A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities

I am sure that you know very well the story A Tale of Two Cities written by Charles Dickens. It is, in fact, the story of the uprisings in France. Beginning with a man named Jerry Cruncher who is chasing a mail coach holding, he delivers a letter to Lorry telling him that he needs to wait in the city he is traveling to (Dover) for a young woman. He meets the young woman, named Lucie Manette, which tells him that her father (thought dead) has been found in Paris. Lorry brings Lucie to Paris, traveling first to a city called Saint Antoine where they meet the Defarge's. They are the leaders of a group called the "Jacques" who are the revolutionaries that are also housing Lucie's father (in such agony after his imprisonment in the Bastille for eighteen years). The family is reunited, but Dr. Manette (Lucie's Father) is still distressed.

In 1780 a man named Charles Darnay is on trial for treason. Two british spies are trying to frame the innocent Darnay for their own profit, but in the court room Darnay is saved from the death penalty. Charles becomes very fond of Lucie Manette, starting to fall in love. After the French government discovers the things of Charles past and his true identity, the best of times turns into the worst. The Defarge's lead an attack on The Bastille were Dr. Manette was held prisoner, as a revolt against the French aristocracy. Mister Defarge discovers the the letter in Dr. Manette's jail cell that will change someone's life forever. Will Lucie and Charles remain together? Will be Dr. Manette sent back to the place that he suffered so long ago? Will France ever be able to find its peace?

In a few words this was the plot synopsis. If you didn’t have the book around, you can search pdf files in order to download it for free. I personally enjoyed reading this story. There were many things in this book that I found extraordinary: the way that Dickens is able to connect all of the characters to each other, or the descriptive level of the book, Dickens being sure that doesn't miss any detail, making possible for the reader to picture out the entire image.

In conclusion, I would recommend this book because you will be able to learn a lot from it. There is a lot of suspense and it is hard to tell what is going to happen next. If you like history then you will like for sure this book. After you’ve started it, is very hard to put it down and I guarantee that you will want to read more and more until you will be able to find out how it ends.

The Invisible Bridge

The Invisible Bridge

The Invisible Bridge is the first novel written by Julie Orringer. Published in May 2010, it is a marvelous achievement. The author of the novel has that rare talent that makes a 600-page story very readable, even at its grimmest. Building vivid worlds in effortless phrases, she takes us in 1930s Budapest just as a young Hungarian Jew, Andras Lévi, departs for the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris. He hones his talent for design, works backstage in a theater, and allies with other Jewish students in defiance of rising Nazi influence. And then he meets Klara, a captivating Hungarian ballet instructor nine years his senior with a painful past and a willful teenage daughter. Against Klara's better judgment, love engulfs them, drowning out the rumblings of war for a time. But inevitably, Nazi aggression drives them back to Hungary, where life for the Jews goes from hardship to horror.

The World War II and the Holocaust have been covered so extensively in many formats, and yet there are so many under represented stories. This book takes up one of these side stories, the story of Jews in Hungary, and brings the day-to-day realities of the war to life just to touch you in the way, only a personal story can.

The brilliance of Orringer's novel is the tender and poignant testimony of the human spirit, the fragile structure of a human being standing against the barbaric forces of history. As I said before, it is a touching story of the power of love, the foundation of life which withstands the horror and tragedy, grief and despair of war.

The Hand That First Held Mine

The Hand That First Held Mine

In the novel The Hand That First Held Mine (published on April 12, 2010), Maggie O'Farrell interweaves two seemingly unconnected stories: that of Lexie Sinclair, living in post-WWII London, and Elina Vilkuna, a denizen of present-day London.

The story develops when Alexandra Sinclair (renamed Lexie by the love of her life, Innes Kent) leaves her traditional family and moves to London. The setting is bohemian post war London in the 1950's when most women lived with their families or boarding houses for women only. Lexie is unconventional: she is ahead of her time, independent, and passionate and wants to carve a niche for herself. With the help and high powered love of Innes, she becomes knowledgeable about art and turns herself into a credible reporter. She works hard and is rewarded with like-minded friends. Tragedy befalls her and eventually she ends up an "unwed" mother out of choice. Throughout her travails, she holds onto her passion for Innes and confidence in herself as a mother and journalist.

