. Beyond the limelight, the parades, and the intrusion of the national media into a quiet and predictable life, the Tucker household balance is upset. And Ian Finch's curious and continued involvement in Sonny's life creates a new and troubling set of hurdles for Paul to overcome. Somehow, though his father has been saved, he continues to slip through Paul's fingers. Secrets, lies, and changing alliances threaten Paul's relationship with his father and his mother and his understanding of what holds a family -- and a town -- together. The Broken Places is a brilliant meditation on the psychology of heroism, the definition of family, and the true meaning of honor. With pitch-perfect dialogue, subtle but stunning insights, and a dazzling ability to uncork the quiet power of each character, Susan Perabo's The Broken Places uncovers and celebrates the unsettling truths of human nature.

The curse itself occurred in Game 4 of the 1945 World Series. Billy goat tavern owner William Sianis was asked to leave Wrigley Field because the odor of his pet goat bothered other fans. He then uttered his famous words, Them Cubs, they aint gonna win no more.

When one falls Crime reporter Mari Alvarez was never able to solve her mother’s murder ten years ago. But when a woman is gunned down on the doorstep of her West Tampa neighborhood, Mari can’t shake the eerie sense of connection. The others will break Now there have been two murders in two days. Each crime scene awash with arcane clues—and without a trace of DNA from the killer. And for each victim, a doll. The first is missing an eye. The second is missing a heart. But are these clues leading to the killer...or messages for Mari? Unless she plays the game... Caught up in a maelstrom of Old-World superstition, secrets, and ties to her own past, Mari has only one option. Put the puzzle together before someone else dies—even if it destroys her career. But there’s no escaping the hungry spider’s web when it’s been made just for you...