Books-By-Mail BOOKLIST
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Books-By-Mail BOOKLIST Sep/Oct, 2012 Large Print Best-sellers/Best-selling Authors — Fiction Archer, Jeffrey The Sins of the Father With war between Britain and Germany on the horizon, Harry Clifton has joined the merchant marines to escape long buried family secrets that have just come to light. The very day that Britain declares war on Germany, a U-boat sinks Harry's ship. While recovering on a passing American cruise liner, Harry seizes the chance to escape his tangled past by stealing the identity of an American killed in the explosion. But upon landing in America, he quickly finds how mistaken he was when he — as his taken identity, Tom Bradshaw — is arrested for murder. Without any way of knowing the details of the charges, or of contacting his family across the Atlantic, or of even proving that he is anyone other than Bradshaw, Harry Clifton is trapped behind bars and chained to a past that is far worse than the one he had hoped to escape. Atkins, Ace Robert Parker’s Lullaby When 14-year-old Mattie Sullivan asks Spenser to look into her mother’s murder, he’s not completely convinced that the police investigation four years ago was botched. Mattie is gruff, street-smart, and wise beyond her years, left to care for her younger siblings and an alcoholic grandmother in a dilapidated apartment in South Boston. But her need for closure and her determination to make things right hit Spenser: They’re the very characteristics he abides by. Mattie believes the man convicted of the crime is innocent and points Spenser to the drug dealers who she saw carrying her mother away hours before her murder. Neither the Boston PD nor the neighborhood thugs are keen on his dredging up the past, but as Spenser becomes more involved in the case, he starts to realize that Mattie may be onto something. Barnes, Julian The Sense of an Ending In Barnes' latest, winner of the 2011 Man-Booker Prize, protagonist Tony Webster has lived an average life with an unremarkable career, a quiet divorce, and a calm middle age. Now in his mid-60s, his retirement is thrown into confusion when he's bequeathed a journal that belonged to his brilliant school-friend, Adrian, who committed suicide 40 years earlier at age 22. Though he thought he understood the events of his youth, he's forced to radically revise what he thought he knew about Adrian, his bitter parting with his mysterious first lover Veronica, and must reflect on how he let life pass him by, safely and predictably. Bass, Jefferson The Inquisitor’s Key Miranda Lovelady, protégé of forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton, is spending the summer helping excavate a newly discovered chamber beneath the spectacular Palace of the Popes in Avignon, France. There she discovers a stone chest inscribed with a stunning claim: inside lie the bones of none other than Jesus of Nazareth. Faced with a case of unimaginable proportions, Miranda summons Brockton for help. Both scientists are skeptical — after all, fake relics abounded during the Middle Ages — but evidence for authenticity looks strong initially, and soon grows stronger. Brockton and Miranda link the bones to the haunting image on the Shroud of Turin, revered by millions as the burial cloth of Christ, and then a laboratory test finds the bones to be 2,000 years old. The finding triggers a deadly tug-of-war between the anthropologists, the Vatican, and a deadly zealot who hopes to use the bones to bring about the Second Coming — and trigger the end of time. Bell, Ted Phantom Counterspy Alex Hawke must catch a villainous megalomaniac obsessed with horrifying experiments in cyber warfare. The first and most bizarre event nearly becomes a monumental catastrophe when something goes awry at an American theme park, wreaking havoc on visitors looking for nothing more than a sun-splashed holiday. In a different part of the country, a USAF F-15 pilot, escorting another jet in the skies over the Midwest, inexplicably loses control of his plane, endangering the lives of several people and deeply puzzling those following his mission on the ground. Then, in the misty calm of a coastal California evening, the world's premier scientist on the subject of artificial intelligence gets a strange phone call. When he hangs up, he quietly grabs his coat and leaves for an after-dinner stroll from which he never returns. It's up to Hawke and the brilliant former inspector Ambrose Congreve to find out what could possibly be happening. But how does one identify and fight an enemy one can't see? Even these seasoned operatives are mystified. Is there really such a thing as an ultra-intelligent machine, a cyber weapon that can shift the geopolitical balance of power? In a hunt from Palo