Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins has few illusions about the world–at least not about the world of a young black veteran in the late 1940s in Southern California. His stint in the Army didn’t do anything to dissuade him from his belief that justice doesn’t come cheap, especially for men like him. “I thought there might be some justice for a black man if he had money to grease it,” Easy says. Fired from his job on the line at an aircraft plant, he’s in danger of losing his home, symbol of his tenuous hold on middle class status. That’s a good enough reason to accept a white man’s offer to pay him for finding a beautiful, mysterious Frenchwoman named Daphne Monet, last seen in the company of a well-known gangster.

1773: The Massachusetts colony is torn between patriots who want independence from British rule and loyalists who support the King. At the center is the educated and beautiful Abigail Adams?wife of John Adams, the leader of the Sons of Liberty, a secret organization opposing the Crown.

When a murder occurs in the home of their friend and fellow patriot, Rebecca Malvern, John is accused of the gruesome crime, which was seemingly perpetrated to obtain a secret Sons of Liberty document. With both her husband?s good name and the fate of the Sons of Liberty at stake, Abby must uncover a conspiracy that could cost them all their freedom?and their lives.

Sano Ichiro, the shogun’s most honorable investigator of events, situations, and people, looks forward to the comforts that his arranged marriage promises. However, the death of the shogun’s favorite concubine interrupts the couple’s wedding ceremony and shatters any hopes the samurai detective had about enjoying a little peace with his new wife.

After Sano traces the cause of Lady Harume’s death to a self-inflicted tattoo, he must travel into the cloistered, forbidden world of the shogun’s women to untangle the complicated web of Harume’s lovers, rivals, and troubled past to identify her killer. To make matters worse, Reiko, his beautiful young bride, reveals herself to be not a traditional, obedient wife, but a headstrong, intelligent, aspiring detective bent on helping Sano with his new case. Sano is horrified at her unladylike behavior, and the resulting sparks make their budding love as exciting as the mystery surrounding Lady Harume’s death.

At 15, Miss Mary Russell is of above average intelligence and has dealt with great tragedy. Living with an oppressive aunt for her guardian,?daily jaunts onto the Sussex Downs are a way for young Mary to escape. For a few hours, Mary wanders the countryside and reads the books that will prepare her for entering into her degree program at Oxford. But one day, Mary stumbles upon an older gentlemen who will alter the course of her life.

Years into his early retirement, Sherlock Holmes, presently dedicating himself to the study of bees, sees the wit and advanced intelligence in the youth before him. An unlikely friendship soon develops as The Great Detective molds Mary Russell into his worthy apprentice in the art of detection. And as the years go by, and the world changes under the effects of World War I, the pair take on?a difficult case of child abduction. Soon they find themselves under pursuit by a master criminal who will threatens their lives, test their detective skills, and the strength of their friendship.

“It was a long time ago, now, and there were many gunfights to follow, but I remember as well as I remember anything the first time I saw Virgil Cole shoot. Time slowed down for him. Always steady, and never fast . . .” When Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch arrive in Appaloosa, they find a small, dusty town suffering at the hands of renegade rancher Randall Bragg, a man who has so little regard for the law that he has taken supplies, horses, and women for his own and left the city marshal and one of his deputies for dead. Cole and Hitch, itinerant lawmen, are used to cleaning up after opportunistic thieves, but in Bragg they find an unusually wily adversary-one who raises the stakes by playing not with the rules, but with emotions.

Viva Xoltotl!

Tenochtitlan, once known as Mexico City, is the hottest, most exciting city in the year 2045. Stainless steel pyramids pierce the sky. Aztec fundamentalists, with artificial hearts, worship the sun with blood and lasers. And Xólotl Zapata, renegade cartoonist, is running for his life.

Everyone is after Zapata: the government, the Mafia, street gangs, cults, and garbage collectors. Why? Because 21st century science has developed a virus that can “infect” any human mind with religion – and Zapata is the carrier!

On a walk in the woods Usagi Jane finds a strange object half-buried in the dirt. Curious, she digs it up and discovers that it’s a bunny skull. Sad to see just a skull, she builds a bunny body out of dirt and sets the skull on top. To her surprise, it comes to life and runs from her. She soon discovers more skull bunnies in the woods, but they run from her as well. How can Usagi Jane approach the timid skull bunnies? And will they ever accept her as a friend?

This book, with its 150 recipes culled from a lifetime of family meals and culinary instruction, is much more than a cookbook. It is a daughter’s tribute – a collection of personal memories of the philosophy and superstitions behind culinary traditions that have been passed down through her Cantonese family, in which each ingredient has its own singular importance, the preparation of a meal is part of the joy of life, and the proper creation of a dish can have a favorable influence on health and good fortune.

Each chapter begins with its own engaging story, offering insight into the Chinese beliefs that surround life-enhancing and spiritually calming meals. In addition, personal family photographs illustrate these stories and capture the spirit of China before the revolution, when young’s family lived in Canton, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.

The art of the code -code making and code breaking- remains shrouded in mystery and seems locked away in the murky realms of military intelligence, spies, and secret services. Yet codes affect virtually every area of our lives, providing security, protecting identity, and enabling us to connect via the Internet across global boundaries. This lavishly illustrated encyclopedia surveys the history and development of code making and code breaking in all areas of culture and society-from hieroglyphs and runes to DNA, the Zodiac Killer, The Da Vinci Code, graffiti, and beyond.

Beginning with the first codes, including those found in the natural world and among ancient peoples, the book casts a wide net, exploring secret societies, codes of war, codes of the underworld, commerce, human behavior, and civilization itself. Editor Paul Lunde and an extraordinary group of specialists have compiled the most comprehensive and complete collection of codes available.

Visually stunning and packed with fascinating details, The Book of Codes tells the complete story of codes at a time when they have become fundamentally important to our lives.