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Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan prays he will find a nun's murderer in this British crime novel by a Diamond Dagger winner: "A most ingenious writer" (The New York Times).


The day begins like any other for Sister Mary St. Gertrude. When her alarm sounds at 5 a.m., Sister Mary begins rousting her convent sisters from their beds, starting with the Reverend Mother. Down the Order she goes with a knock and a warm blessing. But when the young nun reaches Sister Anne's door, there is no answer. She assumes that Sister Anne got up early, and continues on her way.


 


But later, when a fellow nun leaves a bloody thumbprint on the sheet music for a hymn, and Sister Anne is nowhere to be found, it becomes apparent that something is very wrong. Then Sister Anne's body is found at the bottom of a steep set of stairs, her veil askew and her head crushed.


 

Religious Body introduces the sophisticated Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan along with his eager and trustworthy sidekick, Detective Constable Crosby, and the acerbic Superintendent Leeyes in a mystery of holy proportions that will have readers guessing until the last page.

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The author of Bearing the Cross, the Pulitzer Prizewinning biography of Martin Luther King Jr., exposes the government's massive surveillance campaign against the civil rights leader


When US attorney general Robert F. Kennedy authorized a wiretap of Martin Luther King Jr.'s phones by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he set in motion one of the most invasive surveillance operations in American history. Sparked by informant reports of King's alleged involvement with communists, the FBI amassed a trove of information on the civil rights leader. Their findings failed to turn up any evidence of communist influence, but they did expose sensitive aspects of King's personal life that the FBI went on to use in its attempts to mar his public image.


 


Based on meticulous research into the agency's surveillance records, historian David Garrow illustrates how the FBI followed King's movements throughout the country, bugging his hotel rooms and tapping his phones wherever he went, in an obsessive quest to destroy his growing influence. Garrow uncovers the voyeurism and racism within J. Edgar Hoover's FBI while unmasking Hoover's personal desire to destroy King. The spying only intensified once King publicly denounced the Vietnam War, and the FBI continued to surveil him until his death.


 

The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. clearly demonstrates an unprecedented abuse of power by the FBI and the government as a whole.

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A deadly mystery by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird: Where there's a will, there's a wayfor murder


That Miss Beatrice Wansdyke had died is not particularly surprising. A chemistry mistress at the Girls' Grammar School in Berebury, she was a longtime sufferer of diabetes who managed to live her modest life to a ripe old age. But one thing is oddBeatrice Wansdyke died a very wealthy woman. What was an old schoolteacher doing with a small fortune?


 


Meanwhile, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, Calleshire's finest investigator, learns he is about to become a father. But with ominous players hell-bent on pursuing Miss Wansdyke's money, will Sloan live to see his child's first birthday?

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A continent-spanning adventure featuring one of literature's greatest rogues


Redmond Barry has almost all the qualities of a gentleman: he speaks well, has learned courtly etiquette, and can hold his own with a sword in hand. But passion is his downfallpassion for life, for excitement, and unfortunately, for his cousin Nora. When he almost kills Nora's suitor in a duel, Barry flees to Dublin, and the adventure of his life begins.


 


A consummate rake and con man, Barry finds himself on the battlefield against the Prussians in the Seven Years' War after losing everything. But warand life, for that matteris not exactly what Barry wished or expected it to be. A braggart's tale through and through, with an antihero of epic proporations, The Luck of Barry Lyndon is a brisk romp through one of literature's most unusual lives.


 


This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

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In 1970s England, a broke nobleman and a body in a suit of armor present a puzzling mystery in this witty novel by a Diamond Dagger Award winner.


It is the early 1970s, and times are tough in the upper reaches of British society. To survive the changing times, the Earl of Ornum has done the previously unthinkable and opened his estate to wandering tourists. One day, a hyperactive little boy and his family are roaming Ornum House delightedly. The curious tyke sees a full suit of armor and lifts the visor . . . only to see a face staring out at him.


