Starting on a personal note, Robert Hughes takes us to the Rome he first encountered as a hungry 21-year-old fresh from Australia in 1959. He then takes us back more than 2,000 years to the city's foundation, one mired in mythologies and superstitions that would inform Rome's development for centuries.

Starting on a personal note, Robert Hughes takes us to the Rome he first encountered as a hungry 21-year-old fresh from Australia in 1959. He then takes us back more than 2,000 years to the city's foundation, one mired in mythologies and superstitions that would inform Rome's development for centuries.

From Robert Hughes, one of the greatest art and cultural critics of our time, comes a sprawling, comprehensive, and deeply personal history of Rome --- as city, as empire, and, crucially, as an origin of Western art and civilization, two subjects about which Hughes has spent his life writing and thinking.

Starting on a personal note, Hughes takes us to the Rome he first encountered as a hungry 21-year-old fresh from Australia in 1959. From that exhilarating portrait, he takes us back more than 2,000 years to the city's foundation, one mired in mythologies and superstitions that would inform Rome's development for centuries.

From the beginning, Rome was a hotbed of power, overweening ambition, desire, political genius, and corruption. Hughes details the turbulent years that saw the formation of empire and the establishment of the sociopolitical system, along the way providing colorful portraits of all the major figures, both political (Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Nero, Caligula) and cultural (Cicero, Martial, Virgil), to name just a few. For almost a thousand years, Rome would remain the most politically important, richest, and largest city in the Western world.

From the formation of empire, Hughes moves on to the rise of early Christianity, his own antipathy toward religion providing rich and lively context for the brutality of the early Church, and eventually the Crusades. The brutality had the desired effect --- the Church consolidated and outlasted the power of empire, and Rome would be the capital of the Papal States until its annexation into the newly united kingdom of Italy in 1870.

As one would expect, Hughes lavishes plenty of critical attention on the Renaissance, providing a full survey of the architecture, painting, and sculpture that blossomed in Rome over the course of the 14th through the 16th centuries, and shedding new light on old masters in the process. Having established itself as the artistic and spiritual center of the world, Rome in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries saw artists (and, eventually, wealthy tourists) from all over Europe converging on the bustling city, even while it was caught up in the nationalistic turmoils of the Italian independence struggle and war against France.

Hughes keeps the momentum going right into the twentieth century, when Rome witnessed the rise and fall of Italian Fascism and Mussolini, and took on yet another identity in the postwar years as the fashionable city of "La Dolce Vita." This is the Rome Hughes himself first encountered, and it's one he contends, perhaps controversially, has been lost in the half century since, as the cult of mass tourism has slowly ruined the dazzling city he loved so much. Equal parts idolizing, blasphemous, outraged, and awestruck, ROME is a portrait of the Eternal City as only Robert Hughes could paint it.

The first book in Derek Raymond's acclaimed Factory Series is an unflinching yet deeply compassionate portrait of a city plagued by poverty and perversion, and a policeman who may be the only one who cares about the "people who don't matter and who never did."

Murders are a dime a dozen in Margaret Thatcher's London, and when it comes to the brutal killing of a middle-aged alcoholic found dumped outside of town, Scotland Yard has more important cases to deal with.

Instead it's a job for the Department of Unexplained Deaths and its head Detective Sergeant. With only a box of cassette-tape diaries as evidence, the rogue detective has no chouce but to listen to the haunting voice of the victim for clues to his gruesome end.

The first book in Derek Raymond's acclaimed Factory Series is an unflinching yet deeply compassionate portrait of a city plagued by poverty and perversion, and a policeman who may be the only one who cares about the "people who don't matter and who never did."

The shot to the head didn't kill Nashville homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson. But it will crack her psyche and take her to the very edge. Someone or something is coming after Taylor. But is it dead...or living?

The shot to the head didn't kill Nashville homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson. But it will crack her psyche and take her to the very edge. Someone or something is coming after Taylor. But is it dead...or living?

The headshot didn't kill Taylor Jackson. But it will haunt. In her showdown with the murderous Pretender, a bullet taken at close range severed the connection between Taylor's thoughts and speech. Effectively mute, there's no telling if her voice will ever come back. Trapped in silence, she is surrounded by ghosts --- of the past, of friendships and trusts lost --- of the specter of a lost faith in herself and her motives that night. When Memphis Highsmythe offers Taylor his home in the Scottish highlands to recuperate, her fiancé John Baldwin can't refuse her excitement, no matter his distrust of the man. At first, Memphis's drafty and singularly romantic castle seems the perfect place for healing. But shortly the house itself surrounds her like a menacing presence. As Taylor's sense of isolation and vulnerability grows, so, too, does her grip on reality.

