2008, ISBN: 9780380751457
Headline. Fair. 6.26 x 9.17 x 1.02 inches. Paperback. 2008. 320 pages. Ex-library. Cover worn.<br>In the fourteenth book in t he series, the stakes are raised even higher as Stephan… More...
Headline. Fair. 6.26 x 9.17 x 1.02 inches. Paperback. 2008. 320 pages. Ex-library. Cover worn.<br>In the fourteenth book in t he series, the stakes are raised even higher as Stephanie Plum fi nds herself in her most dangerous, hilarious, hottest, chase yet. With her loveably offbeat family along for the ride (as well as a few new faces), it's clear to see why the Plum novels are calle d Hot Stuff by the New York Times and why Evanovich herself is ca lled the master. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Starr ed Review. Lorelei King returns to Trenton, N.J., to continue the misadventures of Stephanie Plum, intermittently successful bount y hunter. King is one of many to voice Janet Evanovich's successf ul series, but her voice can be heard above the crowd, especially when she's bringing the more colorful characters to life. Her fo rmer prostitute Lula can tear down walls with the force of her pe rsonality, and King gives professional security specialist (read mercenary) Ranger the measured tones of one who is always in cont rol. Stephanie spends much of the book blue from a briefcase dye bomb. King's Plum accepts her blueness and responds to the reacti ons with indignity, ruefulness and eventually resignation. In add ition to established favorites, Evanovich has thrown into the mix a 60-ish singer trying to hang onto fame who gives King plenty o f scope for her Southern side. Fearless Fourteen becomes peerless fourteen with narrator King at the helm. A St. Martin's hardcove r (Reviews, May 19). (June) Copyright ® Reed Business Informatio n, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This t ext refers to the audioCD edition. From Booklist Our heroine, th e irrepressible bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, finds herself watch ing over a goth teen called Zook, who is heavily into gaming, aft er his mom can't make bail and disappears (or has been kidnapped) . A lot of people think there is stolen money buried in or near O fficer Morelli's little house--that's Steph's Morelli, the cop wh o is her number-one boyfriend most of the time, or at least when the entrancing Ranger isn't nearby. The money is the reason behin d Zook's mom's disappearance, and it's the tie that binds Evanovi ch's various plotlines, which carom about endlessly, not always r esolving. Questions abound: Are Steph's sidekick, the plus-size L ula, and Ranger's man Tank really engaged? Ranger is working secu rity for a fading but brassy pop star: How does Steph manage to g et into and out of her reality show? Can Zook and his sidekicks p rotect Morelli's house--and Stephanie--with their homegrown weapo nry (think potatoes as missiles)? Where else but Evanovich's four teenth novel can a line like it's raining money and popsicles! ac tually make sense? Fans will be delighted, but others, who stumbl e into the series at this advanced point, may find themselves sta rved for backstory, so much so that they may need to go all the w ay back to One for the Money (1994). --GraceAnne A. DeCandido --T his text refers to the audioCD edition. From the Back Cover Per sonal vendettas. Hidden treasure. A monkey named Carl. In her lat est adventure, bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is as fearless as eve r... The Crime: Armed robbery to the tune of nine million dollar s. Dom Rizzi robbed a bank, stashed the money, and did the time. His family couldn't be more proud. He always was the smart one. The Cousin: Joe Morelli. Morelli is Dom's cousin. He's also a cop . Less than a week after Dom's release from prison, Morelli has s hadowy figures breaking into his house and dying in his basement. Meanwhile, Dom has gone missing... The Catastrophe: Moonman. Mo relli hires Walter Mooner Dunphy, stoner and inventor turned crim e fighter, to protect his house. Morelli is low on cash. Mooner w ill work for potatoes. The Cupcake: Stephanie Plum. Stephanie an d Morelli have a long-standing relationship that involves sex, af fection, and driving each other nuts. She's a bond enforcement ag ent with more luck than talent, and she's involved in this bank-r obbery-gone-bad disaster from day one. The Crisis: Ranger. Secur ity expert Carlos Manoso, street name Ranger, has a job for Steph anie that will involve night work. Morelli has his own ideas rega rding Stephanie's evening activities. The Conclusion: Be fearles s. Read FOURTEEN! Visit: www.evanovich --This text refers to the audioCD edition. Review [Lorelei] King is one of many to v oice Janet Evanovich's successful series, but her voice can be he ard above the crowd...Fearless Fourteen becomes peerless fourteen with narrator King at the helm. -Publishers Weekly, Starred Revi ew Lorelei King gives a fantastic performance... relax and enjoy Evanovich's tight writing and King's amazing reading of everyone from Stephanie to tough cops to adolescent boys to a Big Black M ama of a woman. -AudioFile on Fearless Fourteen, an Earphones Awa rd Winner AudioFile Golden Earphones Award-winning actress Lorel ei King, who also read Evanovich's Eleven on Top and Twelve Sharp , returns, effectively bringing to life more than a dozen of Evan ovich's legendarily quirky characters. -Kirkus Reviews For fans of Evanovich mysteries on audiobook, Lorelei King is more than a reader -- she is Stepahnie Plum. -Publishers Weekly Stephanie Pl um is a bounty hunter with a great sense of humor that balances o ut her attitude and worse luck...like Dorothy Parker with a lousy job and a Jersey accent. -Time Evanovich's series is as addicti ve as Fritos...Evanovich serves up consistently craveable goodies . -People These books are really just laugh-out-loud funny. -Hub Pages --This text refers to the audioCD edition. Excerpt. ® Repr inted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One In my min d, my kitchen is filled with crackers and cheese, roast chicken l eftovers, farm fresh eggs, and coffee beans ready to grind. The r eality is that I keep my Smith & Wesson in the cookie jar, my Ore os in the micro wave, a jar of peanut butter and hamster food in the over-the-counter cupboard, and I have beer and olives in the refrigerator. I used to have a birthday cake in the freezer for e mergencies, but I ate it. Truth is, I would dearly love to be a domestic goddess, but the birthday cake keeps getting eaten. I m ean, you buy it, and you eat it, right? And then where are you? N o birthday cake. Ditto cheese and crackers and eggs and the roast chicken leftovers (which were from my mother). The coffee beans are light-years away. I don't own a grinder. I guess I could buy two birthday cakes, but I'm afraid I'd eat both. My name is Ste phanie Plum, and in my defense I'd like to say that I have bread and milk on my shopping list, and I don't have any communicable d iseases. I'm five feet, seven inches. My hair is brown and should er length and naturally curly. My eyes are blue. My teeth are mos tly straight. My manicure was pretty good three days ago, and my shape is okay. I work as a bond enforcement agent for my cousin V innie, and today I was standing in Loretta Rizzi's kitchen, think ing not only was Loretta ahead of me in the kitchen-needs-a-makeo ver race, but she made me look like a piker in the Loose Cannon C lub. It was eight in the morning, and Loretta was wearing a lon g, pink flannel nightgown and holding a gun to her head. I'm go nna shoot myself, Loretta said. Not that it would matter to you, because you get your money dead or alive, right? Technically, t hat's true, I told her. But dead is a pain in the tuchus. There's paperwork. A lot of the people Vinnie bonds out are from my Ch ambersburg neighborhood in Trenton, New Jersey. Loretta Rizzi was one of those people. I went to school with Loretta. She's a year older than me, and she left high school early to have a baby. No w she was wanted for armed robbery, and she was about to blow her brains out. Vinnie had posted Loretta's bond, and