All Our Yesterdays
All Our Yesterdays opens amid the violence and tumult of 1920s Ireland with Conn Sheridan, a reckless young IRA captain. Conn’s forbidden affair with Hadley Winslow, a Boston tycoon’s wife, initiates a dangerous entanglement of desire and blackmail between two families that will span three generations. When a shattering betrayal forces Conn to flee Ireland, he begins a new life in America as a Boston cop. There the violence and obsessions of Conn’s past continue to haunt him as he marries and has a son, Gus. Gus Sheridan will follow his father into the police force, rising to head the city’s homicide division. He will also inherit his father’s daredevil toughness, dangerous obsessions — and a cool reserve softened only by his unspoken love for his own son, Chris. And it is Chris Sheridan, a young special prosecutor, who will close the circle of treachery and betrayal that began with his grandfather in Ireland. For Chris Sheridan will uncover, piece by piece, the shocking truth about his family’s past and even about Grace, the beautiful, sophisticated Boston woman he wants to marry. Grand in scope, All Our Yesterdays creates a living, breathing portrait of an era... and of two families who must come to terms with their heritage, and with the violence, the obsessions, and the deceit that both define and haunt them. |
Edenville Owls
There is something evil in the air... Everything is new for Bobby Murphy. It is a new school year with a pretty new teacher, Miss Delaney. He and his buddies have just formed a new basketball team, the Edenville Owls. And then there are all these new feelings for his old friend Joanie. Suddenly, their friendship feels different. Times are changing, and as World War II has just come to an end, life in Edenville is no longer so simple — especially for Bobby. The Owls need a leader to take them to the state championships. Joanie has started dating his teammate Nick. And if things aren’t complicated enough, Bobby sees Miss Delaney arguing with a suspicious-looking man. Could he be responsible for the bruises on her face? Bobby senses that Miss Delaney is in real danger, but is there any way for a fourteen-year-old like him to help her? He will have to find it. It is time for Bobby to be strong. There is something evil in the air. |
Love and Glory
Boone Adams met Jennifer Grayle when they were both eighteen and lost her when they were both twenty-two. His life from that point was a steady descent through the circles of American culture until he hit bottom in Los Angeles ten years later. Now he has nothing left but his love for Jennifer, a love that has remained unsullied and still, the eye at the center of his hurricane, his only stay against confusion. It saves him. Slowly, with agonizing effort, he comes back — across the country, across the years, across the despair that nearly destroyed him, sustained only by his determination to get Jennifer back. Love and Glory is a story of love and commitment and regeneration, told in the language of our time and set among the artifacts of recent American culture. In prose that often soars Love and Glory speaks not only of desolation but of possibility. It speaks not only of Boone and Jennifer but of America, and it hints, obliquely, that perhaps we are not merely “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”. |
Perchance to Dream
Now Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser detective novels and foremost interpreter of the Chandler tradition, embarks once again into Chandler territory with an all-new sequel to the 1939 classic The Big Sleep. Set in the sun-drenched streets and on the lush hillsides of Los Angeles, Perchance to Dream takes private eye Philip Marlowe deeper than ever into labyrinths of crime, duplicity, and murder. After the death of General Guy Sternwood, his daughter Vivian sends her psychotic sister, Carmen, to a sanatorium. Carmen’s sudden disappearance from the hospital leads Vivian to turn in desperation to Eddie Mars, a shady underworld club owner. Concerned for what is happening to the family, the Sternwoods’ butler asks Marlowe to find Carmen and fend off Eddie Mars once again. Through it all, Marlowe presses for the truth, a tough, shop-soiled Galahad. In Perchance to Dream, Parker adds a major new work to the Philip Marlowe canon — a novel of high suspense, action, and pure entertainment. |
The Best American Mystery Stories 2002
Bestselling novelist James Ellroy introduces this year’s collection of the finest mystery writing. Many of the contributors herein are novelists themselves, displaying their talents in short story form: Michael Connelly tells a fatal tale of revenge in “Two-Bagger.” In Joe Gores’s “Inscrutable,” the Feds beat the Mafia at their own game. Stuart Kaminsky demonstrates how horribly wrong things go when a robber gets cocky in “Sometimes Something Goes Wrong.” And Robert B. Parker shows just how important Jackie Robinson’s fans can be in “Harlem Nocturne.” Also featured are veterans of the short story form and favorites of this series. Brendan DuBois’s “A Family Game” introduces a former Mafia family trying to lead a normal life in the Witness Protection Program. Joyce Carol Oates tells a chilling tale of a crush taken too far in “The High School Sweetheart.” A tenant sneaks into the murder crime scene next door in Michael Downs’s “Man Kills Wife, Two Dogs.” Readers will be captivated by all the stories herein, whether by famed novelists or masters of the short story. |
The Boxer and the Spy
When a shy high school student's body is found washed up on the shore of a quiet New England beach town - an alleged suicide linked to steroids - fifteen-year-old boxer-in-training Terry Novak isn't quite sure what to think. Something just doesn't add up. Artsy and withdrawn, Jason wasn't exactly the type to be doing ’roids. So Terry, with the help of his friend, Abby decides to do some investigating of his own. It doesn't take long, though, before they learn that asking questions puts them in grave danger and that survival is going to be a fight. Fortunately, Terry has learned a thing or two about fighting. Robert B. Parker, New York Times bestselling author of the Spenser novels, packs a punch with this taut, empowering mystery for young readers. |
Three Weeks in Spring
This is a love story. It is true. It has a happy ending. It is a story about a man and a woman, about breast cancer and mastectomy and recovery. It is about courage and self control, about unity, about compassion, about Joan Parker and her husband and their sons. It is about family and triumph and pervading tenderness. It is about love. In Three Weeks in Spring, the Parkers tell us, with a novelist’s skill, the way it was in April when Joan got sick. The way the fear escalated, the way they had to control it, and keep it in, and fight it off. Was it cancer? Would it spread? Would she die? Three Weeks in Spring speaks of pain, and fear. But it speaks ultimately about strength and the power of love. It is a book filled with humor and with an unbreakable will to laugh. The good guys win in this book. And to follow the Parkers through fear and laughter and growing elation during three weeks in a recent spring is to share in the victory. |