From a master of contemporary fantasy comes the first novel of a landmark series unlike any you’ve ever read before. With A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin has launched a genuine masterpiece, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill the pages of this magnificent saga, the first volume in an epic series sure to delight fantasy fans everywhere.
A GAME OF THRONES
A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE: BOOK ONE
Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. To the south, the king’s powers are failing—his most trusted adviser dead under mysterious circumstances and his enemies emerging from the shadows of the throne. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the frozen land they were born to. Now Lord Eddard Stark is reluctantly summoned to serve as the king’s new Hand, an appointment that threatens to sunder not only his family but the kingdom itself.
Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, A Game of Thrones tells a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; a child is lost in the twilight between life and death; and a determined woman undertakes a treacherous journey to protect all she holds dear. Amid plots and counter-plots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, allies and enemies, the fate of the Starks hangs perilously in the balance, as each side endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.
Unparalleled in scope and execution, A Game of Thrones is one of those rare reading experiences that catch you up from the opening pages, won’t let you go until the end, and leave you yearning for more.
As the lead singer of Grammy-winning supergroup TLC, Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins has seen phenomenal fame, success, and critical acclaim. But backstage, she has lived a dual life. In addition to the balancing act of juggling an all-consuming music career and her family, Tionne has struggled since she was a young girl with sickle-cell disease--a debilitating and incurable condition that can render her unable to perform, walk, or even breathe.
A Sick Life chronicles Tionne's journey from a sickly young girl from Des Moines who was told she wouldn't live to see 30 through her teen years in Atlanta, how she broke into the music scene, and became the superstar musician and sickle-cell disease advocate she is today. Through Tionne's tough, funny, tell-it-like-it-is voice, she shares how she found the inner strength, grit, and determination to live her dream, despite her often unpredictable and debilitating health issues. She dives deep into never-before-told TLC stories, including accounts of her friendship with Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes and her tragic death. Tionne's unvarnished discussion of her remarkable life, disease, unending strength, and ability to power through the odds offers a story like no other.
Two bodies arrived at the morgue--one was still breathing.
A woman checks into a hotel room and entertains a man who is not her husband. A shooter blows away the lover and wounds the millionairess, leaving her for dead. Is it the perfect case for the Women's Murder Club--or just the most twisted?
BookShots
LIGHTNING-FAST STORIES BY JAMES PATTERSON
Novels you can devour in a few hours Impossible to stop reading All original content from James Patterson
A pompous developer plans to turn the new spirit portal into an amusement park, potentially severing an already tumultuous connection with the spirits. What's more, the triads have realigned and are in a brutal all-out brawl at the city's borders--where hundreds of evacuees have relocated!
In order to get through it all, Korra and Asami vow to look out for each other--but first, they've got to get better at being a team and a couple!
Written by series co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino and drawn by Irene KohT.M.N.T., Sensation Comics featuring Wonder Woman, Secret Origins: Batgirl, Afrina and the Glass Coffin) and with consultation by Bryan Konietzko, this is the official continuation of The Legend of Korra!
“A cautionary tale that ends in triumph.” —GQ
“A revelation and a welcome addition to hip-hop’s literary legacy.” —All Hip Hop
The highly anticipated memoir from Gucci Mane, “one of hip-hop’s most prolific and admired artists” (The New York Times).
For the first time Gucci Mane tells his story in his own words. It is the captivating life of an artist who forged an unlikely path to stardom and personal rebirth. Gucci Mane began writing his memoir in a maximum-security federal prison. Released in 2016, he emerged radically transformed. He was sober, smiling, focused, and positive—a far cry from the Gucci Mane of years past.
Born in rural Bessemer, Alabama, Radric Delantic Davis became Gucci Mane in East Atlanta, where the rap scene is as vibrant as the dope game. His name was made as a drug dealer first, rapper second. His influential mixtapes and street anthems pioneered the sound of trap music. He inspired and mentored a new generation of artists and producers: Migos, Young Thug, Nicki Minaj, Zaytoven, Mike Will Made-It, Metro Boomin.
Yet every success was followed by setback. Too often, his erratic behavior threatened to end it all. Incarceration, violence, rap beefs, drug addiction. But Gucci Mane has changed, and he’s decided to tell his story.
In his extraordinary autobiography, the legend takes us to his roots in Alabama, the streets of East Atlanta, the trap house, and the studio where he found his voice as a peerless rapper. He reflects on his inimitable career and in the process confronts his dark past—years behind bars, the murder charge, drug addiction, career highs and lows—the making of a trap god. It is one of the greatest comeback stories in the history of music.
