A Good Year for the Roses (1988)

A Good Year for the Roses (1988)

Timlin, Mark

Timlin, Mark

The explosive and compelling thriller of drugs and murder in south London's mean, gangland streets. Nick Sharman is nobody's favourite person. Ex-cop, ex-doper, invalided out of the Met after a stray bullet in the foot saved him from an investigation into the missing evidence from a drugs haul. The cops don't like him. The villains don't like him. Sharman is unemployable. So he's hired himself an office and set up shop as a private investigator in his south London patch. Divorces and debt-collecting were what he expected. What he gets is Patsy Bright, young, pretty and missing. Her father wants her back. She's a good girl, a model, and only a little bit into drugs. With Sharman's connections it should be a piece of cake. Only when he comes to with a split head, a pocketful of planted heroin, a dead girl and two policemen acting on a tip-off, does Sharman realise this case is different. And serious. And personal.
Read online
  • 24
Miracle on I-40

Miracle on I-40

Curtiss Ann Matlock

Curtiss Ann Matlock

Lacey Brant, struggling single mother and waitress at Gerald's Truckstop, and her two children are grudgingly taken across country in an eighteen-wheeler on Interstate-40 by Cooper, modern-day Scrooge. Lacey has longed to go home to North Carolina, where her parents haven't even met her children. Cooper, by promising a friend to do this favor, is about to take the journey of his life. Miracle on I-40 is a Christmas romance classic revised and expanded by Curtiss Ann Matlock; originally published as a novella by Silhouette
Read online
  • 24
Landscape: Memory

Landscape: Memory

Matthew Stadler

Matthew Stadler

Originally published: New York : Scribner, c1990Amid the rubble of San Francisco's 1906 earthquake, Max Kosegarten, the narrator of this lyrical first novel, becomes the inseparable boyhood friend of Duncan Taqdir, son of a Persian sculptor and an English archeologist. Set mainly in 1914-1916 and told in diary-like entries interspersed with 36 brooding illustrations by the author, the story follows the boys as they become lovers, ultimately separated by college and a tragic accident. Together they explore California's woods, beaches and mountains, and search for evidence of the earthquake that brought them together. Their excavations as well as Max's reading of Ruskin and Cicero, point to this sensitive novel's motif: how memory accretes into character and shapes perception. Another theme is a teen's acceptance of his homosexuality. Max's perky, self-absorbed mother, who is having an affair with Duncan's father, is sharply drawn. Letters from Max's uncle, serving on a hellish front in WW I, add period flavor. 
Read online
  • 23
The Pink Lemonade Charade

The Pink Lemonade Charade

Cynthia Blair

Cynthia Blair

During a school trip to Washington, D.C., identical teen-age twins Chris and Susan Pratt get involved in a lot more than sightseeing. A beautiful Russian ballet dancer with a secret draws them into the most daring—and the most dangerous—adventure of the girls' entire lives. Will Chris and Sooz's identical appearance, along with their cleverness, help them win this high-stakes game? Young Adult Fiction by Cynthia Blair; originally published by Fawcett Juniper
Read online
  • 23
The Road to Avalon

The Road to Avalon

Joan Wolf

Joan Wolf

The pageantry and passionate intrigues of King Arthur's court are expertly re-created in this historical novel—the only Arthurian novel in which all of the central characters are portrayed as intrinsically good people.
Read online
  • 22
Federation World

Federation World

James White

Science Fiction

While James White is best known for the Sector General series, he has written many more science fiction novels. This is one of his best, easily equal to any of the Sector general series. The book is set in a near future after humanity’s contact with aliens. The aliens offer to relocate all of mankind who qualifies to the Federation World, a Dyson sphere near the center of the galaxy. The principal characters are not accepted for citizenship, instead qualifying for positions on the Federation staff. Their job is to make contact with new species and to invite them to join the Federation if they qualify. White’s writing is remarkably clear and easy to read.
Read online
  • 21
Summer's Lease

Summer's Lease

John Mortimer

John Mortimer

Summer's Lease - the classic, international bestselling novel by John Mortimer 'Amusing, entertaining ... and a cracking good read' Sunday Express'And summer's lease hath all too short a date' - Sonnet 18, William ShakespeareIt's high summer when Molly Pargeter drags her amiably bickering family to a rented Tuscan villa for the holidays. Molly is sure that the house is the perfect setting for their three-week getaway, but soon she becomes fascinated by the lives of the absent owners - and things start to go horribly wrong ... 'With a cosy fluency of wit, Mortimer charms us into his urbane tangle of clues' Mail on Sunday Summer's Lease, which was made into popular BBC TV mini-series starring John Gielgud, is a delightful novel from Rumpole author John Mortimer: witty, compassionate, humane, perfectly plotted and wonderfully readable. It will be adored by...
Read online
  • 21
The Poison Oracle

The Poison Oracle

Peter Dickinson

Peter Dickinson

In this bizarre thriller set in an Arab emirate, an English scientist is trying to teach a chimpanzee to communicate. But when the chimp is the sole witness to a murder, giving evidence strains its new skill to the limit.
Read online
  • 21
Kiss

Kiss

John Lutz

John Lutz

When a client dies in a car explosion, Orlando detective Fred Carver learns the man may not have been who he said he wasFor Bert Renway, it starts out as a simple proposition: a fat bundle of money to spend a few weeks impersonating Frank Wesley, a local tycoon. But after a while Bert grows suspicious of the easy money, and seeks help in the shape of Fred Carver, an ex–Orlando policeman turned private investigator. Like Bert, Carver smells trouble, and agrees to help him find out who his employers are and why they want him to play Wesley. Neither of them is suspicious enough. A few minutes after Bert leaves, an explosion sounds in the parking lot—the new client’s car gone up in a burst of flame. When they pull his body from the wreckage, dental records identify him not as Bert Renway, but as Frank Wesley. Carver doesn’t care. He’s on the case no matter who the man was. This ebook features an illustrated biography of John Lutz including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.
Read online
  • 21
183