Good Books

On the heels of his resoundingly praised fantasy series THE GREAT GAME, author Dave Duncan returns to the form with which he originally established his reputation: the epic sword-and-sorcery adventure. The breathtaking saga of THE KING'S BLADES begins with THE GILDED CHAIN, the relentlessly exciting story of an unparalleled swordsman trained from early childhood to take his place among the King's elite corps of warrior/bodyguards in a dangerously uncertain fantasy realm. Audaciously taking as his own name of Kingdom's most fabled champion of long ago, Durandel sees his lifelong dream of serving his liege dashed to bits when

he is bonded for life, not to his beloved king, but to an effete noble fop. But

Destiny has inscrutable plans for this able young knight in an ancient, isolated city

in a land far from the blood intrigues of the perilous court. On a mission that

promises glory and great treasures, grisly secrets of opulence and immortality will

be revealed--while countless betrayals and untold horrors combine to threaten a remarkable future prophesied for a warrior who could be the mightiest hero in the history of the monarchy.

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Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

Or did she?

In this riveting debut novel, See What I Have Done , Sarah Schmidt recasts one of the most fascinating murder cases of all time into an intimate story of a volatile household and a family devoid of love.

On the morning of August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden calls out to her maid: Someone's killed Father . The brutal ax-murder of Andrew and Abby Borden in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, leaves little evidence and many unanswered questions. While neighbors struggle to understand why anyone would want to harm the respected Bordens, those close to the family have a different tale to tell--of a father with an explosive temper; a spiteful stepmother; and two spinster sisters, with a bond even stronger than blood, desperate for their independence.

As the police search for clues, Emma comforts an increasingly distraught Lizzie whose memories of that morning flash in scattered fragments. Had she been in the barn or the pear arbor to escape the stifling heat of the house? When did she last speak to her stepmother? Were they really gone and would everything be better now? Shifting among the perspectives of the unreliable Lizzie, her older sister Emma, the housemaid Bridget, and the enigmatic stranger Benjamin, the events of that fatefulday are slowly revealed through a high-wire feat of storytelling.

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Winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Prix des libraires du Quebec and the Stephen Leacock Medal. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Walter Scott Prize.

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die: Eli and Charlie Sisters can be counted on for that. Though Eli has never shared his brother's penchant for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. On the road to Warm's gold-mining claim outside San Francisco -- and from the back of his long-suffering one-eyed horse -- Eli struggles to make sense of his life without abandoning the job he's sworn to do.

Patrick DeWitt, acclaimed author of Ablutions, doffs his hat to the classic Western, and then transforms it into a comic tour-de-force with an unforgettable narrative voice that captures all the absurdity, melancholy, and grit of the West -- and of these two brothers, bound to each other by blood and scars and love.

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