Download or read book A Twist of Orchids written by Michelle Wan and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2010-04-13 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Cross-pollinates Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief with Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence."—The Washington Post Book World on Deadly Slipper Winter in the Dordogne: delicious food, ruggedly beautiful scenery, unscrupulous orchid hunters, illegal drugs, a poetic house-breaker, and three mysterious deaths and counting . . . In this electrifying third installment of the highly acclaimed Death in the Dordogne series, expat Montrealer Mara Dunn and Brit Julian Wood are living together in an uneasy, on-and-off way. When bad things start to happen to their friends—first Amelie Gaillard falls mysteriously to her death, then a local Turkish couple’s son disappears—each has a very different way of helping out. So different that each begins to wonder if they are really meant to be together. But when Julian, with his unerring understanding of the orchid lover’s mind, thinks he has found the link between the local spike in drug traffic and murder, one of them might lose the other—permanently.

Download or read book Missing Julia written by Catherine Dunne and published by MacMillan. This book was released on 2015-05-21 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful and compelling story which explores one of the most difficult decisions we might ever have to make. One morning in October, William Harris is confronted by the shocking disappearance of the woman he loves. Julia Seymour has vanished without trace - from his life, from her daughter's and from her own. Her sudden departure seems to be both deliberate and final. But William is determined to find her. In the days that follow, he tries to piece together what might have driven her away. His search takes him to London, to India - and to Julia's life before he met her. In the process, William discovers secrets about Julia's past that challenge and disturb his view of all they shared together. Secrets that illuminate the present in ways he could never have expected. Praise for Catherine Dunne 'A real touch of Jodi Picoult . . . a domestic setting . . . tension . . . and a little bit of darkness' Arena Arts Review, RTÉ Radio 1

Download or read book Buried Diamonds written by April Henry and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-12-08 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Past and present collide when Claire finds an engagement ring that had been missing for 50 years and her Jewish roommate is targeted by Neo-Nazis in this Agatha- and Anthony-nominated series.

Download or read book Illinois Biographical Dictionary written by Caryn Hannan and published by State History Publications. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 775 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biographies on interesting and influential persons who have lived in the state of Illinois.

Download or read book Off Track written by Clare Curzon and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2010-04-13 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two strangers, a research microbiologist and a commuter-line driver, both once fired by ambition but now disillusioned, encounter each other at a major crossroads in their lives. In a vicious and mistaken attack, one becomes a hapless victim of the other's desperation. As the Thames Valley Serious Crimes Squad, headed by Mike Yeadings, investigates the disappearance of one of the men, grim secrets of national importance emerge. Involvement spreads beyond the men's families to a mysterious immigrant couple with a tragic past. Suspicion falls on Detective Superintendent Zyczynski's journalist lover as he is drawn in to counter the threat to a young child's life. Clare Curzon has written a stunning police procedural with strong psychological depth and mesmerizing characters.

Download or read book Gone Girl written by Gillian Flynn and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “mercilessly entertaining” (Vanity Fair) instant classic “about the nature of identity and the terrible secrets that can survive and thrive in even the most intimate relationships” (Lev Grossman, Time “One of the Best Books of the Decade”)—now featuring never-before-published deleted scenes ONE OF TIME'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME, ONE OF CNN'S MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE, AND ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Janet Maslin, The New York Times, People, Entertainment Weekly, O: The Oprah Magazine, Slate, Kansas City Star, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer? ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: San Francisco Chronicle, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Chicago Tribune, HuffPost, Newsday

Download or read book Chicago Portraits written by June Skinner Sawyers and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-31 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The famous, the infamous, and the unjustly forgotten—all receive their due in this biographical dictionary of the people who have made Chicago one of the world’s great cities. Here are the life stories—provided in short, entertaining capsules—of Chicago’s cultural giants as well as the industrialists, architects, and politicians who literally gave shape to the city. Jane Addams, Al Capone, Willie Dixon, Harriet Monroe, Louis Sullivan, Bill Veeck, Harold Washington, and new additions Saul Bellow, Harry Caray, Del Close, Ann Landers, Walter Payton, Koko Taylor, and Studs Terkel—Chicago Portraits tells you why their names are inseparable from the city they called home.