Decades later, another woman in London, has a near death experience giving birth to her son, Jonah. Elina is also not married but is a loyal, bright companion to Ted, the father of her child. She is also an artist and has a solid understanding of contemporary art and its value. Ted, who is nearly paralyzed by nearly losing Elina during labor, begins to recover lost memories. These memories traumatize him and he experiences deep loss.

O'Farrell alternates these plots artfully, always keeping the incorrigible Lexie in forward motion, while letting Ted and Elina wade further back in time. Inevitably, the two stories collide, and the result is a remarkably taut and unsentimental whole that embraces the unpredictable, both in love and in life.

The Imperfectionists: A Novel

The Imperfectionists: A Novel

In Tom Rachman's debut novel, The Imperfectionists, his experience as foreign correspondent and editor at a scrappy English-language newspaper in Rome is the key. The novel (published in April 2010) is focused on the personal lives of various news reporters, executives, copy editors, and the reader. Each chapter focuses on one individual and is a story all its own; together, the whole is greater than the part of its sums and represents the trials, tribulations, and occasional rewards of those involved with an international English language newspaper.

The chaos of the newsroom becomes a stage for characters unified by a common thread of circumstance, with each chapter presenting an affecting look into the life of a different player. From the comically overmatched greenhorn to the forsaken foreign correspondent, we suffer through the painful heartbreaks of unexpected tragedy and struggle to stifle our laughter in the face of well-intentioned blunders. This cacophony of emotion blends into a single voice, as the depiction of a paper deemed a "daily report on the idiocy and the brilliance of the species" becomes more about the disillusion in everyday life than the dissolution of an industry.

Author Tom Rachman has been a journalist and editor overseas, so this book about the lives of foreign stringers, devoted readers, and jaded newsroom employees is right up his alley. The Imperfectionists: A Novel covers people whose quirks, machinations, fates, and sorrows shape their lives as they doggedly put out at least one edition every day. They aren't romantic figures or dashing heroes. They are people with fears, regrets, secrets, resentments, jealousies, and nearly unbearable hurts. Thanks to Rachman's abilities, the paper's dysfunctional, memorable bunch reminds us that most of us aren't hugely successful, beautiful, or happy, yet life still goes on at one level or another. This conglomeration of stories that gingerly coalesce to form a dreadful picture of the imperfection that both plagues and yet sustains humanity (all within the confines of a struggling newspaper in Rome) highly recommends Rachman's novel.

House Rules: A Novel

House Rules: A Novel

In House Rules, Jodi Picoult explores the complex world of Emma Hunt, who is almost entirely focused on helping her eighteen-year-old son, Jacob, learn to communicate appropriately with his family and peers. This is a difficult task, considering the fact that Jacob has Asperger's syndrome, a disorder characterized by a compulsive attachment to order and routine, a tendency to take comments literally, hypersensitivity to bright lights, human touch, and scratchy fabrics, a reluctance to make eye contact, lack of empathy, painful bluntness, and difficulty relating to others. Emma's life is complicated by the fact that her husband, Henry, left shortly after their younger son, Theo, was born. Fifteen-year-old Theo deeply resents the amount of time and money that his mother spents on his older brother.

The author of this book (published on March 2, 2010), effectively conveys the anguish of a single parent who invests almost all of her energy trying to give her son a chance to enjoy a fulfilling life. But the price that she pays is steep, not just financially, but emotionally. Emma has few pleasures, no vacations, and no luxuries; her younger son must settle for whatever time and attention she can spare. Picoult's narrative device of allowing each character to convey his or her thoughts in alternating chapters works well. In spite of its length (over five hundred pages), the story moves along briskly and is helped immeasurably by sharply written dialogue and liberal doses of humor.

House Rules has lively courtroom theatrics and a dash of romance. Although the plot has gaping holes as well as a bit too much sermonizing, Picoult wisely avoid overdosing on melodrama and sentiment. She drives home a theme that is close to her heart: Family members may occasionally loathe one another, but it is well worth the effort to make peace. This is an engaging, entertaining, moving, and at times, eloquent work of fiction. In conclusion, House Rules looks at what it means to be different in our society, how autism affects a family, and how the legal system works well for people who communicate a certain way, and fails those who don't.

