From Publishers WeeklyMoore, praised for her short story collection Self-Help, makes her debut as a novelist with this story about what may be the disintegration of the thoroughly modern protagonist's personality. PW called Anagrams "original and highly inventive." Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalWho exactly is Benna, the 33-year-old poetry teacher (or singer? or aerobics instructor?) we meet in this inventive novel? It is hard to say. She hidesfrom us, from herselfbehind imaginary identities, relationships, and scenarios in which elements of character and action are transposed like the letters of those anagrams she scribbles on napkins. Her fantasies are offered as straight narrative along with a stream of wisecracks ("All the world's a stage we're going through"). For deep down, Benna is terrified of the contingencies of reality ("One gust of wind and Santa became Satan"), longs for the very continuity she mocks. This won't be everyone's cup of tea. Still, the virtuosity of Moore's widely praised Self-Help ( LJ 3/15/85) is once again evident, and when she fleetingly reveals the vulnerability beneath the sleight of hand, it is very affecting. Elise Chase, Forbes Lib., Northampton, Mass.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Liner Notes “They sailed out of Lisbon harbor with the flags snapping and the brass culverins gleaming under a high white sun, priests proclaiming in sonorous Latin the blessing of the Pope, soldiers in armor jammed on the castles fore and aft, and sailors spiderlike in the rigging, waving at the citizens of the town who had left their work to come out on the hills and watch the ships crowd out the sunbeaten roads, for this was the Armada, the Most Fortunate Invincible Armada, off to subjugate the heretic English to the will of God. There would never be another departure like it” And aboard one of the ships was Manuel Tetuan, a young Moroccan orphan shanghaied from a Franciscan monastery. “Black Air” is the multiple award nominated and World Fantasy Award-winning novelette of Manuel’s beatific innocence, of his compassion in me face of war, and of the miracles that enabled him to survive the tragedy of the doomed Armada. Since the unanimous critical acclaim that greeted his first novel, The Wild Shore, Kim Stanley Robinson has firmly established a reputation for gripping prose, compassionate human insight, and otherworldly visions imbued with a sharply focused sense of vivid, hard reality. Robinson’s extraordinary range of interests is demonstrated in haunting stories of: tourists tooling the beautiful, sunken ruins of Venice: an amoral future sleuth who, with her bumbling Watson, must find the forger of Monets on a planet of wealthy esthetes; three friends, one brain damaged, who confront eternity and subtle magic in the snowbound Sierras; a repertoire company of hypnotically trained, surgically altered actors, and an unknown psychopath whose murders mock the scripts of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama; the historic effects of the Second World War’s last traitor, the pilot who deliberately fails to A-bomb Hiroshima; impoverished Uranian miners who seek fame in an interplanetary music competition by reviving an ancient, lost form—Dixieland Jazz; and a dilapidated Arizona grill-souvenir shop that becomes the focus of a drifter’s encounters with Time and destiny. The Planet on the Table, a rare collection filled with the deftness, honesty and warmth that have propelled Kim Stanley Robinson so quickly into the forefront of modern SF. Kim Stanley Robinson is the author of the Hugo and Nebula nominated novel, The Wild Shore, Icehenge; and the current Nebula nominee, The Memory of Whiteness. His short fiction has been frequently nominated for awards, and he is the winner of the World Fantasy Award for “BIack Air.” His doctoral thesis on Philip K. Dick was recently published by UMI Press. A native of Southern California, Robinson presently lives in Switzerland with his wife, Lisa, an environmental chemist. Contemporary Reviews %ldquo;A quietly haunting tale, ‘Black Air’ is only incidentally an alternate-world story of the Spanish Armada; its true subject is a young boy’s vision, awakened in impressionistic waves of language that verge on synesthesia,” — The Village Voice “Robinson has been known for several years as one of the finest short story writers around.” —Locus “[Robinson] has shown in his short fiction a genuine love for the word as artifact, for depth of characterization and for the potential of the science fiction genre as an art form.” — Fantasy Review “Robinson’s narrative technique is impressive and the richness of his concepts and language extraordinary.” — Booklist “If a better single-author short story collection comes out this year, its going to be one hell of a year.” — Locus From Publishers WeeklyIn the past two years Robinson has published three well-received novels. This, his first collection of shorter work, is comprised of eight stories, including a World Fantasy Award winner and several Hugo and Nebula nominees. Robinson's strengths are a clean, clear style and a depth of characterization unusual for science fiction. Among the stories are "The Lucky Strike," which tells about bombardier Frank January, who in an alternate World War II, refuses to drop the Hiroshima bomb, a gesture that lands him in front of a firing squad and eventually ignites a world-wide peace and disarmament movement. In the award-winning novelette, "Black Air," a boy pressed into service on La Lavia, a galleon in the Spanish Armada, witnesses death in many forms when the Armada is smashed and La Lavia helplessly sails ever northward. The other tales here are similarly strong and imaginative.

