AsVesuvius churns, a slave girl-turned-gladiator joins forces with an unlikelysource to seek justice.In the coastal town of Pompeii, a newgladiator prepares to fight. But this gladiator hides a deadly secret: she's arunaway Jewish slave girl named Ariella, disguised as a young boy. A savvy fighter,Ariella determines to triumph in the arena, knowing her life will be forfeitshould anyone uncover the truth.Cato, a wealthy politician, moved toPompeii after tiring of the corruption in Rome. But he soon learns that Pompeiiis just as corrupt, and if he doesn't play the game, his family could pay theprice. Determined to bring about justicefor the citizens of Pompeii, Cato searches for allies. But what he discoversinstead is a confounding group of Christians . . . and a young female gladiatorwhose fame is growing daily.Political unrest reaches a boilingpoint as Christians are jailed and executed, and the mountain in the distancethreatens to destroy the...

The New York of Lynne Tillman’s hilarious, audacious fourth novel is a boiling point of urban decay. The East Village streets are overrun with crooked cops, drug addicts, pimps and prostitutes. Garbage piles up along the sidewalks amid the blaring soundtrack of car stereos. Confrontations are supercharged by the summer heat wave. This merciless noise has left Elizabeth Hall an insomniac. Junkies roam her building and overturn trashcans, but the mean-spirited landlord refuses to help clean or repair the decrepit conditions. Live-in boyfriend Roy is good-natured but too avoidant to soothe the sores of city life. Though Elizabeth fights on for normalcy and sanity in this apathetic metropolis, violent fantasies threaten to push her over the edge. In vivid detail, she begins to imagine murders: those of the “morons” she despises, and, most obsessively, her own. Frightening, hilarious, and wholly addictive, No Lease on Life is an avant-garde sucker-punch, a plea for humanity propelled by dark wit and unflinching honesty. Tillman’s spare prose, frank, poignant and always illuminating, captures all the raving absurdity of a very bad day in America’s toughest, hottest melting pot. Lynne Tillman (New York, NY) is the author of five novels, three collections of short stories, one collection of essays and two other nonfiction books. She collaborates often with artists and writes regularly on culture, and her fiction is anthologized widely. Her last collection of short stories, This Is Not It, included 23 stories based on the work of 22 contemporary artists. Her novels include American Genius, A Comedy(2006), No Lease on Life(1998) which was a New York Times Notable Book of 1998 and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Cast in Doubt(1992), Motion Sickness(1991), and Haunted Houses(1987). The Broad Picture(1997) collected Tillman’s essays, which were published in literary and art periodicals. She is the Fiction Editor at FenceMagazine, Professor and Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at the University at Albany, and a recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Kenji Nakayama has seen the end of the world—and it isn't pretty. Those killed by a horrific plague have risen up, reanimated and eager to kill. Those that have survived struggle to find somewhere safe. For Kenji, this nightmare never ends—no matter how many times he dies. That all changes when the young precog encounters the Stone Soldiers, rescuing survivors and slaughtering zombies. Kenji learns that the petrified super soldiers could have prevented the apocalypse with a little forewarning. Luckily for them, Kenji can do just that—by going back and experiencing it all one more time. Can the men of living stone save the world with Kenji's help, or will the monster behind the undead apocalypse prove more than even a super psychic can handle?

Detailing the role of women in aviation, from the very first days of flight to the present, this rich exploration of the subject profiles 26 women pilots who sought out and met challenges both in the sky and on the ground. Divided into six chronologically arranged sections, this book composes a minihistory of aviation. Learn about pioneers such as Katherine Wright, called by many the "Third Wright Brother," and Baroness Raymonde de Laroche of France, the first woman awarded a license to fly. Read about barnstormers like Bessie Coleman and racers like Louise Thaden, who bested Amelia Earhart to win the 1929 Women's Air Derby. Additional short biography sidebars for other key figures and lists of supplemental resources for delving deeper into the history of the subject are also included.

From the grand master of the historical novel comes a dazzling, epic portrait of the City of Light Internationally bestselling author Edward Rutherfurd has enchanted millions of readers with his sweeping, multigenerational dramas that illuminate the great achievements and travails throughout history. In this breathtaking saga of love, war, art, and intrigue, Rutherfurd has set his sights on the most magnificent city in the world: Paris. Moving back and forth in time across centuries, the story unfolds through intimate and vivid tales of self-discovery, divided loyalties , passion, and long-kept secrets of characters both fictional and real, all set against the backdrop of the glorious city—from the building of Notre Dame to the dangerous machinations of Cardinal Richlieu; from the glittering court of Versailles to the violence of the French Revolution and the Paris Commune; from the hedonism of the Belle Époque, the heyday of the impressionists, to the tragedy of the First World War; from the 1920s when the writers of the Lost Generation could be found drinking at Les Deux Magots to the Nazi occupation, the heroic efforts of the French Resistance, and the 1968 student revolt. With his unrivaled blend of impeccable research and narrative verve, Rutherfurd weaves an extraordinary narrative tapestry that captures all the glory of Paris. More richly detailed, more thrilling, and more romantic then anything Rutherfurd has written before, Paris: The Novel wonderfully illuminates hundreds of years in the City of Light and Love and brings the sights, scents, and tastes of Paris to sumptuous life.