 


As Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan soon finds, the man in the suit of armor is deadand there's a slew of suspects waiting to be interviewed. Was it the ditzy duchess? The disappointing nephew? One of the servants? The earl himself? It's up to Sloan and his wisecracking sidekick, Detective Constable Crosby, to find out before the murderer strikes again.

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From the contemporary angst of Ghost Images (1979), Minot now turns to a neat blend of allegory and Biblical revisionism. Ham, Noahs third and youngest son, is the narrator and there are elements, he wants us to know, that the Official Version of the story has left out. The scorn, for instance, with which Noahs idea for the ark was met from within the family.

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Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church

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A "delightful" tour of Rome's St. Agnes Outside the Walls, examining the stories, rituals, and architecture of this seventeen-hundred-year-old building (The Christian Science Monitor).


In The Geometry of Love, acclaimed author Margaret Visser, the preeminent "anthropologist of everyday life," takes on the living history of the ancient church of St. Agnes. Examining every facet of the building, from windows to catacombs, Visser takes readers on a mesmerizing tour of the old church, covering its social, political, religious, and architectural history. In so doing, she illuminates not only the church's evolution but also its religious legacy in our modern lives. Written as an antidote to the usual dry and traditional studies of European churches, The Geometry of Love is infused with Visser's unmatched warmth and wit, celebrating the remarkable ways that one building can reveal so much about our history and ourselves.

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W. H. Hudson's trailblazing story of a pastoral utopia that harbors a dark secret


After a landslide, Smith awakens groggy and confused. The landscape around him has changed dramatically. He wanders through the countryside, searching for any semblance of civilization, until a family takes him in. As he recounts what happened to him and where he came from, it dawns on Smith that he has somehow left his own world behind and awoken somewhere entirely new.


 


What Smith finds is a gorgeous utopian vision of a peaceful world made real. Humans live in accordance with nature, respectful of the land and animals, untethered by technology. The cause of this new order is an alternate hierarchy of humanity that Smith must learn to adhere toor face the consequences.


 


As he integrates into this foreign society, Smith finds himself falling for the daughter of the house. But when he tries to tell her, he realizes the most important difference between his former world and his new one: Romantic love no longer exists.


 


This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

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For several years, Robert Kelley lived a primitive and contented life in a fishing village in the mangrove swamps of Sierra Leone. There, he developed and managed a project that built a cooperative fisheries station to support remote coastal villages. His development work done, he reluctantly turns the station over to the corrupt government Fisheries Division, whom he knows from experience will simply steal its resources and go away, leaving the villagers poorer than ever. He travels to Freetown, the capital, to present his last report to his employer, an English development agency, and leave Sierra Leone for Mali to join Marie, with whom he's had an intermittent and intense love affair. But when he arrives in Freetown, his superior offers him another position, establishing and managing a new project in the heart of a politically unstable region of the country. Robert hesitates to accept, for he has already committed himself to joining Marie. His decision embroils him in unexpected and violent consequences. This love story of two expatriates is set against a lushly pictured West Africa in which the echoes of colonial, and even pre-colonial, life are still evident in the corrupting power of the Big Man and the equally corrupting privilege that surrounds white expatriate life. The Turning Over vividly portrays the last vestiges of that epoch in a world disintegrating into chaos.

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A history of roaring prosperityand economic cataclysm: "The one account of America in the 1920s against which all others must be measured" (The Washington Post).


Beginning November 11, 1918, when President Woodrow Wilson declared the end of World War I in a letter to the American public, and continuing through his defeat, Prohibition, the Big Red Scare, the rise of women's hemlines, and the stock market crash of 1929, Only Yesterday, published just two years after the crash, chronicles a decade like no other. Allen, who witnessed firsthand the events he describes, immerses you in the era of flappers, speakeasies, and early radio, making you feel like part of history as it unfolds.



This bestselling, enduring account brings to life towering historical figures including J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Ford, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Al Capone, Babe Ruth, and Jack Dempsey. Allen provides insightful, in-depth analyses of President Warren G. Harding's oil scandal, the growth of the auto industry, the decline of the family farm, and the long bull market of the late twenties. Peppering his narrative with actual stock quotes and breaking financial news, Allen tracks the major economic trends of the decade and explores the underlying causes of the crash. From the trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti to the inventions, crazes, and revolutions of the day, this timeless work will continue to be savored for generations to come.