Francis Cornish was always good at keeping secrets. From the well-hidden family secret of his childhood to his mysterious encounters with a small-town embalmer, a master art restorer, a Bavarian countess, and various masters of espionage, the events in Francis’s life were not always what they seemed. In this wonderfully ingenious portrait of an art expert and collector of international renown, Robertson Davies has created a spell-binding tale of artistic triumph and heroic deceit. It is a tale told in stylish, elegant prose, endowed with lavish portions of Davies’s wit and wisdom.

Seventeen-year-old Olivia hasn't seen her father since she was eight months old. But when he summons her out of the blue, Olivia travels cross country to New Hampshire to meet him. That summer, she learns to adapt to rural life and to try to understand her reclusive father. The next summer, following high school graduation, she returns to recreate her father's seventy-mile annual bike ride – reflecting on her own personal journey to understand the true meaning of love and kinship.

From the 1991 Edgar Award-winning author of New Orleans Mourning comes a witty mystery featuring writer/sleuth Paul McDonald. When his burglar friend Booker "happens" on part of Mark Twain's original manuscript of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he wants Paul to help find its rightful owner.

Read this classic romance by New York Times bestselling author Penny Jordan, now available for the first time in e-book! Previously published as Desire Never Changes in 1986. The tycoon's bride of convenience! Ever since their passionate encounter, Somer's dreams had been filled with the lean, tanned body of Chase Lorimer. She hadn't been able to look at another man—even though she'd thought she'd never see Chase again. Now, Chase is back, and this time he wants marriage—but on his terms. Somer has two choices: consent to be his convenient bride, or spend the rest of her life dreaming about him. Can she take a chance on the real thing...?

In New Orleans everyone wore masks, everyone hid secrets...Michael Rome: He was a master at assuming other identities, while never revealing his own. A sharp mind and deadly hands were his only companions. Until Jessica Duval scaled his defenses, entering where no one had gone before--his mind and his heart.Jessica Duval: She'd fled New Orleans years ago, hiding from the deep dark secret of her youth. But with her brother in trouble, she had no choice but to return.... No choice but to follow the only two clues she had--the vision of a dove and the figure of a handsome stranger.... No choice but to reach out to lone-wolf Michael.Theirs was a connection deeper than devotion, more powerful than passion. But would Jessica ever know the real Michael Rome?

Jack Dwyer, ex-cop turned amateur actor, is delighted when his agent lands him a role in a local production of Long Day's Journey Into Night. The real drama starts, however, when Michael Reeves — the play's angry, bullying director — is found murdered, and Dwyer's friend Stephen Wade — a sweet has-been of an actor — is charged with the crime. Dwyer knows that Wade has been set up. But who did it? And why?||||Was it David Ashton, an apparent fortune-seeker and heir to the Bridges Theater by marriage; or Richard Keech, the handsome, pushy young actor who shared the woman whom the dead man loved? Or could it have been Anne Stewart — the agin actress who carries a secret as dark as that of the character she plays? And what of Lenora Bridges — the matriarch of the theatrical family, who never comes out of her room in the building high above the stage?||||Sure, all the world's a stage but, for Dwyer, it's not that simple because a real man's life...

