AEM Library - Genres

The last thing Dawson Black expected was Bethany Williams. As a Luxen, an alien life form on Earth, human girls are…well, fun. But since the Luxen have to keep their true identities a secret, falling for one would be insane. Dangerous. Tempting. Undeniable.

Bethany can’t deny the immediate connection between her and Dawson. And even though boys aren’t a complication she wants, she can’t stay away from him. Still, whenever they lock eyes, she’s drawn in. Captivated. Lured. Loved.

Dawson is keeping a secret that will change her existence…and put her life in jeopardy. But even he can’t stop risking everything for one human girl. Or from a fate that is as unavoidable as love itself.

Gone Tomorrow

Lee Child

Amazon.com Review

Book Description
New York City. Two in the morning. A subway car heading uptown. Jack Reacher, plus five other passengers. Four are okay. The fifth isn’t.

In the next few tense seconds Reacher will make a choice--and trigger an electrifying chain of events in this gritty, gripping masterwork of suspense by #1 New York Times bestseller Lee Child.

Susan Mark was the fifth passenger. She had a lonely heart, an estranged son, and a big secret. Reacher, working with a woman cop and a host of shadowy feds, wants to know just how big a hole Susan Mark was in, how many lives had already been twisted before hers, and what danger is looming around him now.

Because a race has begun through the streets of Manhattan in a maze crowded with violent, skilled soldiers on all sides of a shadow war. Susan Mark’s plain little life was critical to dozens of others in Washington, California, Afghanistan . . . from a former Delta Force operator now running for the U.S. Senate, to a beautiful young woman with a fantastic story to tell–and to a host of others who have just one thing in common: They’re all lying to Reacher. A little. A lot. Or maybe just enough to get him killed.

In a novel that slams through one hairpin surprise after another, Lee Child unleashes a thriller that spans three decades and gnaws at the heart of America . . . and for Jack Reacher, a man who trusts no one and likes it that way, it’s a mystery with only one answer–the kind that comes when you finally get face-to-face and look your worst enemy in the eye.

Amazon Exclusive Essay: Lee Child on Gone Tomorrow

My career as a writer has been longer than some and shorter than others, but it happens to span the internet era more or less exactly. My first book,

A year or so later I actually got e-mail, and a year or so after that I got a web site, and a couple of years after that I got broadband, and over the following few years I got into the habit of starting the day internet surfing, reading the news and the gossip.

But it is not until now that I can say that one of my books--the thirteenth Reacher thriller, Gone Tomorrow--is truly and exclusively a product of the internet age.

I started the surfing years in a sensible, structured manner, but I eventually learned that the best stuff comes randomly. I started to follow links on a whim, bouncing from place to place, Googling other people’s references, following the maze, looking for rabbit holes.

I found an anonymous police blog from Britain.

It was apparently hosted by a London copper, and because it was secure and anonymous it was uninhibited. The people who posted there said all kinds of things. There were complaints and there was bitching, of course, but also there was a frank and unexpurgated view of police work from behind the lines. I got there in the summer of 2005, just after the suicide bombings on London’s transportation system, and just after a completely innocent Brazilian student had been shot to death by London police, who were under the mistaken impression that the guy had been involved.

Now, as a thriller writer, I’m familiar with the idea that cops can be bent or reckless. But I’m equally aware that’s mostly literary license. I know lots of cops, and they’re great people doing a very tough job. Years ago I met a friend’s eight-year-old daughter--a sweet little girl with no front teeth--and she grew up to be a cop. She won a bravery medal for a difficult solo arrest during which she was stabbed and had her thumb broken. She’s tough, but she’s not bent or reckless. So are the other cops I know.

So I was curious: what happened with the Brazilian kid? How was the mistake made?

So I eavesdropped while the coppers on the anonymous site were asking the same question. And I learned something interesting.

Their first consensus explanation was: because of “the list.” The Brazilian boy was showing “all twelve signs.” I thought, what list? What signs? So I clicked and scrolled and Googled, and it turned out that years earlier Israeli counterintelligence had developed a failsafe checklist of physical and behavioral signifiers, that when all present and correct mean you are looking at a suicide bomber. The list had entered training manuals, and after 9/11 those manuals were studied like crazy all over the world. And the response was mandatory: you see a guy showing the signs, you put him down, right now, before he can blow himself up.

And by sheer unlucky coincidence, the Brazilian kid had been showing the signs. A winter coat in July, a recent shave, and so on. (Read Gone Tomorrow if you want to know all twelve, and why.)