Alto, California, to the Russian frontier, to Cambridge University and the glistening Mediterranean aboard his newly christened and armed super- yacht Blackhawke, Alex Hawke is joined by the unstoppable Stokely Jones and his ex-CIA buddy Harry Brock as he moves closer to unmasking the scientist behind these extraordinary events, going nose-to- nose with an enemy unlike any he's fought before. Berry, Steve The Columbus Affair Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Tom Sagan has written hard-hitting articles from hot spots around the world. But when a controversial report from a war-torn region is exposed as a fraud, his professional reputation is ruined. Now he lives in virtual exile — haunted by bad decisions and the shocking truth he can never prove: that his downfall was a deliberate act of sabotage by an unknown enemy. But before Sagan can end his torment with suicide, fate intervenes in the form of an enigmatic stranger with a request that cannot be ignored. Zachariah Simon has the look of a scholar, the soul of a scoundrel, and the zeal of a fanatic. He also has Tom Sagan’s estranged daughter at his mercy. Simon desperately wants something only Sagan can supply: the key to a 500-year-old mystery, a treasure with explosive political significance in the modern world. For both Simon and Sagan the stakes are high, the goal intensely personal, and the consequences of opposing either man potentially catastrophic. On a perilous quest from Florida to Vienna to Prague, and finally to the mountains of Jamaica, the two men square off in a dangerous game. Along the way, both of their lives will be altered — and everything the world knows about Christopher Columbus will change. Bohjalian, Chris The Sandcastle Girls When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Syria, she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke College, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. The First World War is spreading across Europe, and she has volunteered on behalf of the Boston-based Friends of Armenia to deliver food and medical aid to refugees. There, Elizabeth becomes friendly with Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. When Armen leaves Aleppo to join the British Army in Egypt, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, and comes to realize that he has fallen in love with the wealthy, young American woman who is so different from the wife he lost. Flash forward to the present, where we meet Laura Petrosian, a novelist living in suburban New York. Although her grandparents’ ornate home was affectionately nicknamed the “Ottoman Annex,” Laura has never really given her Armenian heritage much thought. But when an old friend calls, claiming to have seen a newspaper photo of Laura’s grandmother promoting an exhibit at a Boston museum, Laura embarks on a journey back through her family’s history that reveals love, loss — and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations. Buckley, Christopher They Eat Puppies, Don’t They? In an attempt to gain congressional approval for a top-secret weapons system, Washington lobbyist "Bird" McIntyre teams up with sexy, outspoken neo-conservative Angel Templeton to pit the American public against the Chinese. When Bird fails to uncover an authentic reason to slander the nation, he and Angel put the Washington media machine to work spreading a rumor that the Chinese secret service is working to assassinate the Dalai Lama. Meanwhile in China, mild-mannered President Fa Mengyao and his devoted aide Gang are maneuvering desperately against sinister party hard-liners Minister Lo and General Han. Now Fa and Gang must convince the world that the People's Republic is not out to kill the Dalai Lama, while maintaining Fa's small margin of power in the increasingly militaristic environment of the party. On the home front, Bird must contend with a high-strung wife who entertains Olympic equestrian ambition, as the qualifying competition happens to be taking place in China. Things unravel abroad; Bird and Angel's lie comes dangerously close to reality, and as their relationship rises to a new level, so do mounting tensions between the two countries. Buckley takes on another hot-button political issue in his latest satire. Burke, Alafair Never Tell Sixteen-year-old Julia Whitmire appeared to have everything: a famous father, a luxurious Manhattan townhouse, a coveted spot at the elite Casden prep school. When she is found dead in her bathtub, her parents insist that their daughter would never take her own life. Julia's enviable world was more complicated than it seemed. The pressure to excel at Casden was enormous; abuse of prescription drugs ran rampant, and a search of Julia's computer reveals that she was engaged in a dangerous game of cyber bullying.