The Autobiography of Gucci Mane is a blunt and candid account—an instant classic.
Illustrated, packed with images, and unlike any book in the entire galaxy, Bronson’s F*ck, That’s Delicious includes 40-plus recipes inspired by his childhood, family, tours, and travels. Journey from bagels with cheese that represent familial love to the sex and Big Macs of upstate New York fat camp and ultimately to the world’s most coveted five-star temples of gastronomy. And: the tacos in LA. The best Dominican chimis. Jamaican jerk. Hand-rolled pasta from Mario. Secrets to good eating from Massimo. Meyhem Lauren’s Chicken Patty Potpie. And more! more! more!
An addictive new novel of psychological suspense from the author of #1 New York Times bestseller and global phenomenon The Girl on the Train
“Hawkins is at the forefront of a group of female authors—think Gillian Flynn and Megan Abbott—who have reinvigorated the literary suspense novel by tapping a rich vein of psychological menace and social unease… there’s a certain solace to a dark escape, in the promise of submerged truths coming to light.” —Vogue
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.
Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.
"Explosive.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A fantastic thriller from one of the best in the genre!” —RT Reviews
A horrific crime. One witness—a fifteen year old girl from the wrong side of the tracks, one known for lying and her own brushes with the law.
Is it any surprise no one believed her?
Officer Miranda Rader of the Harmony, Louisiana PD is known for her honesty, integrity, and steady hand in a crisis—but that wasn’t always so. Miranda comes from the town of Jasper, a place about the size of a good spit on a hot day, and her side of the tracks was the wrong one. She’s worked hard to earn the respect of her coworkers and the community.
When Miranda and her partner are called to investigate the murder of one of the town’s most beloved college professors, they’re unprepared for the brutality of the scene. This murder is unlike any they’ve ever investigated, and just when Miranda thinks she’s seen the worst of it, she finds a piece of evidence that chills her to the core: a faded newspaper clipping about that terrible night fifteen years ago. The night she’d buried, along with her past and the girl she’d been back then. Until now that grave had stayed sealed...except for those times, in the deepest part of the night, when the nightmares came: of a crime no one believed happened and the screams of the girl they believed didn’t exist.
Then another man turns up dead, this one a retired cop. Not just any cop—the one who took her statement that night. Two murders, two very different men, two killings that on the surface had nothing in common—except Miranda.
A friend of luminaries including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Medgar Evers, and the forebear of today’s popular black comics, including Larry Wilmore, W. Kamau Bell, Damon Young, and Trevor Noah, Dick Gregory was a provocative and incisive cultural force for more than fifty years. As an entertainer, he always kept it indisputably real about race issues in America, fearlessly lacing laughter with hard truths. As a leading activist against injustice, he marched at Selma during the Civil Rights movement, organized student rallies to protest the Vietnam War; sat in at rallies for Native American and feminist rights; fought apartheid in South Africa; and participated in hunger strikes in support of Black Lives Matter.
In this collection of thoughtful, provocative essays, Gregory charts the complex and often obscured history of the African American experience. In his unapologetically candid voice, he moves from African ancestry and surviving the Middle Passage to the creation of the Jheri Curl, the enjoyment of bacon and everything pig, the headline-making shootings of black men, and the Black Lives Matter movement. A captivating journey through time, Defining Moments in Black History explores historical movements such as The Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance, as well as cultural touchstones such as Sidney Poitier winning the Best Actor Oscar for Lilies in the Field and Billie Holiday releasing Strange Fruit.
An engaging look at black life that offers insightful commentary on the intricate history of the African American people, Defining Moments in Black History is an essential, no-holds-bar history lesson that will provoke, enlighten, and entertain.
That’s the question Greg Heffley is asking as his town voluntarily unplugs and goes electronics-free. But modern life has its conveniences, and Greg isn’t cut out for an old-fashioned world.
With tension building inside and outside the Heffley home, will Greg find a way to survive? Or is going “old school” just too hard for a kid like Greg?
In today’s increasingly dangerous world, threats to your personal safety are everywhere. From acts of terror to mass shootings, and from the unseen (and sometimes virtual) matrix of everyday crime, danger is no longer confined to dark alleys or unstable regions. Potentially life-threatening circumstances can arise anywhere, anytime, and Clint Emerson—former Navy SEAL—wants you to be prepared.
