|
|
|
The Brass Verdict: A Novel
Things are finally looking up for defense attorney Mickey Haller. After two years of wrong turns, Haller is back in the courtroom When Hollywood lawyer Jerry Vincent is murdered, Haller inherits his biggest case yet: the defense of Walter Elliott, a prominent studio executive accused of murdering his wife and her lover. But as Haller prepares for the case that could launch him into the big time, he learns that Vincent's killer may be coming for him next. Enter Harry Bosch. Determined to find Vincent's killer, he is not opposed to using Haller as bait. But as danger mounts and the stakes rise, these two loners realize their only choice is to work together. Bringing together Michael Connelly's two most popular characters, The Brass Verdictis sure to be his biggest book yet. (2008).
Price: $10.00
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Bones (Alex Delaware, No. 23)
When it comes to writing deftly layered, tightly coiled novels of suspense, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman reigns supreme as “master of the psychological thriller” ( People). Now, Kellerman has worked his magic again in this chilling new masterpiece. The anonymous caller has an ominous tone and an unnerving message about something “real dead . . . buried in your marsh.” The eco-volunteer on the other end of the phone thinks it’s a prank, but when a young woman’s body turns up in L.A.’s Bird Marsh preserve no one’s laughing. And when the bones of more victims surface, homicide detective Milo Sturgis realizes the city’s under siege to an insidious killer. Milo’s first move: calling in psychologist Alex Delaware. The murdered women are prostitutes–except the most recent victim; a brilliant young musician from the East Coast, employed by a wealthy family to tutor a musical prodigy, Selena Bass seems out of place in the marsh’s grim tableau. Conveniently–perhaps ominously–Selena’s blueblood employers are nowhere to be found, and their estate’s jittery caretaker raises hackles. But Milo’s instincts and Alex’s insight are too well-honed to settle for easy answers, even given the dark secrets in this troubled man’s past. Their investigation unearths disturbing layers–about victims, potential victims, and suspects alike–plunging even deeper into the murky marsh’s enigmatic depths. Bizarre details of the crimes suggest a devilish serial killer prowling L.A.’s gritty streets. But when a new murder deviates from the pattern, derailing a possible profile, Alex and Milo must look beyond the suspicion of madness and consider an even more sinister mind at work. Answers don’t come easy, but the darkest of drives and desires may fuel the most devious of foes. Bones is classic Kellerman–relentlessly peeling back the skin and psyches of its characters and revealing the shadows and sins of the souls beneath. With jolt after jolt of galvanizing suspense, it drives the reader through its twists and turns toward a climax as satisfying as it is shattering..
Price: $9.98
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Chasing Darkness: An Elvis Cole Novel (Elvis Cole)
Elvis Cole is Back--In a Desperate Fight to Clear his Name... It's fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning When police and fire department personnel rush door to door in a frenzied evacuation effort, they discover the week-old corpse of an apparent suicide. But the gunshot victim is less gruesome than what they find in his lap: a photo album of seven brutally murdered young women -- one per year, for seven years. And when the suicide victim is identified as a former suspect in one of the murders, the news turns Elvis Cole's world upside down. Three years earlier Lionel Byrd was brought to trial for the murder of a female prostitute named Yvonne Bennett. A taped confession coerced by the police inspired a prominent defense attorney to take Byrd's case, and Elvis Cole was hired to investigate. It was Cole's eleventh-hour discovery of an exculpatory videotape that allowed Lionel Byrd to walk free. Elvis was hailed as a hero. But the discovery of the death album in Byrd's lap now brands Elvis as an unwitting accomplice to murder. Captured in photographs that could only have been taken by the murderer, Yvonne Bennett was the fifth of the seven victims -- two more young women were murdered after Lionel Byrd walked free. So Elvis can't help but wonder -- did he, Elvis Cole, cost two more young women their lives? Shut out of the investigation by a special LAPD task force determined to close the case, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike desperately fight to uncover the truth about Lionel Byrd and his nightmare album of death -- a truth hidden by lies, politics, and corruption in a world where nothing is what it seems to be. Chasing Darkness is a blistering thriller from the bestselling author who sets the standard for intense, powerful crime writing..