Becoming a True Dad

Becoming a True Dad

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Raising a Father. All opinions are 100% mine.

A wile ago I wrote about a book titled Raising a Father, a book about a father who realized, at the edge of 37, that he did not know his daughter at all. At that time I didn’t knew much about the book or the author himself, but since I grew up with no father figure in my entire life, perhaps this is the reason for which I found it very touching.

Raising a Father tells the story of Raka, the daughter of Sen, who used all her charm, love and caring nature to teach her father how to be a better dad, and in the end a better person. On the other hand, Sen is a corporate employee who learned at a point in his life, that he is loosing his father-daughter future. As a result, he promptly quit his highly successful career in the corporate world in order to start a home-based marketing consulting company in Denver, named his daughter as manager, and began the journey of becoming a true father. After that he learned how to measure the real success: by having a strong relationship with his daughter.

This book will teach every man that success depends on spending more time with the loved ones, on being there for every special moment and on surrounding them with love, encouragement, tolerance, acceptance, approval, recognition, kindness or security. For the rest of you out there who would love to become the best fathers they can be, watch the following video or grab your copy of this precious book.

Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

William Boyd is a literary craftsman whose skills keep the reader enthralled and informed from the first page to the last. In his surprising new novel, William Boyd explores how one chance occurrence can evolve rapidly into a life-leveling storm. Climatologist Adam Kindred is trying to establish a new life in London (far from his failed marriage and ruined career in the US) when he inadvertently stumbles upon a botched murder and becomes the chief suspect. Boyd manages to breathe new life into the wrong-man tale, weaving together vivid back-stories of intriguing characters, from the hired killer desperate to clean up his mess, to the ruthless executives out for profit, to the hardscrabble individuals Kindred meets while on the run. Ordinary Thunderstorms is anything but ordinary: an ambitious, engaging thriller that also raises questions about identity, religion, and social responsibility.

Boyd takes the readers into the times, places and events with unerring skill, drawing out the characters with exquisite detail of appearance, speech, environment, motivation and behavior. This is a thriller of extraordinary dimensions, and one can only hope it will be filmed, to provide again counterpoint to the mindless drivel that passes increasingly for movie entertainment these days.

A Reliable Wife: A Novel of Intensity and Raw Power

A Reliable Wife: A Novel of Intensity and Raw Power

A Reliable Wife is a novel of intensity and raw power. On its own rather masochistic terms, it offers love of the deepest kind. This novel will appeal widely, but likely most to those who crave a bold but somewhat perverse love story featuring very flawed characters. They, despite their cravenness, reach out to readers and demand notice and even grudging respect and affection. Although this novel is a certified page-turner, it can feel chaotic and contradictory due to a narrative consisting often of characters' uncensored, roiling feelings and streams of consciousness.

When wealthy businessman Ralph Truitt stood on the icy railroad platform waiting for the late train to deposit his mail order wife-to-be before him, he was expecting a woman of plain appearance with a missionary history; someone who could presumably make his house into a home and who could withstand the pressures of living in a still untamed country. That was what his ad had asked for: a reliable wife. When she disembarked the train, Catherine Land's beautiful face didn't match the picture she had sent Truitt and he told her flatly: "maybe you thought I was a fool. You were wrong". But a howling storm stopped Ralph from interrogating her there and then. And as the horses drew Truitt's carriage toward his estate in blinding snow, fate stepped in and won this woman a renewed offer to become Mrs. Truitt, which was what she wanted.

Well, more precisely, she wanted what she intended would follow shortly: widowhood and the inheritance of Truitt's amassed estate. She had brought what she needed to implement her deadly scheme. Possessed of a scandalous past she would keep secret at all costs, Catherine had so much experience with men she was confident she could murder and yet remain emotionally unencumbered. Ralph was no saint himself, but he carried an ingrained self-flagellating and resigned spirit. Wounds of love and lust had scarred him terribly two decades ago. Now alone and, for all intents and purposes, heirless at fifty-four, Ralph felt despair. He knew it wasn't unique to himself. He knew "the winters were too long," causing insanity, suicide, starvation, axe murders, and mostly silent desperation and depression.

