Search Results: Authors starting with V from Petes Loved Books

London, England: Sheridan, 1993. WELL READ PAPERBACK. CREASES TO THE SPINE AND COVERDuring the Depression, Jess--eighteen, beautiful, and gently raised--promises her dying father that she will care for her little sister, Tillie, and enters a world of dark streets, shame, blackmail, and additional frightening promises

Secaucus, N.J: Citadel Press, 1976. SOFT COVER. Used. SLIGHT CREASING ON THE SPINEThis biography of Lana Turner focuses on her career as an actress and her motion pictures.

Not Listed: HarperCollins, Not recorded. Used. When in 1705 Kornell Csillag's grandfather returns destitute to his native Hungary from exile, he happens across a gold fob-watch gleaming in the mud. The shipwrecked fortunes of the Csillag family suddenly take a new and marvelous turn. The golden watch brings an unexpected gift to the future generations of firstborn sons: clairvoyance. Passed down from father to son, this gift offers the ability to look into the future or back into history?for some it is considered a blessing, for others a curse. No matter the outcome, each generation records its astonishing, vivid, and revelatory visions into a battered journal that becomes known as The Book of Fathers. For three hundred years the Csillag family line meanders unbroken across Hungary's rivers and vineyards, through a land overrun by wolves and bandits, scarred by plague and massacre, and brutalized by despots. Impetuous, tenderhearted, and shrewd, the Csillags give birth to scholars and gamblers,… Read More

London: Grafton, 1988. Used. WELL READ PAPERBACK. SMALL TEARS ON THE BASE OF THE SPINE"[A] rewarding thriller...It contains enough twists and genuine surprises to keep the reader racing toward the satisfying final pages."THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWAlthough American painter Michael Doss has been schooled in the ancient ways of the warrior, he leads a quiet life. Until the tragic death of his father ignites the warrior spirit in his blood that will not be quenched until he uncovers the secret of his father's enigmatic life. His journey plunges him into a dangerous underworld, where he finds himself in lethal combat with a sinister Japanese organization that is bent on destroying the United States through global economic chaos. Doss is trapped. His only chance for survival is a final confrontation, face to face, with the vile assassin behind it all, Zero. "From the Paperback edition."

London: Harper Collins, 1995. Used.PAPERBACK EDITION.CREASES TO SPINE AND COVER.MARK ON FRONT COVEREric Lustbader, who delivers electrifying suspense in the #1 bestsellers featuring Robert Ludlum?s? Jason Bourne, sends an honor-bound Ninja on a death-defying mission deep in the Vietnamese jungle.A ruthless American killing machine named Rock rules over a secret, blood-soaked empire of riches and murder: Floating City. At his command is the Torch?the tool of ultimate evil that one man can destroy: Nicholas Linnear. But only when he faces the harrowing truth about the Yakuza?the Japanese criminal underworld he despises?and about Koei, the woman he loved as no other, will he find the inner strength to annihilate Floating City and honor his family?s debt to the dead of the Yakuza, the Kaisho. While half a world away, his longtime friend and ex-NYPD detective Lew Croaker hunts the Kaisho?s would-be assassins, Linnear infiltrates a vast web of terror, crossing the line that divides good from evil,… Read More

London: HarperCollins, 1994. Used.WELL READ PAPERBACK. CREASES TO THE SPINE AND COVERDiana Whitney is on the verge of winning an Oscar for her role in a controversial terror film. Suddenly she finds her private life invaded by a nightmare that matches the script . . .

Pan Macmillan, 2003. Used. Funny, personal, completely unexpected travel writing, and an incisive view into Australian life away from the big cities-Mango Country explores the notion that the further you venture from a nation's capital, the likelier you are to encounter its culture in the raw.Journeying around North Queensland, jungle tour-guide turned gonzo-journalist John van Tiggelen lingers in places that tourists are ill-advised, disinclined or simply unable to visit. He goes crocodile hunting, shoots a nude calendar for charity, joins the world's wildest cricket carnival, attends the opening of the Big Mango and flits around the Torres Strait on a wing and a prayer. En route he is harassed by cassowaries, bush poets, thong collectors, falling coconuts, numerous drunks, Bob Katter, the president of the Country Women's Association and the alien commander of 18 million spaceships, among others. But he also harasses them.At one level Mango Country is an irreverent profile of a province, but John… Read More