Download or read book Speculative Everything written by Anthony Dunne and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-12-06 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want). Speculative Everything offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches. Dunne and Raby cite examples from their own design and teaching and from other projects from fine art, design, architecture, cinema, and photography. They also draw on futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology, and literary fiction. They show us, for example, ideas for a solar kitchen restaurant; a flypaper robotic clock; a menstruation machine; a cloud-seeding truck; a phantom-limb sensation recorder; and devices for food foraging that use the tools of synthetic biology. Dunne and Raby contend that if we speculate more—about everything—reality will become more malleable. The ideas freed by speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures.

Download or read book Blackout in Precinct Puerto Rico written by Steven Torres and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2010-03-30 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blackout in Precinct Puerto Rico is the fifth installment in Stephen Torres' highly acclaimed Precinct Puerto Rico series It's Friday night when sixteen-year-old Luisa Ferré stumbles into Sheriff Luis Gonzalo' path--naked, battered, and so traumatized she won't say a word. Between partygoers and out of towners, it isn't long before the list of suspects begins to grow. "Searing... Fans of downbeat slice-of-life mysteries will be most rewarded." - Publishers Weekly

Download or read book Murder on the Hour written by Elizabeth J. Duncan and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The residents of Llanelen are brimming with excitement. Antiques Cymru, a regional take on the popular national TV show, is coming to the Welsh town and people are flocking from miles around, hoping their attic treasures turn out to be worth a fortune. On the day of filming, quiet local sheep farmer Haydn Williams brings a generations-old long-case clock for evaluation, while the woman he's always admired from afar, Catrin Bellis, turns up with a cherished handmade quilt. Will either hear surprising good news about the value of their family heirlooms? By the end of the day, Catrin turns up dead, her quilt missing. Who could have wanted this shy, quiet woman - who had been overshadowed by her parents for her whole life - dead? Delving into Catrin's past, spa owner and amateur sleuth Penny Brannigan is surprised to discover that Catrin had at least one enemy. And as Penny's romantic life heats up with a new love interest, she realizes that a mysterious document hidden in Haydn's clock could hold the key to a long-forgotten secret and a present-day murder. Elizabeth J. Duncan's Murder on the Hour is a light-hearted traditional mystery featuring a charming heroine set in an enchanting Welsh town.

Download or read book Mr Dooley in the Hearts of His Countrymen written by Finley Peter Dunne and published by . This book was released on 1899 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: he fictional Mr. Dooley expounded upon political and social issues of the day from his South Side Chicago Irish pub and he spoke with the thick verbiage and accent of an Irish immigrant. His sly humor and political acumen won the support of President Theodore Roosevelt, a frequent target of Mr. Dooley's barbs. Indeed his sketches became so popular and such a litmus test of public opinion that they were read each week at White House cabinet meetings.

Download or read book Poison Ivy written by Cynthia Riggs and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On her first day as adjunct professor at Ivy Green College, Victoria Trumbull recognizes the stench emanating from her classroom as more than just dead mice. Brownie, the groundskeeper's mangy mutt, soon discovers a second body hiding beneath a cluster of poison ivy. The stakes have never been higher for Ivy Green, which is on the brink of losing already-lukewarm support from its accredited partner, Cape Cod University. Thackery Wilson, the founder of Ivy Green, worries that the bad publicity from the murders will obliterate the financial and academic support the tiny college and its dependent students desperately need. As the bodies continue to pile up, all tenure committee members, Victoria and Brownie find themselves hunting a serial killer and trying to save the college. This charming 11th entry in Cynthia Rigg's Martha's Vineyard mystery series brings the island to life with a cast of eccentric characters led by a unique and endearing sleuth.

