Cotton Malone retired from the high-risk world of elite operatives for the U.S. Justice Department to lead the low-key life of a rare-book dealer. But his quiet existence is shattered when he receives an anonymous e-mail: “You have something I want. You’re the only person on earth who knows where to find it. Go get it. You have 72 hours. If I don’t hear from you, you will be childless.” His horrified ex-wife confirms that the threat is real: Their teenage son has been kidnapped. When Malone’s Copenhagen bookshop is burned to the ground, it becomes brutally clear that those responsible will stop at nothing to get what they want.
Sleuth Regan Reilly and her husband, Jack, return to New York from their honeymoon in Ireland and discover that their next-door neighbour has put up his apartment for sale. They decide to buy it and enlarge the loft Jack lived in as a bachelor. Regan takes time off from her work as a Private Investigator to supervise the construction, while Jack resumes his job as head of the Manhattan Major Case Squad.
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer. He is one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's short stories are characterized by their economy of style and their efficient effortless dénouement.
The Byzantine world underwent a remarkable recovery of intellectual energy in the period following the recovery of Constantinople in 1261. The reaction of the emperors and their entourage of well-educated high officials to their political disasters was a deliberate reivial of the glories of ancient Greek culture. The main subject of this book is the preservation and dissemination by this learned elite of such ancient literature, philosophy and science as still survived then, the development of editorial techniques which resulted in more complete and less corrupt texts, and their improvement buy the addition of commentaries and other innovations.
