The Crooked Little Pieces: Volume 3


Book Description

Dreams are a red flag for the danger-prone. Postwar van der Holts. Sophistication sticks to Head of Music Isabel – and so does new headmaster, the mysterious and semi-dictatorial Richard Schneider. Dissent from doctorly conventionality leads Anneliese into digressions deviant even for her as she squares off not just against Susanna but a serial offender of the law. Sparks fly between old flames; new fears prove equally exciting. Loyalties are switched and cravings itched in this compendium of the forbidden driven by foreboding: a mere taste of the temptations still to come. Treats are aplenty for the reader who prefers vicarious living in The Crooked Little Pieces: Volume 3: a world abundant in the traps of passion’s shackles. Into the higher stakes we go.




The Crooked Little Pieces: Volume 4


Book Description

Curiosity can be a killer. The clock begins to tick on Anneliese’s moral compass as the sleuth-psychiatrist delves deeper into London’s social dregs – encountering a playbook too subversive for her tastes. While Isabel belittles the idea of jealousy Charles Anthony views his obsession as a Jezebel. Susanna’s (other) indiscretions are hard-pressed to rest in peace as torments old and new distort her life. Headmaster Richard on the other hand sparks strife when he reviles his troublesome subordinate… again. Repression treads with clumsy thumps on both the sisters’ souls in this suspicion-rousing feast of silent dreams: a gallery of scintillating scenes where passion and possessiveness lurk still beneath the surface. Envy, pride, wrath and desire light a fire in The Crooked Little Pieces: Volume 4: the part inviting you to pick your poison.




The Crooked Little Pieces: Volume 1


Book Description

Lost are the creatures destined never to be understood. 1926. Professor Josef van der Holt obtains a post at an all women’s college overseas. Stuffy London suddenly becomes the site for the unseemly exploits of his half-Dutch and half-German daughters Anneliese and Isabel. When tragedy carves out a hollow in their lives, an ailing soul sends the sororal twins along a jagged path: while Isabel takes flight in sensual hedonism Anneliese skirts danger in her role as sleuth. Elusive are the sentiments they seek: swift stopovers of fleeting feeling. Seditious loves and passions scarcely probable veer each away from the predictable. And when the obvious appears unstoppable the opposite may achingly be true. Spanning the twentieth century’s five most volatile decades, The Crooked Little Pieces is a series about inextricable entanglements. Perverse relationships pervade a glossary of scenes. Plots criss-cross over a rich tapestry of twists and tension-fuelling characters: some relatable, others opaque and many “crooked”. It is television drama. Novelised.




Big Book of Best Short Stories - Volume 3


Book Description

This book contains70 short storiesfrom 10 classic, prize-winning and noteworthy authors. The stories were carefully selected by the criticAugust Nemo, in a collection that will please theliterature lovers. For more exciting titles, be sure to check out our 7 Best Short Stories and Essential Novelists collections. This book contains: - Robert Louis Stevenson:The Waif Woman The Bottle Imp Thrawn Janet Markheim The Body Snatcher Olalla Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert E. Howard:Worms of the Earth The Queen of Black Coast Pigeons from Hell The Children of the Night Red Nails The Twilight of the Grey Gods The Shadow of the Vulture - G. K. Chesterton:The Blue Cross The Invisible Man The Man Who Was Thursday A Nightmare The Strange Crime of John Boulnois The Three Tools of Death The Wrong Shape The Mistake of the Machine - Edgar Wallace:The Cat Burglar Circumstantial Evidence The Ghost of Downhill The Poetical Policeman Red Aces The Four Just Men The Shadow Man - Arthur Machen:The Great God Pan The White People The Black Seal The Novel of the White Powder The Red Hand The Inmost Light The Bowmen - Ambrose Bierce:An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge One Summer Night The Death Of Halpin Frayser The Moonlit Road A Psychological Shipwreck The Stranger The Middle Toe of the Right Foot - Talbot Mundy:The Soul Of A Regiment The Pillar Of Light The Lady and the Lord Kitty Bruns Her Fingers The Mystic India Speaks The Real Red Root The Hermit and the Tiger - Abraham Merritt:The Pool Of The Stone God The Last Poet And The Robots The Fox Woman The People Of The Pit The Drone Through The Dragon Glass Three Lines Of Old French - Zane Grey:Amber's Mirage The Ranger Don: The Story Of A Lion Dog The Wolf Tracker Lure of the River A Missouri Schoolmarm Monty Price's Nightingale - Edgar Rice Burroughs:Tarzan's First Love A Jungle Joke Tarzan Rescues the Moon John Carter and the Giant Of Mars The Ancient Dead Beyond Thirty Skeleton Men of Jupiter




Three Crooked Kings


Book Description

One of the landmark Australian true-crime books, with a new introduction following the death of disgraced Police Commissioner Terry Lewis. Three Crooked Kings is the shocking true story of Queensland and how a society was shaped by almost half a century of corruption. At its core is Terry Lewis, deposed and jailed former police commissioner. From his entry into the force in 1949, Lewis rose through the ranks, becoming part of the so-called Rat Pack with detectives Glen Hallahan and Tony Murphy under the guiding influence of Commissioner Frank Bischof.The next four decades make for a searing tale of cops and killings, bagmen and blackmail, and sin and sleaze that exposes a police underworld that operated from Queensland to New South Wales. This gripping book examines the final pieces of the puzzle, unearths new evidence on cold cases, and explores the pivotal role that whistleblower Shirley Brifman, prostitute and brothel owner, played until her sudden death.Awarded journalist and novelist Matthew Condon has crafted the definitive account of an era that changed a state and is still reverberating to this day.