Loretta had failed to show for her court appearance, so I was dispatched to d rag her back to jail. And as luck would have it, I walked in at a bad moment and interrupted her suicide. I just wanted a drink, Loretta said. Yeah, but you held up a liquor store. Most peopl e would have gone to a bar. I didn't have any money, and it was hot, and I needed a Tom Collins. A tear rolled down Loretta's ch eek. I've been thirsty lately, she said. Loretta is a half a he ad shorter than me. She has curly black hair and a body kept tone d by hefting serving trays for catered affairs at the fire house. She hasn't changed much since high school. A few crinkle lines a round her eyes. A little harder set to her mouth. She's Italian-A merican and related to half the Burg, including my off-and-on boy friend, Joe Morelli. This was your first offense. And you didn' t shoot anyone. Probably you'll get off with a hand-slap, I told Loretta. I had my period, she said. I wasn't thinking right. Loretta lives in a rented row house on the edge of the Burg. She has two bedrooms, one bath, a scrubbed-clean, crackerbox kitchen, and a living room filled with secondhand furniture. Hard to make ends meet when you're a single mother without a high school dipl oma. The back door swung open and my sidekick, Lula, stuck her head in. What's going on in here? I'm tired of waiting in the car . I thought this was gonna be a quick pickup, and then we were go ing for breakfast. Lula is a former 'ho, turned bonds office fi le clerk and wheelman. She's a plus-size black woman who likes to squash herself into too small clothes featuring animal print and spandex. Lula's cup runneth over from head to toe. Loretta is having a bad morning, I said. Lula checked Loretta out. I can s ee that. She's still in her nightie. Notice anything else? I as ked Lula. You mean like she's tryin' to style her hair with a S mith & Wesson? I don't want to go to jail, Loretta said. It's not so bad, Lula told her. If you can get them to send you to th e work house, you'll get dental. I'm a disgrace, Loretta said. Lula shifted her weight on her spike-heeled Manolo knock-offs. You be more of a disgrace if you pull that trigger. You'll have a big hole in your head, and your mother won't be able to have an open-casket viewing. And who's going to clean up the mess it'll m ake in your kitchen? I have an insurance policy, Loretta said. If I kill myself, my son, Mario, will be able to manage until he can get a job. If I go to jail, he'll be on his own without any m oney. Insurance policies don't pay out on suicides, Lula said. Oh crap! Is that true? Loretta asked me. Yeah. Anyway, I don' t know why you're worried about that. You have a big family. Some one will take care of Mario. It's not that easy. My mother is i n rehab from when she had the stroke. She can't take him. And my brother, Dom, can't take him. He just got out of jail three days ago. He's on probation. What about your sister? My sister's g ot her hands full with her own kids. Her rat turd husband left he r for some pre-puberty lap dancer. There must be someone who ca n baby-sit for you, Lula said to Loretta. Everyone's got their own thing going. And I don't want to leave Mario with just anybod y. He's very sensitive . . . and artistic. I counted back and p laced her kid in his early teens. Loretta had never married, and so far as I know, she'd never fingered a father for him. Maybe you could take him, Loretta said to me. What? No. No, no, no, n o. Just until I can make bail. And then I'll try to find someon e more permanent. If I take you in now, Vinnie can bond you out right away. Yeah, but if something goes wrong, I need someone to pick Mario up after school. What can go wrong? I don't kno w. A mother worries about these things. Promise you'll pick him u p if I'm still in jail. He gets out at two-thirty. She'll do it , Lula said to Loretta. Just put the gun down and go get dressed so we can get this over and done. I need coffee. I need one of th ose extra-greasy breakfast sandwiches. I gotta clog my arteries o n account of otherwise the blood rushes around too fast and I mig ht get a dizzy spell. Lula was sprawled on the brown Naugahyde couch hugging the wall in the bonds office, and Vinnie's office m anager, Connie Rosolli, was at her desk. Connie and the desk had been strategically placed in front of Vinnie's inner-office door with the hope it would discourage pissed-off pimps, bookies, and other assorted lowlifes from rushing in and strangling Vinnie. What do you mean she isn't bonded out? I asked Connie, my voice r ising to an octave normally only heard from Minnie Mouse. She h as no money to secure the bond. And no assets. That's impossibl e. Everyone has assets. What about her mother? Her brother? She m ust have a hundred cousins living in a ten-mile radius. She's w orking on it, but right now she has nothing. Bupkus. Nada. So Vin nie's waiting on her. Yeah, and it's almost two-thirty, Lula sa id.You better go get her kid like you promised. Connie swiveled her head toward me and her eyebrows went up to her hairline. You promised to take care of Mario? I said I'd pick him up if Lore tta wasn't bonded out in time. I didn't know there'd be an issue with her bond. Oh boy, Connie said. Good luck with that one. Loretta said he was sensitive and artistic. I don't know about the sensitive part, but his art is limited to spray paint. He's p robably defaced half of Trenton. Loretta has to pick him up from school because they won't let him on a school bus. I hiked my b ag onto my shoulder. I'm just driving him home. That was the deal . There might be some gray area in the deal, Lula said. You mig ht've said you'd take care of him. And anyways, you can't dump hi m in an empty house. You get child ser vices after you for doin' that. Well, what the heck am I supposed to do with him? Lula and Connie did I don't know shoulder shrugs. Maybe I can sign f or Loretta's bond, I said to Connie. I don't think that'll fly, Connie said. You're the only person I know who has fewer assets than Loretta. Great. I huffed out of the office and rammed myse lf into my latest P.O.S. car. It was a Nissan Sentra that used to be silver but was now mostly rust. It had doughnut-size wheels, a Jaguar hood ornament, and a bobble-head Tony Stewart doll in th e back window. I like Tony Stewart a lot, but seeing, Headline, 2008, 2, New York Ballantine 1984. Good. 120 x 180mm. Paperback. 1984. 224 pages. Cover worn. <br>In 1914, when Jean-Marc Montjean, a yo ung French doctor, falls for the beautiful Katya, his love leads to devastating trauma, horror, and tragedy for himself and Katya' s family Editorial Reviews Review A most exquisite, elegant, in genious thriller. --New York Daily News A tour de force . . . A story that explores meticulously some of the darker corners of th e human soul. --Washington Post --This text refers to an out of p rint or unavailable edition of this title. About the Author Trev anian's books have been translated into more than fourteen langua ges and have sold millions of copies worldwide. He lives in the F rench Basque mountains. He is the author of The Crazyladies of Pe arl Street, Shibumi, The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction, and Th e Main. