David Baldacci - Simple Genius
Last seen in Split Second (2003), former Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have reached a crisis in their relationship in this less than compelling Washington political thriller from bestseller Baldacci. When Maxwell instigates a fight with the most intimidating bruiser she could find at a local bar and lets herself be beaten unconscious, despite her superior fighting skills, her partner suggests she voluntarily commit herself to a psychiatric facility. While Maxwell reluctantly undergoes treatment to find the childhood roots of her death wish, King probes the suicide of a scientist found on the grounds of Virginia's Camp Peary, a mysterious CIA facility. Both mysteries are fairly run of the mill, lacking the sharp twists and expert pacing that characterize Baldacci's fiction at its best.
Anne Rice - Complete Vampire Chronicles Collection
Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the body Thief plus the new titles from Anne Rice.
For the first time you can find all your favorite night-stalking, blood-guzzling undead--Lestat, Claudia, Louis, Akasha, Armand, and Memnoch--all in the same place at the same time. Here, collected in one archive, are the four bestselling, original titles of Anne Rice's sprawling vampire series plus I`ve added the new titles too and so you get 12 books in one archive.
Orson Scott Card, a well-known, successful sci-fi writer, master of the craft of characterization, gives us with this book one of the few writing reference volumes that flawlessly delivers everything it promises and more. Whether you want to write fiction of any genre, or scripts and plays, and whether you are a beginner or an experienced writer, this book has tons of essential, useful and solid information to offer.
Working With Numbers and Statistics: A Handbook for Journalists
Authors Charles Livingston and Paul Voakes developed this resource book to improve journalistic writing and reporting, enabling journalists to:
*make accurate, reliable computations, which in turn enables one to make relevant comparisons, put facts into perspective, and lend important context to stories;
*recognize inaccurate presentations, whether willfully spun or just carelessly relayed;
*ask appropriate questions about numerical matters;
*translate complicated numbers for viewers and readers in ways they can readily understand;
*understand computer-assisted reporting; and
*write livelier, more precise pieces through the use of numbers.
The math is presented in a journalistic context throughout, enabling readers to see how the procedures will come into play in their work.
Working With Numbers and Statistics is designed as a reference work for journalism students developing their writing and reporting skills. It will also serve professionals as a useful tool to improve their understanding and use of numbers in news stories.
Fans of Bob Dylan have a multitude of choices when it comes to biographies and retrospectives, but author Michael Gray outdistances them all with this voluminous collection of all things Dylan.
Over the course of 823 pages Gray considers everything from railroad imagery in Dylan's songs to his use of nursery rhymes, covering the topics thoughtfully and thoroughly.
While Gray is certainly a fan, it's this impartiality that fuels the book and gives it weight. Insightful and entertaining, Gray's tome will broaden appreciation of the artist, his influences and his legacy.
Gray offers a detailed volume featuring entries related to Dylan's life, artists who influenced him and were influenced by him, musical styles he created, and background stories of specific Dylan songs and recordings.
Most of the entries are sketches of musicians, although Gray includes actors, authors, and other nonmusicians. These entries provide brief biographies and then explain how the people are connected to Dylan: how they worked with him, influenced or were influenced by him, and which of his songs they performed or recorded.
This makes for unique entries, such as Interviews and the myth of their rarity (in which he claims Dylan actually averaged one interview per month over 40 years) and Dylan being "bored" by his acoustic material 1965-66, the myth of. In fact, the entire book is written in a refreshingly relaxed manner, as befits a music critic and fan.