All writing is what if? So I tried to imagine that moment of... disbelief, I guess. You see a guy showing the signs, and probably every fiber of your being is saying, “This can’t be.” But you’re required to act.

So for the opening scene of Gone Tomorrow, I had Reacher sitting on a subway train in New York City, staring at a woman who is showing the signs. Reacher is ex-military law enforcement, and he knows the list forward and backward. Half of his brain is saying, “This can’t be,” and the other half is programmed to act. What does he do? What if he’s wrong? What will happen?

That’s where the story starts. It ends hundreds of pages later, in a place you both do and don’t expect. --_Lee Child_

(Photo © Sigrid Estrada)

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. All good thriller writers know how to build suspense and keep the pages turning, but only better ones deliver tight plots as well, and only the best allow the reader to match wits with both the hero and the author. Bestseller Child does all of that in spades in his 13th Jack Reacher adventure (after Nothing to Lose). Early one morning on a nearly empty Manhattan subway car, the former army MP notices a woman passenger he suspects is a suicide bomber. The deadly result of his confronting her puts him on a trail leading back to the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s and forward to the war on terrorism. Reacher finds a bit of help among the authorities demanding answers from him, like the NYPD and the FBI, as well as threats and intimidation. And then there are the real bad guys that the old pro must track down and eliminate. Child sets things up subtly and ingeniously, then lets Reacher use both strength and guile to find his way to the exciting climax. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Digital fortress

Dan Brown

Time to Die

Wilbur Smith

As the world around him burns with passion and death, professional hunter and guerrilla fighter Sean Courtney is trapped between his worst enemies, an overwhelming love for a woman, and his instincts to survive -- and kill.

From School Library Journal

YA --Continuing the saga of the South African family begun in When the Legends Die (Lippincott, 1963; o.p.), Smith weaves another compelling tale of high adventure, politics, and romance in the wilds of Zimbabwe and Mozambique. This new novel finds Sean Courtney leading a big game hunting expedition that is caught deep in hostile territory, where two tribal armies are engaged in battle. Courtney's fighting and survival instincts are constantly being tested throughout this action-packed story. Compassion and love interest temper the characterization of Sean Courtney, a bit of a change from his wild ways of the past. Smith's fans will not be disappointed in this addition to the Courtney chronicles, as he expertly describes the excitement and beauty of the African veldt. --Nancy Bard, Jefferson Sci-Tech, Alexandria, VA
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher

These audiobooks from Macmillan UK offer abridged readings of some of the world's most popular authors. Handsomely packaged, they feature readings by eminent actors of the stage and screen, including James Fox, Martin Shaw, Tim Pigott-Smith and David Rintoul.

Angels & Demons

Dan Brown

SUMMARY: An ancient secret brotherhood.A devastating new weapon of destruction.When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol -- seared into the chest of a murdered physicist -- he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati...the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. The Illuminati has now surfaced to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy -- the Catholic Church.Langdon's worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the Vatican's holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati announces they have hidden an unstoppable time bomb at the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival.Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and even the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-year-old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair...a clandestine location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation.An explosive international thriller, Angels & Demons careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war.

Golden Fox

Wilbur Smith

"Fascinating...Stunning...Seduction and betrayal. Politics and treachery. Wilbur Smith's THE GOLDEN FOX combines these elements and more with the beauty and violence of the African continent.... Compelling."
THE FREE LANCE-STAR (Fredericksburg, VA)
The Courtney family blood has long run hot--as hot as the passion and turmoil boiling in war-torn South Africa. When one of their own succumbs to the worst kind of evil, those ties are put to the ultimate test.
Isabella Courtney, dazzling daughter of South Africa's ambassador to England, is passionately obsessed with Ramon, the Marques de Santiago y Machado--also known as the Golden Fox, one of the world's most ruthless terrorists. When she secretly bears his child, Ramon kidnaps the boy and persuades powerful, yet reluctant, Isabella to betray South Africa and her beloved family...until the truth at last comes out, and the explosive Courtneys rally to her side and strike back with a raging vengance....