A Reliable Wife seethes with savage passions which the author pens with an operatic flair. The prose is sometimes alarming: "He wanted to slice her open and lie inside the warm blood of her body." However, Goolrick also excels in memorable passages of a recuperative nature: as a beautiful garden scene poignantly illustrates. A Reliable Wife is a novel of intensity and raw power.

Best Books of 2009: Literature & Fiction

Best Books of 2009: Literature & Fiction

Below, are presented the best ten books of 2009 for literature and fiction. The ranking was made according to the customer orders on Amazon.com, only books published for the first time in 2009 being eligible. So, here they are:

Let the Great World Spin: A Novel by Colum McCann releassed on December 2, 2009. In the dawning light of a summer morning, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal", the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.

Wolf Hall: A Novel by Hilary Mantel releassed on October 13, 2009. No other character from the history has been writ larger than Henry VIII, but that didn't stop Hilary Mantel. She strides through centuries, past acres of novels, histories, biographies, and plays confident in the knowledge that to recast history's most mercurial sovereign. But, it's not the King she needs to see, and one of the King's most mysterious agents, Thomas Cromwell. A self-made man and remarkable polymath, he ascends to the King's right hand. Having little interest in what motivates his Majesty, and although he makes way for Henry's marriage to the infamous Anne Boleyn, Cromwell is honored and hopes to secure a free future to England.

Brooklyn: A Novel by Colm Toibin releassed on May 5, 2009. Committed to a quiet life in little Enniscorthy, Ireland, the industrious young Eilis Lacey finds herself swept up in an unplanned adventure to America, engineered by the family priest and her glamorous sister, Rose. Eilis's determination to embrace the spirit of the journey makes a bittersweet center for Brooklyn. The Author's spare portrayal of this contemplative girl is achingly lovely, and every sentence rings with truth. Readers will find themselves swept across the Atlantic with Eilis to a boarding house in Brooklyn where she painstakingly adapts to a new life, reinventing herself and her surroundings in the letters she writes home.

This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper releassed on August 6, 2009. This is a wonderful book and will make laugh out loud to everybody who will read it. Is a truly incandescent story about love of all kinds and forgiveness. Judd Foxman is separated and heading towards divorce, unemployed, and living in a basement apartment, all of which are directly related to the affair his wife Jen is having with Wade, Judd's boss. Then Foxman's father dies of cancer, leaving a final request that his entire family sit shiva seven days, and Judd and his siblings return to the suburban home where they grew up. This of course means seven days in his parent's house with his dysfunctional family, including his mom, a sexy, "I've-still-got-it" shrink fond of making horrifying TMI statements; his older sister, Wendy, and her distracted hubby and three kids; his older brother, Paul, and his wife; and his youngest brother, Phillip, the "Paul McCartney of our family: better-looking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pictures, and occasionally rumored to be dead."

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore releassed on September 1, 2009. After 11 years since Author’s last book and 15 since her last novel, Moore brings to the attention of the readers the portrait of a Midwest college town seen through the eyes of Tassie Keltjin, a student from the country whose mind has been lit up by learning but who spends nearly all this story out of class, as a nanny for a couple who have adopted a toddler. Tassie's a bit of a toddler herself, testing the world as if through her teeth, and she finds the world stranger and more deeply wounded the more she learns of it. Her investigations make A Gate at the Stairs sad, hilarious, and thrillingly necessary.

Tinkers by Paul Harding releassed on January 1, 2009. Harding's outstanding debut unfurls the history and final thoughts of a dying grandfather surrounded by his family in his New England home. George Washington Crosby repairs clocks for a living and on his deathbed revisits his turbulent childhood as the oldest son of an epileptic smalltime traveling salesman. The descriptions of the father's epilepsy and the cold halo of chemical electricity that encircled him immediately before he was struck by a full seizure are stunning, and the household's sadness permeates the narrative as George returns to more melancholy scenes.

Spooner by Pete Dexter releassed on September 24, 2009. This book is about Warren Spooner, a sad sack. His mother despises him as the surviving twin from a hideously painful delivery. He's not very smart, and his one redeeming talent (baseball) is nullified by catastrophic injury. He gets into trouble, a lot. Though he manages to organize his life through marriage and a job, the self-destructive behavior endures.

