A creature of the night, Sarafina lives only for pleasure, but love is an emotion she has deemed forbidden. Experience has taught her that love leads only to betrayal and pain, and she wants no more of pain. She cares for no one, tolerating only the presence of those she can control utterly. With her powers, she is convinced she can break anyone. Willem Stone cannot be broken. He is a challenge Sarafina cannot resist--a man as boldly alive as she is, a man with a will of iron, yet a mere mortal. And the only thing stronger than the clash of their wills is the power of their desire. But when vampire hunters take Amber Lily, the only child ever born to a vampire, Sarafina and Willem must put their struggle aside and combine their strengths in a rescue attempt that could cost them their very lives. And in the process, they find the most powerful force of all: love.

Murder runs deep in a thrilling new series. An Underwater Investigation featuring C.S.I. diver Hannah Sampson. Summoned to the sun-drenched beaches of the British Virgin Islands, Hannah Sampson is fully prepared to face unknowable dangers beneath the crystal-clear waters of an idyllic paradise. But the possibility of murder runs deeper and darker than the sea itself. Her police commissioner's son-an expert diver and researcher-was found dead, pinned under the submerged wreckage of a cargo ship. Whatever the victim was looking for, he found. Whatever he found was the death of him. Now Hannah must discover for herself what lies beneath-a secret that could take Hannah's breath away.

San Francisco crime reporter Tom Reed is burned out. On the day he decides to finally quit the news business, a sensational story breaks. A heart-stopping robbery-homicide at a jewelry store. The suspects have shot and killed a police officer before fleeing with a female hostage. Reed rushes to the scene, his passion resurrected for one last big story. Arriving at the chaos, Reed is stunned to learn from a staff member, still clutching a receipt, that the hostage is his wife, Ann Reed. Horrified, Reed confronts San Francisco Homicide Inspector Walt Sydowski and other detectives on the case. All know the odds. Reed is paralyzed with anguish, but his son, Zach, refuses to give up hope of finding his mother, despite the grisly trail left by the killers. Now the clock is ticking down as Reed battles his demons and Sydowski in a life and death search for Ann.

American Falls is the first major collection of short stories from Barry Gifford, master of the dark side of the American reality. These stories range widely in style and period, from the 1950s to the present, from absurdist exercises to romantic tales, from stories about childhood innocence to novellas of murder and revenge.In the title story, a Japanese-American motel operator chooses not give up a total stranger, a black man wanted for murder, when the police come searching for him. In "Room 584, The Starr Hotel," a man rants his outrage at an amorous couple in the room next door before he himself is arrested for having committed multiple murders. "The Unspoken" recounts the confessions of a man without a mouth who tells about the woman who loved him. And in this collection’s longest fiction, a novella called "The Lonely and the Lost," a small town’s talented and colorful inhabitants solve their problems as best they can until it comes time for the devil to reap what they have sown.Dark and light intermix in masterful chiaroscuro, dark becoming light, light revealing sinister or brooding complexity. No simple endings, only happy beginnings.From BooklistUnlike his novels, most of which fit solidly in the noir tradition and are crackling with kinetic energy, Gifford's short stories are reflective, often elegiac--small moments placed under a microscope. In "My Last Martini," for example, which is one of several stories here to have appeared in previous collections, the narrator listens quietly as an unknown woman on the next barstool tells the story of her family's legacy of sexual dysfunction. The flatness of the narrative style, while seeming to mask emotion, actually manages to heighten the reader's sense of turmoil below the surface. That turmoil takes center stage in a noirish novella, " The Lonely and the Lost," which has more in common with Gifford's novels, including Wild at Heart (1989), than it does with the other stories collected here. Whether passion and violence erupt in surrealistic bursts or roil silently under a placid surface, however, Gifford's insistently idiosyncratic fiction never fails to surprise, jolting us into recognizing the mundane in the midst of the surreal or forcing us to confront tragedy in an empty martini glass. Bill OttCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reservedAbout the AuthorThe author of more than forty published works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into twenty-eight languages, BARRY GIFFORD began as a poet and musician. His most recent prose works are Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels, Sad Stories of the Death of Kings, and Memories from a Sinking Ship: A Novel. His most recent poetry collection is Imagining Paradise: New and Selected Poems (2012). Gifford lives in the San Francisco area and maintains a website at www.barrygifford.com.

