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Phantoms

In an all-new afterword, Koontz explains the impact this novel has had on his career. One of his most chilling bestsellers--a tale of an abandoned town and the unimaginable truth behind its silence--was the basis for the 1998 motion picture starring Peter O'Toole and Ben Affleck, with the screenplay written by Koontz. A tale of an abandoned town and the unimaginable truth behind its silence... Now with a new afterword, Dean Koontz explains the impact "Phantoms" had on his career

Forty Signs of Rain

The bestselling author of the classic Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt returns with a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation’s capital—and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines. When the Arctic ice pack was first measured in the 1950s, it averaged thirty feet thick in midwinter. By the end of the century it was down to fifteen. One August the ice broke. The next year the breakup started in July. The third year it began in May. That was last year. It’s an increasingly steamy summer in the nation’s capital as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler cares for his young son and deals with the frustrating politics of global warming. Charlie must find a way to get a skeptical administration to act before it’s too late—and his progeny find themselves living in Swamp World. But the political climate poses almost as great a challenge as the environmental crisis when it comes to putting the public good ahead of private gain. While Charlie struggles to play politics, his wife, Anna, takes a more rational approach to the looming crisis in her work at the National Science Foundation. There a proposal has come in for a revolutionary process that could solve the problem of global warming—if it can be recognized in time. But when a race to control the budding technology begins, the stakes only get higher. As these everyday heroes fight to align the awesome forces of nature with the extraordinary march of modern science, they are unaware that fate is about to put an unusual twist on their work—one that will place them at the heart of an unavoidable storm. With style, wit, and rare insight into our past, present, and possible future, this captivating novel propels us into a world on the verge of unprecedented change—in a time quite like our own. Here is Kim Stanley Robinson at his visionary best, offering a gripping cautionary tale of progress—and its price—as only he can tell it.

Novgorod Diary

his is a piquant, science fiction spoof of the sacred cows of the twenty-first century. It seems someone tries stealing 350 million high quality Russian souls from Hades Limited, by electing the wrong man to the Kremlin. An old diary exists in Novgorod proving Nick Rubowski, a high-ranking KGB officer, the Hades candidate, being the rightful heir to the Russian throne. If this became public, he'd lose the election. Therefore, Luce (Lucifer), the Hades Limited CEO sends George to Earth, to protect the firm's interests by fixing the Russian elections. The CIA, the KGB, the royalists and the mafia have adverse interests, and George must negotiate.

Help The Poor Struggler

Around bleak Dartmoor, where the Hound of the Baskervilles once bayed, three children have been brutally murdered. Now Richard Jury of Scotland Yard joins forces with a hot-tempered local constable named Brian Macalvie to track down the killer. The trail begins at a desolate pub, Help the Poor Struggler. It leads straight to the estate of Lady Jessica, a ten-year-old orphaned heiress who lives with her mysterious uncle and an ever-changing series of governesses. And as suspense spreads across the forbidding landscape, an old injustice retums to haunt Macalvie...with clues that link a murder in the distant pass with a killing yet to come.

The Letter of the Law

The Mask

From the New York Times bestselling author of The House of Thunder and Hideaway. She appeared out of nowhere. And Paul and Carol were drawn to her immediately--the child they had never had. It was a dream come true--until the young girl's mask fell away to reveal the face of terrifying evil. A beautiful young girl appears out of nowhere. A teenager with no past, no family -- no memories. Carol and Paul were drawn to her. She was the child they'd never had. Most mothers would die for such a darling little angel. And that's what frightened Carol most of all...

Mortal Prey

C Is For Corpse

Kinsey meets him in the local gym. Bobby Callahan is a scarred young man struggling back to life after a car forced his Porsche over the edge of a canyon, battering his body and muddling his memory. All he remembers is that someone, for some reason, tried to kill him. Desperate for clues about his own past life and certain he is being stalked, he asks Kinsey to protect him. Kinsey can't resist the brave kid - and neither can the killers. Three days late Bobby is dead. Kinsey Millhone never welshed on a deal. She'd been hired to stop a killing. Now she'd find the killer.

The Oath

While investigating the murder of the head of San Francisco's largest HMO, defense attorney Dismas Hardy discovers too many patients are dying--and it looks like it is the hospital that is killing them. This "People(" Page-Turner of the Week pits Hardy and homicide lieutenant Abe Glitsky against each other in a story of bad medicine and hard-hitting justice. Medical malpractice or murder? Glitsky and Hardy take opposite sides of the case-in the newest bestseller from the author of "The Hearing," When an HMO executive is hit by a car during a morning jog through his exclusive San Francisco neighborhood, he has the bad luck to be transported to one of his own hospitals...and winds up dead in his ICU bed. But in spite of the rumors about his company's substandard care, this death appears to be a case of malice, not of malpractice. Lt. Abe Glitsky has strong suspicions about a doctor with opportunity, means, and motives to spare. But working up a case won't be easy.