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The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners

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A New York Times Notable Book: A renowned scholar explores the way we eat across cultures and throughout history.


From the wild parties of ancient Greece to the strictures of an Upper East Side meal to the ritualistic feasts of cannibals, Margaret Visser takes us on a fascinating journey through the diverse practices, customs, and taboos that define how and why we prepare and consume food the way we do.



With keen insights into small details we take for granted, such as the origins of forks and chopsticks or why tablecloths exist, and examinations of broader issues like the economic implications of dining etiquette, Visser scrutinizes table manners across eras and oceans, offering an intimate new understanding of eating both as a biological necessity and a cultural phenomenon.



Witty and impeccably researched, The Rituals of Dinner is a captivating blend of folklore, sociology, history, and humor. In the words of the New York Times Book Review, "Read it, because you'll never look at a table knife the same way again."

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Jane Austen's gripping first novel of love and marriage


The well-bred Miss Catherine Morland always seems to have her nose stuck in a book, and the Gothic classics are her favorites. During the winter social season, she catches the eyes of two men: the sweet and witty Henry Tilney and the vain John Thorpe. When Catherine is invited to the Tilney family estate of Northanger Abbey, she expects to be met with the brooding and dramatic architecture of her novels, full of hidden secrets behind locked doors. What she finds is even better.


 


This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

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From the Nobel Prizewinning author of Independent People: A biting satire of post-WWII Iceland caught between superpowers at the dawn of the Nuclear Age. When the Americans make an offer to buy Icelandic land to build an atomic war base, a storm of protest is provoked throughout the country, and it is here that Laxness finds the catalyst for his story. Told by a country girl from the north, the novel follows her experiences upon taking up employment as a maid in the house of her Member of Parliament. She finds herself in a world very different to that of her upbringing and, marvelling at the customs and behaviour of the people around her, she emerges as the one obstinate reality in a world of fantasy. Her observations and experiences expose the intellectual society of the south as rootless and shallow and in stark contrast to the ancient culture of the solid and less fanciful north. The colourful, yet at times dark, cast of characters she meets personifies the southern fantasy world. In this black comedy Laxness has painted a masterpiece of social commentary as relevant today as when it was first written in 1948.

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Poet and lyricist Fran Landesman occupies the ironic territory between Dorothy Parker and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Landesmans work combines pathos and humor and glows with the tough wisdom gleaned from a lifetime of riding in fast convertibles and hanging out in smoky bars. This ebook contains Landesmans books Invade My Privacy, The Ballad of the Sad Young Men and Other Verse, and More Truth Than Poetry.

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Domenic Stansberrys award-winning novel tells the story of Niccolo Jones, a broken-down man plagued by his obsession with his brother Joes ex-wife Marie. Set in the old Italian neighborhood of North Beach in San Francisco, the novel flashes back and forth between their childhood days in the 1950s and events thirty years later. The kids are adults now, and everything has changed.   Nicks story begins when Joe is murdered, igniting in Nick an unquenchable desire for revenge. The crime also awakens Nicks memories of days gone by, particularly his own illicit feelings for Marie. But the price of passion is as costly now as it was for Nick thirty years agofor The Last Days of Il Duce is as much about the secrets of the past as it is about the sins of the present.

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An Edgar Award finalist in the year it was published, the reputation of this novel has only increased over the years, and it is now regarded by many as one of the best sports mysteries ever written, and one of the best books about baseball.   It tells the story of Frank Lofton, an itinerant reporter obsessed with a minor league team in a Massachusetts mill town. The town is plagued by arson, and with the burning city as a backdrop, Lofton follows his obsession, leading him from the mysterious death of a struggling ballplayer, to the owners beautiful mistress, into an underworld of corruption and deceit.

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A New Mexican shaman and PI is up against a shape-shifting adversary who haunts his worst nightmares, in a "fascinating and absolutely eerie" mystery (Thrilling Detective).


