The Wicked Hour

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The Wicked Hour

Author : Alice Blanchard
Publisher : Minotaur Books
ISBN 13 : 1250205743
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis The Wicked Hour by : Alice Blanchard

Download or read book The Wicked Hour written by Alice Blanchard and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the award-winning author of Trace of Evil, a detective dealing with the scars of her past must solve a seemingly unconnected string of murders, and face the impossible question of what to do when the killer may be hiding amongst the ones you know, in Alice Blanchard's The Wicked Hour. “Readers will welcome a return to Burning Lake with Natalie at the helm.”—Associated Press “Lockhart is a relatable new heroine on the police-procedural scene, and one who will appeal to readers of Tana French."—Booklist The day after Burning Lake’s notorious, debauched Halloween celebration, Detective Natalie Lockhart uncovers a heartbreaking scene—a young woman, dead and lying in a dumpster. There’s no clue to who she is, save for a mystifying tattoo on her arm, and a callus underneath her chin. She’s not from around here. No one knows who she is. As Natalie retraces the young woman’s steps leading up to her death, she uncovers a deeper, darker horror—a string of murders and disappearances, seemingly unconnected, that may have ties to each other—and explain the abrupt disappearance of her best friend years ago. As she digs deeper within the mind of the hunter, Natalie finds a darkness she could never have imagined. And as she draws closer to the truth, the killer is weaving a trap for her that may prove inescapable.

The Witching Hour

Author : Anne Rice
Publisher : Ballantine Books
ISBN 13 : 0307575950
Total Pages : 1058 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (75 download)

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Book Synopsis The Witching Hour by : Anne Rice

Download or read book The Witching Hour written by Anne Rice and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2010-11-17 with total page 1058 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the beloved author of the Vampire Chronicles, the first installation of her spellbinding Mayfair Chronicles—the inspiration for the hit television series! “Extraordinary . . . Anne Rice offers more than just a story; she creates myth.”—The Washington Post Book World Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery—aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches—finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life. He is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a sensory power that mystifies and frightens him. As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and—in passionate alliance—set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, an intricate tale of evil unfolds. Moving through time from today’s New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and a château in the Louis XIV’s France, and from the coffee plantations of Port au Prince, where the great Mayfair fortune is made and the legacy of their dark power is almost destroyed, to Civil War New Orleans, The Witching Hour is a luminous, deeply enchanting novel. The magic of the Mayfairs continues: THE WITCHING HOUR • LASHER • TALTOS

Trace of Evil

Author : Alice Blanchard
Publisher : Minotaur Books
ISBN 13 : 1250205727
Total Pages : 311 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Trace of Evil by : Alice Blanchard

Download or read book Trace of Evil written by Alice Blanchard and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An IndieNext Pick! "Gripping...Blanchard keeps the tension high." - Associated Press From Alice Blanchard, the author of the New York Times Notable mystery novel Darkness Peering comes Trace of Evil, first in an evocative new series about a small New York town, its deeply held secrets, and the woman determined to uncover them, no matter what the cost. There’s something wicked in Burning Lake... Natalie Lockhart is a rookie detective in Burning Lake, New York, an isolated town known for its dark past. Tasked with uncovering the whereabouts of nine missing transients who have disappeared over the years, Natalie wrestles with the town’s troubled history – and the scars left by her sister’s unsolved murder years ago. Then Daisy Buckner, a beloved schoolteacher, is found dead on her kitchen floor, and a suspect immediately comes to mind. But it’s not that simple. The suspect is in a coma, collapsed only hours after the teacher’s death, and it turns out Daisy had secrets of her own. Natalie knows there is more to the case, but as the investigation deepens, even she cannot predict the far-reaching consequences – for the victim, for the missing of Burning Lake, and for herself.

Wicked Hour

Author : Chloe Neill
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 039958711X
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis Wicked Hour by : Chloe Neill

Download or read book Wicked Hour written by Chloe Neill and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the second pulse-pounding novel in the USA Today bestselling Heirs of Chicagoland series, vampire Elisa Sullivan gets drawn into the shifting sands of Pack politics. Vampires were made, not born—until Elisa Sullivan came along. As the only vampire child in existence, she grew up with a heavy legacy, and tried to flee her past. Then circumstances drew her back to Chicago, and she stayed to keep it safe. With shifter Connor Keene, the only son of Pack Apex Gabriel Keene, at her side, she faced down a supernatural evil that threatened to destroy Chicago forever. After the dust from the attack has settled, Elisa is surprised when Connor invites her to a usually private Pack event in the north woods of Minnesota, and by the warm welcome she receives from some of Connor’s family, even though she's a vampire. But the peace doesn't last. The shifters tell tales of a monster in the woods, and when the celebration is marred by death, Elisa and Connor find themselves in the middle of a struggle for control that forces Elisa to face her true self—fangs and all.