How Can You Come into New Levels of Prosperity? Many Christians have given their time and money for the sake of the Gospel. Some have given for years without seeing their own personal, social, and financial outlook change. Others who have enjoyed prosperity have even greater levels of blessing in store for them. We know from the Word of God that our heavenly Father desires His children to do well and that when we give, it is given back to us abundantly. Why then do so many Christians still struggle to receive all of God's promises? In this book, Joyce Meyer reveals an important basic principle and shows you how to experience God's power in your own life. Discover: Why joyful giving ensures future blessings How planting more seeds lets you meet more needs Why complaining and envy steal God's bounty How certain Scriptures will increase your harvest. Find out how to nurture the seed you sow and prepare to prosper!

Tony Boudreaux's family had a saying that "good things happen in threes." However, instead of three days of rich Cajun food, dancing, and laughing over old times at his family reunion at Whiskey Bend in the middle of the Atchafalaya Swamp, Tony Boudreaux faces trouble.Tony and his family find themselves not only cut off from the rest of the world by Belle, a Category Three hurricane, but also confronted with voodoo wangas, an angry family trying to lynch one of its own and a psychotic killer who has decided to double the Boudreaux and Thibodeaux populations in the family cemetery—and by the most unique methods.This means Tony has to work quickly—before the hurricane strikes and before the murderer kills again.

Guardian angels do exist and God still performs miracles. In this simple yet engaging compilation, bestselling author Karen Kingsbury retells some of the incredible stories she's heard from teenagers over the years.

Chapter I A Strange Request Tom Swift closed the book of adventures he had been reading, tossed it on the table, and got up. Then he yawned. "What\'s the matter?" asked his chum, Ned Newton, who was deep in another volume. "Oh, I thought this was going to be something exciting," replied Tom, motioning toward the book he had discarded. "But say! the make-believe adventures that fellow had, weren\'t anything compared to those we went through in the city of gold, or while rescuing the exiles of Siberia." "Well," remarked Ned, "they would have to be pretty classy adventures to lay over those you and I have had lately. But where are you going?" he continued, for Tom had taken his cap and started for the door. "I thought I\'d go out and take a little run in the aeroplane. Want to come along? It\'s more fun than sitting in the house reading about exciting things that never have happened. Come on out and--" "Yes, and have a tumble from the aeroplane, I suppose you were going to say," interrupted Ned with a laugh. "Not much! I\'m going to stay here and finish this book." "Say," demanded Tom indignantly. "Did you ever know me to have a tumble since I knew how to run an airship?" "No, I can\'t say that I did. I was only joking." "Then you carried the joke too far, as the policeman said to the man he found lugging off money from the bank. And to make up for it you\'ve got to come along with me." "Where are you going?" "Oh, anywhere. Just to take a little run in the upper regions, and clear some of the cobwebs out of my head. I declare, I guess I\'ve got the spring fever. I haven\'t done anything since we got back from Russia last fall, and I\'m getting rusty." "You haven\'t done anything!" exclaimed Ned, following his chum\'s example by tossing aside the book. "Do you call working on your new invention of a noiseless airship nothing?" "Well, I haven\'t finished that yet. I\'m tired of inventing things. I just want to go off, and have some good fun, like getting shipwrecked on a desert island, or being lost in the mountains, or something like that. I want action. I want to get off in the jungle, and fight wild beasts, and escape from the savages!" "Say! you don\'t want much," commented Ned. "But I feel the same way, Tom." "Then come on out and take a run, and maybe we\'ll get on the track of an adventure," urged the young inventor. "We won\'t go far, just twenty or thirty miles or so." The two youths emerged from the house and started across the big lawn toward the aeroplane sheds, for Tom Swift owned several speedy aircrafts, from a big combined aeroplane and dirigible balloon, to a little monoplane not much larger than a big bird, but which was the most rapid flier that ever breathed the fumes of gasolene. "Which one you going to take, Tom?" asked Ned, as his chum paused in front of the row of hangars. "Oh, the little double-seated monoplane, I guess that\'s in good shape, and it\'s easy to manage. When I\'m out for fun I hate to be tinkering with levers and warping wing tips all the while. The Lark practically flies herself, and we can sit back and take it easy....

Book One of the Epic Prequel to the Classic Novel Dune—Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture Step into the universe of Frank Herbert’s Dune, one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time. Before Paul Atreides became Muad’Dib, the dynamic leader who unified the wild Fremen on the desert planet known as Dune . . . Before the evil Baron Harkonnen overthrew House Atreides and sent Paul and his mother Jessica fleeing into the deadly wasteland of sand . . . Before the secrets of the spice and the sandworms were discovered . . . There was another story . . . The tale of young Leto Atreides learning to become a ruler in the shadow of his great father. The tale of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, ruthless tyrant who becomes a pawn of Bene Gesserit breeding schemes. The tale of Pardot Kynes, ambitious planetologist dispatched to the sands...