In modern-day Havana, the remnants of the glamorous past are everywhere--old hotel-casinos, vintage American cars & flickering neon signs speak of a bygone era that is widely familiar & often romanticized, but little understood. In Havana Nocturne, T.J. English offers a multifaceted true tale of organized crime, political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution & international conflict that interweaves the dual stories of the Mob in Havana & the event that would overshadow it, the Cuban Revolution.As the Cuban people labored under a violently repressive regime throughout the 50s, Mob leaders Meyer Lansky & Charles "Lucky" Luciano turned their eye to Havana. To them, Cuba was the ultimate dream, the greatest hope for the future of the US Mob in the post-Prohibition years of intensified government crackdowns. But when it came time to make their move, it was Lansky, the brilliant Jewish mobster, who reigned supreme. Having cultivated strong ties with the Cuban government & in particular the brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista, Lansky brought key mobsters to Havana to put his ambitious business plans in motion. Before long, the Mob, with Batista's corrupt government in its pocket, owned the biggest luxury hotels & casinos in Havana, launching an unprecedented tourism boom complete with the most lavish entertainment, the world's biggest celebrities, the most beautiful women & gambling galore. But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara & others who would lead the country's disenfranchised to overthrow their corrupt government & its foreign partners--an epic cultural battle that English captures in all its sexy, decadent, ugly glory. Bringing together long-buried historical information with English's own research in Havana--including interviews with the era's key survivors--Havana Nocturne takes readers back to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's playground for mob leaders. English deftly weaves together the parallel stories of the Havana Mob--featuring notorious criminals such as Santo Trafficante Jr & Albert Anastasia--& Castro's 26th of July Movement in a riveting, up-close look at how the Mob nearly attained its biggest dream in Havana--& how Fidel Castro trumped it all with the revolution.
The beach house is a peaceful haven, a place to escape everyday problems. Here, three families find their feelings intensified and their lives transformed each summer.When thirty-year-old Julia, mourning the death of her husband, decides to sell the Santa Cruz beach house they owned together, she sets in motion a final summer that will change the lives of all the families who rent it year after year. Teenaged Chris discovers the bittersweet joy of first love. Maggie and Joe, married sixty-five years, courageously face a separation that even their devotion cannot prevent. The married woman Peter yearns for suddenly comes within his reach. And Julia ultimately finds the strength to rebuild her life?something she once thought impossible.With equal measures of heartbreak and happiness, bestselling author Georgia Bockoven's unforgettable novel tells of the beauty of life and the power of love, and speaks to every woman who has ever clung to a child or loved a man.
Big Mouth, Big Heart, Big City . . . Big ProblemsThings are looking up at last for Lizzie Nichols. She has a career she loves in the field of her choice (wedding gown restoration), and the love of her life, Jean-Luc, has finally proposed. Life's become a dizzying whirl of wedding gown fittings--not necessarily her own--as Lizzie prepares for her dream wedding at her fiancé's château in the south of France. But the dream soon becomes a nightmare when the best man--whom Lizzie might once have accidentally slept with...no, really, just slept--announces his total lack of support for the couple, a sentiment seconded by the maid of honor; Lizzie's Midwestern family can't understand why she doesn't want to have her wedding in the family backyard; her future French in-laws are trying to lure the groom back into investment banking; and Lizzie finds herself wondering if her Prince Charming really is as charming as she once believed.
One of the most acclaimed and honored writers in the field of crime fiction, Laura Lippman offers readers a gripping tale of deception and delusion, of family wounds and betrayals. Thirty years ago, the Bethany girls, ages eleven and fifteen, disappeared from a Baltimore shopping mall. They never returned, their bodies were never recovered, and only painful questions remain. Now, in the aftermath of a rush-hour hit-and-run accident, a clearly disoriented woman is claiming to be Heather, the younger Bethany sister. Not a shred of evidence supports her story, and every lead she reluctantly offers takes the police to another dead end?a dying, incoherent man; a razed house; a missing grave. But she definitely knows something about that terrible day?and about the shocking fissures that the tragedy exposed in the foundation of a seemingly solid family.
