Concentration

Bombs Away by John Steinbeck

A magnificent volume of short novels and an essential World War II report from one of America's great twentieth-century writers. A nonfiction account of Steinbeck's experiences with U.S. Army Air Force bomber crews during World War II.

Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie

When a number of leading scientists disappear without a trace, concern grows within the international intelligence community. And the one woman who appears to hold the key to the mystery is dying from injuries sustained in a plane crash. Meanwhile, in a Casablanca hotel room, Hilary Craven prepares to take her own life. But her suicide attempt is about to be interrupted by a man who...

Falling Women by Ellen Herbert

Short stories about families in turmoil and children in peril, from a homeless mother forced to put her son in foster care to a suburban mother afraid of passing her water phobia to her son. Braxton, North Carolina is the where in these stories, an imaginary coastal town adjacent to Camp Corregidor, a stopover for recruits on their way to Vietnam and later to Iraq. Braxton is the...

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut

Eliot Rosewater - drunk, volunteer fireman, and President of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation - is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature... with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout.

Lost Paradise by Kathy Marks

Pitcairn Island - remote and wild in the South Pacific, a place of towering cliffs and lashing surf - is home to descendants of Fletcher Christian and the Mutiny on the Bounty crew, who fled there with a group of Tahitian maidens after deposing their captain, William Bligh, and seizing his ship in 1789. Shrouded in myth, the island was idealized by outsiders, who considered it a...

Songbook by Nick Hornby

Songs, songwriters, and why and how they get under our skin... Songbook is Hornby's labor of love. A shrewd, funny, and completely unique collection of musings on pop music, why it's good, what makes us listen and love it, and the ways in which it attaches itself to our lives - all with the beat of a perfectly mastered mix tape.

Soul Thief by Jana Oliver

Riley Blackthorne is beginning to learn that there are worse things than death by demon. And love is just one of them... Seventeen-year-old Riley has about had it up to here. After the devastating battle at the Tabernacle, trappers are dead and injured, her boyfriend Simon is gravely injured, and now her beloved late father's been illegally poached from his grave by a very powerful...

The Four Seasons by Laurel Corona

In glittering 18th-century Venice, music and love are prized above all else - and for two sisters coming of age, the city's passions blend in intoxicating ways. Chiaretta and Maddalena are as different as night and day. The two sisters were abandoned as babies on the steps of the Ospedale della Pietß, Venice's world-famous foundling hospital and musical academy. High-spirited and...

The Gypsy Piano Tuner by Janna Eliot

This is a collection of punchy short stories about various Romani people, well told and authentic. There is humour and pathos - a thoroughly good read.

The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller

It's a lousy room in a lousy part of a lousy town. But Marv doesn't care. There's an angel in the room. She says her name is Goldie. A few hours later, Goldie's dead without a mark on her perfect body, and the cops are coming before anyone but Marv could know she's been killed. Somebody paid good money for this frame... With a new look generating more excitement than ever before...

War Is Not Over When It's Over by Ann Jones

In 2007, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which brings relief to countries in the wake of war, wanted to understand what really happened to women in post-conflict zones. Answers came through the point and click of digital cameras. On behalf of the IRC, Jones spent a year traveling through Africa, East Asia, and the Middle East, lending cameras to women who had no other means...

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

At once a deft parody of the American fame factory and a piercing portrait of young and old desire, this novel introduces two unforgettable characters: Grady Tripp, a former publishing prodigy now lost in a fog of pot and passion and stalled in the midst of his endless second book, and Grady's student, James Leer, a budding writer obsessed with Hollywood self-destruction and...