When former assistant D.A. Danny Chaisson goes to work for Creole politico Jimmy Boudrieux, he winds up witnessing a murder. He goes underground to avoid being assassinated by the killers or captured by the Louisiana police, who think he's a suspect. And when you're underground in New Orleans, you're really underground, as the author demonstrates with a series of noir set-pieces. Meanwhile, Chaisson's got women troubles, including a rocky relationship with his adolescent daughter.

California attorney Charlie Morell is an expert on the murderous Abakua cult that resides in his native Cuba. He's such an expert, in fact, that the Abakua feel that he might put a crimp in their violent rituals, so they frame him for murders they committed. Charlie enlists the aid of Mexican-American sleuth-attorney Rita Carr, and the two plunge into a mystery that moves from L.A. to Havana.

Kenny's parents divorce, but he continues to idolize his father, who is a pilot in the Air Force. But when his mother, Lenna, becomes involved with a rodeo rider--a local celebrity named Roddy--Kenny is thrilled. Then things begin to spiral downward: not only does Roddy have to leave town in a hurry, but Kenny's father is killed in an airplane crash. And Kenny and his new friend Cynthia get into some trouble. Kenny's growth toward maturity, however, keeps him steady as life around him crumbles and then goes on.

This riff on the prince and the pauper tale features two cousins--both mice--exchanging places for a spell, one to the city, the other to the country. Gouache paintings accompany the text.

A once-prosperous Depression-era family flees its Yankee roots to resettle in a small Southern town. Harry and Cynthia Baird and their daughter go south in order to escape from financial and social problems, but they are bewildered--and, ultimately, enlightened and liberated--by the very different set of conventions they encounter.

This volume of 116 magnificent photographs Ansel Adams took of Yosemite and the surrounding area has become a classic in the field of nature photography.

This darkly satirical sf mystery is somewhat of a departure from Douglas Adams's internationally bestselling HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY series. Richard MacDuff, a bemused computer programmer, is propelled into a series of mysterious but inextricably interconnected events, involving the odd behavior of an extremely absentminded Cambridge professor, the senseless murder of his boss, the true meaning of Coleridge's two most famous poems, and a horse stuck in a bathroom. Only Richard's old college friend Dirk Gently, a somewhat shady, possibly psychic, and perennially underemployed PI, can trace the pattern to its source: an ancient ghost searching for a hidden time machine. Although DIRK GENTLY has never reached the same popularity as the HITCHHIKER'S books, it has a certain cult classic status. Fans of the British television series DOCTOR WHO will find DIRK GENTLY of interest, as it borrows plot elements from two scripts that Douglas Adams wrote for the series: "City of Death" and "Shada" (the filming of the latter was never completed due to a labor dispute). DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY was followed by a second Dirk book, THE LONG DARK TEATIME OF THE SOUL. A third book in the series, THE SALMON OF DOUBT, was incomplete at the time of Adams's death; the work-in-progress, along with some of Adams's collected writings, was published in 2002.

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY is not just a book--it's a phenomenon. It's based on a BBC radio series that also spawned four other books, a TV series, a 2005 film, a text-based computer adventure game, and a website. As the story begins, Arthur Dent is having a bad day. First, the town council knocked his house down to build a local bypass. Then a fleet of alien spaceships blew up his planet to make way for an intragalactic bypass. Can things get any worse? Possibly. Having been rescued from the Earth's destruction by his friend Ford Prefect, Arthur embarks upon a hectic, hysterically funny adventure that includes torturously bad poetry, a depressed robot, the two-headed President of the Galaxy (currently on the lam), and the legendary planet-building planet of Magrathea. Arthur's only consolation is the wise advice printed on the cover of that classic tome, THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY: "Don't Panic." HITCHHIKER'S has developed a cult classic status that extends beyond SF fans, and people enjoy swapping quotes from it in much the same way that they exchange quotes from MONTY PYTHON. Although there is an extensive crop of British writers who write humorous fantasy in much the same vein, such as Terry Pratchett and Tom Holt, no one has quite been able to make the splash in satirical SF that Adams has.

In his ninth mystery, private detective Carl Wilcox investigates the year-old murder of a promising local girl. Gwendolyn Wescott was smart and beautiful, and she was Sunday school teacher Chris Kilbride's favorite pupil. When Gwendolyn was discovered missing and later found dead after having been raped and strangled in the church basement, all fingers pointed to Chris. But a year has passed, and the mystery remains unsolved by police who have yet to find enough evidence to create a suspect. Is Carl the man for the job?