The Witching Tree

Author : Alice Blanchard
Publisher : Minotaur Books
ISBN 13 : 1250783054
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (57 download)

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Book Synopsis The Witching Tree by : Alice Blanchard

Download or read book The Witching Tree written by Alice Blanchard and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to Burning Lake, a small, isolated town with a dark history of witches and false accusations. Now, a modern-day witch has been murdered, and Detective Natalie Lockhart is reluctantly drawn deep into the case, in this atmospheric mystery from Alice Blanchard, The Witching Tree. As legend has it, if you carve your deepest desire into the bark of a Witch Tree, then over time as the tree grows, it will swallow the carvings until only a witch can read them. Until now. Detective Natalie Lockhart gained unwanted notoriety when she and her family became front and center of not one, but two sensational murder cases. Now she’s lost her way. Burned out and always looking over her shoulder, Natalie desperately thinks that quitting the police force is her only option left. All that changes when a beloved resident—a practicing Wiccan and founder of the town’s oldest coven—is killed in a fashion more twisted and shocking than Natalie has ever seen before, leaving the town reeling. Natalie has no choice but to help solve the case along with Detective Luke Pittman, her boss and the old childhood friend she cannot admit she loves, even to herself. There is a silent, malignant presence in Burning Lake that will not rest. And what happens next will shock the whole town, and Natalie, to the core.

The Wicked Heart

Author : Christopher Pike
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1665940638
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (659 download)

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Book Synopsis The Wicked Heart by : Christopher Pike

Download or read book The Wicked Heart written by Christopher Pike and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-10-07 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Club—now an original Netflix series! Dusty Shame was a high school senior, and a serial killer. Already he has murdered three young women, and he has more planned. Yet Dusty did not want to hurt anybody. There was something inside him, or perhaps outside him, that compelled him to kill. Sheila Hardolt has lost her best friend to Dusty’s brutal attacks. It will be her task to probe the clues Dusty has left at the site of each of his murders. Clues that will point her into the past—to a time when a large portion of mankind lost all sense of decency. There she will find the seed of Dusty’s evil compulsion, the Wicked Heart, and the reason why it did not die the first time it was destroyed.

Lasher

Author : Anne Rice
Publisher : Ballantine Books
ISBN 13 : 0307575861
Total Pages : 642 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (75 download)

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Book Synopsis Lasher by : Anne Rice

Download or read book Lasher written by Anne Rice and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2010-11-17 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the beloved author of the Vampire Chronicles, the second installation of her spellbinding Mayfair Chronicles—the inspiration for the hit television series! “[Anne] Rice’s descriptive writing is so opulent it almost begs to be read by candlelight.”—The Washington Post Book World In seventeenth-century Scotland, the first “witch,” Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjured up the spirit she named Lasher—a creation that spelled her own destruction and torments each of her descendants. Now, the beautiful Rowan Mayfair, queen of the coven, must flee from this darkly brutal yet irresistible demon. The magic of the Mayfairs continues: THE WITCHING HOUR • LASHER • TALTOS

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Author : John Berendt
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0679429220
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (794 download)

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Book Synopsis Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by : John Berendt

Download or read book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil written by John Berendt and published by Random House. This book was released on 1994-01-13 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic of true crime, set in a most beguiling Southern city—now in a 30th anniversary edition with a new afterword by the author “Elegant and wicked . . . might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to book a bed and breakfast for an extended weekend at the scene of the crime.”—The New York Times Book Review Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. In this sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative, John Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman’s Card Club; the turbulent young gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the “soul of pampered self-absorption”; the uproariously funny drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young people dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience.

Happy Hour

Author : Marlowe Granados
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1839764031
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (397 download)

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Book Synopsis Happy Hour by : Marlowe Granados

Download or read book Happy Hour written by Marlowe Granados and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the verve and bite of Ottessa Moshfegh and the barbed charm of Nancy Mitford, Marlowe Granados’s stunning debut brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York City. Isa Epley, all of twenty-one years old, is already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. She arrives in New York with her newly blond best friend looking for adventure. They have little money, but that’s hardly going to stop them. By day, the girls sell clothes on a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave between Brooklyn, the Upper East Side, and the Hamptons among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, Internet entrepreneurs, stuffy intellectuals, and bad-mannered grifters. Resources run ever tighter and the strain tests their friendship as they try to convert social capital into something more lasting than precarious gigs as au pairs, nightclub hostesses, paid audience members, and aspiring foot fetish models. Through it all, Isa’s bold, beguiling voice captures the precise thrill of cultivating a life of glamour and intrigue as she juggles paying her dues with skipping out on the bill. Happy Hour is a novel about getting by and having fun in a system that wants you to do neither.