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edit ion of this title. Excerpt. ? Reprinted by permission. All right s reserved. salies-les-bains: august 1938 Every writer who has d ealt with that last summer before the Great War has felt compelle d to comment on the uncommon perfection of the weather: the endle ss days of ardent blue skies across which fair-weather clouds toi led lazily, the long lavender evening freshened by soft breezes, the early mornings of birdsong and slanting yellow sunlight. From Italy to Scotland, from Berlin to the valleys of my native Basse Pyrenees, all of Europe shared an exceptional period of clear, d elicious weather. It was the last thing they were to share for fo ur terrible years-save for the mud and agony, hate and death of t he war that marked the boundary between the nineteenth and twenti eth centuries, between the Age of Grace and the Era of Efficiency . Many who have described that summer claim to have sensed somet hing ominous and terminal in the very excellence of the season, a last flaring up of the guttering candle, a Hellenistic burst of desperate exuberance before the death of a civilization, a final, almost hysterical, moment of laughter and joy for the young men who were to die in the trenches. I confess that my own memory of that last July, assisted to a modest degree by notes and sketches in my journal, carries no hint that I viewed the exquisite weath er as an ironic jest of Fate. Perhaps I was insensitive to the om ens, young as I was, filled with the juices of life, and poised e agerly on the threshold of my medical career. These last words p rovoke a wry smile, as only the conventions of language allow me to describe the quarter century I have passed as a bachelor docto r in a small Basque village as a medical career. To be sure, the bright hardworking young man that I was had every reason to hope he was on the first step of a journey to professional success, al though he might have drawn some hint of a more limited future fro m the humiliatingly trivial tasks he was assigned by his sponsor and patron, Doctor Hippolyte Gros, who emphasized his assistant's subordinate position in dozens of ways, both subtle and bold, no t the least effective of which was reminding patients that I was indeed a full-fledged doctor, despite my apparent youth and palpa ble lack of experience. Doctor Montjean will attend to writing o ut your prescription, he would tell a patient with a benevolent s mile. You may have every confidence in him. Oh, the ink may still be wet on his certificate, but he is well versed in all the most modern approaches to healing, both of body and mind. This last g ibe was aimed at my fascination with the then new and largely mis trusted work of Doctor Freud and his followers. Doctor Gros would pat the hand of his patient (all of whom were women of a certain age, as he specialized in the discomforts associated with menopa use) and assure her that he was honored to have an assistant who had studied in Paris. The widened eyes and tone of awe with which he said Paris were designed to suggest, in broad burlesque, that a simple provincial doctor, such as he, felt obliged to be humbl e before a brilliant young man from the capital who had everythin g to recommend him-save perhaps experience, compassion, wisdom, u nderstanding, and success. Lest I create too unflattering a port rait of Doctor Gros, let me admit that it was kind of him to invi te me to be his summer assistant, as I was fresh out of medical s chool, penniless, without any prospects for purchasing a practice , and burdened by a most uncomplimentary report of my year of int ernship at the mental institution of Passy. However, far from sho wing Doctor Gros the gratitude he had a right to expect, I courte d his displeasure by confessing to him that I considered his area of specialization to be founded on old wives' tales, and his pro fitable summer clinic to be little more than a luxury resort for women with more leisure than common sense. In sharing these obser vations with him, I am sure I believed myself to be admirably ope n and honest for, with the callous assurance of youth, I often mi stook insensitivity for frankness. It is little wonder that he oc casionally retaliated against my callow self-confidence with thru sts at my inexperience and my peculiar absorption with the darker workings of the mind. Indeed, one day in the clinic when I had been holding forth on the ethical parallels between withholding t reatment from the sick and giving it to the healthy, he said to m e, You have no doubt wondered, Montjean, why I chose you to assis t me this summer. Possibly you came to the conclusion that I was staggered by your academic accomplishments and impressed by the a ltruism revealed by your year of unpaid service at Passy. Well, t here was some of that, to be sure. Then too, there was the fact t hat you were born in this part of France, and your dark Basque go od looks are an asset to a clinic catering to women of a certain age and uncertain appetites. After all, having a Basque boy fiddl e with their bits lends to the local color. But foremost among yo ur qualities was your willingness to work cheap, which I admired because humility is an attractive and rare quality in a young doc tor. However, little by little, I am coming to the view that what I mistook for humility was, in fact, an accurate evaluation of y our worth. And, the truth be told, I wasn't of all that much val ue to him, as there was not really enough work at the clinic to o ccupy two doctors. My principal worth was as insurance against hi s falling ill for a day or two, and as freedom for him to take th e occasional day off-days he implied were devoted to romantic pre occupations. For Doctor Gros had something of a reputation as a r ake and a devil with the women who were his patients. He never bo asted openly of his conquests to the worthies of Salies who were his companions over a few glasses each evening in one of the arca de cafes around the central square. Instead he relied on the sile nt smile, the shrug, the weak gesture of protest, to establish hi s reputation, not only as a romancer of potency, but as a man pos sessed of great discretion and a finely tuned sense of honor. No r did Doctor Gros's particularly advantageous position in the str eam of sexual opportunity engender the jealousy one might have ex pected among his peers, for he was protected from their envy by a fully deserved reputation as the ugliest man in Gascony, perhaps in all of France. His was a uniquely thoroughgoing ugliness embr acing both broad plan and minute detail, an ugliness the total of which was greater than the sum of the parts, an ugliness to whic h each feature contributed its bit, from the bulbous veiny nose, to the blotched and pitted complexion, well warted and stained, t o the slack meaty mouth, to the flapping wattles, to the gnarled, irregular ears, to the undershot chin overbalanced by a beetling brow. Only his eyes, glittering and intelligent within their sun ken, rheumy sockets, escaped the general aesthetic holocaust. But withal there was a peculiar attraction to his face, a fascinatio n at the abandon with which Nature can embrace ruin, that lured o ne's glance again and again to his features only to have the gaze deflected by self-consciousness. Doctor Gros was by far the wit tiest and best-educated man in Salies, but the audience for his p ompous, rather purple style of monologue were the dull-minded men who controlled the spa community: the owners of the hotel-restau rants, the manager of the casino, the village lawyer, the banker, all of whom felt a certain reluctant debt to the doctor, for it was his clinic that was the principal attraction for the summer t ourist/patients who were the economic foundation of the town. Sti ll-even though Profit occupies so dominant a position in the mora l order of the French bourgeois mentality that vague impulses tow ards fair play and decency are easily held in rein-it is possible that the more prudish of Salies's merchants might have found Doc tor Gros's cavalier treatment of the lady patients offensive, had these pampered, well-to-do women been genuinely ill. But in fact they were robust middle-class specimens whose only physical dist ress was having attained an age at which fashionable society allo wed them to flap and flutter over women's problems, the clinical details of which they whispered to one another with that appalled delectation later generations would reserve for sex. So it was t hat I alone found Doctor Gros's sexual hinting and double entendr es medically unethical and socially distasteful, a view that my y outhful addiction to moral simplism required me to express. Looki ng back, I wonder that Doctor Gros put up with my self-assured ce nsure at all, but the peculiar fact was that he rather seemed to like me, in a gruff sort of way. He took impish delight in outrag ing my tidy and compact sense of ethics. Also, I was in a positio n, by virtue of education, to