100 Deadly Skills contains proven self-defense skills, evasion tactics, and immobilizing maneuvers—modified from the world of black ops—to help you take action in numerous “worst case” scenarios from escaping a locked trunk, to making an improvised Taser, to tricking facial recognition software. With easy-to-understand instructions and illustrations, Emerson outlines in detail many life-saving strategies and teaches you how to think and act like a member of the special forces.
This complete course in survival teaches you how to prevent tracking, evade a kidnapping, elude an active shooter, rappel down the side of a building, immobilize a bad guy, protect yourself against cyber-criminals, and much more—all using low-tech to “no-tech” methods. Clear, detailed, and presented in an easy-to-understand and execute format, 100 Deadly Skills is an invaluable resource. Because let’s face it, when danger is imminent, you don’t have time for complicated instructions.
"The lost art of verbal communication may be revitalized by Leil Lowndes." -- Harvey McKay, author of “How to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive”
What is that magic quality makes some people instantly loved and respected? Everyone wants to be their friend (or, if single, their lover!) In business, they rise swiftly to the top of the corporate ladder. What is their "Midas touch?"
What it boils down to is a more skillful way of dealing with people.
The author has spent her career teaching people how to communicate for success. In her book How to Talk to Anyone (Contemporary Books, October 2003) Lowndes offers 92 easy and effective sure-fire success techniques-- she takes the reader from first meeting all the way up to sophisticated techniques used by the big winners in life. In this information-packed book you’ll find:
9 ways to make a dynamite first impression 14 ways to master small talk, "big talk," and body language 14 ways to walk and talk like a VIP or celebrity 6 ways to sound like an insider in any crowd 7 ways to establish deep subliminal rapport with anyone 9 ways to feed someone's ego (and know when NOT to!) 11 ways to make your phone a powerful communications tool 15 ways to work a party like a politician works a room 7 ways to talk with tigers and not get eaten aliveIn her trademark entertaining and straight-shooting style, Leil gives the techniques catchy names so you'll remember them when you really need them, including: "Rubberneck the Room," "Be a Copyclass," "Come Hither Hands," “Bare Their Hot Button,” “The Great Scorecard in the Sky," and "Play the Tombstone Game,” for big success in your social life, romance, and business.
How to Talk to Anyone, which is an update of her popular book, Talking the Winner's Way (see the 5-star reviews of the latter) is based on solid research about techniques that work!
By the way, don't confuse How to Talk to Anyone with one of Leil's previous books, How to Talk to Anybody About Anything. This one is completely different!
Darcy Anderson’s husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his routine business trips when the unsuspecting Darcy looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a hidden box under a worktable and in it she discovers a trove of horrific evidence that her husband is two men—one, the benign father of her children, the other, a raging rapist and murderer. It’s a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends “A Good Marriage.”
This story was originally published in Stephen King’s acclaimed collection, Full Dark, No Stars.
In a remarkable true story of faith and blessings, a mother tells of her sickly young daughter, how she survived a dangerous accident, her visit to Heaven and the inexplicable disappearance of the symptoms of her chronic disease.
Annabel Beam spent most of her childhood in and out of hospitals with a rare and incurable digestive disorder that prevented her from ever living a normal, healthy life. One sunny day when she was able to go outside and play with her sisters, she fell three stories headfirst inside an old, hollowed-out tree, a fall that may well have caused death or paralysis. Implausibly, she survived without a scratch. While unconscious inside the tree, with rescue workers struggling to get to her, she visited heaven. After being released from the hospital, she defied science and was inexplicably cured of her chronic ailment.
Miracles from Heaven will change how we look at the world around us and reinforce our belief in God and the afterlife.
Presented for the first time with stark, stunning new coloring by Brian Bolland, BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE is Alan Moore's unforgettable meditation on the razor-thin line between sanity and insanity, heroism and villainy, comedy and tragedy.
According to the grinning engine of madness and mayhem known as the Joker, that's all that separates the sane from the psychotic. Freed once again from the confines of Arkham Asylum, he's out to prove his deranged point. And he's going to use Gotham City's top cop, Commissioner Jim Gordon, and the Commissioner’s brilliant and beautiful daughter Barbara to do it.
After the release of Smoke + Mirrors and its respective world tour, a self-imposed hiatus for 2016 and cryptic messages from the band through their social media gained anticipation for their third album. The album was finally announced on May 9, with the initiation of the album's pre-order. In comparison to Night Visions and Smoke + Mirrors, frontman Dan Reynolds explained that the album will be an 'evolution for Imagine Dragons'.