Magic Hour

Author : Susan Isaacs
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0061870617
Total Pages : 500 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (618 download)

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Book Synopsis Magic Hour by : Susan Isaacs

Download or read book Magic Hour written by Susan Isaacs and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Susan Isaacs brings her wicked wit and keen understanding of what really goes on between men and women to a very different slice of Long Island—the Hamptons. Magic hour. That perfect time, that fleeting hour of enchanted light near dusk and dawn that is perfect for moviemaking, perfect for making love. Perfect for murder. And into the magic hour steps Stephen Brady, wise guy, tough guy, local farm boy turned homicide cop, and a good man with a very bad life. But just as his luck is about to change, the rich, gifted, and urbane filmmaker Sy Spencer is murdered, and Brady discovers that his prime suspect is a woman he and the victim shared. A spellbinding mystery, a scathing social satire and a poignant love story, Magic Hour looks beyond the trendy magazine-cover Hamptons’ world of the summer set’s high-cheekboned elegance and the locals’ down-on-the-farm authenticity into the hearts of real people. Magic Hour is the story of the treacherous murder that rocks them all and of the police detective who is too cold-hearted, too world-weary to ever fall in love—until he does.

The Year of the Witching

Author : Alexis Henderson
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593099621
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis The Year of the Witching by : Alexis Henderson

Download or read book The Year of the Witching written by Alexis Henderson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young woman living in a rigid, puritanical society discovers dark powers within herself in this stunning, feminist fantasy debut. In the lands of Bethel, where the Prophet's word is law, Immanuelle Moore's very existence is blasphemy. Her mother’s union with an outsider of a different race cast her once-proud family into disgrace, so Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, follow Holy Protocol, and lead a life of submission, devotion, and absolute conformity, like all the other women in the settlement. But a mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel, where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches. Their spirits are still lurking there, and they bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the journal of her dead mother, who Immanuelle is shocked to learn once sought sanctuary in the wood. Fascinated by the secrets in the diary, Immanuelle finds herself struggling to understand how her mother could have consorted with the witches. But when she begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history, she realizes the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness. And she starts to understand that if Bethel is to change, it must begin with her.

As the Wicked Watch

Author : Tamron Hall
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 006303705X
Total Pages : 339 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (63 download)

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Book Synopsis As the Wicked Watch by : Tamron Hall

Download or read book As the Wicked Watch written by Tamron Hall and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in a thrilling new series from Emmy Award-winning TV Host and Journalist Tamron Hall, As The Wicked Watch follows a reporter as she unravels the disturbing mystery around the deaths of two young Black women, the work of a serial killer terrorizing Chicago. When crime reporter Jordan Manning leaves her hometown in Texas to take a job at a television station in Chicago, she’s one step closer to her dream: a coveted anchor chair on a national network. Jordan is smart and aggressive, with unabashed star-power, and often the only woman of color in the newsroom. Her signature? Arriving first on the scene—in impractical designer stilettos. Armed with a master’s degree in forensic science and impeccable instincts, Jordan has been able to balance her dueling motivations: breaking every big story—and giving a voice to the voiceless. From her time in Texas, she’s covered the vilest of human behaviors but nothing has prepared her for Chicago. Jordan is that rare breed of a journalist who can navigate a crime scene as well as she can a newsroom—often noticing what others tend to miss. Again and again, she is called to cover the murders of Black women, many of them sexually assaulted, most brutalized, and all of them quickly forgotten. All until Masey James—the story that Jordan just can’t shake, despite all efforts. A 15-year-old girl whose body was found in an abandoned lot, Masey has come to represent for Jordan all of the frustration and anger that her job often forces her to repress. Putting the rest of her work and her fraying personal life aside, Jordan does everything she can to give the story the coverage it desperately requires, and that a missing Black child would so rarely get. There’s a serial killer on the loose, Jordan believes, and he’s hiding in plain sight.

The Rogue's Hour

Author : Scott Ciencin
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781593150204
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rogue's Hour by : Scott Ciencin

Download or read book The Rogue's Hour written by Scott Ciencin and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A man without a past, Rileigh is pursued through the port city of Qeynos by a necromancer and a shadownight. After hiding aboard a ship, he finds himself embroiled in a quest to retrieve four stolen objects of power that once belonged to an ancient dragon.

Wild Hunger

Author : Chloe Neill
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0399587098
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis Wild Hunger by : Chloe Neill

Download or read book Wild Hunger written by Chloe Neill and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first thrilling installment of Chloe Neill's spinoff to the New York Times bestselling Chicagoland Vampires series, a new vampire will find out just how deep blood ties run. As the only vampire child ever born, some believed Elisa Sullivan had all the luck. But the magic that helped bring her into the world left her with a dark secret. Shifter Connor Keene, the only son of North American Central Pack Apex Gabriel Keene, is the only one she trusts with it. But she's a vampire and the daughter of a Master and a Sentinel, and he's prince of the Pack and its future king. When the assassination of a diplomat brings old feuds to the fore again, Elisa and Connor must choose between love and family, between honor and obligation, before Chicago disappears forever.

