Download or read book Come Closer written by Sara Gran and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Instead of a book she had ordered by mail, Amanda receives "Demon Possession, Past and Present." Soon after, something seems to take her over, and she wonders if she has been possessed by a female demon known to students of the Kabbalah as Naamah.

Download or read book Dope written by Sara Gran and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-02-06 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Come Closer and the Claire DeWitt series comes a highly acclaimed—and unusual—gritty thriller about a missing girl... and the addict tasked with saving her. Josephine, a former addict, is offered a thousand dollars to find a suburban couple’s missing daughter. But the search will take her into the dark underbelly of New York she thought she’d escaped—and a web of deceit that threatens to destroy her.

Download or read book Claire Dewitt And The Bohemian Highway written by Sara Gran and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detective looks into the death of her ex-boyfriend: “The most interesting private eye I’ve encountered since Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander.” —The Washington Post When Claire DeWitt’s ex-boyfriend Paul Casablancas, a musician, is found dead in his Mission District house, Claire is on the case. Paul’s wife and the police are sure Paul was killed for his valuable collection of vintage guitars. But Claire, the best detective in the world, has other ideas. Even as her other cases offer hints to Paul’s fate—a missing girl in the grim East Village of the 1980s and an epidemic of missing miniature horses in Marin County-–Claire knows: the truth is never where you expect it, and love is the greatest mystery of all. The follow-up to the Macavity Award winner Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, this intense and unusual crime novel comes from “a distinctive new voice in mystery fiction” (NPR’s Fresh Air). “Drug-taking, tarot-reading San Francisco detective Claire DeWitt is back . . . Claire is terrific at getting to the bottom of other people’s problems but not so good at dealing with her own. But that’s the peculiar charm of this punky sleuth and her offbeat entourage.” —Booklist “[A] mesmerizing character.” —New Orleans Times-Picayune “The Claire DeWitt novels are not so much noir mysteries as stories about the nature of mysteries themselves. The stories are wise, chilling, insightful and reeking with despair—and yet so beautifully written in an original, quirky style that it is difficult to resist them.” —Associated Press

Download or read book City of the Dead written by Sara Gran and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2011-06-02 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Orleans, and Vic Willing, Assistant District Attorney for the prosecutors' office, has been missing since Hurricane Katrina hit. Called in from San Francisco is Claire DeWitt, a detective whose expertise and methods derive from some unique sources. What Claire discovers takes us into the heart of the crime-ravaged, deeply wounded city, where those who can afford it live behind fences and those who can't are slain daily on the streets. And it's there she discovers that the only thing worse than an unsolved case, maybe, is a solved one. From the acclaimed author of Dope and Come Closer, City of the Dead is the first novel of a detective series unlike any you have read before, one that is sure to inspire a passionate and devoted following. Only a writer with a life as unusual as Sara Gran's - she was in New York City on 9/11/2001 and evacuated from her home in New Orleans on 8/29/2005 - could have written such an extraordinary look at modern-day New Orleans.

Download or read book The Book of the Most Precious Substance written by Sara Gran and published by . This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The highly anticipated new thriller from internationally renowned author Sara Gran, author of Come Closer and the Claire DeWitt series. A mysterious book that promises unlimited power and unrivaled sexual pleasure. A down-on-her-luck book dealer hoping for the sale of a lifetime. And a twist so shocking, no one will come out unscathed. After a tragedy too painful to bear, former novelist Lily Albrecht has resigned herself to a dull, sexless life as a rare book dealer. Until she gets a lead on a book that just might turn everything around. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is a 17th century manual on sex magic, rumored to be the most powerful occult book ever written--if it really exists at all. And some of the wealthiest people in the world are willing to pay Lily a fortune to find it-if she can. Her search for the book takes her from New York to New Orleans to Munich to Paris, searching the dark corners of power where the world's wealthiest people use black magic to fulfill their desires. Will Lily fulfill her own desires, and join them? Or will she lose it all searching for a ghost? The Book of the Most Precious Substance is an addictive erotic thriller about the lengths we'll go to get what we need-and what we want.

Download or read book The Man Who Came Uptown written by George Pelecanos and published by Mulholland Books. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling and Emmy-nominated writer behind HBO's We Own This City: a "gripping, surprisingly soulful" mystery about an ex-offender who must choose between the man who got him out and the woman who showed him another path (Entertainment Weekly). Michael Hudson spends the long days in prison devouring books given to him by the prison's librarian, a young woman named Anna who develops a soft spot for her best student. Anna keeps passing Michael books until one day he disappears, suddenly released after a private detective manipulated a witness in Michael's trial. Outside, Michael encounters a Washington, D.C. that has changed a lot during his time locked up. Once shady storefronts are now trendy beer gardens and flower shops. But what hasn't changed is the hard choice between the temptation of crime and doing what's right. Trying to balance his new job, his love of reading, and the debt he owes to the man who got him released, Michael struggles to figure out his place in this new world before he loses control. Smart and fast-paced, The Man Who Came Uptown brings Washington, D.C. to life in a high-stakes story of tough choices.

