After the recent birth of her third child, Missouri genealogist Torie O'Shea is itching to get back to work. When she's approached to research and write a book about a recently deceased local woman who attained fame in the thirties and forties as a jazz singer, Torie figures she's found her new project. But her preliminary research turns up a startling piece of the woman's past: her infant son was kidnapped from his cradle in 1938 and never seen again. Back in the present day, the mayor of New Kassell, Bill Castlereagh, is fixing to legalize riverboat gambling in the small historic village, which has Torie and her neighbors up in arms, terrorized by visions of neon lights and dancing girls invading their quaint, picaresque town. Torie knows she has to do something to stop the mayor's plan before it gets started, but she's finding it hard to tear herself away from her research. She just can't stop herself from wondering what happened to that little baby all...

WOULD THEY DESTROY EARTH IN ORDER TO SAVE IT? Conquered by the Jao twenty years ago, the Earth is shackled under alien tyranny--and threatened by the even more dangerous Ekhat, who are sending a genocidal extermination fleet to the solar system. Humanity's only chance rests with an unusual pair of allies: a young Jao prince, newly arrived to Terra to assume his duties, and a young human woman brought up amongst the Jao occupiers. But both are under pressure from the opposing forces--a cruel Jao viceroy on one side, determined to drown all opposition in blood; a reckless human resistance on the other, perfectly prepared to shed it. Added to the mix is the fact that only by adopting some portions of human technology and using human sepoy troops can the haughty Jao hope to defeat the oncoming Ekhat attack--and then only by fighting the battle within the Sun itself.

Milt Dale is the Man of the Forest. Living alone in a camp in the wilderness called Paradise Park, he prefers the company of bears, cougars, and wolves to that of the surrounding ranchers and troublemakers. But one day he overhears a conversation that changes his life and convinces him to leave his wild paradise to save a young woman from certain doom. The pioneer spirit runs in Helen Rayner’s blood, but it may not save her from the nasty end that tough guy Snake Anson has planned for her. To get his hands on her uncle’s ranch, he needs to get rid of Helen—by any means necessary. But luckily for Helen, the Man of the Forest is not about to let that happen.

Paul Bowles had already established himself as an important American composer when, at the age of 38, he published The Sheltering Sky and became widely recognized as one of the most powerful writers of the postwar period. By the time of his death in 1999 he had become a unique and legendary figure in modern literary culture. From his base in Tangier he produced novels, stories, and travel writings in which exquisite surfaces and violent undercurrents mingle. This Library of America volume, containing his first three novels, with its companion Collected Stories and Later Writings, is the first annotated edition of Bowles’s work, offering the full range of his literary achievement: the portrait of an outsider who was one of the essential American writers of the last half century. The Sheltering Sky (1949), which remains Bowles’s most celebrated work, describes the unraveling of a young, sophisticated, and adventuresome married couple as they make their way into the Sahara. In a prose style of meticulous calm and stunning visual precision, Bowles tracks Port and Kit Moresby on a journey through the desert that culminates in death and madness. In Let It Come Down (1952), Bowles plots the doomed trajectory of Nelson Dyar, a New York bank teller who comes to Tangier in search of a different life and ends up giving in to his darkest impulses. Rich in descriptions of the corruption and decadence of the International Zone in the last days before Moroccan independence, Bowles’s second novel is an alternately comic and horrific account of a descent into nihilism. The Spider’s House (1955), the longest and most complex of Bowles’s novels, is set against the end of French rule in Morocco. Its characters—ranging from a Moroccan boy gifted with spiritual healing power to an American writer who regrets the passing of traditional ways—are caught up in the clash between colonial and nationalist factions, and are forced to confront cultural gulfs widened by political violence. Bowles—who once told an interviewer, “I’ve always wanted to get as far as possible from the place where I was born”—charts the collisions between “civilized” exiles and unfamiliar societies that they can never really grasp. In fiction of slowly gathering menace, he achieves effects of horror and dislocation with an elegantly spare style and understated wit.