catch his puns and comic images tha t went over the heads of his merchant-minded cronies. But I belie ve the principal reason he was fond of me was nostalgic egotism: he saw in me, in both my ambitions and limitations, the young man he had been before time and fate reduced his brilliance to mere table wit, and eroded the scope of his aspirations to the dimensi ons of a profitable small-town clinic. Perhaps this is why his r eaction to my attitude of moral superiority was limited to giving me only the most trivial tasks to perform. And, in fact, I was n ot all that distressed at being relegated to the role of an eleva ted pharmacist, for I had just finished years of grinding work an d study that had drained mind and body and was in need of a lazy summer with time on my hands, with freedom to wander through the quaint, slightly shoddy resort village or to loaf on the banks of the sparkling Gave, overarched by ancient trees and charming sto ne bridges. I wanted time to rest, to dream, to write. Ah yes, w rite. For at that time in my life I felt capable of everything. H aving attempted nothing, I had no sense of my limitations; having dared nothing, I knew no boundaries to my courage. During the ye ars of fatigue and dulling rote in medical school, I had daydream ed of a future confected of two careers: that of the brilliant an d caring doctor and that of the inspired and inspiring poet. And why not? I was an avid and sensitive reader, and I made the commo n error of assuming that being a responsive reader indicated late nt talent as a writer, as though being a gourmand was but a short step from being a chef. Indeed, my first interest in the pioneer work of Doctor Freud sprang, not from a concern for persons woun ded in their collisions with reality, but from my personal curios ity about the nature of creativity and the springs of motivation. So it was that, for several hours a day throughout that indolen t, radiant summer, I wandered into the countryside with my notebo ok, or sat alone at an out-of-the-way cafe, sipping an aperitif a nd holding imagined conversations with important and terribly imp ressed lions of the literary world, or I lounged by the banks of the Gave, notebook open, sketching romantic impressions, my lofty poetic intent inevitably withering to a kind of breathless shatt ered prose in the process of being recorded-a dissipation that I was sure I would learn to avoid once I had mastered the tricks of writing. Then, too, there was the matter of love. As the reader might suspect, the expansive young man that I was had no doubt b ut that he was capable of a great love . . . a staggering love. I was, after all, twenty-five years old, brimming with health, a d evourer of novels, fertile of imagination. It is no surprise that I was ripe for romance. Ripe for romance? Is that not only the self-conscious and sensitive young man's way of saying he was hea vy with passion? Is not, perhaps, romance only the fiction by mea ns of which the tender-minded negotiate their lust? No, not quit e. I am painfully aware that the young man I used to be was callo w, callous, self-confident, and egotistic. There is no doubt he w as heavy with passion. But, to give the poor devil his due, he wa s also ripe for romance. I slipped into a comfortable, rather la zy, routine of life, doing all that Doctor Gros demanded of me an d nothing more. A more ambitious person-or a less blindly confide nt one-would have filled his time with study and self-improvement , for any dispassionate analysis of my future prospects would hav e revealed them to be most uncertain. I was, after all, without f amily and without means; I was in debt for my education; and I ha d no inclination to waste my talents on some impoverished rural c ommunity. Yet I was content to laze away my days, resting myself in preparation for some unknown prospect or adventure that I was sure, without the slightest evidence, lay just around the corner. As events turned out, I would have wasted any time spent in work and study; for the war came that autumn and I was called up imme diately. Romantically-and quite stupidly-I joined the army as a s imple soldier. Four years of mud and trenches, stench, fear, bru talizing boredom. Twice wounded, once seriously enough to limit m y physical activities for the rest of my life. Four years recorde d in my memory as one endless blur of horror and disgust. Even to this day I am choked with nausea and rage when I stand among my fellow veterans in the graveyard of my village and recite the nam es of those mort pour la France. Why did I submit myself to the butchery of the trenches when I might have served in the echelons as a medical officer? Even the most rudimentary knowledge of Doc tor Freud would suggest that I was pursuing a death wish . . . as indeed I was. I knew this at the time, but that knowledge neithe r freed nor, New York Ballantine 1984, 1984, 2.5, Avon Books, 1986. Readers won't be surprised that each of these short stories appeared previo usly among explicit photos of naked women in Swank. In almost every episode , narrator "Wolf" Lannihan, an insurance investigator, takes a tumble with a well-endowed and/or leggy woman. Whether she's an innocent bystander or t he crime's perpetrator matters not a jot to him. He's toughhard-boiled, har d-hitting and appallingly hard-drinking. Sanders (The Fourth Deadly Sin, et c.) has reworked these mildly diverting stories, originally published in th e late 1960s, and added some topical references. But his sexist description s of women ("She was a little thing but well-machined with everything in ab undance and in the right place") and the pervasive "cherchez la femme" phil osophya woman is usually at the bottom of the crimeroot the tales firmly in the past., Avon Books, 1986, 0<
nzl, n.. | Biblio.co.uk |
1996, ISBN: 9780380751457
Grand Central Publishing, 1996-11-01. Mass Market Paperback. Good. 1.0000 in x 6.8000 in x 4.3000 in. This is a used book in good condition and may show some signs of use or wear ., Gra… More...
Grand Central Publishing, 1996-11-01. Mass Market Paperback. Good. 1.0000 in x 6.8000 in x 4.3000 in. This is a used book in good condition and may show some signs of use or wear ., Grand Central Publishing, 1996-11-01, 2.5, Avon Books. Paperback. POOR. Noticeably used book. Heavy wear to cover. Pages contain marginal notes, underlining, and or highlighting. Possible ex library copy, with all the markings/stickers of that library. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, and dust jackets may not be included., Avon Books, 1<
usa, usa | Biblio.co.uk |
ISBN: 9780380751457
Avon Books. Paperback. POOR. Noticeably used book. Heavy wear to cover. Pages contain marginal notes, underlining, and or highlighting. Possible ex library copy, with all the markings/s… More...
Avon Books. Paperback. POOR. Noticeably used book. Heavy wear to cover. Pages contain marginal notes, underlining, and or highlighting. Possible ex library copy, with all the markings/stickers of that library. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, and dust jackets may not be included., Avon Books, 1<
Biblio.co.uk |
ISBN: 9780380751457
Avon Books. Paperback. POOR. Noticeably used book. Heavy wear to cover. Pages contain marginal notes, underlining, and or highlighting. Possible ex library copy, with all the markings/s… More...
Avon Books. Paperback. POOR. Noticeably used book. Heavy wear to cover. Pages contain marginal notes, underlining, and or highlighting. Possible ex library copy, with all the markings/stickers of that library. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, and dust jackets may not be included., Avon Books, 1<
Biblio.co.uk |
1986, ISBN: 9780380751457
Softcover book. 234 pages. Published by HarperCollins Publishers (1986) Media > Book, [PU: Avon]
BetterWorldBooks.com used in stock. Shipping costs:zzgl. Versandkosten., plus shipping costs Details... |
2008, ISBN: 9780380751457
Headline. Fair. 6.26 x 9.17 x 1.02 inches. Paperback. 2008. 320 pages. Ex-library. Cover worn.<br>In the fourteenth book in t he series, the stakes are raised even higher as Stephan… More...