Price: $5.49
[Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member
Written in solitary confinement, Kody Scott's memoir of sixteen years as a gangbanger in Los Angeles was a searing bestseller and became a classic, published in ten languages, with more than 300,000 copies in print in the United States alone. After pumping eight blasts from a sawed-off shotgun at a group of rival gang members, twelve-year-old Kody Scott was initiated into the L.A. gang the Crips. He quickly matured into one of the most formidable Crip combat soldiers, earning the name "Monster" for committing acts of brutality and violence that repulsed even his fellow gang members. When the inevitable jail term confined him to a maximum-security cell, a complete political and personal transformation followed: from Monster to Sanyika Shakur, black nationalist, member of the New Afrikan Independence Movement, and crusader against the causes of gangsterism. In a document that has been compared to The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, Shakur makes palpable the despair and decay of America's inner cities and gives eloquent voice to one aspect of the black ghetto experience today. .
Price: $7.67
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Bright Shiny Morning
One of the most celebrated and controversial authors in America delivers his first novel—a sweeping chronicle of contemporary Los Angeles that is bold, exhilarating, and utterly original. Dozens of characters pass across the reader's sight lines—some never to be seen again—but James Frey lingers on a handful of LA's lost souls and captures the dramatic narrative of their lives: a bright, ambitious young Mexican-American woman who allows her future to be undone by a moment of searing humiliation; a supremely narcissistic action-movie star whose passion for the unattainable object of his affection nearly destroys him; a couple, both nineteen years old, who flee their suffocating hometown and struggle to survive on the fringes of the great city; and an aging Venice Beach alcoholic whose life is turned upside down when a meth-addled teenage girl shows up half-dead outside the restroom he calls home. Throughout this strikingly powerful novel there is the relentless drumbeat of the millions of other stories that, taken as a whole, describe a city, a culture, and an age. A dazzling tour de force, Bright Shiny Morning illuminates the joys, horrors, and unexpected fortunes of life and death in Los Angeles. .
Price: $8.93
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century
It was an explosion that reverberated across the country—and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air. When at last the wreckage had been sifted and the hospital triage units consulted, twenty-one people were declared dead and dozens more injured. But as it turned out, this was just a prelude to the devastation that was to come. In American Lightning, acclaimed author Howard Blum masterfully evokes the incredible circumstances that led to the original “crime of the century”—and an aftermath more dramatic than even the crime itself. With smoke still wafting up from the charred ruins, the city’s mayor reacts with undisguised excitement when he learns of the arrival, only that morning, of America’s greatest detective, William J. Burns, a former Secret Service man who has been likened to Sherlock Holmes. Surely Burns, already world famous for cracking unsolvable crimes and for his elaborate disguises, can run the perpetrators to ground. Through the work of many months, snowbound stakeouts, and brilliant forensic sleuthing, the great investigator finally identifies the men he believes are responsible for so much destruction. Stunningly, Burns accuses the men—labor activists with an apparent grudge against the Los Angeles Times’s fiercely anti-union owner—of not just one heinous deed but of being part of a terror wave involving hundreds of bombings. While preparation is laid for America’s highest profile trial ever—and the forces of labor and capital wage hand-to-hand combat in the streets—two other notable figures are swept into the drama: industry-shaping filmmaker D.W. Griffith, who perceives in these events the possibility of great art and who will go on to alchemize his observations into the landmark film The Birth of a Nation; and crusading lawyer Clarence Darrow, committed to lend his eloquence to the defendants, though he will be driven to thoughts of suicide before events have fully played out. Simultaneously offering the absorbing reading experience of a can’t-put-it-down thriller and the perception-altering resonance of a story whose reverberations continue even today, American Lightning is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction..
