She's a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful center of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one ( Read more... )

All the World's Mornings - Pascal Quignard

Set in seventeenth-century France, All the World's Mornings is based on the life of Monsieur de Sainte Colombe, a solitary, reclusive widower and taciturn musical genius, and the father of two beautiful daughters.

One spring, a shy but ambitious young man arrives at the farm begging to become a pupil of ( Read more... )

About three things I was absolutely positive.

First, Edward was a vampire.

Second, there was a part of him - and I didn't know how dominant that part might be - that thirsted for my blood.

And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.


( Read more... )

Thomas Friesen has three goals in life. Get a job. Make friends. Find a good book to curl up with. After landing a job at READ, the newest hypermegabookstore, he feels he may have accomplished all three.

All is not peaceable within the stacks, however. Dis content is steadily rising, and it is aimed squarely at Munroe Purvis, a talk show host whose ( Read more... )

Set in Italy at the time of Waterloo, Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma is the imaginary biography of Fabrizio del Dongo. Handsome, aristocratic and charmingly naïve, Fabrizio is a "hero unaware," his destiny shaped by the sensational events going on arund him - at Waterloo, at Lake Como and at Parma, where Fabrizio falls in love with the ( Read more... )

May 1920: Trapped on a volcanic island during a typhoon, Becca and Doug MacKenzie want nothing more than to continue the search for their mother and father. But their uncle Captain MacKenzie, seems more concerned with the missing gyrolabe, and he refuses to discuss the role that the mysterious Guild of Specialists played in their parents' ( Read more... )

In nineteenth-century Britain, young Lavinia Huntington's older husband appreciates her lively intellect and seems eager to extend his wife's education from his study to their bedroom. Lavinia absorbs all he has to teach and glories in the birth of their son.

In twenty-first-century Los Angeles, Julia Huntington studies the human genome, seeking the ( Read more... )

The Three Signs of a Miserable Job - Patrick Lencioni

In his sixth fable, bestselling author Patrick Lencioni takes on a topic that almost everyone can relate to: the causes of a miserable job. Millions of workers, even those who have carefully chosen careers based on true passions and interests, dread going to work, suffering each day as they ( Read more... )

For all of their childhood, young Beth Herne and her brother Luke have lived in fear - beaten and terrorized because of their mother's religious beliefs. Until one summer, staying with her grandparents, Beth discovers independence. And her descent into darkness begins...

Rhianwen Rhys, although known in the village as a witch, seems kind and ( Read more... )

The story and characters in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame have resonated with succeeding generations since its publication in 1831. It has tempted filmmakers, and most recently animators, who have exploited its dramatic content to good effect but have inevitably lost some of the grays that make the original text so compelling.

From ( Read more... )