Download or read book Saturn s Return to New York written by Sara Gran and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2003-07 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Mary Forrest receives the gift of an astrological reading for her birthday, she doesn't expect it to be the harbinger of her life's imminent upheaval. But this is Mary's Saturn Return year, her twenty-ninth; the year that the planet Saturn returns to the exact spot it was in when she was born. According to astrology, the return of Saturn brings major life challenges that, if not met, will cycle back again 29 year later. While skeptical of the reading at first, Mary can't help but find some truth in it as her mother becomes seriously ill, her job in New York City is at a dead end, and memories of past relationships haunt her. To make it through the year, Mary must overcome intimacy and abandonment issues, resurrect her relationship with her ailing mother, and learn to trust the man she loves. A novel of flawed but believable characters, Sara Gran's debut, Saturn's Return to New York, is an introspective story of the relationships and setbacks that shape us.

Download or read book The Aunt Who Wouldn t Die written by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A chaotic, furious, extraordinary Bengali confection...Irresistible.” -- Philip Hensher, Man Booker–shortlisted author of The Northern Clemency “A feminist, fractured fairy tale…this is a story that lingers.” – NPR "The book is a riot, a sprightly thriller that will make you not only want to discover more Bengali cultural norms of the vintage era but also create rational stirrings within you to go look up more of Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s works." -- World Literature Today A laugh-out-loud, tug-at-your-heartstrings tale of love, family, and freedom centered around three generations of Bengali women. Somlata has just married into the dynastic but declining Mitra family. At eighteen, she expects to settle into her role as a devout wife in this traditional, multi-generational family. But then Somlata, wandering the halls of the grand, decaying Mitra mansion, stumbles upon the body of her great aunt-in-law, Pishima. A child bride widowed at twelve, Pishima has finally passed away at the ripe old age of seventy. But she isn’t letting go just yet. Pishima has long harbored a grudge against the Mitras for keeping her in perpetual widowhood, never allowed to fall in love.. Now, her ghost intends to meddle in their lives, making as much mischief as possible. Pishima gives Somlata the keys to her mysterious box of gold to keep it out of the Mitras’ hands. However, the selfless Somlata, witnessing her new family waste away their wealth to the brink of bankruptcy, has her own ideas. Boshon is a book-loving, scooter-riding, rebellious teenager who wants nothing to do with the many suitors that ask for her hand. She yearns for freedom and wants to go to college. But when her poor neighbor returns from America she finds herself falling in love. Perhaps Pishima’s yearning spirit lives on in her own her heart? The Aunt Who Wouldn’t Die is a frenetic, funny, and fresh novel about three generations of Mitra women who are surprising at every turn and defy all expectations. They may be guarding a box of gold, but they are the true treasures in this gem of a novel. Translated from the Bangla by Arunava Sinha

Download or read book Fall of Giants written by Ken Follett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 1010 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ken Follett’s magnificent historical epic begins as five interrelated families move through the momentous dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage. A thirteen-year-old Welsh boy enters a man’s world in the mining pits. . . . An American law student rejected in love finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson’s White House. . . . A housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with a German spy. . . . And two orphaned Russian brothers embark on radically different paths when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution. From the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty, Fall of Giants takes us into the inextricably entangled fates of five families—and into a century that we thought we knew, but that now will never seem the same again. . . .

Download or read book The Darkest Night written by Ron Franscell and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-12-09 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Casper, Wyoming: 1973. Eleven-year-old Amy Burridge rides with her eighteen-year-old sister, Becky, to the grocery store. When they finish their shopping, Becky's car gets a flat tire. Two men politely offer them a ride home. But they were anything but Good Samaritans. The girls would suffer unspeakable crimes at the hands of these men before being thrown from a bridge into the North Platte River. One miraculously survived. The other did not. Years later, author and journalist Ron Franscell—who lived in Casper at the time of the crime, and was a friend to Amy and Becky—can't forget Wyoming's most shocking story of abduction, rape, and murder. Neither could Becky, the surviving sister. The two men who violated her and Amy were sentenced to life in prison, but the demons of her past kept haunting Becky...until she met her fate years later at the same bridge where she'd lost her sister.