Headline. Fair. 6.26 x 9.17 x 1.02 inches. Paperback. 2008. 320 pages. Ex-library. Cover worn.<br>In the fourteenth book in t he series, the stakes are raised even higher as Stephanie Plum fi nds herself in her most dangerous, hilarious, hottest, chase yet. With her loveably offbeat family along for the ride (as well as a few new faces), it's clear to see why the Plum novels are calle d Hot Stuff by the New York Times and why Evanovich herself is ca lled the master. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Starr ed Review. Lorelei King returns to Trenton, N.J., to continue the misadventures of Stephanie Plum, intermittently successful bount y hunter. King is one of many to voice Janet Evanovich's successf ul series, but her voice can be heard above the crowd, especially when she's bringing the more colorful characters to life. Her fo rmer prostitute Lula can tear down walls with the force of her pe rsonality, and King gives professional security specialist (read mercenary) Ranger the measured tones of one who is always in cont rol. Stephanie spends much of the book blue from a briefcase dye bomb. King's Plum accepts her blueness and responds to the reacti ons with indignity, ruefulness and eventually resignation. In add ition to established favorites, Evanovich has thrown into the mix a 60-ish singer trying to hang onto fame who gives King plenty o f scope for her Southern side. Fearless Fourteen becomes peerless fourteen with narrator King at the helm. A St. Martin's hardcove r (Reviews, May 19). (June) Copyright ® Reed Business Informatio n, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This t ext refers to the audioCD edition. From Booklist Our heroine, th e irrepressible bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, finds herself watch ing over a goth teen called Zook, who is heavily into gaming, aft er his mom can't make bail and disappears (or has been kidnapped) . A lot of people think there is stolen money buried in or near O fficer Morelli's little house--that's Steph's Morelli, the cop wh o is her number-one boyfriend most of the time, or at least when the entrancing Ranger isn't nearby. The money is the reason behin d Zook's mom's disappearance, and it's the tie that binds Evanovi ch's various plotlines, which carom about endlessly, not always r esolving. Questions abound: Are Steph's sidekick, the plus-size L ula, and Ranger's man Tank really engaged? Ranger is working secu rity for a fading but brassy pop star: How does Steph manage to g et into and out of her reality show? Can Zook and his sidekicks p rotect Morelli's house--and Stephanie--with their homegrown weapo nry (think potatoes as missiles)? Where else but Evanovich's four teenth novel can a line like it's raining money and popsicles! ac tually make sense? Fans will be delighted, but others, who stumbl e into the series at this advanced point, may find themselves sta rved for backstory, so much so that they may need to go all the w ay back to One for the Money (1994). --GraceAnne A. DeCandido --T his text refers to the audioCD edition. From the Back Cover Per sonal vendettas. Hidden treasure. A monkey named Carl. In her lat est adventure, bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is as fearless as eve r... The Crime: Armed robbery to the tune of nine million dollar s. Dom Rizzi robbed a bank, stashed the money, and did the time. His family couldn't be more proud. He always was the smart one. The Cousin: Joe Morelli. Morelli is Dom's cousin. He's also a cop . Less than a week after Dom's release from prison, Morelli has s hadowy figures breaking into his house and dying in his basement. Meanwhile, Dom has gone missing... The Catastrophe: Moonman. Mo relli hires Walter Mooner Dunphy, stoner and inventor turned crim e fighter, to protect his house. Morelli is low on cash. Mooner w ill work for potatoes. The Cupcake: Stephanie Plum. Stephanie an d Morelli have a long-standing relationship that involves sex, af fection, and driving each other nuts. She's a bond enforcement ag ent with more luck than talent, and she's involved in this bank-r obbery-gone-bad disaster from day one. The Crisis: Ranger. Secur ity expert Carlos Manoso, street name Ranger, has a job for Steph anie that will involve night work. Morelli has his own ideas rega rding Stephanie's evening activities. The Conclusion: Be fearles s. Read FOURTEEN! Visit: www.evanovich --This text refers to the audioCD edition. Review [Lorelei] King is one of many to v oice Janet Evanovich's successful series, but her voice can be he ard above the crowd...Fearless Fourteen becomes peerless fourteen with narrator King at the helm. -Publishers Weekly, Starred Revi ew Lorelei King gives a fantastic performance... relax and enjoy Evanovich's tight writing and King's amazing reading of everyone from Stephanie to tough cops to adolescent boys to a Big Black M ama of a woman. -AudioFile on Fearless Fourteen, an Earphones Awa rd Winner AudioFile Golden Earphones Award-winning actress Lorel ei King, who also read Evanovich's Eleven on Top and Twelve Sharp , returns, effectively bringing to life more than a dozen of Evan ovich's legendarily quirky characters. -Kirkus Reviews For fans of Evanovich mysteries on audiobook, Lorelei King is more than a reader -- she is Stepahnie Plum. -Publishers Weekly Stephanie Pl um is a bounty hunter with a great sense of humor that balances o ut her attitude and worse luck...like Dorothy Parker with a lousy job and a Jersey accent. -Time Evanovich's series is as addicti ve as Fritos...Evanovich serves up consistently craveable goodies . -People These books are really just laugh-out-loud funny. -Hub Pages --This text refers to the audioCD edition. Excerpt. ® Repr inted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One In my min d, my kitchen is filled with crackers and cheese, roast chicken l eftovers, farm fresh eggs, and coffee beans ready to grind. The r eality is that I keep my Smith & Wesson in the cookie jar, my Ore os in the micro wave, a jar of peanut butter and hamster food in the over-the-counter cupboard, and I have beer and olives in the refrigerator. I used to have a birthday cake in the freezer for e mergencies, but I ate it. Truth is, I would dearly love to be a domestic goddess, but the birthday cake keeps getting eaten. I m ean, you buy it, and you eat it, right? And then where are you? N o birthday cake. Ditto cheese and crackers and eggs and the roast chicken leftovers (which were from my mother). The coffee beans are light-years away. I don't own a grinder. I guess I could buy two birthday cakes, but I'm afraid I'd eat both. My name is Ste phanie Plum, and in my defense I'd like to say that I have bread and milk on my shopping list, and I don't have any communicable d iseases. I'm five feet, seven inches. My hair is brown and should er length and naturally curly. My eyes are blue. My teeth are mos tly straight. My manicure was pretty good three days ago, and my shape is okay. I work as a bond enforcement agent for my cousin V innie, and today I was standing in Loretta Rizzi's kitchen, think ing not only was Loretta ahead of me in the kitchen-needs-a-makeo ver race, but she made me look like a piker in the Loose Cannon C lub. It was eight in the morning, and Loretta was wearing a lon g, pink flannel nightgown and holding a gun to her head. I'm go nna shoot myself, Loretta said. Not that it would matter to you, because you get your money dead or alive, right? Technically, t hat's true, I told her. But dead is a pain in the tuchus. There's paperwork. A lot of the people Vinnie bonds out are from my Ch ambersburg neighborhood in Trenton, New Jersey. Loretta Rizzi was one of those people. I went to school with Loretta. She's a year older than me, and she left high school early to have a baby. No w she was wanted for armed robbery, and she was about to blow her brains out. Vinnie had posted Loretta's bond, and Loretta had failed to show for her court appearance, so I was dispatched to d rag her back to jail. And as luck would have it, I walked in at a bad moment and interrupted her suicide. I just wanted a drink, Loretta said. Yeah, but you held up a liquor store. Most peopl e would have gone to a bar. I didn't have any money, and it was hot, and I needed a Tom Collins. A tear rolled