Born as a ward of the state of Maine, the child of an unmarried Yankee blueblood mother and an unknown black father, Victoria Rowell beat the odds. The Women Who Raised Me is the remarkable story of her rise out of the foster care system to attain the American Dream?and of the unlikely series of women who lifted, motivated, and inspired her along the way.From Agatha Armstead?a black Bostonian who was Victoria's longest-term foster mother and first noticed her spark of creativity and talent?to Esther Brooks, a Paris-trained prima ballerina who would become her first mentor at the Cambridge School of Ballet?The Women Who Raised Me is a loving, vivid portrait of all the women who would help Victoria transition out of foster care and into New York City's wild worlds of ballet, acting, and adulthood. Though Victoria would go on to become an accomplished television and film star, she still carried the burden of loneliness and anxiety, particularly common to those "orphans of the living" who are never adopted. Vividly recalled and candidly told, her story is transfixing, redemptive, heartbreaking, and, ultimately, inspiring.
Lizzie Nichols is back, pounding the New York City pavement and looking for a job, a place to live, and her proper place in the universe (not necessarily in that order)."Summer Fling" Luke's use of the "L" (Living Together) word has her happily abandoning plans to share a one-room walk-up with best friend Shari in exchange for cohabitation with the love of her life in his mom's ritzy Fifth Avenue pied-à-terre. Lizzie's landed a non-paying gig in her chosen field--vintage wedding gown rehab--and a paying one as a receptionist at Shari's boyfriend's father's posh law firm. So life is good . . . for the moment.But almost immediately her notoriously big mouth is getting her into trouble. At work she's becoming too chummy with society bride-to-be Jill Higgins, inflaming the ire of Jill's troublesome future mother-in-law. At home she's made the grievous error of bringing up the "M" (Marriage) word to commitment-shy Luke. Once again joblessness and homelessness are looming large for hapless blabbermouth Liz--unless she can figure out some way to babble her way to a happily ever after.
London's social season is in full swing, and Victorian aristocracy can't stop whispering about a certain gentleman who claims to be the direct descendant of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. But he's not the only topic of wagging tongues. Drawing rooms, boudoirs, and ballrooms are abuzz with the latest news of an audacious cat burglar who has been systematically stealing valuable items that once belonged to the ill-fated queen. Light gossip turns serious when the owner of one of the pilfered treasures is found murdered, and the mysterious thief develops a twisted obsession with Lady Emily Ashton. It will take all of Emily's wit and perseverance to unmask her stalker and ferret out the murderer, while faced with a brewing scandal that threatens both her reputation and her romance with her late husband's best friend, the dashing Colin Hargreaves.
The Petrakis family lives in the small Greek seaside village of Plaka. Just off the coast is the tiny island of Spinalonga, where the nation's leper colony once was located?a place that has haunted four generations of Petrakis women. There's Eleni, ripped from her husband and two young daughters and sent to Spinalonga in 1939, and her daughters Maria, finding joy in the everyday as she dutifully cares for her father, and Anna, a wild child hungry for passion and a life anywhere but Plaka. And finally there's Alexis, Eleni's great-granddaughter, visiting modern-day Greece to unlock her family's past.A richly enchanting novel of lives and loves unfolding against the backdrop of the Mediterranean during World War II, The Island is an enthralling story of dreams and desires, of secrets desperately hidden, and of leprosy's touch on an unforgettable family.
