When Robert Smith's wife dies, some longtime friends decide to spirit him away for a little vacation. They just didn't expect the villa they rented to be such a dump and that Robert would arrive with a gorgeous young film star in tow.
Samurai Sano Ichiro, our guide through the intricacies of life and death in 17th-century Japan in Laura Joh Rowland's evocative and accessible mysteries is called the Shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People. All of these skills--plus a strong sense of survival--are needed in this story about what happens when Dutch traders arrive in Nagasaki in 1690. The foreigners are isolated in a small section of the city, and most ordinary citizens are forbidden to make contact with them--on penalty of beheading.
The Perfect Recipe: The Ultimate, Hands-Down Best Way to Cook Our Favorite Foods
Which comes first when mashing potatoes the butter or the milk? How do you roast a turkey so the breast is as moist and juicy as the legs? Is it possible to create a fudgy, cakey, chewy brownie all in one? Pam Anderson, executive editor of the highly successful magazine COOK'S ILLUSTRATED, painstakingly conducted test after test to arrive at not only the best recipe but frequently the most convenient and sensible one.
For Harry Fletcher, life on St Mary's Island is good. He has a fine boat and a long list of rich clients eager to charter it for the big game fishing of the Mozambique Channel. He has a home amongst the palms above a white coral beach, and he has friends and pretty girls to share his paradise.
Harry has earned all this the hard way, but now he is at peace. Until suddenly men from the world of violence which he has forsaken so long before arrive on the island to plunge him once more into a deadly game – for an unknown prize against undeclared odds. Of one thing Harry is certain: to fall is to die.