SUMMARY: As their outrageous misfortune continues, the Baudelaire orphans are shipped off to a miserable boarding school, where they befriend the two Quagmire triplets and find that they have been followed by the dreaded Count Olaf.

Everyone has their rough nights, but things have clearly taken a turn for the surreal when Angel, a young photographer, finds a group of drunken teenagers in the courtyard of his apartment building, taunting a young troll. Trolls are known in Scandinavian mythology as wild beasts like the werewolf, but this troll is just a small, wounded creature. Angel decides to offer it a safe haven for the night. In the morning Angel thinks he dreamed it all. But he finds the troll alive, well, and drinking from his toilet. What does one do with a troll in the city? Angel begins researching frantically. Angel searches the Internet, folklore, nature journals, and newspaper clippings, but his research doesn't tell him that trolls exude pheromones that have a profound aphrodisiac effect on all those around him. As Angel's life changes beyond recognition, it becomes clear that the troll is familiar with the man's most forbidden feelings, and that it may take him across lines he never thought he'd cross. A novel of sparkling originality, Troll is a wry, peculiar, and beguiling story of nature and man's relationship to wild things, and of the dark power of the wildness in ourselves.

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Steven Pressfield's The Profession. Brilliant at war, a master of politics, and a charismatic lover, Alcibiades was Athens’ favorite son and the city’s greatest general. A prodigal follower of Socrates, he embodied both the best and the worst of the Golden Age of Greece. A commander on both land and sea, he led his armies to victory after victory. But like the heroes in a great Greek tragedy, he was a victim of his own pride, arrogance, excess, and ambition. Accused of crimes against the state, he was banished from his beloved Athens, only to take up arms in the service of his former enemies. For nearly three decades, Greece burned with war and Alcibiades helped bring victories to both sides — and ended up trusted by neither. Narrated from death row by Alcibiades’ bodyguard and assassin, a man whose own love and loathing for his former commander mirrors the mixed emotions felt by all Athens, Tides of War tells an epic saga of an extraordinary century, a war that changed history, and a complex leader who seduced a nation.

This is the story of Father Damien Modeste, priest to his beloved people, the Ojibwe. Modeste, nearing the end of his life, dreads the discovery of his physical identity -- for he is a woman who has lived as a man. For more than a half century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved people, the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse. To complicate his fears, his quiet life changes when a troubled colleague comes to the reservation to investigate the life of the perplexing, difficult, possibly false saint Sister Leopolda. Father Damien alone knows the strange truth of Sister Leopolda's piety and is faced with the most difficult decision of his life: Should he reveal all he knows and risk everything? Or should he manufacture a protective history though he believes Leopolda's wonder-working is motivated by evil?

The Twin Novae battle had been one of the last of the Idiran war, one of the most horrific. Desperate to avert defeat, the Idirans had induced not one but two suns to explode, snuffing out worlds & biospheres teeming with sentient life. They were attacks of incredible proportion--gigadeathcrimes. But the war ended & life went on. Now, 800 years later, light from the 1st explosion is about to reach the Masaq' Orbital, home to the Culture's most adventurous & decadent souls. There it will fall upon Masaq's 50 billion inhabitants, gathered to commemorate the deaths of the innocent & to reflect, if only for a moment, on what some call the Culture's own complicity in the terrible event. Also journeying to Masaq' is Major Quilan, an emissary from the war-ravaged world of Chel. In the aftermath of the conflict that split his world apart, most believe he has come to Masaq' to bring home Chel's most brilliant star & self-exiled dissident, the honored Composer Ziller. Ziller claims he will do anything to avoid a meeting with Quilan, who he suspects has come to murder him. But the Major's true assignment will have far greater consequences than the death of a mere political dissident, as part of a conspiracy more ambitious than even he can know--a mission his superiors have buried so deeply in his mind that even he can't remember it. Hailed by SFX magazine as "an excellent hopping-on point if you've never read a Banks SF novel before," Look to Windward is an awe-inspiring immersion into the wildly original, vividly realized civilization Banks calls the Culture.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has opened up a vast market, but how do you sell things to a generation that only knows one brand of cola? Gangsters, spin doctors and drug dealers scheme and collude in this humorous satire on consumer culture.

New York City is fun to write about. Almost anything any thrillfest you can imagine ... short of being shot into space or hired as Lady Gaga's tailor ... is likely to happen. Whenever I think I'm wrong about that I am proven, well, wrong.For example, when beginning a yarn set in Central Park I wanted to show how wild the place can be and so cast about for wild animals to place there. I thought, a resident falcon or two, some exotic migratory birds, a large murder of crows, perhaps I would take a chance and install a beaver in one of the ponds. Then Amy Eddings of WNYC, the city's Public Radio station, broadcast an April Fools Day report about a plan—taken very seriously by some community groups—to introduce wolves into Central Park.That was just as I was beginning to write "Murder in Central Park." I dreamed up a canopy researcher living in a cabin in the treetops so as better to observe tool-making behavior in crows, a scientist crammed into a far corner of the park studying...

She's an ex-assassin. He's ex-military. Together they are Clean Scene Inc, where blood splatter matters, and these vamps, along with their adorable vampire kitty, are on the case.

Welcome to Grace Valley, California---where blood runs thicker...ties bind stronger...and love is all the more sweet. Visitors to the town often remark about the valley's peace and beauty---both of which are plentiful. Unlocked doors, front porches, pies cooling in the windows---this is country life at its finest. But visitors don't always see what lies at the heart of a community. Or just beyond... June Hudson grew up in Grace Valley, the daughter of the town doctor. Leaving only to get her medical training, she returned home and followed in her father's footsteps. Some might say she chose the easy, comfortable route...but June knows better. For June, her emergency room is wherever she's needed---or wherever a patient finds her. Always on call, her work is her life, these people her extended family. Which is a good thing, since this is a town where you should have picked your husband in the ninth grade. Grace Valley is not exactly the place to meet eligible men---until an undercover DEA agent suddenly starts appearing at all sorts of strange hours. Everybody has secrets down in the valley. Now June has one of her own.

These thirteen folktales have one thing in common: brainy, brawny, brave heroines--and not one damsel in distress! From Bradamante, the fierce female medieval knight, to Li Chi, the Chinese girl who slays a dreaded serpent and saves her town, these heroines use their cunning, wisdom, and strength to succeed. Drawing from diverse cultures around the world, renowned author Jane Yolen celebrates the smart, strong, and sassy heroines of legend and lore in a collection that will encourage bravery in every girl.

New York Times bestselling author Anne Bishop returns to the world of her Black Jewels Trilogy with a prequel that follows a man who is determined to rebel against the course set before him...Jared is a Red-Jeweled Warlord bound as a pleasure slave by the Ring of Obedience. After suffering nine years of torment as a slave, he murdered his owner and escaped—only to be caught and sold into slavery once again.   Purchased by a notorious queen, Jared fears he will share the mysterious fate of her other slaves—never to be seen again—and so prepares himself for death. But the Gray Lady may not be what she seems and Jared soon faces a difficult decision: his freedom, or his honor...