PTSD. Pills. Ghosts. Grudges. Someone or something is coming after Taylor. But is she being haunted by the dead...or hunted by the living?

Carly Chase is still traumatized 10 days after being in a fatal traffic accident that kills a student from Brighton University. Then she learns that the drivers of the two other vehicles involved have been found tortured and murdered --- and she could be next.

Carly Chase is still traumatized 10 days after being in a fatal traffic accident that kills a student from Brighton University. Then she learns that the drivers of the two other vehicles involved have been found tortured and murdered --- and she could be next.

In 1945, a German bomber crash-lands in Iceland during a blizzard, with both German and American officers on board. One of the German officers sets off in search of the nearest farm, only to disappear into the white vastness. Years later, a young Icelander stumbles upon the excavation and promptly disappears. But he first manages to contact his sister, who embarks on a desperate mission to find him.

In 1945, a German bomber crash-lands in Iceland during a blizzard, with both German and American officers on board. One of the German officers sets off in search of the nearest farm, only to disappear into the white vastness. Years later, a young Icelander stumbles upon the excavation and promptly disappears. But he first manages to contact his sister, who embarks on a desperate mission to find him.

"Indridason fills the void that remainds after you've read Stieg Larsson's novels." --USA Today

Prepare for sizzling action in a riveting stand alone thriller from Arnaldur Indridason, the award-winning author of the Inspector Erlunder series.

Why is the US Army trying to secretively remove a plame from an Icelandic glacier, and why are they threatened by a young Icelandic rescue volunteer who manages to contact his sister Kristen before disappearing off the face of the earth? Kristin, who will not rest until she discovers the truth of her brother's fate, soon is in great danger herself, leading her on a long and hazardous journey in search of the key to the riddle about Operation Napoleon.

Flashback to 1945, when a German bomber flies over Iceland in a blizzard. The crew have lost their way and crash on a glacier. Puzzlingly, there are both Germand and American officers on board. One of the senior German officers claims that their best chance of survival is to try to walk to the nearest farm and sets off, a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, only to disappear into the white vastness.

Exceptional prose meets nonstop action in this spellbinding standalone by Arnaldur Indridason, who is critically acclaimed around the globe.

In this fourth novel in Lisa Black’s captivating suspense series, forensic investigator Theresa MacLean finds herself embroiled in a case in which everyone has a motive and everyone is a suspect --- especially when high-powered defense attorneys start turning up dead.

In this fourth novel in Lisa Black’s captivating suspense series, forensic investigator Theresa MacLean finds herself embroiled in a case in which everyone has a motive and everyone is a suspect --- especially when high-powered defense attorneys start turning up dead.

A former forensic scientist with the Cleveland coroner’s office, Lisa Black knows the world she writes about, as she has proven in the past with her gripping thrillers featuring Theresa MacLean (TAKEOVER, EVIDENCE OF MURDER, TRAIL OF BLOOD). With DEFENSIVE WOUNDS, Black delivers possibly her most sensational crime fiction masterwork to date --- a stunning tale of forensic expert MacLean’s investigation into the brutal murder of a criminal defense attorney at a Cleveland convention that reveals the frightening presence of a serial killer prowling the city. The forensic police thriller remains one of the most popular sub-genres in contemporary mystery fiction, and DEFENSIVE WOUNDS once again proves that Lisa Black is one of the “big guns,” in the top tier alongside Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs, Jefferson Bass and Michael Connelly.

After the loss of his family farm, John Moon is a desperate man. A master hunter, his ability to poach game in-season or out is the only thing that stands between him and the soup kitchen line. Until he trespasses on the wrong land, hears a rustle in the brush, and fires a single fateful shot.

After the loss of his family farm, John Moon is a desperate man. A master hunter, his ability to poach game in-season or out is the only thing that stands between him and the soup kitchen line. Until he trespasses on the wrong land, hears a rustle in the brush, and fires a single fateful shot.

After the loss of his family farm, John Moon is a desperate man. A master hunter, his ability to poach game in-season or out is the only thing that stands between him and the soup kitchen line. Until Moon trespasses on the wrong land, hears a rustle in the brush, and fires a single fateful shot.

Following the bloody trail, he comes upon a shocking scene: an illegal, deep woods campground filled with drugs, bundles of cash and the body of a dead young woman, killed by Moon's stray bullet.

Faced with an ultimate dilemma, Moon has to make a choice: does he take the money and ignore his responsibility for the girl's death? Or confess?

But before he has a chance to decide, Moon finds himself on the run, pursued by those who think the money is theirs. Men who don't care about right and wrong and who want only one thing from John Moon: his body, face down in a ditch.

Matthew F. Jones's A SINGLE SHOT is a rare, visionary thriller reminiscent of the work of Tom Franklin, Ron Rash, Daniel Woodrell and Cormac McCarthy.