Empty Promises

Empty Promises

Ann Rule

Nonfiction / True Crime

MORE THAN 20 MILLION COPIES OF ANN RULE'S BOOKS IN PRINT!In this unnerving collection drawn from her personal crime files, "America's best true-crime writer" (Kirkus Reviews) Ann Rule brilliantly dissects the convoluted love affairs that all too often end in violence. Expertly analyzing a shocking, headline-making case, Rule unmasks the deadly motives inside a seemingly idyllic marriage: a beautiful young wife, a rising star in America's top-ranked computer corporation, and a prosperous husband, the scion of a family building business. With an adorable son and a gorgeous home, the couple seemed to have it all. But a furtive evil permeated their days and nights, dragging them into a murky world of drugs, sordid sex, and con operations. In this realm, one of them would prove to be a virtual innocent, the other a manipulator with no conscience. Sudden, violent death brought their charade of a fairy-tale romance to a tragic end -- with a brutal crime that might never have come to light were it not for the stubborn detectives and prosecutors whose fight for justice spanned an entire decade. Empty Promises recounts several other cases where the search for love brought only lies and betrayal -- a cautionary primer, perhaps, for those who trust too much too soon. Powerful because they strike so close to home, the cases in Empty Promises will leave readers shaken by the realities of love gone terribly -- and fatally -- wrong.From BooklistAlthough the former police officer and FBI consultant is best known for full-length true-crime books, she is also a prolific writer of shorter articles, publishing more than a thousand of them over the past three decades. Many of her shorter pieces have been collected in the ongoing Crime Files series, of which this is volume seven. The ten pieces included here, some of them going back more than 25 years, tell the story of a man whose possessiveness allegedly led him to murder; of unrequited love that led to madness; of a couple of genuinely (almost comically) incompetent femme fatales; of a man who killed for the thrill of it; and other fascinating, unsettling tales. Rule brings the same respect for detail to her short work that is evident in the book-length accounts. She is able to look beyond "just the facts" and penetrate to the heart of the matter, to identify not only the who and the what, but the all-important why. The shortest article here is deeper, and tells us more about the nature of crime, than a whole stack of full-length books written by less talented competitors. Among the very small group of top-notch true-crime writers (Lawrence Schiller, Jack Olsen, and Joe McGinniss, when he gets it right), Rule just may be the best of the bunch. David PittCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reservedReviewThe undisputed master crime writer of the Eighties and Nineties John Saul Devastatingly accurate insight NEW YORK TIMES
Read online
  • 8
Garden of Thorns

Garden of Thorns

Lillian Stewart Carl

Lillian Stewart Carl

First print-published by Berkley Publishing Group, 1992Mark Owen and Hilary Chase, who met at the excavation of a medieval Scottish priory in Dust to Dust, get back together in Fort Worth, Texas, his home town.Hilary is working at a museum, curating a set of medieval artifacts recovered from the Nazis by famous explorer and writer Arthur Coburg. Only when he recently died did the existence of the artifacts come to light. Now his much younger wife, Dolores, wants to sell them to the museum.Mark is helping British archaeologist Jenny Galliard excavate the Coburgs' eerie Victorian house, Osborne, a place scarred by two unsolved Jack-the-Ripper style murders.The emotional scars of Hilary's past are still healing, much to Mark's sympathy and frustration combined. Putting together a relationship is hard enough without being drawn unwillingly into the dark secrets of the Coburg family.No surprise Osborne is haunted. But Mark and Hilary are dismayed to...
Read online
  • 8
Breaktime

Breaktime

Aidan Chambers

Young Adult / Fiction / Romance

When Ditto challenges Morgan to prove that literature is crap he triggers off a chain of events to alter his outlook of life forever. Ditto faces a series of charges from Morgan against literature: that all fiction is Done. Finished. Dead; a sham and a pretence. He undertakes faithfully to record a life in the week of Ditto - with all the chaos of reality thrown in - and his literary creation reveals more about himself tha he originally bargained for.
Read online
  • 8
The Hades Factor c-1