From Publishers Weekly

Smith's ( A Time to Die ) 22nd novel, already a bestseller in England, adds to his reputation as a writer of suspenseful, knowledgeable thrillers. Isabella Courtney is the only daughter of a wealthy, influential South African family. Ramon de Santiago y Machado is the calculating, cold-blooded villain who skillfully pursues, seduces and impregnates her, then uses the child as a pawn to force her to participate in his cause: a violent revolution against capitalism. In desperation, Isabella is forced to seek help from her family, and it is here that Smith's skill in building tension shifts into high gear. The final chapters are fast-paced and action-filled, augmenting the effects of realistic settings and exemplary prose throughout. Though Smith sometimes focuses too long on unnecessary detail, this is an entertaining novel by a gifted, intelligent raconteur.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA-- Smith's newest novel about the Courtney family centers around Isabella, the only daughter of Shasa Courtney, South Africa's ambassador to England. Ramon de Santiago y Machado, secretly known as El Zoro Dorado or the Golden Fox, concocts an elaborate plan to seduce Isabella, impregnate her, and then use the child as a pawn to further terrorist plots against South Africa. She gives birth to a son, Nicholas, whom Ramon kidnaps when he is one month old, setting in motion Isabella's betrayal of her beloved family and country. Smith excels at creating finely drawn characters; descriptive settings in London, Europe, and Africa; and a masterful development of an action-packed thriller that gets better as each new predicament unfolds. Expertly written, this novel engulfs readers until the very last page. --Nancy Bard, Thomas Jefferson Sci-Tech, Fairfax County, VA-
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Honour Among Thieves

Jeffrey Archer

From Publishers Weekly

Newly minted CIA and Mossad agents work to undo damage wrought by a Mafia/Iraqi conspiracy in English author Archer's ( As the Crow Flies ; Kane and Abel ) witty, action-filled--if improbable--thriller. Some readers, we suppose, might find quite plausible the idea that the mob has arranged for a ringer to impersonate President Clinton during his first months in office. But here the actor who plays Clinton assumes the role only long enough to swipe the Declaration of Independence. The chase is on as mobsters spirit the manuscript-turned-macguffin off to Iraq, where Saddam has plans to barbeque it for the Fourth of July, live on CNN. Meanwhile, Yale Law professor Scott Bradley goes undercover for the CIA, tracking lovely young Mossad operative Hannah Kopec, likewise on assignment in Paris. It's only a matter of time before the two agents are caught up in each other's arms and, of course, in the race to recapture the Declaration. Beyond the thrills and surprises that Archer's masterful narrative provides, readers will remain aware of the extreme unlikelihood that a scam such as Saddam's could succeed, and that two such neophytes would be thrown in to stop it. This deficit in verisimilitude doesn't detract too much from the novel's entertainment value, however, and some will be amused that Archer himself good-naturedly joins in the criticism by ironically making the accuracy of the spelling of "Brittish" (sic) in the Declaration and its copies central to his plot. 50,000 first printing; major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA-It is spring, 1993. Saddam Hussein, in his ongoing desire to humiliate the U.S., arranges for the theft of the Declaration of Independence from the National Archives. His aim is to destroy the document in front of CNN cameras on July 4th for all the world to see, and so destroy the credibility of his arch-enemy. This is the basis of Archer's fast-paced novel. His cast of characters is right out of today's headlines: President Bill Clinton and Saddam Hussein; American CIA agents and agents from Israel's Mossad; the Mafia; and an Irish expert forger. The setting of the novel is equally broad, practically encompassing the globe. The highly improbable plot may strain credibility, but the author more than makes up for this by creating an entertaining adventure.
_ Pamela B. Rearden, Centreville Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA_
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A Matter of Honour

Jeffrey Archer

Review

'Probably the greatest storyteller of our age' MAIL ON SUNDAY

Product Description

He should never have opened the envelope ...Adam Scott listens to the reading of his father's will, aware that the results can only be pitiful. The Colonel, after all, had nothing to leave - except a letter he had never opened himself, a letter Adam fears can only bring further disgrace to the family name. Against his mother's wishes, Adam opens the letter, and immediately realises his life can never be the same again. The contents leave him with no choice but to follow a course his father would have described as a matter of honour. "Probably the greatest storyteller of our age" - Mail On Sunday".

Cursed

Jennifer L. Armentrout

Dying sucks--and high school senior Ember McWilliams knows firsthand. After a fatal car accident, her gifted little sister brought her back. Now anything Ember touches dies. And that, well, really blows.Ember operates on a no-touch policy with all living things--including boys. When Hayden Cromwell shows up, quoting Oscar Wilde and claiming her curse is a gift, she thinks he’s a crazed cutie. But when he tells her he can help control it, she’s more than interested. There’s just one catch: Ember has to trust Hayden's adopted father, a man she's sure has sinister reasons for collecting children whose abilities even weird her out. However, she’s willing to do anything to hold her sister's hand again. And hell, she'd also like to be able to kiss Hayden. Who wouldn't?But when Ember learns the accident that turned her into a freak may not've been an accident at all, she’s not sure who to trust. Someone wanted her dead, and the closer she gets to the truth, the closer she is to losing not only her heart, but her life. For real this time.

