The Winner of the Brand New Copy of
American Ghost by Hannah Nordhaus is:
Brenda H. (shackgirl)
Congratulations! Your Book will be on the way to you soon!
Thank you to everyone who entered!
Free Book Friday Winner!
February 24th, 2019Free Book Friday – American Ghost
February 22nd, 2019
American Ghost by Hannah Nordhaus
The award-winning journalist and author of The Beekeeper’s Lament attempts to uncover the truth about her great-great-grandmother, Julia–whose ghost is said to haunt an elegant hotel in Santa Fe in this spellbinding exploration of myth, family history, and the American West. The dark-eyed woman in the long black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Vases of flowers appeared in new locations. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events: blankets ripped off while they slept, the room temperature plummeting, disembodied breathing, dancing balls of light. La Posada – “place of rest” had been a grand Santa Fe home before it was converted to a hotel. The room with the canopy bed had belonged to Julia Schuster Staab, the wife of the home’s original owner. She died in 1896, nearly a century before the hauntings were first reported. In American Ghost, Hannah Nordhaus traces the life, death, and unsettled afterlife of her great-great-grandmother Julia, from her childhood in Germany to her years in the American West with her Jewish merchant husband. American Ghost is a story of pioneer women and immigrants, ghost hunters and psychics, frontier fortitude and mental illness, imagination and lore. As she traces the strands of Julia’s life, Nordhaus uncovers a larger tale of how a true-life story becomes a ghost story and how difficult it can sometimes be to separate history and myth.
ISBN 9780062249203, Paperback
There are currently 12 members wishing for this book.
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We will choose 1 winner at random from comments we receive here on the Blog from PBS members.
You have until Sunday, February 24, 2019 at 12 noon EST, to leave a comment.
Good Luck to everyone!
Note: All the books given away on Free Book Friday are available in the PBS Market. We have thousands of new and new overstock titles available right now, with more added hourly. Some of the prices are amazing – and you can use a PBS credit to make the deal even better!
Free Book Friday Winner!
February 17th, 2019
The Winner of the brand new copy of
Robert Ludlum’s The Janus Reprisal
by
Debra J. (homemakerdeb)
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Free Book Friday – The Janus Reprisal
February 15th, 2019
Robert Ludlum’s The Janus Reprisal
With U.S. intelligence agencies wracked by internal power struggles and paralyzed by bureaucracy, the president was forced to establish his own clandestine group–Covert-One. It is activated only as a last resort, when the threat is on a global scale and time is running out. — THE JANUS REPRISAL — It begins with a terrorist attack. Covert-One operative Colonel Jon Smith is attending a conference in The Hague on infectious diseases, together with leading scientists and political figures from around the world. Without warning, the conference hotel is consumed in a bloodbath. Smith is caught in the crossfire and barely escapes . . . but not before discovering a picture of himself and two other targets in the pocket of one of the shooters.
But the hotel is not the only location under attack in The Hague. Bombs are going off at the train station, the airport, and the International Criminal Court, where Pakistani warlord Oman Dattar is being held while he’s tried for crimes against humanity. In the resulting chaos, the prisoner escapes.
Dattar nurses a special hatred for the United States and its allies. With his freedom, and access to a mysterious new weapon, Dattar puts in motion a murderous, ambitious plot to exact his revenge and bring down the West once and for all–unless Covert-One can stop him.
ISBN 9781455521708, Paperback
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We will choose 1 winner at random from comments we receive here on the Blog from PBS members.
You have until Sunday, February 17, 2019 at 12 noon EST, to leave a comment.
Good Luck to everyone!
Note: All the books given away on Free Book Friday are available in the PBS Market. We have thousands of new and new overstock titles available right now, with more added hourly. Some of the prices are amazing – and you can use a PBS credit to make the deal even better!
Fiction Review – Ashenden
February 12th, 2019
Ashenden: the British Agent by W. Somerset Maugham
Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)
These short stories are based on the author’s experiences as a spy during WWI. Prospective thrill-seekers are clearly warned off in Maugham’s introduction. He says, “The work of an agent in the Intelligence Department is on the whole extremely monotonous. A lot of it is uncommonly useless. The material it offers for stories is scrappy and pointless; the author has himself to make it coherent, dramatic and probable.”
The stories here have verbal dueling and furious thinking but are without car chases, gun play, or stuff blowing up. The fantastic characters would be familiar to readers who like John “Greenmantle” Buchan, such as the Hairless Mexican, femme fatale Giulia Lazzari, and hardcore Teuton Mrs. Caypor. In contrast to the earnest tone of writers like Buchan, Maugham writes in his usual bemused tone, always tolerant of flawed human nature.
I’ve read more of Maugham’s stories and novels than is perhaps healthy. I think, in terms of characterization, dialogue, and Maugham’s favorite themes (like abused love a la Of Human Bondage), these stories rank with his best like Cakes and Ale, The Narrow Corner, and The Razor’s Edge. Finally, for those into history of genres, with these stories Maugham unwittingly invented the genre of sophisticated espio-fiction, which Eric Ambler, John Le Carre and Alan Furst, among many others, later did so well.
Free Book Friday Winner!
February 11th, 2019
The Winner of the brand new copy of
Wouldn’t It Be Deadly:
An Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins Mystery
by D.E. Ireland is:
Jewl W. (wallja99)
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Thank you to everyone who entered!
Free Book Friday – Wouldn’t It Be Deadly
February 8th, 2019
Wouldn’t It Be Deadly:
An Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins Mystery
by D.E. Ireland
Following her successful appearance at an Embassy Ball — where Eliza Doolittle won Professor Henry Higgins’ bet that he could pass off a Cockney flower girl as a duchess — Eliza becomes an assistant to his chief rival Emil Nepommuck. After Nepommuck publicly takes credit for transforming Eliza into a lady, an enraged Higgins submits proof to a London newspaper that Nepommuck is a fraud. When Nepommuck is found with a dagger in his back, Henry Higgins becomes Scotland Yard’s prime suspect.
However, Eliza learns that most of Nepommuck’s pupils had a reason to murder their blackmailing teacher. As another suspect turns up dead and evidence goes missing, Eliza and Higgins realize the only way to clear the Professor’s name is to discover which of Nepommuck’s many enemies is the real killer. When all the suspects attend a performance of Hamlet at Drury Lane, Eliza and Higgins don their theatre best and race to upstage a murderer.
ISBN 9781250049353, Hardcover
There are currently 9 members wishing for this book.
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We will choose 1 winner at random from comments we receive here on the Blog from PBS members.
You have until Sunday, February 10, 2019 at 12 noon EST, to leave a comment.
Good Luck to everyone!
Note: All the books given away on Free Book Friday are available in the PBS Market. We have thousands of new and new overstock titles available right now, with more added hourly. Some of the prices are amazing – and you can use a PBS credit to make the deal even better!