Price: $13.90
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music
A moving story of the remarkable bond between a journalist in search of a story and a homeless, classically trained musician—destined to be a major motion picture from DreamWorks, starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.When Steve Lopez saw Nathaniel Ayers playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles’ skid row, he found it impossible to walk away. More than thirty years earlier, Ayers had been a promising classical bass student at Juilliard—ambitious, charming, and also one of the few African-Americans—until he gradually lost his ability to function, overcome by schizophrenia. When Lopez finds him, Ayers is homeless, paranoid, and deeply troubled, but glimmers of that brilliance are still there. Over time, Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers form a bond, and Lopez imagines that he might be able to change Ayers’s life. Lopez collects donated violins, a cello, even a stand-up bass and a piano; he takes Ayers to Walt Disney Concert Hall and helps him move indoors. For each triumph, there is a crashing disappointment, yet neither man gives up. In the process of trying to save Ayers, Lopez finds that his own life is changing, and his sense of what one man can accomplish in the lives of others begins to expand in new ways. Poignant and ultimately hopeful, The Soloist is a beautifully told story of friendship and the redeeming power of music..
Price: $3.98
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way
What you're reading right now is known as the “flap copy.” This is where the 72,444 words of my latest book, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way, are cooked down to fit in a 3 ½-by-9 ½-inch column. But how does one do that with a fictional story about a B movie actor’s disastrous attempt to finally star in a big-budget Hollywood movie? Do you tantalize readers with snappy zingers like the one in chapter six where Biff the Wonder Boy says, “You may be bred in ol’ Kentucky, but you're only a crumb up here”? Or do you reveal pivotal plot points like the one at the end of the book where the little girl on crutches points an accusing finger and shouts, “The killer is Mr. Potter!” I have too much respect for you as an attention-deficient consumer to attempt such an obvious ruse. But let’s not play games here. You’ve already picked up the book, so you either: A. Know who I am B. Like the cool smoking jacket I’m wearing on the cover C. Have just discovered that the bookstore restroom is out of toilet paper Is this a relationship book? Well, if by “relationship book” you mean that the characters in it have relationships or are related to someone, then yes, absolutely. Will you learn how to pick up chicks? Good heavens, I can only hope so, though for best results in that department you should both read this book and be Brad Pitt. Is it a sequel to my autobiography, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor? Sadly, no, which made it much harder to write. According to my publisher, I haven't “done” enough since 2001 to warrant another memoir. Is it an “autobiographical novel”? Yes. I'm the lead character in the story and I'm a real person and everything in the book actually happened, except for all the stuff that didn’t. Mostly, the action revolves around my preparations for a pivotal role in director Mike Nichols’s A-list relationship film Let's Make Love!, starring Richard Gere, Renée Zellweger, and Christopher Plummer. This is the kind of break most actors can only dream of. But my Homeric attempt to break through the glass ceiling of B-grade genre fare is hampered by a vengeful studio executive and a production that becomes infected by something called the “B movie virus,” symptoms of which include excessive use of cheesy special effects, slapstick, and projectile vomiting. When someone fingers me as the guy responsible for the virus, thus ruining my good standing in the entertainment industry (hey, I said it was fiction, okay?), I become a fugitive racing against the clock, an innocent patsy battling the shadowy forces of the studio system to clear my name, save my career, and destroy the Death Star. In a jaw-dropping twist worthy of Hitchcock (page 274), you'll gasp as I turn the tables on Hollywood and attempt to salvage my reputation in a town where you’re only as good as your last remake. From a violent fistfight with a Buddhist to a life-altering stint in federal prison, this novel has it all. If you like John Grisham, Tom Clancy, or one too many run-on sentences, you'll absolutely love Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way. And if the 72,444 words are too time-consuming, there are lots and lots of cool graphics. Regards, Bruce “Don't Call Me Ash” Campbell ~ Bruce Campbell's first book, If Chins Could Kill, was a major sleeper hit and became a New York Times and national bestseller. His immense energy and sharp wit are in evidence again in Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way, a novel that will have readers laughing out loud. .
Price: $4.99
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
|
|
|
