A six-pack sampler of short fiction by Alan Annand: humor, crime and WW2 adventure.Bananarama: Reformed meat-eater embarks on a 15-day bananas-and-orange-juice diet, with surprising side effects.The Date Square Killer: Mild-mannered hit man finds love, social justice and the meaning of life in non-random acts of murder.River Girl: Middle-aged bureaucrat takes a detour on his morning jog that leads him to an unexpected rendezvous with Fate.Specimen: A wealthy...

Beneath Buddhist prayer flags, a reporter is found dead at dawn on a Vermont ashram. Summoned by an old friend who runs a silent retreat, astrologer Axel Crowe arrives to assess the situation. Within hours, the police arrest his friend for murder.Believing him innocent, Crowe suspects instead a mysterious devotee who may be ex-CIA, and the beautiful Thai woman who accompanied him to the retreat. But when Crowe follows them to New York, the woman disappears and the man threatens to ...

Stellar Astrology, Volume 3, is a third compilation of articles covering topics in Jyotish, or Vedic astrology. Key principles and techniques of analysis and prediction are illustrated through a series of profiles featuring celebrities, criminals, and political figures, plus many instructive technical essays.This is a lively and informative book intended for serious students and practitioners alike. For more of the best astrological writing today, see Annand's earlier collections, ...

Scorpio Rising (New Age noir)In the space of one hour, three strangers die violent deaths. A hit-and-run vehicle kills a dot-com millionaire jogging in San Francisco. A car bomb obliterates the team leader of a government counter-terrorism project in Los Alamos, New Mexico. An assailant ambushes a New York heiress walking home from Broadway and forces her own pepper spray down her throat.In all three cases, investigators reach an immediate impasse. Each victim leaves an est...

When a beautiful woman dies at a California vineyard, astrologer Axel Crowe divines this was no accident. Although the police at first assume a tainted pinot noir, Crowe suspects an exotic poison.With her best friend dead and her vineyard's reputation in jeopardy, Crowe's client urges him to ferret out the guilty from among a cast of immigrant workers, competing vintners and old Napa money with criminal connections.The nexus of intrigue is a developer bent on turning the Na...

These 23 stories take us on a twisted fun ride into some future times and parallel universes where characters as diverse as a one-legged International Actuarial Forensics specialist, a pharmaceutical guinea pig, and a far-sighted fetus engage in their own games of the survival of the fittest. From a new short story by William Gibson in which a teen disassociated from his body haunts his neighborhood through the decades, to Douglas Coupland’s balls-out satire of a slightly futuristic Surviv...

**FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE HARRY BOSCH AND LINCOLN LAWYER SERIESAn electrifying standalone thriller that breaks all the rules! With an introduction by Stephen King.**Death is reporter Jack McEvoy's beat: his calling, his obsession. But this time, death brings McEvoy the story he never wanted to write--and the mystery he desperately needs to solve. A serial killer of unprecedented savagery and cunning is at large. His targets: homicide cops, each haunted by a mu...

Detours are amazing creatures.A detour can shortcut your existence or it can lead you down a forever long road that will linger far into the distant reaches of eternity. It is these unexpected tangents that people stumble across nearly every day that will haunt you in a frighteningly familiar fashion.Wander into a laundromat and find a kind of a time machine. Indulge yourself in a particularly nasty game of baseball. Hitch a ride on a freight train with the piggyback man or...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The remarkable true story of a man who lived alone in the woods of Maine for 27 years, making this dream a reality—not out of anger at the world, but simply because he preferred to live on his own.“A meditation on solitude, wildness and survival.” —The Wall Street Journal**In 1986, a shy and intelligent twenty-year-old named Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the forest. He ...

Four novels in the Power Plays series created by #1 New York Times master of the techno-thriller Tom Clancy.When it comes to high-tech intelligence systems, UpLink Technologies is the leader in the field—and sometimes, the nation’s best hope in a time of crisis...COLD WARCUTTING EDGEZERO HOURWILD CARD

For fans of Dan Brown's Origin and The Da Vinci Code, by the author of the award-winning, massive bestseller The Girl with All the Gifts, comes a thriller to keep you reading until dawn.Hidden in the Dead Sea scrolls - the secret of how Christ really diedAs ex-mercenary Leo Tillman and ambitious cop Heather Kennedy investigate a series of baffling deaths, the trail leads them to the Dead Sea Scrolls - and the dead...

With a distinctive and original voice, Mark Richard's stories capture characters on the fringe of society, and illuminate the goodness at the heart of their Southern, down-and-out lies. Full of startling images and harrowing epiphanies, The Ice at the Bottom of the World is a collection by a true master of his craft. In these ten stories, Mark Richard, winner of the 1990 PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award, emerges as the heir apparent to Mark Twain, Flannery O'Connor, and Willi...