Sag Harbor: A Novel by Colson Whitehead releassed on April 28, 2009. The action of the books takes the readers to the year 1985. The 15-year-old Benji Cooper, one of the only black students at his elite Manhattan private school, leaves the city to spend three largely unsupervised months living with his younger brother Reggie in an enclave of Long Island's Sag Harbor, the summer home to many African American urban professionals. Benji's a Converse-wearing, Smiths-loving, Dungeons & Dragons-playing nerd whose favorite Star Wars character is the hapless bounty hunter Greedo. But Sag Harbor is a coming-of-age novel whose plot side-steps life-changing events writ large. The book's leisurely eight chapters mostly concern Benji's first kiss, the removal of braces, BB gun battles, slinging insults with his friends, and working his first summer job.

The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vásquez releassed on July 30, 2009. A virtuosic novel about family, history, memory, and betrayal from the brightest new Latin American literary talent working today. When Gabriel Santoro's biography is scathingly reviewed by his own father, a public intellectual and famous Bogotá rhetorician, Gabriel could not imagine what had pierced his icy exterior to provoke such a painful reaction. A volume that catalogues the life of Sara Guterman, a longtime family friend and Jewish immigrant, since her arrival in Colombia in the 1930s, A Life in Exile seemed a slim, innocent exercise in recording modern history.

Cutting for Stone: A novel by Abraham Verghese releassed on February 3, 2009. Lauded for his sensitive memoir about his time as a doctor in eastern Tennessee at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, Verghese turns his formidable talents to fiction, mining his own life and experiences in a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations. Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a devout young nun, leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the arduous sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor bound for Ethiopia, Thomas Stone, who becomes a key player in her destiny when they meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa.

Sources: 1 / 2

Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Mastering the Art of French Cooking

With the help of this book, you will learn how to cook the basic French recipes. Mastering the Art of French Cooking, published on the 1st of December, represent the perfect gift for any lover of the French food. This boxed set brings together Mastering the Art of French Cooking, first published in 1961, and its sequel, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume Two, published in 1970.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking is for both seasoned cooks and beginners who love good food and long to reproduce at home the savory delights of the classic cuisine, from the historic Gallic masterpieces to the seemingly artless perfection of a dish of spring-green peas. The techniques learned in this book, with more than one hundred instructive illustrations, can be applied to recipes in all other cookbooks, making them infinitely usable. In compiling the secrets of famous Cordon Bleu chefs, the authors produced a magnificent volume that continues to have a place of honor in all kitchens.

Sources: 1

Raising a Father

Raising a Father

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Raising a Father. All opinions are 100% mine.

Raising a Father is not just a book written by Arjun Sen, it is a father’s memorable experience, a father who realized, at the edge of 37, that he did not know his daughter at all. It is an experience that many people gone through, but they are too busy to see it and to learn the lesson. The book brings out this simple message of re-adjusting the priorities, before being too late.

Each story of the book marks the journey of a father which leaves behind the corporate world in order to become a real dad. First of all, here is emphasized the importance of taking responsibility in relationships and introduced the concept of taking measure of your relationships. Seeing the relationship with his daughter reduced only to phone calls on birthdays, the author left corporate America. The journey of becoming a true father began with the establishment of a home-based consulting company in Denver, which is the favorite city of his 10-year-old daughter. Today, Arjun Sen measures the success differently: his daughter leaves for college in a few years, and he believes that his success is determined by the time spent with her. Raising a Father is the story of a young daughter using all her charm, patience, love, and caring nature to teach her father how to be a better dad and person.

After reading the entire book, you will want for sure to share it with all your friends. Watch also the trailer of the book, if what lays written above doesn’t convinced you to pick it up and read it…

Books Affiliate Programs

Books Affiliate Programs

Making money from reviewing books and by participating to an affiliate program, is an option that should be considered if your blog category allows it. The products featured in this category can include many of your favorite options where your readers can go to purchase what you recommend. After signing up for one of these affiliate programs, you can feature the ads on your site and begin to earn money. When you recommend the books you liked and include links right from there where people can buy them, you will see yourself get paid for reviewing books and doing what you love. Below are presented some of the most popular programs related to this category.