Crooked House


Book Description

Don't close your eyes... Some doors, once opened, can never be closed again... Orphan and widow Corinne Zellman is stunned when she receives several urgent letters from a lawyer, telling her she's the only surviving heir of Edward Buchanan, a relative of her recently deceased husband. Though Corinne ignores the first few summons, too grieved to consider them anything but cruel hoaxes, she takes notice when yet another arrives, this time with a family ring identical to the one her husband wore and lost just before he was killed. Stuck in a dead end job and curious about the family the love of her life seldom spoke of, she reluctantly pulls up stakes and heads to Bloodmoon Cove, where the persistent elderly gentleman lives. There, with her best friend Ruby, she finds Crooked House, the family "estate". Crooked House certainly lives up to its disturbing name, as does Edward Buchanan, who is old and pale and disappears so frequently she can almost believe he's nothing more than a ghost. It isn't long before Corinne begins to suspect that her new family member had ulterior motives for insisting she come live with him. But to believe that is to believe that Rafe Yager, a hardened soldier, is entirely correct when he says Crooked House is dangerous. The longer she stays, the less chance she'll ever leave again. Ghost hunter Rafe is one of the last descendants of the Mino-Miskwi Native American tribe whose elders disappeared during a ritual at their sacred place at the top of Bloodmoon Mountain. Rafe has come home based on a terrifying vision of wide-eyed, wholesome dreamer Cori losing her soul to an evil she doesn't recognize. Crooked House is falling and its sinister legacy demands recompense for her husband's death--something that was no accident, as she supposed. Can Rafe save Cori from a sacrifice she never meant to make when she unknowingly came to love a monster?




Crooked Little Vein


Book Description

“May be destined to become one of the great underground classics of the twenty-first century.” —Lansing State Journal Burned-out private dick Michael McGill needs to jump-start his career. What he gets instead is a cattle prod to the crotch. The president’s heroin-addicted chief of staff wants McGill to find the Constitution—the real one the Founding Fathers secretly devised for the time of gravest crisis. And with God, civility, and Mom’s homemade apple pie already dead or dying, that time is now. But McGill has a talent for stumbling into every imaginable depravity—and this case is driving him even deeper into America’s darkest, dankest underbelly, toward obscenities that boggle even his mind. “Combines the noir sensibilities of Raymond Chandler with the grotesqueness of Chuck Palahniuk’s infamous short story ‘Guts’ and the acerbic social commentary of William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch.” —Chicago Tribune “Laugh-out-loud funny . . . a deeply inventive look at the undercurrents beneath the mainstream popular culture.” —Charlotte Observer “Not for the faint of heart.” —Entertainment Weekly










A Mother's Heart: Book 1 - 3


Book Description

Love Beats Fiercely in a Mother’s Heart Three heart-warming romances about a woman’s love—romantic love as well as her love for her family. Keeping Katie Maura Anderson was out of options. Her adopted daughter, three-year-old Katie, is her entire world, and no heartless legal system was going to take her baby away. She did what any mother would do. She grabs Katie and runs. Sheriff Alan Parks believes in the law, following it and enforcing it to the letter. Then Maura Anderson shows up in his small, quiet town, and he knows she’s running from something. At first, he assumes she’s running from someone – an ex-husband or boyfriend – but when she won’t confide in him he starts wondering. Who is this woman who’s captured his heart, and what or who is she afraid of? When he finds the answers, however, a part of him wishes he’d never asked the question. Because how can he help her when he represents what she’s fleeing . . . the law. Once A Wife At seventeen, Sarah Colby had been scared and desperate. Her marriage to Reece Colby was faltering. They were nearly destitute and their infant son, Drew, needed on-going medical care they couldn’t afford. Sarah felt her world crumpling around her. Then her mother-in-law, Elizabeth, offered Sarah a solution. Elizabeth would make certain Drew got the medical attention he needed if Sarah would walk away from her husband and son. Believing she had no other option, Sarah accepted Elizabeth’s offer—though leaving them was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Now, twelve years later, Sarah still questions that decision. So when she learns that Drew’s in trouble, she knows it’s time to break her agreement with Elizabeth. Drew needs the mother he’s never known and Sarah needs to help her son. But how can she face Reece after deserting him? And what will happen when he finds out about Lyssa, the daughter he doesn’t know he has? Where the Heart Is She’d come home to put her life back together. With a broken engagement behind her and a baby on the way, Maddie Adams needs a safe place to have her baby and heal her broken heart. Then she runs into Nick Ryan, her once-best friend and first love, and her life once again becomes entwined with his. And though the sparks between them are as strong as ever, she does her best to ignore them. Nick had betrayed her once, and she can’t risk it happening again. Not now when she has another life to consider. Nick Ryan grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Back then, the only person who’d believed in him was Maddie Adams, a girl with everything going for her. Then he’d messed up and lost her. Despite that, he’d achieved his dream of becoming a doctor and returned home to practice medicine. But he’d made other mistakes along the way, mistakes that had cost him his wife and left him with an angry teenage son. With Maddie back in town, he’s hoping for a second chance. Can he undo the damage he’s done to his son? Can he heal the old hurt between him and Maddie? And can they put together a new family, one based on love rather than obligation?