Though summering in the lush countryside to escape the plague rampaging through London, the queen and her court cannot escape the reach of a multiple murderer who seems to disappear at will. In the gardens of Hampton Court, Elizabeth proudly shows a famed visiting lawyer her huge hornbeam maze, but the intricate labyrinth soon becomes a scene of horror as Elizabeth herself is attacked and the lawyer is murdered within its leafy dead ends. The queen calls upon her small, select band of advisors to help her ferret out the identity of the maze murderer. When the court must flee the encroaching Black Death, even the royal haven of Hatfield House with its charming knot garden holds terror. Undaunted, the queen and her chief advisor, William Cecil, set a trap in the flooded thorn maze at Cecil's nearby estate. Even if they snare the ghostly murderer before he or she strikes again, will they unmask not only the villain but also the person they love best in the entire realm?

In 1937, Mount Lucania was the highest unclimbed peak in North America. Located deep within the Saint Elias mountain range, which straddles the border of Alaska and the Yukon, and surrounded by glacial peaks, Lucania was all but inaccessible. The leader of one failed expedition deemed it "impregnable." But in that year, a pair of daring young climbers would attempt a first ascent, not knowing that their quest would turn into a perilous struggle for survival. Escape from Lucania is their remarkable story.Classmates and fellow members of the Harvard Mountaineering Club, Brad Washburn and Bob Bates were two talented young men -- handsome, intelligent, and filled with a zest for exploring. Both were ambitious climbers, part of a small group whose first ascents in the great mountain ranges during the 1930s and 1940s changed the face of American mountaineering. Setting their sights on summitting Lucania in the summer of 1937, Washburn and Bates put together a team of four...

Arthur is a precocious eight-year-old boy whose mother is a B-list celebrity more concerned with the state of her bank account than with her son's development. Then an enigmatic young nanny named Missy introduces him to a world he never knew existed.

GUARDIAN OF THE NIGHTDanger! Undercover agent Jonah Ries couldn't explain to the stunning woman who'd mistaken him for herblind date exactly how he knew someone was trying to harm her. Butevil stalked Moriah's Landing, and Katherine Ridgemont was its target.When she learned of Jonah's deep secret, Kat might not give him thetime of day. Only that wouldn't stop Jonah from watching over thevulnerable beauty after dark. As the anniversary of Kat's mother'smysterious death approached, the instinct to protect became a fire inJonah's blood. A fire matched by his determination to save the womanhe loved from the unknown forces that haunted the night....

Raine Marlowe has finally convinced her soon-to-be ex-husband to star in her directorial debut-but he fears that his character's dark secrets may be dangerously close to his own... "Mary Jo Putney never fails to deliver a winning story with heartwarming characters. She is a pleasure to read...always." (Literary Times) "Putney's writing is clear as crystal and smooth as silk." (Booklist)

The Rand scientific expedition entered the lush wilderness of the Amazon and never returned. Years later, one of its members has stumbled out of the world’s most inhospitable rainforest: a former Special Forces soldier – scarred, mutilated, terrified, and mere hours from death – who went in with one arm missing…and came out with both intact. Unable to comprehend this inexplicable event, the government sends Nathan Rand into this impenetrable secret world of undreamed – of perils to follow the trail of his vanished father…toward mysteries that must be solved at any cost. But the nightmare that is awaiting Nate and his team of scientists and seasoned U.S. Army Rangers dwarfs any danger they anticipated…an ancient, unspoken terror – a power beyond human imagining-that can forever alter the world beyond the dark, lethal confines of the Amazon rainforest for better… and for worse.

secrets Delia loves Double Dutch more than just about anything, and she's really good at it -- so good she and her teammates have a shot at winning the World Double Dutch Championships. Delia would die if she couldn't jump -- but Delia has a secret, and it could keep her off the team next year. Delia's friend Randy has a secret too, one that has him lonely and scared. And while Delia and Randy struggle to keep their secrets, their school is abuzz with rumors about what malicious mischief the terrible Tolliver twins -- who just may have a secret of their own -- are planning. Delia and Randy's secrets collide on what should be the happiest day of Delia's life, and the collision threatens to destroy their friendship. Why can't life be as easy for Delia as Double Dutch?

This seminal work on modern terrorism assesses the changes and continuities in Osama bin Laden's thinking since 2002. In order to win the war against terrorism, argues Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's bin Laden Unit, we must first stop dismissing militant Muslims as "extremists" or "religious fanatics." Formulating a successful military strategy requires that we see the enemy as they perceive themselves - highly trained and motivated soldiers who believe their cause is righteous. Scheuer shows that the war has accelerated the transformation of bin Laden and al Qaeda from man and organization to, respectively, a symbol of leadership and heroism and a worldwide movement.