Season Of The Monsoon

Echoes in the Darkness

On June 25, 1989, the naked corpse of schoolteacher Susan Reinert was found wedged into her hatchback car in a hotel parking lot near Philadelphia's "Main Line." Her two children had vanished. The Main Line Murder Case burst upon the headlines--and wasn't resolved for seven years. Now, master crime writer Joseph Wambaugh reconstructs the case from its roots, recounting the details, drama, players and pawns in this bizarre crime that shocked the nation and tore apart a respectable suburban town. The massive FBI and state police investigation ultimately centered on two men. Dr. Jay C. Smith--By day he was principal of Upper Merion High School where Susan Reinert taught. At night he was a sadist who indulged in porno, drugs, and weapons. William Bradfield--He was a bearded and charismatic English teacher and classics scholar, but his real genius was for juggling women--three at a time. One of those women was Susan Reinert. How these two men are connected, how the brilliant murder was carried off, and how the investigators closed this astounding case makes for Wambaugh's most compelling book yet.

Favorite Son

Catherine Cookson

Twice Shy

The Kiss...

Isabelle Forrester is the exquisite wife of a Parisian banker who has long since shut her out of his heart. Isabelle has lived a life of isolation, pouring her passions into her two children. Isabelle allows herself one secret pleasure: a long-distance friendship by telephone with a Washington power broker who, like Isabelle, is trapped in a loveless marriage. To Bill Robinson, Isabelle is a godsend, a woman of extraordinary beauty and intellectual curiosity – a kindred spirit who touches him across the miles with her warmth and gentle empathy. Agreeing to meet for a few precious, innocent days in London, they find their friendship changing – until, with the sudden crash of steel against steel, they are thrust onto a new path fraught with pain and possibility. Now, inside the cool sterile wards of a London hospital, Isabelle and Bill cling to life, their bodies shattered almost beyond repair. Together they must find the strength not only to embrace life again but to face what they have left behind. A tangle of changing relationships and the tragedy of another loss conspire to separate them once again… and this time they could lose each other forever.

Sanctuary

Deadly Vintage (A Jack Donne Mystery)

Treasury agent-turned-vintner Jack Donne finds his two careers colliding when he becomes embroiled in a bitter family feud that involves counterfeiting wine, and, as Jack finds out, a great deal of danger. Reprint. PW.

Random Winds

Protect and Defend

A compelling new novel from Richard North Patterson- a major departure, and that confirms his place among the most important popular novelists at work today. A newly elected president faces the unexpected chance to nominate a new chief justice of the Supreme Court. His first choice is a nationally respected Court of Appeals judge, a woman whose nomination faces two serious obstacles: a long-held personal secret; and the prospect that a volatile abortion case- a trial pitting a 15-year-old girl against her pro-life parents- will come before the court. And the Senate majority leader is determined to thwart the president's nomination for reasons that cross the boundary between the political and the personal. As these stories intertwine, building in complexity and suspense, Patterson gives us the resounding clash of competing ambitions between the president and the majority leader; the equally momentous collision of science and culture in the courtroom; and, in an unprecedented novelistic depiction of the legal process from the perspective of the judge rather than the lawyers, a revelation of both how the judicial system works and how it intersects with politics, for better or for worse. PROTECT AND DEFEND is a triumph- the definitive novel of politics and law at the dawn of the 21st century.

Heat

Ex-DEA agent Jesse Warden has seen enough of the inside of a solitary confinement cell to last him a lifetime. Or two lifetimes, which is the sentence he's serving after being convicted of a plan he was planning to commit, but never did. So when an old buddy shows up with a deal that could spring him from his hell behind bars, he's ready to listen. To gain his freedom, Jesse must infiltrate a dangerous and reclusive religious cult that has been stockpiling weapons and eliminating those sent to investigate. From the moment he arrives in the Idaho mountain town where the cult is centered, Jesse finds every aspect of life dictated by the group's eerie, imposing leader. Pitted against not only the cult, but also the feds who sent him, Jesse feels control of his own life slipping away, and must make a final, desperate attempt to regain it -- or die trying.

Compelling Evidence

"Seamless, suspenseful, plausible . . . all that a courtroom drama should be" (New York Daily News). Sharp defense attorney Paul Madriani was on the rise with the firm of Potter, Skarpellos--until a short-lived affair with Potter's wife cost him his job. Now, Potter's wife is accused of his murder--and Paul is thrust back into the big time, as he uncovers secrets that may end his career--and his life.

A Woman's Heart

Jaded and bitter, scriptwriter Quinn Gallagher isn't happy about being marooned on location in a sleepy Irish town--or renting a room from young widow Nora Fitzgerald. He doesn't know that the only way she can keep her home is to offer him one--or that the happy endings he writes about so cynically can actually happen offscreen, as well.

The Best Defense

Monster

A second-rate actor is found mutilated in a car trunk. Then a psychologist at a Los Angeles hospital for the criminally insane is murdered in a similar grisly fashion. Suddenly the incoherent ramblings of an inmate at the presumably secure institution begin to make chilling sense—they are, in fact, horrifying predictions. Yet how can a barely functional psychotic locked behind asylum walls possibly know such vivid details of crimes committed in the outside world? Drawn into a labyrinth of secrets, revenge, sex, and manipulation, Dr. Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis set out to unlock this enigma and put an end to the brutal killings—before the madman predicts their own demise. . . .