London: Little, Brown, 2007. Used. A dramatic and compelling portrait of two women's lifelong relationship set against the backdrop of half a century of apartheid in South AfricaHow can you speak when speech has been taken away? When the only person listening refuses to understand? Milla, trapped in silence by a deadly paralysing illness, confined to her bed, struggles to make herself heard by her maidservant and now nurse, Agaat. Contrary, controlling, proud, secretly affectionate, the two women, servant and mistress, are more than matched. Life for white farmers like Milla in the South Africa of the 1950s was full of promise - newly married, her future held the thrilling challenges of creating her own farm and perhaps one day raising children. Forty years later, the world Milla knew is as if seen in a mirror, and all she has left are memories and diaries. As death draws near, she looks back on good intentions and soured dreams, on a brutal marriage and a longed-for only son scarred by his parents… Read More

London: Mitchell Beazley, 2005. Used. Low carbohydrate foods have become a way of life for people seeking to lose weight - but they can also be good for many other aspects of your health. In Low Carb Superdrinks, Michael van Straten introduces hot and cold drinks that will boost your mental and physical well-being as well as playing a part in a low-carbohydrate slimming diet. There are juices, smoothies, water-based drinks, teas and herbal drinks. Some of the drinks offer an energy boost, while others simply make delicious alternatives to water or chemical-packed manufactured products. looking to reduce their carbohydrate intake. Packed with juices made from low-carb fruits and vegetables, smoothies made from low-fat yoghurts and fromage frais and soya products, and herbal drinks, it has something to suit every occasion. Whether you're looking for a low carb energy boost or something refreshing to replace highcarb juices or sugar-laden manufactured drinks, this book contains something for you. Every… Read More

London: Abacus, 2004. Used. In this extraordinary fiction debut?rich with love and betrayal, history and intellectual passion?two remarkable narratives converge on Easter Island, one of the most remote places in the world.It is 1913. Elsa Pendleton travels from England to Easter Island with her husband, an anthropologist sent by the Royal Geographical Society to study the colossal moai statues, and her younger sister. What begins as familial duty for Elsa becomes a grand adventure; on Easter Island she discovers her true calling. But, out of contact with the outside world, she is unaware that World War I has been declared and that a German naval squadron, fleeing the British across the South Pacific, is heading toward the island she now considers home.Sixty years later, Dr. Greer Farraday, an American botanist, travels to Easter Island to research the island?s ancient pollen, but more important, to put back the pieces of her life after the death of her husband.A series of brilliant revelations… Read More

London: Penguin, 2011. Used. On a small island in a glacier-fed lake on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, a marriage is unravelling. Gary, driven by thirty years of diverted plans, and Irene, haunted by a tragedy in her past, are trying to rebuild their life together. Following the outline of Gary's old dream, they're hauling logs out to Caribou Island in good weather and in terrible storms, in sickness and in health, to patch together the kind of cabin that drew them to Alaska in the first place. Across the water on the mainland, Irene and Gary's grown daughter, Rhoda is starting her own life. She fantasizes about the perfect wedding day, whilst her betrothed, Jim the dentist, wonders about the possibility of an altogether different future. From the author of the massively-acclaimed Legend of a Suicide, comes a devastating novel about a marriage, a couple blighted by past shadows and the weight of expectation, of themselves and of each other. Brilliantly drawn and fiercely honest in its depiction of love… Read More

Not Listed: HarperCollins, Not recorded. Hardcover. Used. Julia has suddenly lost her husband and, along with him, her will to live. The vital, energetic old woman that her daughter Kati thought she knew has disappeared almost overnight. How is Kati to cope with a mother constantly on the verge of suicide? This finely wrought tale of love and conflict casts a searchlight into dark areas - how people deal with ageing, loss, death, and grief. At what point are you allowed to say "Life is not worth living?" The story is exquisite and captures the complications of parents and their adult children, and matters around the quality of life.

London: Random House, 2008. Used. Between 1943 and 2003 nine people have been stabbed to death with a trident. In each case, arrests were made, suspects confessed their crimes and were sentenced to a life in prison. One slightly worrying detail - the presumed murderers lost consciousness during the nights of the crimes and have no recollection of them.