Barnes and Noble – this program offers 2.5% to 8.5% commission on sales. The products included in the campaign are books (millions of out-of-print and used books), magazines, music, video, electronic books, gift certificates and software. The frequency of payments is monthly by checks.

Audible – being the leading seller of audio books on the Internet, with over 50,000 titles, Audible offers content that is easily listenable on the PC, Mac or iPod or that can be burned to an audio CD. If you choose to be a part of this program, you will have the opportunity to promote best selling authors like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Danielle Steele, Maya Angelou and Tom Clancy among others. The affiliates can earn from $3.50 to $25 per sale and will be paid on a monthly basis by check.

CampusBook - represents a student-focused textbook shopping site. It compares prices on millions of new and used books from the top bookstores and allows students to compare prices on multiple books at once. Affiliates can earn 15 cents per lead. The frequency of payments is monthly and the transferring of funds is made by check.

A Friend of the Family

A Friend of the Family

In A Friend of the Family (published in November 10, 2009), the author, Lauren Grodstein, speaks about a contemporary suburban drama that, with each turn of the page, takes the reader on the weight of an American tragedy. As the book opens, Peter Dizinoff, a successful doctor from New Jersey, is struggling to adjust to the aftermath of his actions as he sees his personal and professional life cracking beneath his feet. At the center of these troubles is his beloved son Alec, who deflates his father's high expectations when he drops out of college after just three semesters and moves into the apartment above their garage. And when his son begins seeing Laura, the troubled daughter of Peter's best friend who is ten years older than Alec and lives in the tainted shadow of being acquitted for an unspeakable crime when she was 17, Alec's ambivalence to his father's hopes in living a good life turns into a simmering rage.

I picked this up this book from the new fiction shelf, in the library right across the street from my home. It is a well written novel, being pretty much a string of flashback memories that presents the current position in life of the protagonist, Dr. Pete Dizinoff. With elegant prose, Grodstein beautifully conveys the struggles of family even as the protagonist is forced, through his own arrogance to finally question his moral compass and the decisions that have bought him to this time and place. It is really a wonderful novel.

The Road Out of Hell

The Road Out of Hell

The Road Out of Hell written by Anthony Flacco and published in November 3, 2009, presents the disturbing true story of a 13-year-old boy, Sanford Clark, sent to live with his uncle on an isolated farm in California in 1926 where was held captive till the age of 15. Clark becomes quickly subject to all kind of abuse by his uncle, Gordon Stewart Northcott, a psychopath and sadist who lures young boys to the farm to sexually assault, torture and kill them. Forced by Northcott to take part in the murders, Sanford carried tremendous guilt all his life. Yet despite his youth and the trauma, he helped gain some justice for the dead and their families by testifying at Northcott’s trial, which led to his conviction and execution.

Amazingly, the book not shows just a picture of an almost unimaginable evil, but also gives us the picture of Sanford Clark, who was one man able to transcend the evil into which he was forced by his uncle and to become uncommonly good: as a decorated WWII vet, a devoted husband of 55 years, a loving father and a productive citizen.

But in the end, The Road Out of Hell is a chilling look at a dark chapter in America's history.

Pursuit of Honor: A Novel

Pursuit of Honor: A Novel

Vince Flynn is the number one New York Times bestselling authors of nine previous thrillers, including Consent to Kill, Act of Treason, and Protect and Defend.

The action of the book Pursuit of Honor: A Novel, published in October 13, 2009, begins six days after a series of explosions devastated Washington, targeting the National Counterterrorism Center and killing 185 people, including public officials and CIA employees. It was a bizarre act of extreme violence that called for extreme measures on the part of elite counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp and his trusted team member, Mike Nash. Now that the initial shock of the catastrophe is over, key Washington officials are up in arms over whether to make friends or foes of the agents who stepped between the enemy's bullets and countless American lives regardless of the legal consequences. Not for the first time, Rapp finds himself in the frustrating position of having to illustrate the realities of national security to politicians whose view from the sidelines is inevitably obstructed.