Download or read book The Infinite Blacktop written by Sara Gran and published by Atria Books. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “delicious and addictive” (Salon) Claire DeWitt series returns with a thrilling, noirish knockout novel that follows three separate narratives starring the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest detective.” As Cara Hoffman, author of Running, says, this “is a hard-boiled, existential masterpiece.” Claire DeWitt, the hard-living and tough-talking private investigator, has always been something of a detective. As a young girl growing up in Brooklyn, Claire and her two best friends, Tracy and Kelly, fell under the spell of the book Detection by legendary French detective Jacques Silette. They solved many cases together, in the process witnessing human behavior at its worst. The three were inseparable—until the day Tracy vanished without a trace. That is still the only case Claire ever failed to solve. Later, in her twenties, Claire is in Los Angeles trying to get her PI license by taking on a cold case that has stumped the LAPD. She hunts for the real story behind the death of a washed-up painter ten years earlier, whose successful, widely admired artist girlfriend had died a few months before him. Today, Claire is on her way to Las Vegas when she’s almost killed by a homicidal driver. In a haze of drugs and injuries, she struggles off the scene, determined to find her would-be killer’s identity but the list of people who would be happy to see her dead is not a short one. As these three “eccentric, enticingly artful” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) narratives converge, some mysteries are solved and others continue to haunt. But Claire will continue her search for the answer to the biggest mystery of all: what is the purpose of our lives, and how can anyone survive in a world so clearly designed to break our hearts again and again?

Download or read book The Pale King written by David Foster Wallace and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "breathtakingly brilliant" novel by the author of Infinite Jest (New York Times) is a deeply compelling and satisfying story, as hilarious and fearless and original as anything Wallace ever wrote. The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has. The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions -- questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society -- through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time. "The Pale King is by turns funny, shrewd, suspenseful, piercing, smart, terrifying, and rousing." --Laura Miller, Salon

Download or read book Maggie Terry written by Sarah Schulman and published by Feminist Press at CUNY. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Maggie Terry is the most beautiful, most bitter, most sweet, and all around best detective novel I've read in years. Precise, insightful, heartbreaking, and page turning." —Sara Gran, author of The Infinite Blacktop Post-rehab, Maggie Terry is single-mindedly trying to keep her head down in New York City. There's a madman in the White House, the subways are constantly delayed, summer is relentless, and neighborhoods all seem to blend together. Against this absurd backdrop, Maggie wants nothing more than to slowly re- build her life in hopes of being reunited with her daughter. But her first day on the job as a private investigator lands her in the middle of a sensational new case: actress strangled. If Maggie is going to solve this mystery, she'll have to shake the ghosts—dead NYPD partner, vindictive ex, steadfast drug habit—that have long ruled her life. Sarah Schulman is a literary chronicler of the marginalized and subcultural, focusing on queer urban life. She is the author of several books, including The Gentrification of the Mind, Conflict Is Not Abuse, and The Cosmopolitans. She is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at CUN Y, and teaches creative writing at the College of Staten Island.

Download or read book Ladies of the Lake written by Haywood Smith and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-09 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "New York Times"-bestselling author of "The Red Hot Club" delivers a delightful story of four sisters who must spend the summer together so they can inherit their grandmother's lake estate.

Download or read book Yawn written by Mary Mann and published by FSG Originals. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The incisive and often hilarious story of one of our most interesting cultural phenomena: boredom It’s the feeling your grandma told you was only experienced by boring people. Some people say they’re dying of it; others claim to have killed because of it. It’s a key component of depression, creativity, and sex-toy advertisements. It’s boredom, the subject of Yawn, a delightful and at times moving take on the oft-derided emotion and how we deal with it. Deftly wrought from interviews, research, and personal experience, Yawn follows Mary Mann’s search through history for the truth about boredom, spanning the globe, introducing a varied cast of characters. The Desert Fathers—fourth-century Christian monks who made their homes far from civilization—offer the first recorded accounts of lethargy; Thomas Cook, grandfather of the tourism industry, provided escape from the mundane for England’s working class; and contemporarily, we meet couples who are disenchanted by monogamous sex, deployed soldiers who seek entertainment and connection in porn, and prisoners held in solitary confinement, for whom boredom is a punishment for crimes they may or may not have committed. With sharp wit and impressive historical acumen, Mann tells the unexpected story of the hunt for a deeper understanding of boredom, in all its absurd, irritating, and inspiring splendor.

Download or read book Paper Towns written by John Green and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quentin Jacobson has spent a lifetime loving Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows. After their all-nighter ends, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo has disappeared.

Download or read book Bangkok 8 written by John Burdett and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2003-06-03 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thriller with attitude to spare, Bangkok 8 is a sexy, razor-edged, often darkly hilarious novel set in one of the world’s most exotic cities. Witnessed by a throng of gaping spectators, a charismatic Marine sergeant is murdered under a Bangkok bridge inside a bolted-shut Mercedes Benz. Among the witnesses are the only two cops in the city not on the take, but within moments one is murdered and his partner, Sonchai Jitpleecheep—a devout Buddhist and the son of a Thai bar girl and a long-gone Vietnam War G.I.—is hell-bent on wreaking revenge. On a vigilante mission to capture his partner’s murderer, Sonchai is begrudgingly paired with a beautiful FBI agent named Jones and captures her heart in the process. In a city fueled by illicit drugs and infinite corruption, prostitution and priceless art, Sonchai’s quest for vengeance takes him into a world much more sinister than he could have ever imagined.