As The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest opens, Lisbeth Salander-the heart and soul of Larsson's two previous novels-is under close supervision in the intensive care unit of a provincial Swedish city hospital. And she's fighting for her life in more ways than one: when she's well enough, she'll be taken back to Stockholm to stand trial for a triple murder. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will have to prove her innocence, and identify and denounce the corrupt politicians who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to become victims of abuse and violence. And, on her own, she will plot her revenge-against the man who tried to kill her, and the government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life.

Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now, Lisbeth Salander is ready to fight back.

The electrifying follow-up to the phenomenal best seller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The fierce heart of this novel is Lisbeth Salander: the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker who teamed up with crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This time, Lisbeth is implicated in a murder: her fingerprints found on the weapon used to kill two journalists the night before their explosive story about sex trafficking in Sweden was set to be published. Now, while Blomkvist-alone in his belief in her innocence-plunges into his own investigation of the slayings, Lisbeth is drawn into a hunt in which she is the prey, and which compels her to revisit her dark past in an effort to settle with it once and for all.

Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared off the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family. There was no corpse, no witnesses, no evidence. But her uncle, Henrik, is convinced that she was murdered by someone from her own deeply dysfunctional family. Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist is hired to investigate, but he quickly finds himself in over his head. He hires a competent assistant: the gifted and conscience-free computer specialist Lisbeth Salander, and the two unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn''t share his brother''s appetite for whiskey and killing, he''s never known anything else. But their prey isn''t an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm''s gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living - and whom he does it for.With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters - losers, cheaters, and ne''er-do-wells from all stripes of life - and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humour, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.

Paris, 1940.  A brilliant jazz musician, Hiero, is arrested by the Nazis and never heard from again.  He is twenty years old.  He is a German citizen.  And he is black.

 

Fifty years later, his friend and fellow musician, Sid, must relive that unforgettable time, revealing the friendships, love affairs and treacheries that sealed Hiero''s fate.  From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of  Paris - where the legendary Louis Armstrong makes an appearance - Sid, with his distinctive and rhythmic German-American slang, leads the reader through a fascinating world alive with passion, music and the spirit of resistance.

 

Half-Blood Blues, the second novel by an exceptionally talented young writer, is an entrancing, electric story about jazz, race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of others, in the name of art.

 

Christine wakes up every morning in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar man.

She looks in the mirror and sees an unfamiliar, middle-aged face. And every morning, the man she has woken up with must explain that he is Ben, he is her husband, she is forty-seven years old, and a terrible accident two decades earlier decimated her ability to form new memories.

But it's the phone call from a Dr. Nash, a neurologist who claims to be working with Christine without her husband's knowledge, that directs her to her journal, hidden in the back of her closet. For the past few weeks, Christine has been recording her daily activities -- tearful mornings with Ben, sessions with Dr. Nash, flashes of scenes from her former life -- and rereading past entries, relearning the facts of her life as retold by the husband she is completely dependent upon. As the entries build up, Christine asks many questions. What was life like before the accident? Why did she and Ben never have a child? What has happened to Christine's best friend? And what exactly was the horrific accident that caused such a profound loss of memory?

Every day, Christine must begin again the reconstruction of her past. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more unbelievable it seems.

Following in the footsteps of The Birth House, her powerful debut novel, The Virgin Cure secures Ami McKay''s place as one of our most beguiling storytellers. (Not that it has to… that is pretty much taken care of!)

"I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart." So begins The Virgin Cure, a novel set in the tenements of lower Manhattan in the year 1871. As a young child, Moth''s father smiled, tipped his hat and walked away from his wife and daughter forever, and Moth has never stopped imagining that one day they may be reunited - despite knowing in her heart what he chose over them. Her hard mother is barely making a living with her fortune-telling, sometimes for well-heeled clients, yet Moth is all too aware of how she really pays the rent.

Life would be so much better, Moth knows, if fortune had gone the other way - if only she''d had the luxury of a good family and some station in life. The young Moth spends her days wandering the streets of her own and better neighbourhoods, imagining what days are like for the wealthy women whose grand yet forbidding gardens she slips through when no one''s looking. Yet every night Moth must return to the disease- and grief-ridden tenements she calls home.

The summer Moth turns twelve, her mother puts a halt to her explorations by selling her boots to a local vendor, convinced that Moth was planning to run away. Wanting to make the most of her every asset, she also sells Moth to a wealthy woman as a servant, with no intention of ever seeing her again.

These betrayals lead Moth to the wild, murky world of the Bowery, filled with house-thieves, pickpockets, beggars, sideshow freaks and prostitutes, but also a locale frequented by New York''s social elite. Their patronage supports the shadowy undersphere, where businesses can flourish if they truly understand the importance of wealth and social standing - and of keeping secrets. In that world Moth meets Miss Everett, the owner of a brothel simply known as an "infant school." There Moth finds the orderly solace she has always wanted, and begins to imagine herself embarking upon a new path.

Yet salvation does not come without its price: Miss Everett caters to gentlemen who pay dearly for companions who are "willing and clean," and the most desirable of them all are young virgins like Moth. That''s not the worst of the situation, though. In a time and place where mysterious illnesses ravage those who haven''t been cautious, no matter their social station, diseased men yearn for a "virgin cure" - thinking that deflowering a "fresh maid" can heal the incurable and tainted.

Through the friendship of Dr. Sadie, a female physician who works to help young women like her, Moth learns to question and observe the world around her. Moth''s new friends are falling prey to fates both expected and forced upon them, yet she knows the law will not protect her, and that polite society ignores her. Still she dreams of answering to no one but herself. There''s a high price for such independence, though, and no one knows that better than a girl from Chrystie Street.

First time in paperback!

A magical transformation takes place in Danielle Steel's luminous novel: Strangers become roommates, roommates become friends, and friends become a family in a turn-of-the-century house in Manhattan's West Village.
 
The plumbing was prone to leaks, the furniture rescued from garage sales. And every square inch was being devotedly restored to its original splendor-even as a relationship fell to pieces. Now Francesca Thayer, newly separated from her boyfriend, is suddenly the sole mortgage payer on her Greenwich Village townhouse. The struggling art gallery owner does the math and then the unimaginable. She puts out an advertisement for boarders, and soon her home becomes a whole new world.

First comes Eileen, a fresh, pretty L.A. transplant, now a New York City schoolteacher. Then there's Chris, a young father fighting for custody of his seven-year-old son. The final tenant is Marya, a celebrated cookbook author hoping to start a new chapter in life after the death of her husband. Over the course of one amazing, unforgettable, ultimately life-changing year, Francesca discovers that her accidental tenants have become the most important people in her life. The house at 44 Charles Street fills with laughter, heartbreak, and hope-and in the hands of master storyteller Danielle Steel, it's a place those who visit will never want to leave. 

In this mesmerizing debut, a competition between two magicians becomes a star-crossed love story.

The circus arrives at night, without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within nocturnal black and white striped tents awaits a unique experience, a feast for the senses, where one can get lost in a maze of clouds, meander through a lush garden made of ice, stand awestruck as a tattooed contortionist folds herself into a small glass box, and gaze in wonderment at an illusionist performing impossible feats of magic.

Welcome to Le Cirque des Rêves. Beyond the smoke and mirrors, however, a fierce competition is underway - a contest between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood to compete in "a game," in which each must use their powers of illusion to best the other. Unbeknownst to them, this game is a duel to the death, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will.