SUMMARY:Danielle Steel, America’s number-one best-selling novelist, has held millions spell-bound with such novels as Family Album, Full Circle, and Changes. But with Secrets she takes her readers beyond the tightly knit world of the family, into the heart of the nation’s most glamorous industry: television.Here is the drama behind the creation of Manhattan, a first-of-its-kind prime-time television series produced by Melvin Wechsler. Tempered by tragedy, seasoned by success, a man with a Midas touch, Mel Wechsler will assemble a dazzling cast:Sabina Quarles at forty-five has managed to maintain–by dint of spunk and surgery–the body of an eighteen-year-old. Tough, spirited, and self-sufficient, she has survived twenty years in Hollywood, never marrying, never quite succeeding, never deigning to work in television. Yet Manhattan may bring her both the stardom she craves–and the security her very special needs require.Jane Adams is an earthy thirty-nine-year-old beauty. Devoted to her children, dominated by her abusive and violent husband, forced to choose between her husband and her acting career, Jane may find that her role in Manhattan has cost her everything that matters most. Zack Taylor, the leading man, is a paragon of professionalism. Yet beyond the smooth good looks, the easy warmth, and the slick charm of the eligible bachelor, he remains an enigma.The charming ingenue, Gabrielle Thornton-Smith, seems to have appeared out of the blue. Beautiful, talented and on the brink of success at twenty-five, what can she have to hide?And Bill Warwick, plucked from the ranks of struggling young actors, is now slated to be the nation’s new heartthrob. But he has lied about one issue in his background. Not only will Bill’s future hang in the balance, but the success of the whole series may be jeopardized when he is forced publicly to confront the consequences of his little white lie.Set in Los Angeles and New York, Secrets carries the reader behind the scenes into the making of a major television series. Probing even deeper beneath the polished surfaces, Danielle Steel explores the dilemmas both men and women, in and out of the searchlight of the media, confront today. She paints a vivid, compelling picture of a sophisticated world and the surprisingly real problems of the people who inhabit it.Here Danielle Steel delineates her richest and most complex cast of characters, people forced together by extraordinary circumstances who must perform even when they're torn apart by their deepest secrets.

Opposites attract in this unforgettable favorite from New York Times bestselling author Sherryl WoodsVictoria Marshall was an incurable romantic with her antique shop and rustic farmhouse, love poems and yesterday's fashions. She was yearning for a Prince Charming to sweep her off her feet. The dashing Tate McAndrews fit the bill, but alas, the IRS representative overseeing her audit had the soul of a stuffy realist.Tate was so...sensible, so practical...without an impulsive bone in his gorgeous body. How could she yearn with such heated longing for a man her mind knew was wrong for her? Could they share more than a brief romance without driving each other crazy? Love, Victoria knew, would find a way.

As the bloody tide of war spread over Gor, Tarl Cabot, outcast by the Priest-Kings, became deeply enmeshed in the military combat between the empire of Ar and the invaders from Cos. His fate would depend upon which proved victorious in the coming confrontation at Ar's besieged river port. And it looked like Tarl himself might prove the deciding factor that would tip the scales of destiny for one side or the other... With RENEGADES OF GOR, all the complexity and intrigue of John Norman's saga comes together to create an adventure replete with danger, excitement, and romance in the unforgettable realm of Gor — where courage remains meaningful, and pride and honor have never been forgotten.

In Heiress, two sisters meet at the funeral of one of the most prestigious men in the country, Dean Lawson, their father. Abbie Lawson, the dutiful genteel daughter bred in the lap of luxury and, Rachel Farr, a mistake born of a passionate love affair, are almost identical in appearance but are worlds apart. Only one daughter can be the heir to the endless oil fields and magnificent thoroughbreds. A fierce competition has arisen between the women, not only for the inheritance but also for the proof of a father's love. They should have been devoted to each other as friends and sisters, but they have become the most embittered of enemies. The Texas men they love watch as the rivals tear themselves apart to become Dean Lawson's heiress.