The time has come. Goel, friend and leader of the Seven Sleepers, decides to send his teenage servants on one last mission before the great, final battle with the Dark Lord.Meantime, in his frightful tower, the Dark Lord hears some good news. An informer has been secretly planted somewhere among Goel's followers.The Sleepers set out, unaware of the perils facing them in the frozen Land of Ice, in the Caverns of Doom, and in the mysterious Land of the Magicians. Worse, they have no way of knowing that the Dark Lord's informer is in their very midst.But when disaster strikes, they become suspicious. Is it the beautiful guide, Glori? Is it the ugly dwarf, Beorn? Or...is it someone else?Join Josh and Sarah and their friends as their allegiance to Goel is tested by danger, fear, tragedy, and trickery.

With the meteoric success of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, Allan Gurganus placed himself among America’s most original and emotionally engaged storytellers. If his first comic novel mapped the late nineteenth-century South, Local Souls brings the twisted hilarity of Flannery O’Connor kicking into our new century.Through memorable language and bawdy humor, Gurganus returns to his mythological Falls, North Carolina, home of Widow. This first work in a decade offers three novellas mirroring today’s face-lifted South, a zone revolutionized around freer sexuality, looser family ties, and superior telecommunications, yet it celebrates those locals who have chosen to stay local. In doing so, Local Souls uncovers certain old habits—adultery, incest, obsession—still very much alive in our New South, a "Winesburg, Ohio" with high-speed Internet. Wells Tower says of Gurganus, "No living writer knows more about how humans matter to each other." Such ties of love produce hilarious, if wrenching, complications: "Fear Not" gives us a banker's daughter seeking the child she was forced to surrender when barely fifteen, only to find an adult rescuer she might have invented. In "Saints Have Mothers," a beloved high school valedictorian disappears during a trip to Africa, granting her ambitious mother a postponed fame that turns against her. And in a dramatic "Decoy," the doctor-patient friendship between two married men breaks toward desire just as a biblical flood shatters their neighborhood and rearranges their fates. Gurganus finds fresh pathos in ancient tensions: between marriage and Eros, parenthood and personal fulfillment. He writes about erotic hunger and social embarrassment with Twain's knife-edged glee. By loving Falls, Gurganus dramatizes the passing of Hawthorne’s small-town nation into those Twitter-nourished lives we now expect and relish. Four decades ago, John Cheever pronounced Allan Gurganus "the most technically gifted and morally responsive writer of his generation." Local Souls confirms Cheever’s prescient faith. It deepens the luster of Gurganus’s reputation for compassion and laughter. His black comedy leaves us with lasting affection for his characters and the aching aftermath of human consequences. Here is a universal work about a village.

This is not a story of forgiveness... The mystery of their best friend's murder drives four girls to destroy the Gregory family. Emily Thorne would be proud.Everyone at Hawthorne Lake Country Club saw Willa Ames-Rowan climb into a boat with James Gregory, the Club's heir apparent.And everyone at Hawthorne Lake Country Club watched him return. Alone.They all know he killed her. But none of them will say a word. The Gregory family is very, very good at making problems go away.Enter the W.A.R.--the war to avenge Willa Ames-Rowan. Four girls. Four very different motives for justice and revenge, and only one rule: destroy the Gregory family at any cost.From the Hardcover edition.

Love or Death? A simple question really. The choice seems obvious. But. What if you never knew love, what if your life was spent just trying to survive? What if you knew your fate before you were fully grown?And then you died.And you were given another chance. A better chance.This new life depended upon one thing: your job. And so you agreed. You thought it would be simple. You thought it would be cut and dry.It never is.And now you are left holding the fate of someone else in the palm of your hand and you have to make the ultimate choice.Love or Death?

Keel-Tath, the child who would unite her people, as foretold by an ancient prophecy, has grown to be a young warrior in the confines of the Desh-Ka temple, where she has been sheltered by her old friend and mentor Ayan-Dar from the clutches of Syr-Nagath, the Dark Queen. But when Keel-Tath is forced to choose between sanctuary and her honor, she goes into exile, leaving behind a broken-hearted Ayan-Dar. Captured and bound in chains by those who serve the Dark Queen, she is rescued from an unspeakable fate by a warrior from the shadows. Thus begins Keel-Tath’s perilous journey to the ends of her war-ravaged world, through deadly wastelands and even deadlier seas, unaware that some of those she holds most dear stand ready to betray her…