down Loretta's ch eek. I've been thirsty lately, she said. Loretta is a half a he ad shorter than me. She has curly black hair and a body kept tone d by hefting serving trays for catered affairs at the fire house. She hasn't changed much since high school. A few crinkle lines a round her eyes. A little harder set to her mouth. She's Italian-A merican and related to half the Burg, including my off-and-on boy friend, Joe Morelli. This was your first offense. And you didn' t shoot anyone. Probably you'll get off with a hand-slap, I told Loretta. I had my period, she said. I wasn't thinking right. Loretta lives in a rented row house on the edge of the Burg. She has two bedrooms, one bath, a scrubbed-clean, crackerbox kitchen, and a living room filled with secondhand furniture. Hard to make ends meet when you're a single mother without a high school dipl oma. The back door swung open and my sidekick, Lula, stuck her head in. What's going on in here? I'm tired of waiting in the car . I thought this was gonna be a quick pickup, and then we were go ing for breakfast. Lula is a former 'ho, turned bonds office fi le clerk and wheelman. She's a plus-size black woman who likes to squash herself into too small clothes featuring animal print and spandex. Lula's cup runneth over from head to toe. Loretta is having a bad morning, I said. Lula checked Loretta out. I can s ee that. She's still in her nightie. Notice anything else? I as ked Lula. You mean like she's tryin' to style her hair with a S mith & Wesson? I don't want to go to jail, Loretta said. It's not so bad, Lula told her. If you can get them to send you to th e work house, you'll get dental. I'm a disgrace, Loretta said. Lula shifted her weight on her spike-heeled Manolo knock-offs. You be more of a disgrace if you pull that trigger. You'll have a big hole in your head, and your mother won't be able to have an open-casket viewing. And who's going to clean up the mess it'll m ake in your kitchen? I have an insurance policy, Loretta said. If I kill myself, my son, Mario, will be able to manage until he can get a job. If I go to jail, he'll be on his own without any m oney. Insurance policies don't pay out on suicides, Lula said. Oh crap! Is that true? Loretta asked me. Yeah. Anyway, I don' t know why you're worried about that. You have a big family. Some one will take care of Mario. It's not that easy. My mother is i n rehab from when she had the stroke. She can't take him. And my brother, Dom, can't take him. He just got out of jail three days ago. He's on probation. What about your sister? My sister's g ot her hands full with her own kids. Her rat turd husband left he r for some pre-puberty lap dancer. There must be someone who ca n baby-sit for you, Lula said to Loretta. Everyone's got their own thing going. And I don't want to leave Mario with just anybod y. He's very sensitive . . . and artistic. I counted back and p laced her kid in his early teens. Loretta had never married, and so far as I know, she'd never fingered a father for him. Maybe you could take him, Loretta said to me. What? No. No, no, no, n o. Just until I can make bail. And then I'll try to find someon e more permanent. If I take you in now, Vinnie can bond you out right away. Yeah, but if something goes wrong, I need someone to pick Mario up after school. What can go wrong? I don't kno w. A mother worries about these things. Promise you'll pick him u p if I'm still in jail. He gets out at two-thirty. She'll do it , Lula said to Loretta. Just put the gun down and go get dressed so we can get this over and done. I need coffee. I need one of th ose extra-greasy breakfast sandwiches. I gotta clog my arteries o n account of otherwise the blood rushes around too fast and I mig ht get a dizzy spell. Lula was sprawled on the brown Naugahyde couch hugging the wall in the bonds office, and Vinnie's office m anager, Connie Rosolli, was at her desk. Connie and the desk had been strategically placed in front of Vinnie's inner-office door with the hope it would discourage pissed-off pimps, bookies, and other assorted lowlifes from rushing in and strangling Vinnie. What do you mean she isn't bonded out? I asked Connie, my voice r ising to an octave normally only heard from Minnie Mouse. She h as no money to secure the bond. And no assets. That's impossibl e. Everyone has assets. What about her mother? Her brother? She m ust have a hundred cousins living in a ten-mile radius. She's w orking on it, but right now she has nothing. Bupkus. Nada. So Vin nie's waiting on her. Yeah, and it's almost two-thirty, Lula sa id.You better go get her kid like you promised. Connie swiveled her head toward me and her eyebrows went up to her hairline. You promised to take care of Mario? I said I'd pick him up if Lore tta wasn't bonded out in time. I didn't know there'd be an issue with her bond. Oh boy, Connie said. Good luck with that one. Loretta said he was sensitive and artistic. I don't know about the sensitive part, but his art is limited to spray paint. He's p robably defaced half of Trenton. Loretta has to pick him up from school because they won't let him on a school bus. I hiked my b ag onto my shoulder. I'm just driving him home. That was the deal . There might be some gray area in the deal, Lula said. You mig ht've said you'd take care of him. And anyways, you can't dump hi m in an empty house. You get child ser vices after you for doin' that. Well, what the heck am I supposed to do with him? Lula and Connie did I don't know shoulder shrugs. Maybe I can sign f or Loretta's bond, I said to Connie. I don't think that'll fly, Connie said. You're the only person I know who has fewer assets than Loretta. Great. I huffed out of the office and rammed myse lf into my latest P.O.S. car. It was a Nissan Sentra that used to be silver but was now mostly rust. It had doughnut-size wheels, a Jaguar hood ornament, and a bobble-head Tony Stewart doll in th e back window. I like Tony Stewart a lot, but seeing, Headline, 2008, 2, New York Ballantine 1984. Good. 120 x 180mm. Paperback. 1984. 224 pages. Cover worn. <br>In 1914, when Jean-Marc Montjean, a yo ung French doctor, falls for the beautiful Katya, his love leads to devastating trauma, horror, and tragedy for himself and Katya' s family Editorial Reviews Review A most exquisite, elegant, in genious thriller. --New York Daily News A tour de force . . . A story that explores meticulously some of the darker corners of th e human soul. --Washington Post --This text refers to an out of p rint or unavailable edition of this title. About the Author Trev anian's books have been translated into more than fourteen langua ges and have sold millions of copies worldwide. He lives in the F rench Basque mountains. He is the author of The Crazyladies of Pe arl Street, Shibumi, The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction, and Th e Main. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edit ion of this title. Excerpt. ? Reprinted by permission. All right s reserved. salies-les-bains: august 1938 Every writer who has d ealt with that last summer before the Great War has felt compelle d to comment on the uncommon perfection of the weather: the endle ss days of ardent blue skies across which fair-weather clouds toi led lazily, the long lavender evening freshened by soft breezes, the early mornings of birdsong and slanting yellow sunlight. From Italy to Scotland, from Berlin to the valleys of my native Basse Pyrenees, all of Europe shared an exceptional period of clear, d elicious weather. It was the last thing they were to share for fo ur terrible years-save for the mud and agony, hate and death of t he war that marked the boundary between the nineteenth and twenti eth centuries, between the Age of Grace and the Era of Efficiency . Many who have described that summer claim to have sensed somet hing ominous and terminal in the very excellence of the season, a last flaring up of the guttering candle, a Hellenistic burst of desperate exuberance before the death of a civilization, a final, almost hysterical, moment of laughter and joy for the young men who were to die in the trenches. I confess that my own memory of that last July, assisted to a modest degree by notes and sketches in my journal, carries no hint that I viewed the exquisite weath er as an