Download or read book Trumpet of Death written by Cynthia Riggs and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When 92-year-old poet/sleuth Victoria Trumbull takes her city-bred tenant Zack Zeller on a nature walk on one of Martha’s Vineyard’s conservation areas and shows him a mushroom she calls black trumpet of death, he’s sure he's found the way to rid himself of his troublesome girlfriend, Samantha. But the mushrooms he's given Samantha end up on her daddy's dinner table, and Zack, one of the invited guests, is sure he’s doomed the diners to an untimely death. Meanwhile, dead bodies are cropping up on the Island. The police have questions about the identity of the culprit and call upon Victoria Trumbull, who knows the Island and its inhabitants intimately. Will she be able to find the truth and clear the name of someone close to her before the murderer finds its next victim? In addition to giving us more of the eccentric cast of characters and quirky plot we love, Trumpet of Death, the 13th book in Cynthia Riggs' Martha’s Vineyard mystery series, describes in loving detail little-known parts of the Island that visitors seldom see.

Download or read book Newspapers and New Politics written by David Paul Nord and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Murder is for Keeps written by Elizabeth J. Duncan and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Local artist and amateur sleuth Penny Brannigan has been spending her summer painting the exterior and views of the once-lovely Gwrych Castle, now in a heartbreaking state of disrepair. A privately owned castellated country house of jaw-dropping scale, the gorgeous house located just outside of Penny's picturesque Welsh town has been sadly neglected for decades. Penny is thrilled when she hears local Mark Baker is leading a team of enthusiastic volunteers to restore the castle grounds and formal gardens to their former grandeur. But there are always disagreements about how everything should be done, and it's not long before they turn deadly"--

Download or read book The Corpse at the Crystal Palace written by Carola Dunn and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A casual outing to the Crystal Palace in London takes a mysterious and murderous turn in The Corpse at the Crystal Palace, the latest mystery in Carola Dunn’s beloved Daisy Dalrymple series. April 1928: Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is visited in London by her young cousins. On the list of must-see sites is the Crystal Palace. Discovering that her children's nanny, Nanny Gilpin, has never seen the Palace, Daisy decides to make a day of it—bringing her cousins, her 3-year-old twins, her step-daughter Belinda, the nurserymaid, and Nanny Gilpin. Yet this ordinary outing goes wrong when Mrs. Gilpin goes off to the ladies’ room and fails to return. When Daisy goes to look for her, she doesn't find her nanny but instead the body of another woman dressed in a nanny's uniform. Meanwhile, Belinda and the cousins spot Mrs. Gilpin chasing after yet another nanny. Intrigued, they trail the two through the vast Crystal Palace and into the park. After briefly losing sight of their quarry, they stumble across Mrs. Gilpin lying unconscious in a small lake inhabited by huge concrete dinosaurs. When she comes to, Mrs. Gilpin can't remember what happened after leaving the twins in the nurserymaid's care. Daisy's husband, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, finds himself embroiled in the investigation of the murdered nanny. Worried about her children's own injured nanny, Daisy is determined to help. First she has to discover the identity of the third nanny, the presumed murderer, and to do so, Daisy must uncover why the amnesic Mrs. Gilpin deserted her charges to follow the missing third nanny.

Download or read book The Coffin Tree written by Gwendoline Butler and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1995-12-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: That summer when the old Docklands of London sweltered in the great heat... was the summer when John Coffin walked his Second City of London and felt that life was unraveling about him... Something had to be done and it was for him to do it. Two of Coffin's young detectives had died - deaths that were said to be accidental. In Coffin's view, however, two accidents are two too many. Commander John Coffin is not a fanciful man, but somehow the half-dead tree, its top killed by lightning, standing in a sad patch of rough earth, seems to him to epitomize his problems. Why did the two policemen die? How did one dead police officer's wife come to die a grisly death herself at the foot of the coffin tree? Coffin can't believe that it was suicide. Beyond these concerns, Coffin is uneasy about his relationship with the mercurial actress, Stella Pinero, whom he married after a long on-and-off romance. It is when Stella, whose art has taught her to look deep into the human psyche, sets things right between them that Coffin is able to seek the answers he knows are there.