Meanwhile, three of the al Qaeda terrorists are still at large, and Rapp has been unofficially ordered to find them by any means necessary. No one knows the personal, physical, and emotional sacrifices required of the job better than Rapp. When he sees Nash cracking under the pressure of the mission and the memories of the horrors he witnessed during the terrorist attack, he makes a call he hopes will save his friend, and get him one step closer to the enemy before it's too late. Once again, Rapp proves himself to be a hero unafraid "to walk the fine line between the moral high ground and violence" (The Salt Lake Tribune) for the country's safety, for the sake of freedom, for the pursuit of honor.

Have a Little Faith: A True Story

Have a Little Faith: A True Story

Mitch Albom is an author, playwright, journalist and screenwriter who has written six books, including the international bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie. His first two novels (The Five People You Meet in Heaven and For One More Day), were instant number one New York Times bestsellers. All three books mentioned above were made into acclaimed TV films.

In Have a Little Faith, Mitch Albom offers a beautifully written story of a remarkable eight year journey between two worlds, journey that will inspire readers everywhere. The book (published in September 29, 2009) begins with an unusual request: an eighty-two-year-old rabbi from author's old hometown asks him to deliver his eulogy. Feeling unworthy, Albom insists on understanding the man better, which throws him back into a world of faith he'd left years ago. Meanwhile, closer to his current home, Albom becomes involved with a Detroit pastor who preaches to the poor and homeless in a decaying church with a hole in its roof.

Moving between their worlds, Christian and Jewish, African-American and white, impoverished and well-to-do, the author observes how these very different men employ faith similarly in fighting for survival: the older, suburban rabbi embracing it as death approaches; the younger, inner-city pastor relying on it to keep himself and his church afloat. Have a Little Faith is a book about a life's purpose, about losing belief and finding it again, about the divine spark inside us all. It is one man's journey, but it is everyone's story.

The Templar Legacy: A Novel

The Templar Legacy: A Novel

Steve Berry, the author of the book, is the New York Times bestselling author of The Charlemagne Pursuit, The Venetian Betrayal, The Alexandria Link, The Third Secret or The Amber Room. His books have been translated into 37 languages and sold in 50 different countries.

The Templar Legacy, published in February 2006, is a thriller which tries to follow in the steps of The Da Vinci Code. The action of the book features rival groups of the Knights Templar searching for a lost treasure and a lost secret of the order. They unwittingly involve "Cotton" Malone, a former Justice Department agent, now an antiquarian book dealer in Copenhagen. When an unexpected call to action reawakens his hair-trigger instincts, he plunges back into the world he thought he had left behind.

The book begins with a violent robbery attempt on Cotton’s former supervisor, Stephanie Nelle, who’s far from home on a mission that has nothing to do with national security. Armed with vital clues to a series of centuries old puzzles scattered across Europe, she means to crack a mystery that has tantalized scholars and fortune hunters through the ages by finding the legendary cache of wealth and forbidden knowledge thought to have been lost forever when the order of the Knights Templar was exterminated in the fourteenth century. But she’s not alone. Competing for the historic prize and desperate for the crucial information Stephanie possesses is Raymond de Roquefort, a shadowy zealot with an army of assassins at his command. Welcome or not, Cotton seeks to even the odds in the perilous race. But the more he learns about the ancient conspiracy surrounding the Knights Templar, the more he realizes that even more than lives are at stake. At the end of a lethal game of conquest, rife with intrigue, treachery, and craven lust for power, lies a shattering discovery that could rock the civilized world and, in the wrong hands, bring it to its knees.

Best books in the first half of 2009

Best books in the first half of 2009

According to Amazon.com, below is a selection of the top 10 must-reads of the year so far:

Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey. Blake Bailey pays a monumental tribute to Cheever's legacy as an American master in Cheever: A Life. Written with compassion and the full cooperation of Cheever's widow and their three children, it chronicles the mournful arc of a lifetime, covering the author's childhood, his time in the army, his life as a writer and his literary rivals, and his struggle to play the role of suburban family man.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. Colum McCann has worked exquisite magic with this novel of electromagnetic force that defies gravity. It's August 1974, a summer when Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses New York City as a man on a cable walks between the World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary feat becomes the touchstone for ten stories that briefly submerge you in a series of varied, intense lives.