ironic jest of Fate. Perhaps I was insensitive to the om ens, young as I was, filled with the juices of life, and poised e agerly on the threshold of my medical career. These last words p rovoke a wry smile, as only the conventions of language allow me to describe the quarter century I have passed as a bachelor docto r in a small Basque village as a medical career. To be sure, the bright hardworking young man that I was had every reason to hope he was on the first step of a journey to professional success, al though he might have drawn some hint of a more limited future fro m the humiliatingly trivial tasks he was assigned by his sponsor and patron, Doctor Hippolyte Gros, who emphasized his assistant's subordinate position in dozens of ways, both subtle and bold, no t the least effective of which was reminding patients that I was indeed a full-fledged doctor, despite my apparent youth and palpa ble lack of experience. Doctor Montjean will attend to writing o ut your prescription, he would tell a patient with a benevolent s mile. You may have every confidence in him. Oh, the ink may still be wet on his certificate, but he is well versed in all the most modern approaches to healing, both of body and mind. This last g ibe was aimed at my fascination with the then new and largely mis trusted work of Doctor Freud and his followers. Doctor Gros would pat the hand of his patient (all of whom were women of a certain age, as he specialized in the discomforts associated with menopa use) and assure her that he was honored to have an assistant who had studied in Paris. The widened eyes and tone of awe with which he said Paris were designed to suggest, in broad burlesque, that a simple provincial doctor, such as he, felt obliged to be humbl e before a brilliant young man from the capital who had everythin g to recommend him-save perhaps experience, compassion, wisdom, u nderstanding, and success. Lest I create too unflattering a port rait of Doctor Gros, let me admit that it was kind of him to invi te me to be his summer assistant, as I was fresh out of medical s chool, penniless, without any prospects for purchasing a practice , and burdened by a most uncomplimentary report of my year of int ernship at the mental institution of Passy. However, far from sho wing Doctor Gros the gratitude he had a right to expect, I courte d his displeasure by confessing to him that I considered his area of specialization to be founded on old wives' tales, and his pro fitable summer clinic to be little more than a luxury resort for women with more leisure than common sense. In sharing these obser vations with him, I am sure I believed myself to be admirably ope n and honest for, with the callous assurance of youth, I often mi stook insensitivity for frankness. It is little wonder that he oc casionally retaliated against my callow self-confidence with thru sts at my inexperience and my peculiar absorption with the darker workings of the mind. Indeed, one day in the clinic when I had been holding forth on the ethical parallels between withholding t reatment from the sick and giving it to the healthy, he said to m e, You have no doubt wondered, Montjean, why I chose you to assis t me this summer. Possibly you came to the conclusion that I was staggered by your academic accomplishments and impressed by the a ltruism revealed by your year of unpaid service at Passy. Well, t here was some of that, to be sure. Then too, there was the fact t hat you were born in this part of France, and your dark Basque go od looks are an asset to a clinic catering to women of a certain age and uncertain appetites. After all, having a Basque boy fiddl e with their bits lends to the local color. But foremost among yo ur qualities was your willingness to work cheap, which I admired because humility is an attractive and rare quality in a young doc tor. However, little by little, I am coming to the view that what I mistook for humility was, in fact, an accurate evaluation of y our worth. And, the truth be told, I wasn't of all that much val ue to him, as there was not really enough work at the clinic to o ccupy two doctors. My principal worth was as insurance against hi s falling ill for a day or two, and as freedom for him to take th e occasional day off-days he implied were devoted to romantic pre occupations. For Doctor Gros had something of a reputation as a r ake and a devil with the women who were his patients. He never bo asted openly of his conquests to the worthies of Salies who were his companions over a few glasses each evening in one of the arca de cafes around the central square. Instead he relied on the sile nt smile, the shrug, the weak gesture of protest, to establish hi s reputation, not only as a romancer of potency, but as a man pos sessed of great discretion and a finely tuned sense of honor. No r did Doctor Gros's particularly advantageous position in the str eam of sexual opportunity engender the jealousy one might have ex pected among his peers, for he was protected from their envy by a fully deserved reputation as the ugliest man in Gascony, perhaps in all of France. His was a uniquely thoroughgoing ugliness embr acing both broad plan and minute detail, an ugliness the total of which was greater than the sum of the parts, an ugliness to whic h each feature contributed its bit, from the bulbous veiny nose, to the blotched and pitted complexion, well warted and stained, t o the slack meaty mouth, to the flapping wattles, to the gnarled, irregular ears, to the undershot chin overbalanced by a beetling brow. Only his eyes, glittering and intelligent within their sun ken, rheumy sockets, escaped the general aesthetic holocaust. But withal there was a peculiar attraction to his face, a fascinatio n at the abandon with which Nature can embrace ruin, that lured o ne's glance again and again to his features only to have the gaze deflected by self-consciousness. Doctor Gros was by far the wit tiest and best-educated man in Salies, but the audience for his p ompous, rather purple style of monologue were the dull-minded men who controlled the spa community: the owners of the hotel-restau rants, the manager of the casino, the village lawyer, the banker, all of whom felt a certain reluctant debt to the doctor, for it was his clinic that was the principal attraction for the summer t ourist/patients who were the economic foundation of the town. Sti ll-even though Profit occupies so dominant a position in the mora l order of the French bourgeois mentality that vague impulses tow ards fair play and decency are easily held in rein-it is possible that the more prudish of Salies's merchants might have found Doc tor Gros's cavalier treatment of the lady patients offensive, had these pampered, well-to-do women been genuinely ill. But in fact they were robust middle-class specimens whose only physical dist ress was having attained an age at which fashionable society allo wed them to flap and flutter over women's problems, the clinical details of which they whispered to one another with that appalled delectation later generations would reserve for sex. So it was t hat I alone found Doctor Gros's sexual hinting and double entendr es medically unethical and socially distasteful, a view that my y outhful addiction to moral simplism required me to express. Looki ng back, I wonder that Doctor Gros put up with my self-assured ce nsure at all, but the peculiar fact was that he rather seemed to like me, in a gruff sort of way. He took impish delight in outrag ing my tidy and compact sense of ethics. Also, I was in a positio n, by virtue of education, to catch his puns and comic images tha t went over the heads of his merchant-minded cronies. But I belie ve the principal reason he was fond of me was nostalgic egotism: he saw in me, in both my ambitions and limitations, the young man he had been before time and fate reduced his brilliance to mere table wit, and eroded the scope of his aspirations to the dimensi ons of a profitable small-town clinic. Perhaps this is why his r eaction to my attitude of moral superiority was limited to giving me only the most trivial tasks to perform. And, in fact, I was n ot all that distressed at being relegated to the role of an eleva ted pharmacist, for I had just finished years of grinding work an d study that had