After a savage confrontation with his archenemy, Sonny Baca is confined to a wheelchair. The doctors don't know if he'll ever walk againand now the Chicano PI is plagued by disturbing dreams of his female ancestors being abducted. The reality is even more chilling. In present-day Santa Fe, the mayor's sixteen-year-old daughter has disappeared. The four black feathers found on Consuelo Romero's bed confirm Sonny's fears: Three more girls will go missing before Raven's master plan becomes a terrifying reality.



A charismatic, chameleonlike power broker who also possesses a shaman's gifts, Raven lures radical environmentalists into committing terrorist acts under the guise of antinuclear protests. But his true agenda is to bring down Sonny once and for all. By obliterating Sonny's dreamsthe portal into the spirit worldhe will destroy his past and his future. The only way to fight back is for Sonny to enter Raven's own dream state. But can he rid the world of an evil that refuses to die?



Rich in atmosphere and setting, this stellar series offers both edge-of-your-seat mystery and one man's journey into the complex landscape of the soul.

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A quartet of killings threaten to derail Lieutenant James Reardons relationshipand end his life Jan has been dating James Reardon long enough to know that she wants to be with him forever, but she will not marry him as long as hes a cop. She has spent too many nights lying awake, afraid that this will be the case that gets him killed, and she cannot make that her whole life. But she and Reardon both know that death is the only thing that could make him take off his badgeand for this hard-boiled San Francisco detective, death may come sooner than he thinks.   It starts with a stabbing in the Embarcadero. A particularly sleazy bartender has gotten knifed in the gut, and he is dead before the cops arrive. Three more killings follow, and each time the victim is one of the citys worst criminals. Is it a vendetta, or a vigilante? Reardon will risk his life to find out. The Gremlins Grampa is the 2nd book in the Lieutenant Reardon Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

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The 1930s in America, September 3, 1929September 3, 1939

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A "wonderfully written account of America in the '30s," the follow-up to Only Yesterday examines Black Tuesday through the end of the Depression (The New York Times).

Wall Street Journal Bestseller



Opening on September 3, 1929, in the days before the stock market crash, this information-packed volume takes us through one of America's darkest times all the way to the light at the end of the tunnel.


 


Following Black Tuesday, America plunged into the Great Depression. Panic and fear gripped the nation. Banks were closing everywhere. In some cities, 84 percent of the population was unemployed and starving. When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933,  public confidence in the nation slowly began to grow, and by 1936, the industrial average, which had plummeted in 1929 from 125 to fifty-eight, had risen again to almost one hundred. But America still had a long road ahead. Popular historian Frederick Lewis Allen brings to life these ten critical years. With wit and empathy, he draws a devastating economic picture of small businesses swallowed up by large corporationsa ruthless bottom line not so different from what we see today. Allen also chronicles the decade's lighter side: the fashions, morals, sports, and candid cameras that were revolutionizing Americans' lives.  


 


From the Lindbergh kidnapping to the New Deal, from the devastating dust storms that raged through our farmlands to the rise of Benny Goodman, the public adoration of Shirley Temple, and our mass escape to the movies, this book is a hopeful and powerful reminder of why history matters.

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The honeymoon is overand it's time for Mike Shayne to prepare for Miami's killing season


For years, Mike Shayne has tangled with the toughest crooks the country has to offer, outsmarting some and outpunching the rest. He was good at his job, but he had no one to come home tountil he met Phyllis. After rescuing his damsel in distress more than once, the hard-boiled PI found himself falling in love, and before he knew it, they were married and on their honeymoon in Cuba. Unfortunately for the lovebirds, their migration home to Miami marks the height of tourist season, when every gangster in America travels south to play. He may be a married man, but Mike Shayne won't be spending this balmy winter cozied up at home.


 


When a real-estate developer tries to hire Shayne to break into his home as part of an insurance-fraud scam, the scheme quickly turns to murder. With more deaths on the horizon, Shayne will have to be careful if he doesn't want to celebrate his first wedding anniversary behind bars. 



The Uncomplaining Corpses is the 3rd book in the Mike Shayne Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.