The album was promoted by two singles: "Believer" and "Thunder" as well as an upcoming tour produced by Live Nation and supported with Grouplove and K.Flay will start in September 2017.
Stephen King’s terrifying, classic #1 New York Times bestseller, “a landmark in American literature” (Chicago Sun-Times)—about seven adults who return to their hometown to confront a nightmare they had first stumbled on as teenagers…an evil without a name: It.
Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.
They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers.
Readers of Stephen King know that Derry, Maine, is a place with a deep, dark hold on the author. It reappears in many of his books, including Bag of Bones, Hearts in Atlantis, and 11/22/63. But it all starts with It.
“Stephen King’s most mature work” (St. Petersburg Times), “It will overwhelm you… to be read in a well-lit room only” (Los Angeles Times).
More than 1,00,000 readers has already read this book worldwide so far!
Change is the universal law. It is the nature of this earth and this world. You’ve to change yourself. You’ve to change yourself the way your life wants or demands from you. If you wouldn’t change yourself with time, then time will destroy you. You wouldn’t survive in this world until and unless you wouldn’t change yourself. We all are bound to change ourselves in life.
Change doesn’t mean to destroy or finish yourself utterly, but to transform yourself according to your need. If you see around your surroundings, you will always find changing in everything with time whether it is a small pitcher plant or a big mango tree, you will always find changing.
There is a great beauty in your change. Is it not true that you always change your dress after wearing two or three days, then how do you feel yourself? You just take off your old and dirty clothes, and in its place you put on your new and neat and tidy clothes. It is also implied the same in your life. You wouldn’t live your life forever in your old thoughts, ideas and faiths. You’ve to change as per your needs. You’ve to adjust yourself with the outlooks of this world, and accordingly you’ve to transform yourself in your new appearance. This is the true law of this world. Then, only you’ll achieve happiness, success, and peace in your life.
You need to change your mind.
You need to change your thoughts.
You need to change your ideas.
You need to change your belief.
You need to change your outlooks.
You need to change your attitudes.
You’ve to change from good to better, and better to best. But not to good to bad; not to better to worse. You’ve to change from worst to best. You’ve to change from failure to successful. You’ve to change from loser to winner.
If you want to survive in this world, then you’ve to change yourself according to time, place and need.
Highlights of the book:
10 WAYS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE AT ANY AGE!
A self-guide to improve your personality and to change your life….
1. Subtract the wrong things
2. Believe you CAN
3. Work hard for what you want the most
4. Stand up for yourself
5. Let go of the past
6. End hurtful relationships
7. Be thankful for what you have
8. Dedicate some time every day for yourself
9. Keep learning and embracing life’s changes
10. Enjoy where you are now
This is lucid dreaming—the ability to know you are dreaming while you are in a dream, and then consciously explore and change the elements of the dream. A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming, with its evocative retro illustrations, shows exactly how to do it. Written by three avid, experienced lucid dreamers, this manual for the dream world takes the reader from step one—learning how to reconnect with his or her dreams— through the myriad possibilities of what can happen once the dreamer is lucid and an accomplished oneironaut (a word that comes from the Greek oneira, meaning dreams, and nautis, meaning sailor).
Readers will learn about the powerful REM sleep stage—a window into lucid dreams. Improve dream recall by keeping a journal. The importance of reality checks, such as “The Finger”—during the day, try to pass your finger through your palm; then, when you actually do it successfully, you’ll know that you’re dreaming. And once you become lucid, how to make the most of it. Every time you dream, you are washing up on the shores of your own inner landscape. Learn to explore a strange and thrilling world with A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming.
On his thirty-sixth birthday, Travis Cornell hikes into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. But his path is soon blocked by a bedraggled Golden Retriever who will let him go no further into the dark woods.
That morning, Travis had been desperate to find some happiness in his lonely, seemingly cursed life. What he finds is a dog of alarming intelligence that soon leads him into a relentless storm of mankind’s darkest creation...
Sugar is an addictive substance, just like caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol. Eating too much sugar can have serious, long-term consequences for your health and your appearance. The Sugar Detox for Beginners will give you the tools you need to seize control of your sugar intake. A sugar detox diet is the most effective way to remove sugar from your system and break the dangerous cycle of unhealthy sugar cravings. With The Sugar Detox Diet, you will get over 75 delicious sugar detox recipes to help you feel more energetic and clear-headed than ever before.