drained mind and body and was in need of a lazy summer with time on my hands, with freedom to wander through the quaint, slightly shoddy resort village or to loaf on the banks of the sparkling Gave, overarched by ancient trees and charming sto ne bridges. I wanted time to rest, to dream, to write. Ah yes, w rite. For at that time in my life I felt capable of everything. H aving attempted nothing, I had no sense of my limitations; having dared nothing, I knew no boundaries to my courage. During the ye ars of fatigue and dulling rote in medical school, I had daydream ed of a future confected of two careers: that of the brilliant an d caring doctor and that of the inspired and inspiring poet. And why not? I was an avid and sensitive reader, and I made the commo n error of assuming that being a responsive reader indicated late nt talent as a writer, as though being a gourmand was but a short step from being a chef. Indeed, my first interest in the pioneer work of Doctor Freud sprang, not from a concern for persons woun ded in their collisions with reality, but from my personal curios ity about the nature of creativity and the springs of motivation. So it was that, for several hours a day throughout that indolen t, radiant summer, I wandered into the countryside with my notebo ok, or sat alone at an out-of-the-way cafe, sipping an aperitif a nd holding imagined conversations with important and terribly imp ressed lions of the literary world, or I lounged by the banks of the Gave, notebook open, sketching romantic impressions, my lofty poetic intent inevitably withering to a kind of breathless shatt ered prose in the process of being recorded-a dissipation that I was sure I would learn to avoid once I had mastered the tricks of writing. Then, too, there was the matter of love. As the reader might suspect, the expansive young man that I was had no doubt b ut that he was capable of a great love . . . a staggering love. I was, after all, twenty-five years old, brimming with health, a d evourer of novels, fertile of imagination. It is no surprise that I was ripe for romance. Ripe for romance? Is that not only the self-conscious and sensitive young man's way of saying he was hea vy with passion? Is not, perhaps, romance only the fiction by mea ns of which the tender-minded negotiate their lust? No, not quit e. I am painfully aware that the young man I used to be was callo w, callous, self-confident, and egotistic. There is no doubt he w as heavy with passion. But, to give the poor devil his due, he wa s also ripe for romance. I slipped into a comfortable, rather la zy, routine of life, doing all that Doctor Gros demanded of me an d nothing more. A more ambitious person-or a less blindly confide nt one-would have filled his time with study and self-improvement , for any dispassionate analysis of my future prospects would hav e revealed them to be most uncertain. I was, after all, without f amily and without means; I was in debt for my education; and I ha d no inclination to waste my talents on some impoverished rural c ommunity. Yet I was content to laze away my days, resting myself in preparation for some unknown prospect or adventure that I was sure, without the slightest evidence, lay just around the corner. As events turned out, I would have wasted any time spent in work and study; for the war came that autumn and I was called up imme diately. Romantically-and quite stupidly-I joined the army as a s imple soldier. Four years of mud and trenches, stench, fear, bru talizing boredom. Twice wounded, once seriously enough to limit m y physical activities for the rest of my life. Four years recorde d in my memory as one endless blur of horror and disgust. Even to this day I am choked with nausea and rage when I stand among my fellow veterans in the graveyard of my village and recite the nam es of those mort pour la France. Why did I submit myself to the butchery of the trenches when I might have served in the echelons as a medical officer? Even the most rudimentary knowledge of Doc tor Freud would suggest that I was pursuing a death wish . . . as indeed I was. I knew this at the time, but that knowledge neithe r freed nor, New York Ballantine 1984, 1984, 2.5, Avon Books, 1986. Readers won't be surprised that each of these short stories appeared previo usly among explicit photos of naked women in Swank. In almost every episode , narrator "Wolf" Lannihan, an insurance investigator, takes a tumble with a well-endowed and/or leggy woman. Whether she's an innocent bystander or t he crime's perpetrator matters not a jot to him. He's toughhard-boiled, har d-hitting and appallingly hard-drinking. Sanders (The Fourth Deadly Sin, et c.) has reworked these mildly diverting stories, originally published in th e late 1960s, and added some topical references. But his sexist description s of women ("She was a little thing but well-machined with everything in ab undance and in the right place") and the pervasive "cherchez la femme" phil osophya woman is usually at the bottom of the crimeroot the tales firmly in the past., Avon Books, 1986, 0<
1996, ISBN: 9780380751457
Grand Central Publishing, 1996-11-01. Mass Market Paperback. Good. 1.0000 in x 6.8000 in x 4.3000 in. This is a used book in good condition and may show some signs of use or wear ., Gra… More...
Grand Central Publishing, 1996-11-01. Mass Market Paperback. Good. 1.0000 in x 6.8000 in x 4.3000 in. This is a used book in good condition and may show some signs of use or wear ., Grand Central Publishing, 1996-11-01, 2.5, Avon Books. Paperback. POOR. Noticeably used book. Heavy wear to cover. Pages contain marginal notes, underlining, and or highlighting. Possible ex library copy, with all the markings/stickers of that library. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, and dust jackets may not be included., Avon Books, 1<
ISBN: 9780380751457
Avon Books. Paperback. POOR. Noticeably used book. Heavy wear to cover. Pages contain marginal notes, underlining, and or highlighting. Possible ex library copy, with all the markings/s… More...
Avon Books. Paperback. POOR. Noticeably used book. Heavy wear to cover. Pages contain marginal notes, underlining, and or highlighting. Possible ex library copy, with all the markings/stickers of that library. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, and dust jackets may not be included., Avon Books, 1<
ISBN: 9780380751457
Avon Books. Paperback. POOR. Noticeably used book. Heavy wear to cover. Pages contain marginal notes, underlining, and or highlighting. Possible ex library copy, with all the markings/s… More...
Avon Books. Paperback. POOR. Noticeably used book. Heavy wear to cover. Pages contain marginal notes, underlining, and or highlighting. Possible ex library copy, with all the markings/stickers of that library. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, and dust jackets may not be included., Avon Books, 1<
1986, ISBN: 9780380751457
Softcover book. 234 pages. Published by HarperCollins Publishers (1986) Media > Book, [PU: Avon]
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Details of the book - 18 Books: Anderson Tapes/1+4 Deadly Sin/Tangent Factor/6+8+10 Commandment/Timothy Files/Timothy's Game/Case of Lucy Bending/Seduction of Peter S/Passion of Molly T/Tales of the Wolf/Capital Crimes/Stolen Blessings/Love Songs/Marlow Chronicles/Caper
EAN (ISBN-13): 9780380751457
ISBN (ISBN-10): 0380751453
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Publishing year: 1986
Publisher: Avon Books, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Book in our database since 2007-05-17T15:03:50-04:00 (New York)
Detail page last modified on 2024-02-21T09:59:50-05:00 (New York)
ISBN/EAN: 9780380751457
ISBN - alternate spelling:
0-380-75145-3, 978-0-380-75145-7
Alternate spelling and related search-keywords:
Book author: lawrence, sanders, enid blyton, sander
Book title: wolf tales, tale tales, sander, manhattan blues, lannihan, the chronicle crime, girls ice, wolves blue, death lake, back blues, lucy, the passion molly, the wolf princess, death the dark, after the dark, caper, the timothy files, seduction peter, love tapes, model back kunst leuchtende, after man, the woman the case, girl woman, wolf gäng, blues who who, lawrence sanders
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