London: Harvill Secker, 2009. Used. Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is not like other policemen. His methods appear unorthodox in the extreme: he doesn't search for clues; he ignores obvious suspects & arrests people with cast-iron alibis; he appears permanently distracted. In spite of all this his colleagues are forced to admit that he is highly successful.

London: Random House, 2004. Used. Each day in honour of a Parisian tradition, a town crier calls out the local news to all who will listen. Over the course of a few days a number of disturbing messages are slipped into his box, messages of portentous and malicious intent referring to the Black Death. Strange marks have also appeared on the doors of several buildings: symbols once used to ward off the plague. Detective Commissaire Adamsberg begins to sense a connection, even a grotesque menace. Then charred and flea-bitten corpses are found. The press seizes on their plague-like symptoms, and the panic sets in.

London: Random House, 2007. Used. Sophia Sim??onidis, A Greek Opera Singer, Wakes Up One Morning To Discover That A Tree Has Appeared Overnight In The Garden Of Her Paris House. Intrigued And Unnerved, She Turns To Her Neighbours: Vandoosler, An Ex-Cop Fired From The Police For Having Helped A Murderer To Escape, And Three Impecunious Historians, Mathias, Marc And Lucien - The Three Evangelists. They Agree - Both Because They Need The Money And Out Of Sheer Curiosity - To Dig Around The Tree And See If Something Has Been Buried There. They Find Nothing But Soil. A Few Weeks Later, Sophia Disappears And Nobody Worries Too Much Until Her Body Is Found Burned To Ashes In A Car. Who Killed The Opera Singer? Her Husband, Her Ex-Lover, Her Best Friend? Or Could It Be Her Lovely Niece Recently Moved To The Capital? They All Seem To Have A Motive. Vandoosler And The Three Evangelists Set Out To Find The Truth.

Harmondsworth: Vintage, 2006. Used. Each day, inhabitants of a small community in the French Alps find another of their ewes with its throat cut. When one of the villagers too is killed people begin to wonder: could it be the work of a werewolf? Soon suspicion falls on Massart, one of the villagers, because of his beardlessness (according to popular legend, werewolves have no hair on their bodies because they are inside the body). Soliman, the victim's adopted son; Le Veilleur, a lonely sheperd and Camille, a lovely girl from the city, decide to pursue Massart and their hunt leads them into the Alps, but their incompetence is undisguisable and they decide to summon Commissaire Adamsberg -- well known for his peculiar investigation methods -- to help. Thanks to his extraordinary intuition, Adamsberg unearths an astonishing truth, one that the villagers are going to find hard to believe. "From the Trade Paperback edition."

London: Random House, 2009. Used. Two drug dealers are found with their throats cut in the Porte de la Chapelle, Paris, and the narcotics division of the local police is eager to wrap up the case quickly, passing the crime off as territorial dispute between junkies. But Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg's intuition tells him otherwise. He teams up with Dr. Ariane, a pathologist with whom he crossed paths twenty years ago and who believes the murderer is a woman. "As other murders begin to surface, Adamberg must move quickly to stop the 'Angel of Death' from killing again."--Jacket.

Not Listed: HarperCollins, Not recorded. Used. Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as 'Lily' in Llama in 1950, when she arrives one summer out of the blue, claiming to be from Chile but vanishing the moment her claim is exposed as fiction. He loves her next in Paris, where she appears as the enchanting 'Comrade Arlette', an activist en route to Cuba, and becomes his lover, albeit an icy, remote one who denies having knowledge about the Lily of years gone by. Whoever the bad girl turns up as - whether it's Madame Robert Arnoux, the wife of a high-ranking UNESCO official, or Kuriko, the mistress of a sinister Japanese businessman - and however poorly she treats him, Ricardo is doomed to worship her.Gifted liar and irresistible, maddening muse - does Ricardo ever know who she really is? The answer is an unclear as what has become of Ricardo himself, a lifelong expatriate shadowed by the sense that he is only ever drifting.

London: Picador, 1984. Used.PAPERBACK EDITION.CREASES TO SPINE AND COVER.MARK ON FRONT COVERAunt Julia and the Scriptwriter ( Spanish: La t?a Julia y el escribidor) is the seventh novel by Nobel Prize -winning author Mario Vargas Llosa. It was published by Editorial Seix Barral, S.A., Spain, in 1977. Set in Peru during the 1950s, it is the story of an 18-year-old student who falls for a 32-year-old divorcee.