Feint of Art

Every chapter begins with an excerpt from a book by grandfather Georges about his life as an art forger. If you want, these can draw you into all kinds of philosophical speculations about the nature of truth and illusion (why artwork created today less valuable than one created centuries ago and why is a forgery from 137BC in the Brock museum while Georges's forgeries aren't?). Or you can just enjoy the suspense and the laugh out loud moments (like when poor Annie gets stuck in a window, which is much funnier in the novel than in a review). And in a postscript you can learn how to try Annie's faux finishing methods at home.

The Black Throne

As children they met and built sand castles on a beach out of space and time: Edgar Perry, Little Annie, and Edgar Allan Poe.... Fifteen years later, Perry meets Annie again, all grown up and beautiful - and in the real world. She warns him of his mortal peril, then flees for Europe on a mysterious black ship.

Perry is recruited by a fabulously wealthy man to follow that ship to Europe where he meets the famed detective Auguste Dupin, has an encounter with a Maelstrom and a black raven, has a run in with a Pit and a Pendulum, and lives many more of the stories his alter ego, Edgar Allan Poe, wrote.

Bad Boy

A distraught woman arrives at the Eastvale police station desperate to speak to Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. But since Banks is away on holiday, his partner, Annie Cabbot, steps in. The woman tells Annie that she's found a loaded gun hidden in the bedroom of her daughter, Erin--a punishable offense under English law. When an armed response team breaks into the house to retrieve the weapon, the seemingly straightforward procedure quickly spirals out of control.

Nick Hornby Juliet, Naked

In this novel of aging, love, and regret, Annie lives in a decaying seaside town in England, where her partner of convenience, Duncan, immerses himself in the esoterica of an obscure American singer-songwriter, Tucker Crowe, who quit the business twenty years earlier and hasn’t been heard from since. When Tucker releases a demo version of his most famous album, “Juliet,” Duncan’s and Annie’s divergent reactions (he loves it, she hates it) pull them apart.

Bood Diamonds - Richard Macandrew + MP3

Award-winning original fiction for learners of English. At seven levels, from Starter to Advanced, this impressive selection of carefully graded readers offers exciting reading for every student's ability. Diamonds smuggled from the bloody civil-war zones of Africa and traded illegally for weapons are known as 'blood diamonds'. London journalists Harley Kirkpatrick and Annie Shepherd sense the scoop of a lifetime when they try to trap a deal in the diamonds. But who is trapping who and are the people involved what they seem?