Hour of the Witch

Author : Chris Bohjalian
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0525432698
Total Pages : 497 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (254 download)

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Book Synopsis Hour of the Witch by : Chris Bohjalian

Download or read book Hour of the Witch written by Chris Bohjalian and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed author of The Flight Attendant: “Historical fiction at its best…. The book is a thriller in structure, and a real page-turner, the ending both unexpected and satisfying” (Diana Gabaldon, bestselling author of the Outlander series, The Washington Post). A young Puritan woman—faithful, resourceful, but afraid of the demons that dog her soul—plots her escape from a violent marriage in this riveting and propulsive novel of historical suspense. Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is twenty-four-years-old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. But here in the New World, amid this community of saints, Mary is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary's hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life. But in a world where every neighbor is watching for signs of the devil, a woman like Mary—a woman who harbors secret desires and finds it difficult to tolerate the brazen hypocrisy of so many men in the colony—soon becomes herself the object of suspicion and rumor. When tainted objects are discovered buried in Mary's garden, when a boy she has treated with herbs and simples dies, and when their servant girl runs screaming in fright from her home, Mary must fight to not only escape her marriage, but also the gallows. A twisting, tightly plotted novel of historical suspense from one of our greatest storytellers, Hour of the Witch is a timely and terrifying story of socially sanctioned brutality and the original American witch hunt.

The Golden Hour

Author : Beatriz Williams
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062834770
Total Pages : 465 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (628 download)

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Book Synopsis The Golden Hour by : Beatriz Williams

Download or read book The Golden Hour written by Beatriz Williams and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Golden Hour is pure golden delight Beatriz Williams is at the top of her game.” —Kate Quinn, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Alice Network Beatriz Williams, the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives, is back with another hot summer read; a dazzling epic of World War II in which a beautiful young “society reporter” is sent to the Bahamas, a haven of spies, traitors, and the infamous Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The Bahamas, 1941. Newly-widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in the Bahamas to investigate the Governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires? Or so Lulu imagines. But as she infiltrates the Duke and Duchess’s social circle, and the powerful cabal that controls the islands’ political and financial affairs, she uncovers evidence that beneath the glister of Wallis and Edward’s marriage lies an ugly—and even treasonous—reality. In fact, Windsor-era Nassau seethes with spies, financial swindles, and racial tension, and in the middle of it all stands Benedict Thorpe: a scientist of tremendous charm and murky national loyalties. Inevitably, the willful and wounded Lulu falls in love. Then Nassau’s wealthiest man is murdered in one of the most notorious cases of the century, and the resulting coverup reeks of royal privilege. Benedict Thorpe disappears without a trace, and Lulu embarks on a journey to London and beyond to unpick Thorpe’s complicated family history: a fateful love affair, a wartime tragedy, and a mother from whom all joy is stolen. The stories of two unforgettable women thread together in this extraordinary epic of espionage, sacrifice, human love, and human courage, set against a shocking true crime . . . and the rise and fall of a legendary royal couple.

The Quick and the Dead

Author : Joy Williams
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 030776382X
Total Pages : 319 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (77 download)

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Book Synopsis The Quick and the Dead by : Joy Williams

Download or read book The Quick and the Dead written by Joy Williams and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • From one of our most heralded writers comes the “poetic, disturbing, yet very funny” (The Washington Post Book World) life-and-death adventures of three misfit teenagers in the American desert. Alice, Corvus, and Annabel, each a motherless child, are an unlikely circle of friends. One filled with convictions, another with loss, the third with a worldly pragmatism, they traverse an air-conditioned landscape eccentric with signs and portents—from the preservation of the living dead in a nursing home to the presentation of the dead as living in a wildlife museum—accompanied by restless, confounded adults. A father lusts after his handsome gardener even as he's haunted (literally) by his dead wife; a heartbroken dog runs afoul of an angry neighbor; a young stroke victim drifts westward, his luck running from worse to awful; a sickly musician for whom Alice develops an attraction is drawn instead toward darker imaginings and solutions; and an aging big-game hunter finds spiritual renewal through his infatuation with an eight-year-old—the formidable Emily Bliss Pickless. With nature thoroughly routed and the ambiguities of existence on full display, life and death continue in directions both invisible and apparent. Gloriously funny and wonderfully serious, The Quick and the Dead limns the vagaries of love, the thirst for meaning, and the peculiar paths by which all creatures are led to their destiny. A panorama of contemporary life and an endlessly surprising tour de force: penetrating and magical, ominous and comic, this is the most astonishing book yet in Joy Williams's illustrious career. Joy Williams belongs, James Salter has written, "in the company of Céline, Flannery O'Connor, and Margaret Atwood."