Before he brilliantly traversed the gritty landscapes of underworld Detroit and Miami, Elmore Leonard wrote breathtaking adventures set in America's nineteenth-century western frontier?elevating a popular genre with his now-trademark twisting plots, rich characterizations, and scalpel-sharp dialogue.No author has ever written more evocatively of the dusty, gutsy heyday of the American West than Elmore Leonard. This complete collection of his thirty-one Western tales will thrill lovers of the genre, his die-hard fans, and everyone in between. From his very first story ever published?"The Trail of the Apache"?through five decades of classic Western tales, The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard demonstrates the superb talent for language and gripping narrative that has made Leonard one of the most acclaimed and influential writers of our time.
The sixth and final novel from beloved and critically-acclaimed Israeli crime novelist Batya Gur--a stunning tale of a beautiful and secretive woman's murder, set against the politically charged backdrop of the Israeli mediaAcclaimed Israeli director Benny Meyuhas' film production of the heartbreaking work "Iddo and Eynam" promises to be a landmark of Israeli film--until his wife and the films' set designer Tirzah Rubin is crushed under a set piece, stalling the production indefinitely. But more shocking is what comes to light in the investigation--that Tirzah's storybook life wasn't at all what it seemed, and that her death may have been part of a larger network of social and political unrest. The brooding Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon has spent his career surrounded by horrific crimes, but perhaps none most deeply disturbs him than Tirzah's murder, its strange connection to Israeli labor disputes and religious corruption shaking him to the core. The crowning achievement to a magnificent career, this final installment in the Michael Ohayon series is a wonderful parting gift from the incomparable Batya Gur--one last fascinating visit to an always tumtultous land, in the company of a detective the author and her devoted readers have loved so well.
New York Times bestselling author Jennifer McMahon's explosive debutForty-one-year-old school nurse Kate Cypher has returned home to rural Vermont to care for her mother who's afflicted with Alzheimer's. On the night she arrives, a young girl is murdered?a horrific crime that eerily mirrors another from Kate's childhood. Three decades earlier, her dirt-poor friend Del?shunned and derided by classmates as "Potato Girl"?was brutally slain. Del's killer was never found, while the victim has since achieved immortality in local legends and ghost stories. Now, as this new murder investigation draws Kate irresistibly in, her past and present collide in terrifying, unexpected ways. Because nothing is quite what it seems . . . and the grim specters of her youth are far from forgotten.More than just a murder mystery, Jennifer McMahon's extraordinary debut novel, Promise Not to Tell, is a story of friendship and family, devotion and betrayal?tautly written, deeply insightful, beautifully evocative, and utterly unforgettable.
Ambitious newspaper reporter Kate Love's determination to unmask a railroad stock swindler has led her to the brink of matrimony with the wealthiest, most eligible black man in the East?the very scoundrel she intends to expose! But at the last possible moment a champion appears to whisk her away from the altar: Dix Wildhorse, a Black Seminole marshal from Oklahoma's Indian country.A daring black knight whom Kate's father sent to rescue?and wed?the free-spirited ebony hellion, Dix ignites fires within her with just a touch, a whisper, a brazen kiss. But Kate isn't about to abandon her career to become the dutiful wife of a lawman who wants to keep her wrapped up in a protective cocoon. As the battle of wills intensifies, the heat of their passion blazes with unmatched fury. And only total surrender will unleash the sweet ecstasy of love.
These 100 new puzzles—from easy to fiendishly difficult—come with a warning: They are seriously addictive.You don't need to be a mathematical genius to solve these puzzles; it is simply a question of logic and a little patience. Beware of pale imitations. These are the original and official Su Doku puzzles by Wayne Gould—New York Post's Su Doku puzzle master and one of Time magazine's Most Influential People.
Post?Civil War New York City is the battleground of the American dream. In this era of free love, emerging rights of women, and brutal sexual repression, Freydeh, a spirited young Jewish immigrant, toils at different jobs to earn passage to America for her family. Learning that her younger sister is adrift somewhere in the city, she begins a determined search that carries her from tenement to brothel to prison?as her story interweaves with those of some of the epoch's most notorious figures: Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Susan B. Anthony; sexual freedom activist Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president; and Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose censorship laws are still on the books.In the tradition of her bestselling World War II epic Gone to Soldiers, Marge Piercy once again re-creates a turbulent period in American history and explores changing attitudes in a land of sacrifice, suffering, promise, and reward.