The Hades Factor c-1

Robert Ludlum

Thriller / Crime

An unknown doomsday virus quickly claims the lives of four people across the country- including Dr. Sophia Russell, a researcher leading the team trying to crack the disease. Devastated and enraged, her fiance, Lt. Colonel Jonathan Smith, uncovers evidence that his lover's death was no accident- that someone out there has the virus, and the pandemic that threatens countless millions of lives was planned. Not knowing where to turn or whom to trust, Smith assembles a private team to aid his fight against the deadly virus. While the death toll mounts rapidly, their quest leads them to the highest levels of power and the darkest corners of the earth, as Smith and his team match wits with a determined genius out to destroy them, with the fate of the world in the balance…
Read online
  • 8
Sinner's Gin

Sinner's Gin

Rhys Ford

Rhys Ford

Sinners Series: Book One There's a dead man in Miki St. John's vintage Pontiac GTO, and he has no idea how it got there. After Miki survives the tragic accident that killed his best friend and the other members of their band, Sinner's Gin, all he wants is to hide from the world in the refurbished warehouse he bought before their last tour. But when the man who sexually abused him as a boy is killed and his remains are dumped in Miki's car, Miki fears Death isn't done with him yet. Kane Morgan, the SFPD inspector renting space in the art co-op next door, initially suspects Miki had a hand in the man's murder, but Kane soon realizes Miki is as much a victim as the man splattered inside the GTO. As the murderer's body count rises, the attraction between Miki and Kane heats up. Neither man knows if they can make a relationship work, but despite Miki's emotional damage, Kane is determined to teach him how to love and be loved — provided,...
Read online
  • 8
Bettany's Book

Bettany's Book

Keneally, Thomas

Keneally, Thomas

The epic Australian novel that was inspired by a diary Tom Keneally discovered while researching The Great Shame.When Sydney film producer Dimp Bettany discovers the memoirs of her ancestors, John Bettany and Sarah Bernard, she is convinced she has found the vehicle for her next masterpiece. Filtered through Dimp's correspondence with her sister, Prim, an aid worker in the Sudan, we are drawn into the lives of John Bettany, a man far ahead of his time, as he shares his vivid impressions of a new colony, and his future wife Sarah, a former convict who has been interred in the notorious Female Factory and who has a close friendship with an English murderess.
Read online
  • 8
Craft For a Dry Lake

Craft For a Dry Lake

Kim Mahood

Kim Mahood

Winner of the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction,The Age Book of the Year Award for Non-fiction, The Dobbie Prize for Best First Book. A lyrical memoir from a first-time author that has won critical acclaim Australia-wide. In the tradition of Drusilla Modjeska's Poppy, Mahood offers an intense and sensitive exploration of identity, familial ties and black/white relations in Australia. Craft For A Dry Lake is a memoir that will touch the hearts and souls of every Australian. In Craft For A Dry Lake Kim Mahood takes us on a lyrical journey to her heartland - travelling with her beloved cattle dog back into the Outback of her youth, seeking to lay to rest her father's ghost but finding herself faced with many of her own.
Read online
  • 8
Fables You Shouldn't Pay Any Attention To

Fables You Shouldn't Pay Any Attention To

Florence Parry Heide

Florence Parry Heide

In this new edition of the classic companion to Tales for the Perfect Child, Sergio Ruzzier lends his signature humor to Florence Parry Heide and Sylvia Worth Van Clief's delectably subversive fables.Genevieve is careless. Muriel is discontented. Phoebe is always putting off until tomorrow what she should be doing today. And Chester is the laziest turkey you ever heard of. Caleb and Conrad, on the other hand, are polite and kind and thoughtful and gracious and truthful. But some good that does them! If the morals you find in these pages aren't exactly, well, moral...just don't pay any attention to them!
Read online
  • 8
183