BZRK Apocalypse

Michael Grant

The Matrix meets Inner Space in this third book in the BZRK trilogy from New York Times best-selling author Michael Grant.

The members of BZRK are preparing for their final stand. Noah and Sadie have seen death, and it holds no fear for them. Madness does, though. And losing each other. But they will not sit back, the only witnesses to an invisible apocalypse. The world is being destroyed from the inside out. It's time for them to fight to the last, in the streets and in the nano.

The staggering conclusion to the BZRK trilogy is a story with both thrills and heart, packed with the author's trademark jaw-dropping set pieces and pace.

From School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up—In an impeccable reading by Nico Evers-Swindell, the members of BZRK are back together to solve the mystery of nanobot attacks on seemingly unrelated groups, from Hollywood celebrities to Nobel Prize winners. Are the attacks coming from their nemesis, the conjoined-twin owners of the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Company, or are the attacks coming from somewhere even more sinister? Evers-Swindell keeps listeners on the edges of their seats as the truly scary and sometimes bloody final book of this trilogy comes to a conclusion. Each character is unique and realistic; for example, after Bugman's unfortunate encounter with a dish of glass fruit, his voice screams out with the sound of swelling lips and broken teeth. This is not a story to listen to without knowledge of the previous two books in the trilogy. There is a fairly graphic sex scene at the beginning of the story and violence throughout. VERDICT There are too many characters and too much backstory to allow this audiobook to stand on its own. But for those who enjoyed the first two volumes, this provides a satisfying ending. —Ann Brownson, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston

About the Author

Michael Grant has spent much of his life on the move. Raised in a military family in the USA, he attended ten schools in five states, as well as three schools in France. Even as an adult he kept moving, and in fact he became a writer in part because it was one of the few jobs that wouldn't tie him down. His dream is to spend a whole year circumnavigating the globe and visiting every continent. He lives in Marin County, California, with his wife, Katherine Applegate, their two children, and far too many pets. You can visit him online at www.themichaelgrant.com. The author lives in Marin County, California.

Beautiful Chaos

Kami Garcia; Margaret Stohl

Ethan Wate thought he was getting used to the strange, impossible events happening in Gatlin, his small Southern town. But now that Ethan and Lena have returned home, strange and impossible have taken on new meanings. Swarms of locusts, record-breaking heat, and devastating storms ravage Gatlin as Ethan and Lena struggle to understand the impact of Lena's Claiming. Even Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals is affected - and their abilities begin to dangerously misfire. As time passes, one question becomes clear: What - or who - will need to be sacrificed to save Gatlin?

For Ethan, the chaos is a frightening but welcome distraction. He's being haunted in his dreams again, but this time it isn't by Lena - and whatever is haunting him is following him out of his dreams and into his everyday life. Even worse, Ethan is gradually losing pieces of himself - forgetting names, phone numbers, even memories. He doesn't know why, and most days he's too afraid to ask.

Sometimes there isn't just one answer or one choice. Sometimes there's no going back. And this time there won't be a happy ending.

1452-1519

1861-1865

1886-1924

1939-1945

A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas

A post-ep for Unbearable. Sort of. Now AU. Originally posted in 2005.

Abortion

Abortion & Birth Control

Action & Adventure

Adolescence

Adult

Adventure

Adventure stories; American

Alien Contact

aliens

All Ages

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Alternative History

Amarantha (ACoTaR)

Ambition in men

American

American Science Fiction And Fantasy

Americans

Americans - Arctic regions

Amren (ACoTaR)

anne rice

Anti-Catholicism

Appreciation

Archer

Arctic regions

Arizona

Art museum curators

Art museum curators - Crimes against

Art thefts

Arthurian

Artificial Satellites

Asia

Azizex666

Azriel (ACoTaR)

BA

Balloonists

Bedtime & Dreams

Beron Vanserra

bethany

Biographical

Biographical fiction

Biography & Autobiography

blogger

Blood and Ash

blood drinker

blood vivicanti

Boarding School & Prep School

Body

books

Boston (Mass.)

Brigands and robbers

Bron (ACoTaR)

business

Business - Leadership

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Cassian (ACoTaR)

Children of immigrants

Children of immigrants - United States

Children: Young Adult (Gr. 7-9)

Childrens

Children's Books

Children's stories; English

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Code and cipher stories; American

Colorado

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Computer industry

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Conduct of life

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Cresseida (ACoTaR)

Cresseida/Morrigan (ACoTaR)