We're back! And this time we've got your back when it comes to you and your car.In Dare to Repair: A Do-It-Herself Guide to Fixing (Almost) Anything in the Home, we opened the door for you into the world of basic home repairs. Now, we're opening a different one -- a car door.Dare to Repair Your Car is a basic car care and safety book written by women for women ... and men, and new teen drivers, and senior drivers. Okay, it's for every person who dares to drive a car.Here are just some of the things that will keep you and your family safe:Changing a flat tireMaintaining fluidsJumpstarting a batteryReplacing a headlampFinding a great mechanicInstalling a car seatDriving tips for teens and seniorsPreparing for a road tripFilled with detailed illustrations and easy-to-follow instructions, Dare to Repair Your Car will help you shift gears and get you moving in the direction of maintaining your car -- yourself. You'll be so excited about what you've learned you'll want to toot your own horn!
Ben Mezrich, author of the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House, returns with an astonishing story of Ivy League hedge-fund cowboys, high stakes, and the Asian underworld.John Malcolm was the ultimate gunslinger in the Wild East, prepared to take on any level of risk in making mind-boggling sums of money. He and his friends were hedge-fund cowboys, living life on the adrenaline-, sex-, and drugs-fueled edge?kids running billion-dollar portfolios, trading information in the back rooms of high-class brothels and at VIP tables in nightclubs across the Far East.Malcolm and his Ivy League-schooled twenty-something colleagues, with their warped sense of morality, created their own economic theory that would culminate in a single deal the likes of which had never been seen before?or since.Ugly Americans is a story of extremes, charged with wealth, nerve, excess, and glamour. A real-life mixture of Liar's Poker and Wall Street, brimming with intense action, romance, underground sex, vivid locales, and exotic characters, Ugly Americans is the untold true story that rocked the financial community.
Lisa EdwardsThis Prada-wearing magazine editor thinks her life is over when her "fabulous" new job turns out to be a deportation to Dublin to launch Colleen magazine. The only saving grace is that her friends aren't there to witness her downward spiral. Might her new boss, the disheveled and moody Jack Devine, save her from a fate worse than hell?Ashling KennedyAshling, Colleen's assistant editor, is an award-winning worrier, increasinglyaware that something fundamental is missing from her life -- apart from a boyfriendand a waistline.Clodagh "Princess" KellyAshling's best friend, Clodagh, lives the domestic dream in a suburban castle.So why, lately, has she had the recurring urge to kiss a frog -- or sleep with afrog, if truth be told?As these three women search for love, success, and happiness, they willdiscover that if you let things simmer under the surface for too long, sooneror later they'll boil over.Discover the Keyes to a Great Read!
Millions of people around the world have already discovered the Atkins Nutritional Approach(TM) and the remarkable benefits of controlling carbohydrates. Now it's even easier to join the revolution, lose weight, and get healthy the proven Atkins way!With less of the underlying science and more practical information, The Atkins Essentials gets to the meat of the most popular and effective weight control program ever, providing the basic skills necessary to enable you to lose and keep losing unwanted body fat -- and to keep it off forever!Providing clear, concise answers to your questions and concerns, The Atkins Essentials is ideal for anyone seeking a healthier lifestyle. For those new to Atkins, it is a quick and effective way to get started -- and for those already on the program, it offers indispensable tips on eating out, stocking your pantry, and more. Simply put, it is Atkins made easy:The ABCs of doing AtkinsAn effective two-week launch into weight-losing modePersonal modifications to slow or speed weight lossHelpful listings of acceptable and unacceptable foodsandFourteen days' worth of delicious, controlled-carb eating ...And much more!So get ready to look great and feel great the Atkins way -- it's easier than ever before!
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