Sugar Detox for Beginners will help you start an effective sugar detox today, with:
• 77 delicious and nutritious recipes for an easy sugar detox, including Almond Pancakes, Lemony Hummus, Tuna Salad, and Salmon Teriyaki• A complete 21-day sugar detox plan when you want to gradually remove sugar from your diet
• 3-day sugar detox plan for when you want to get rid of sugar quickly
• The science behind sugar addiction10 tips to beat sugar cravingsSugar Detox for Beginners will help you reduce your sugar intake without depriving you of the delicious, feel-good foods that you love.
When Hungarian professor Ernő Rubik invented the Rubik’s Cube (or, rather, his Cube) in 1974 out of wooden blocks, rubber bands, and paper clips, he didn’t even know if it could be solved, let alone that it would become the world’s most popular puzzle. Since its creation, the Cube has become many things to many people: one of the bestselling children’s toys of all time, a symbol of intellectual prowess, a frustrating puzzle with 43.2 quintillion possible permutations, and now a worldwide sporting phenomenon that is introducing the classic brainteaser to a new generation.
In Cracking the Cube, Ian Scheffler reveals that cubing isn’t just fun and games. Along with participating in speedcubing competitions—from the World Championship to local tournaments—and interviewing key figures from the Cube’s history, he journeys to Budapest to seek a meeting with the legendary and notoriously reclusive Rubik, who is still tinkering away with puzzles in his seventies.
Getting sucked into the competitive circuit himself, Scheffler becomes engrossed in solving Rubik’s Cube in under twenty seconds, the quasi-mystical barrier known as “sub-20,” which is to cubing what four minutes is to the mile: the difference between the best and everyone else. As Scheffler learns from the many gurus who cross his path, from pint-sized kids to engineering professors, it’s not just about memorizing algorithms or even solving all six sides—it’s about discovering how to solve yourself.
These casually drawn, perfectly on-point comics by the hugely popular young Brooklyn-based artist Sarah Andersen are for the rest of us. They document the wasting of entire beautiful weekends on the internet, the unbearable agony of holding hands on the street with a gorgeous guy, and dreaming all day of getting home and back into pajamas. In other words, the horrors and awkwardnesses of young modern life. Oh and they are totally not autobiographical. At all.
Adulthood Is a Myth presents many fan favorites plus dozens of all-new comics exclusive to this book. Like the work of fellow Millennial authors Allie Brosh, Grace Helbig, and Gemma Correll, Sarah's frankness on personal issues like body image, self-consciousness, introversion, relationships, and the frequency of bra-washing makes her comics highly relatable and deeply hilarious.
At first Lisa's step-father would just make her stroke and massage his feet, hitting her if she stopped, but he soon wanted more. Much more. By the time she was 12 he was regularly abusing her. One day, when Lisa turned 16, she came home to discover that her mother had swapped bedrooms with her. 'You're my girlfriend now', her step-father told her. Lisa turned to her mother for help, but was met with a shrug. She wouldn't hear a word against her husband. 'Don't blame me,' she said. Her step-father's abuse was horrific but what completely tore her apart was knowing her mother knew and encouraged it.
Trapped and increasingly desperate, Lisa tried to find a way out. But her isolation was complete. A few months later her mother told her she'd arranged for Lisa and her step-father to move into a flat together down the road. It was too much for Lisa to bear. 'Please don't make me, please,' she sobbed. But her mother just ignored her. Lisa was marched around to the flat with her possessions and her nightmare was complete.
Alone with her step-father, Lisa's life became even more unbearable. Then one day, finally, she got the chance she'd been looking for to escape. Lisa bravely struck out on her own, petrified her mother would find her and hand her back into the waiting arms of her step-father. But Lisa's mother had no idea how determined she was to break away...
After severely injuring Peter Driscal in an empty parking lot, mischief-maker Cole Matthews is in major trouble. But instead of jail time, Cole is given another option: attend Circle Justice, an alternative program that sends juvenile offenders to a remote Alaskan Island to focus on changing their ways. Desperate to avoid prison, Cole fakes humility and agrees to go.
While there, Cole is mauled by a mysterious white bear and left for dead. Thoughts of his abusive parents, helpless Peter, and his own anger cause him to examine his actions and seek redemption—from the spirit bear that attacked him, from his victims, and from himself.
Gary Paulsen raises the stakes for survival in this riveting and inspiring story as one boy confronts the ultimate test and the ultimate adventure.
From the Paperback edition.