Fordlandia by Greg Grandin. With sales booming in the 1930s, Henry Ford saw opportunity in a downtrodden Brazilian economy. Once a global leader in rubber production, the region was in dire need of an economic savior. If the Ford Motor Company began manufacturing rubber in the Amazon jungle, they could become that messiah while dramatically lowering their own overhead. With meticulous research, Fordlandia explores how this dream of a "jungle economy" ultimately proved no match for Ford's own hubris.

The City & The City by China Mieville. The city is Beszel, a rundown Eastern European metropolis. The other city is Ul Qoma, a modern boomtown. What the two cities share, and what they don't, is the deliciously evocative conundrum of China Mieville's The City & The City. Using a seen-it-all detective's voice that's perfect for this story of seen and unseen, Mieville creates a world both fantastic and unsettlingly familiar, whose mysteries don't end with the solution of a murder.

The Lost City of Z by David Grann. In The Lost City of Z, New Yorker writer David Grann retraces the steps of renowned British explorer Percy Fawcett in his 1925 quest to discover the legendary kingdom of El Dorado in the heart of the Amazon. Grann dives into the jungle on a quest to find details of his sudden disappearance, a mystery that has led many would-be explorers to death or madness.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. Like Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved classic, Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden takes root in your imagination and grows into something enchanting--from a little girl with no memory, alone on a ship to Australia, to a fog-soaked London where orphans comfort themselves with stories of Jack the Ripper, to a Cornish sea heaving against cliffs crowned by an airless manor house, where an overgrown hedge maze ends in the walled garden of a cottage left to rot.

Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad. The facts of the story alone are breathtaking: an 11-year-old boy is the sole survivor of a small-plane crash in a blizzard in the California mountains. Writing 30 years later, Norman Ollestad cuts elegantly back and forth between the crash and his memories of his driven, charismatic father, who died on the mountain. More than a story of survival, Crazy for the Storm is a time-tempered reckoning with what it means to be a father and a son.

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. Committed to a quiet life in Ireland, Eilis Lacey reluctantly finds herself swept up in an adventure to America, engineered by the family priest and her spirited older sister, Rose. Eilis's determination to embrace the journey--especially on behalf of Rose, who has sacrificed her own chance of leaving--makes a bittersweet center for Brooklyn. Spare and lovely, with a haunted heroine who glows on the page, Colm Toibin's latest novel is a moving meditation on the immigrant experience.

The Gamble by Thomas Ricks. Fiasco, Thomas E. Ricks's first bestseller on the Iraq War, was superb and influential, but his follow-up, The Gamble, may be even better. Ricks tells a remarkable story of how a few people inside and outside the Pentagon pushed for the unpopular "surge," and then how soldiers put the difficult plan into action on the ground. But Ricks's conclusion is bracing: the war has not yet been won, and America is not done in Iraq.

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead. Sag Harbor--Colson Whitehead's "autobiographical fourth novel"--is a soulful coming-of-age chronicle of the lazy, sun-soaked days sandwiched between Memorial Day and Labor Day, filled with moments both celebratory and painfully funny and swimming with references to New Coke, The Cosby Show, and more memories of growing up in the 1980s.

The long-awaited new novel will be published by Dan Brown in September

The long-awaited new novel will be published by Dan Brown in September

Dan Brown’s new novel (the long-awaited follow-up to his no.1 international phenomenon, The Da Vinci Code), will be published on September 15, 2009. The Lost Symbol will once again feature Dan Brown’s unforgettable protagonist, Robert Langdon. This book’s narrative takes place in a twelve-hour period, and from the first page, the readers will feel the thrill of discovery as they follow Langdon through a masterful and unexpected new landscape.

The Lost Symbol is a brilliant and compelling thriller. Dan Brown’s prodigious talent for storytelling, infused with history, codes and intrigue, is on full display in this new book. This is one of the most anticipated publications in recent history, and it was well worth the wait, said Sonny Mehta, Chairman and Editor in Chief of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Referring to his new novel, the author declared: this novel has been a strange and wonderful journey. Weaving five years of research into the story's twelve-hour timeframe was an exhilarating challenge. Robert Langdon’s life clearly moves a lot faster than mine.