James M. Cain

An insurance salesman and an unhappy wife conspire to murder her husband and collect his insurance policy.

What would you do with a second chance at life?Sarah Talbot thought she'd never see another birthday. But against all odds, she beat the illness that could have killed her, reopened her bedding shop, Cloud Nine, and vowed to make the most of a fresh start that few are given. With Thanksgiving approaching, Sarah charters a small plane to take her to Elk Island, a remote spot off the rugged Maine coast where she spent some of her happiest days and where she hopes to reunite with the two most important people in her life. She arrives on the island with pilot Will Burke, a kindred spirit with whom Sarah forges a bond that will give them the courage to confront the past and have faith in the future...no matter how uncertain.Once Sarah thought happy endings occurred only in books; now she believes they can happen for anyone. And as she and Will grow closer, and something unexpectedly real blossoms between them, she has him believing it, too. But is believing it enough? Is even love enough? Can real life be lived on cloud nine? In this stunning novel, New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice tells a story you will cherish, peopled with indelible characters whose challenges are your own.From the Paperback edition.

xix, 187 p. ; 21 cm

"An elderly tapister keels over in Exeter Cathedral while viewing the famous embroidered rondels. A woman's body is found in Salisbury, and in London yet another woman dies from supposed "natural causes." But there are no natural causes in a Martha Grimes novel or in the world inhabited by Scotland Yard Chief Superintendent Richard Jury.". "Is there a link connecting these three women? Of course. Jury is convinced that the link is Santa Fe, New Mexico. Leaving Melrose Plant, ex-earl and amateur sleuth, to pursue inquiries in London, Jury heads over to the States, where, surrounded by turquoise jewelry and a thirteen-year-old girl with a pet coyote, he searches for and finds an astonishing web of greed, murder, and mayhem."--BOOK JACKET.

Presents the life cycle of butterflies as they pass through the four stages from egg to adult.

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE: Cain's first novel - the subject of an obscenity trial in Boston and the inspiration for Camus's The Stranger - is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into an erotic obsession, and into a murder; MILDRED PIERCE: Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness and determination. She used those attributes to survive a divorce in 1940s America with two children and to claw her way out of poverty, becoming a successful businesswoman. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for shiftless men and an unreasoning devotion to her monstrous daughter. Out of these elements, Cain created a novel (later made into a film noir classic) of acute social observation and devastating emotional violence - and a heroine whose ambitions and sufferings are never less than recognizable; DOUBLE INDEMNITY: Tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful, Double Indemnity gives us an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. First published in 1935, this novel reaffirmed James M. Cain as a virtuoso of the roman noir.