“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.

Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she’s a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.

Things go from bad to worse when Alexia accidentally kills the vampire and, appalling, Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate. With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London’s high society? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?

Whimsically illustrated, this bite-sized bestiary is the definitive guide to the kosherness of imaginary animals. Once and for all, burning questions passed down through the ages have been answered: Is a vegetable-lamb a vegetable or a lamb? Does licking the Pope make you tryf? What exactly is pollo maligno? Is roasted Sasquatch stringy?

Also featured are Joseph Nig, internationally bestselling author of How to Raise and Keep a Dragon and Duff Goldman, star of the Food Network reality show Ace of Cakes, who reveals how to properly prepare these fantastical beasts.

This irreverent kashrut is a must for those seeking to broaden their imaginary culinary experiences guilt-free.

In 1922, Lord Earl Carnarvon financed the Egyptian expedition that unearthed King Tut’s tomb. While the fact that the dig gained a reputation for being “cursed” is well known, Mathias Fowler slipped away into anonymity. Fowler, an American on the team, had grown obsessed with the Ancient Egyptians and when he returned to the States it was with several stolen artifacts in tow. Fowler had become so obsessed that when he died, he killed all of his household staff and had them buried in his mansion with him – a modern day Pharaoh’s Tomb.

Almost 60 years after Fowler’s death, Jessica Parrish, archeologist and would-be-Indiana Jones, has been hired to assemble and lead a team into the house to take back the missing pieces and disable the booby traps that have already cost one unfortunate group their lives. Can Parrish and her comrades navigate the elaborate deathtraps with their persons intact or will the curse of Tut’s tomb just add to its mounting body count?

Are you so sure about “assure,” “ensure,” and “insure”? Can you determine whether a knob of butter is equivalent to a lump or a pat or a scosh? Can you say which word in the English language has the most definitions, or who put the H in Jesus H. Christ?

If you can’t, be assured that Charles Harrington Elster, author of several well-loved works on language, can-and does in his latest book, a delightfully designed compendium of the most common, interesting, and entertaining conundrums in our language. Drawing upon esoteric sources and his own inimitable expertise, Elster uses a lively question-and-answer format to cover a variety of topics-word and phrase origins, slang, style, usage, punctuation, and pronunciation. Every chapter features original brainteasers, challenging puzzles, and a trove of literary trivia.

Janet dreams of a quiet, drama-free college life with her best friend, Paul. Unfortunately, Paul’s dead, and Janet’s only living friends are first-class busybodies Hanging out with a ghost might seem exciting, but Janet and her ghost-pal Paul make hermits look social.

When Janet’s meddling friend Freya forces her out on yet another blind date, Janet’s running for the hills…until romance blossoms. However, instead of love bringing the fledgling couple together, it’s all the things they have in common that keep them apart. Whether it’s ghosts of the past or ghosts of the present, will the young couple let their pasts haunt them forever, or will they find a way to heal their festering romance?