Michael Kramer
1) The Gambler
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First published in Russian in 1866, "The Gambler", by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, is a gripping narrative of the dangers of gambling. As was common with Dostoyevsky's other writings, he draws upon his own life in a semi-autobiographical way. Dostoyevksy himself suffered from a compulsion to gambling and had to complete "The Gambler" under a strict deadline to pay off his own debts. These first-hand experiences bring a depth of realism to the novel and to...
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He Chose The World's Deadliest Land: To Die, Or To Live Again. . .
Adam Laret, big, young and headstrong, ran from Ehrenberg to the banks of the Rio Colorado. He was blindly fleeing his scheming, gambling brother and the woman Guerd stole from him. But Adam's escape wasn't complete until Guerd, in the company of a sheriff, hunted him down. Then Adam committed the ultimate crime. With the mark of Cain upon him--he traveled into the desert to atone...
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"Maleeny does a nice job of showing us the cutthroat side of the movie industry. Keep 'em coming." -Booklist
When a movie producer hurtles to his death from the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, an apparent suicide, it shocks the film community and puts a two hundred million dollar production in jeopardy. A female colleague comes forward claiming it was murder, but the police are skeptical. Preoccupied by a sudden drug war between the tong gangs of...
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Americans have long debated the cause of the December 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. Many have argued that the attack was a brilliant Japanese military coup, or a failure of U.S. intelligence agencies, or even a conspiracy of the Roosevelt administration. But despite the attention historians have paid to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the truth about that fateful day has remained a mystery-until now. In Operation Snow: How a Soviet Mole in FDR's White...
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On the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, Union artillery lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson fell while bravely spurring his men to action. His father, Sam, a New York Times correspondent, was already on his way to Gettysburg when he learned of his son's wounding but had to wait until the guns went silent before seeking out his son, who had died at the town's poorhouse. Sitting next to his dead boy, Sam Wilkeson then wrote one of the greatest...
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2018 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award nominee
"With its strong sense of place, depiction of racial tension that still lingers in the new South, and appealing sleuths, de Castrique's well-plotted mystery is a winner." -Library Journal
When Asheville, NC, private eyes Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson are asked by an eighty-year-old client to investigate the suspicious death of her brother, they warn her there is little chance of success. Paul...
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Cal Claxton mysteries volume 1
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"The clever plot takes second place to the ebullience of the writing and spot-on inventiveness of the satire."-The Times
St. Martha's College, Cambridge, had been staggering along on a shoestring for decades. Then alumna Alice Toon leaves her old school a huge fortune. The dons immediately fall to fighting over the spoils. The Virgins, led by Dame Maud Theodosia Buckbarrow, believe the bequests should be spent on scholarships. The Dykes-fewer in...
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Blackstone Publishing
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Now an international symbol of twentieth-century humanitarianism, Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, issued countless "false" visas and other documents which were virtual life certificates that saved approximately one hundred thousand Jews from the Nazis in wartime Hungary. Then in 1945, as the war drew to a close, he disappeared after being taken into custody by Soviet military police. Today Wallenberg's fate remains unknown.
This authoritative
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In wartime Hungary, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg issued countless “false” visas and documents which saved approximately 100,000 Jews from the Nazis. After Wallenberg's arrest by Russian military police, he disappeared in 1945. His fate remains unknown. This is a fascinating biography of a great man who refused to be a bystander.
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Is the Chinese curse just a myth? Soon after an ancient talisman is smuggled out of Hong Kong, a container ship filled with Chinese refugees runs aground on Alcatraz, the crew murdered. The Chinese Triads suspect one of their own, a female assassin named Sally known to have connections with a San Francisco detective named Cape Weathers. But when Sally goes missing, Cape becomes the focus of Triads' attention, and soon the FBI has him on their radar....
11) Wynne's War
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An elite platoon of Special Forces soldiers infiltrates a forbidding Afghan war zone on horseback in search of vast treasure in this lyrical, thrilling blend of military fiction and Western. When Corporal Elijah Russell's superb horsemanship is revealed during a firefight in northern Iraq, the young Army Ranger is assigned to an elite Special Forces unit preparing to stage a secret mission in eastern Afghanistan. Elijah's task is to train the Green...
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A major new history of the Third Reich that explores the German psyche. As early as 1941, Allied victory in World War II seemed all but assured. How and why, then, did the Germans prolong the barbaric conflict for three and a half more years? In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of primary source materials-personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence-to answer this question. He offers...
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When the 1944 presidential election campaign geared up late that spring, Franklin D. Roosevelt had already been in office longer than any other president. Sensing likely weakness, the Republicans mounted an energetic and expensive campaign, hitting hard at FDR's liberal domestic policies and the ongoing cost of World War II. Despite gravely deteriorating health, FDR and his feisty running mate, the unexpected Harry Truman, campaigned vigorously against...
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James Salter was a master. One of the greatest writers of American sentences in our literary history, his acute and glimmering portrayals of characters are built with a restrained and poetic style. The author of many memorable works of fiction-including Dusk, and Other Stories, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award-he is also celebrated for his memoirs and many nonfiction essays.In her preface, Kay Salter writes, "Don't Save Anything is a volume of the...
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From the New York Times bestselling author of The Vatican Diaries comes a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how the Vatican investigates claims of miraculous events. Apocalyptic prophecies and miraculous apparitions are headline-grabbing events that often put the Catholic Church's doctrine of 'rational faith' at odds with the passion of its more zealous followers. To some, these claims teeter on the edge of absurdity. Others see them as evidence...
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Drawing on previously unpublished eyewitness accounts, prizewinning historian Donald L. Miller has written what critics are calling one of the most powerful accounts of warfare ever published. Here are the horror and heroism of World War II in the words of the men who fought it, the journalists who covered it, and the civilians who were caught in its fury. Miller gives us an up-close, deeply personal view of a war that was more savagely fought—and...
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Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier's urban planning theory realized in Brasilia, the Great Leap Forward in China, agricultural "modernization" in the Tropics-the twentieth century has been racked by grand utopian schemes that have inadvertently brought death and disruption to millions. Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry?In this wide-ranging and original book,...
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Focusing mostly on Italy and Germany but also considering Spain, Romania, Japan, and movements in other countries, Payne (history, U. of Wisconsin) describes fascism as revolutionary ultranationalism based on national rebirth, extreme elitism, mass mobilization, and the promotion of violence and military virtues. He also suggests that the early Russian communists borrowed many techniques from fascism, and that though we are fairly well inoculated...
19) The prophet
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In Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, the eponymous Almustafa discusses topics such as life and the human condition with his followers before boarding a ship home. The 26 prose poetry fables that comprise the novel are influenced not only by his own Maronite religion but also by Islam, and the mysticism of the Sufis. Running through the text is a belief in the fundamental unity of religions. One of the best-selling poetry books of all time, it shares a...
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Big Anthony Tagliabue is a local character whose fiancée Agnes Ann owns a stable on the eponymous offshore island. She is secretly training a promising filly for the track when she discovers that Tagliabue also harbors a secret: he's a deep-cover operative who is called to duty when a Russian spy ship transits the coast on her way back to St. Petersburg. Giselle, Tagliabue's enigmatic and exotic handler, intimates that his mission to rescue a defector...