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Called "one of the most significant organized crime figures in the United States" by the U.S. District Attorney, Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo was just 15 years old when Prohibition became law. Over the next decade, Alo would work side by side with Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky as they navigated the brutal underworld of bootlegging, thievery and murder. Introduced to the 91-year-old Alo living in retirement in Florida, Dylan Struzan based A BLOODY BUSINESS on more than 50 hours of recorded testimony --- stories Alo had never shared, and that he forbid her to publish until "after I'm gone." Alo died, peacefully, two months short of his 97th birthday. And now his stories --- bracing and violent, full of intrigue and betrayal, hunger and hubris --- can finally be told.
Jon thought he had all the time in the world to respond to his wife’s text message: I miss you so much. I feel bad about how we left it. Love you. But as he’s waiting in the lobby of his hotel in Switzerland, he receives a string of horrifying push notifications. Washington, DC has been hit with a nuclear bomb, followed by New York, London and finally Berlin. Now, two months later, there are 20 survivors holed up at the hotel. When the body of a young girl is discovered, Jon becomes obsessed with investigating her death as a way to cling to his own humanity. Yet the real question remains: Can he afford to lose his mind in this hotel, or should he take his chances in the outside world?
In the years after Christ's crucifixion, Paul of Tarsus, a prosperous tentmaker and Jewish scholar, took it upon himself to persecute the small groups of his followers that sprung up. But on the road to Damascus, he had some sort of blinding vision, a profound conversion experience that transformed Paul into the most effective and influential messenger Christianity has ever had. In THE DAMASCUS ROAD, novelist Jay Parini brings this fascinating and ever-controversial figure to full human life, capturing his visionary passions and vast contradictions.
For the first time in book form, Robert Caro gives us a glimpse into his own life and work in these evocatively written, personal pieces. He describes what it was like to interview the mighty Robert Moses; the combination of discouragement and exhilaration he felt confronting the vast holdings of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas; his encounters with witnesses, including longtime residents wrenchingly displaced by the construction of Moses' Cross-Bronx Expressway and Lady Bird Johnson acknowledging the beauty and influence of one of LBJ's mistresses. He gratefully remembers how, after years of working in solitude, he found a writers' community at the New York Public Library, and details the ways he goes about planning and composing his books.
In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed --- or untoyed with --- by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley. The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls --- until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside down.
The Cuban Revolution took everything from sugar heiress Beatriz Perez. Recruited by the CIA to infiltrate Fidel Castro's inner circle and pulled into the dangerous world of espionage, Beatriz is consumed by her quest for revenge and her desire to reclaim the life she lost. As the Cold War swells like a hurricane over the shores of the Florida Strait, Beatriz is caught between the clash of Cuban American politics and the perils of a forbidden affair with a powerful man driven by ambitions of his own. When the ever-changing tides of history threaten everything she has fought for, she must make a choice between her past and future. But the wrong move could cost Beatriz everything --- not just the island she loves, but also the man who has stolen her heart.
Fifteen-year-old Meghan has been in and out of hospitals with a plague of unexplained illnesses. But when the ailments take a sharp turn, clashing medical opinions begin to raise questions about the puzzling nature of her illness. Doctors suspect Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a rare behavioral disorder where the primary caretaker seeks medical help for made-up symptoms of a child. Is this what's going on? Or is there something even more sinister at hand? Meghan's mother, Becky, must race against time to prove that her daughter has a deadly disease. But she first must confront her darkest fears and family secrets that threaten not only to upend her once-ordered life, but to destroy it.
Galactus, France’s answer to SpaceX, has just launched a communications satellite into orbit, but the payload actually harbors a frightening weapon: a nuclear-triggered electromagnetic pulse. When the satellite is in position, Galactus’s second-in-command, Dr. Nevaeh Patel, will have the power to lay waste to the world with an EMP. A former astronaut, Patel believes she is following the directions of the Numen, aliens who saved her life when she space-walked outside the International Space Station. Special Agents Nicholas Drummond and Michaela Caine must stop the EMP that would wreak havoc on communication and electronic systems on Earth, resulting in chaos and anarchy.
Late one spring night, Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant in California, is walking across a darkened intersection when he is killed by a speeding car. The repercussions of his death bring together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer who returns to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; his widow Maryam, who still pines after her life in the old country; Efrain, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, a former classmate of Nora and a veteran of the Iraq war; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son's secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself.
Rafael Zhettah relishes the simplicity and freedom of his life. He is the owner and head chef of a promising Houston restaurant. A pilot with open access to the boundless Texas horizon. A bachelor, content with having few personal or material attachments that ground him. Then lightning strikes. When he finds Tieresse --- billionaire, philanthropist, sophisticate, bombshell --- sitting at one of his tables, he also finds his soul mate and his life starts again. And just as fast --- when she is brutally murdered in their home, when he is convicted of the crime, when he is sentenced to die --- it is all ripped away. But for Rafael Zhettah, death row is not the end; it is only the beginning. Now, he will stop at nothing to deliver justice to those who stole everything from him.
