Peter Abrahams

For Nat and his new friends, Grace and Izzie Zorn, twin sisters as seductive as they are elusive, it was the perfect plan for some quick cash. A bold scheme with an admirable motive: to save the bright future of a deserving young man. And the victim, too, was deserving--an arrogant billionaire who would hardly notice a financial loss. All the plotters needed was a believable story, desperate and frightening, but false. Nothing bad was supposed to happen. They were only crying wolf. But what if the wolf were real? For someone in the shadows is listening, someone who thinks he deserves an even brighter future. Now a risky but basically innocent game will take a horrifying turn. . . .

Ivy Seidel dreams of becoming a writer, a great American novelist. But running low on money and concerned that her writing might lack a depth and darkness, she takes a job teaching creative writing -- at a maximum-security prison. It is a world she has never experienced before, one ruled by enigmatic codes of honor, ceaseless aggression and absolutely savage violence.But one of the prisoners there is unlike any of the others, and unlike any man she has ever met before. Vance Harrow is unique. He is soft-spoken, charismatic and brilliantly talented. Two things trouble Ivy deeply. First, she suspects that Harrow shouldn't be in prison at all. He possesses an intellect that separates him from the other inmates and a selflessness that might just get him killed. Second, he has at the same time deep reservoirs of rage and brutality that seem perfectly in line with the other prisoners -- a dichotomy Ivy finds difficult to reconcile.Trying to understand the complex picture, perhaps even get some recognition for a writer as gifted as Harrow seems to be, Ivy begins to ask questions. How did such a man end up in prison in the first place? Is he truly guilty? If not, who could have been responsible for putting him there, and why hasn't he tried harder to free himself? But the more questions Ivy asks to free a man she believes to be innocent, the more attention she draws to herself. Soon other people begin to ask questions -- about Ivy Seidel.In the span of just a few days, Ivy's life will be completely turned upside down. What begins as an inquiry into one man's innocence may explode into a love affair, and what begins as an obsession to save one man's life might just end up costing Ivy her own.

Sometimes the dead live on in your dreams . . . at least that's true for Roy Valois. His wife, Delia, died fifteen years earlier while working for a private think tank and he has never forgotten her. Roy is a well-known sculptor in the art world. His newest piece, a magnificent creation he calls Delia, has just been finished, a sign that he's found a little closure at last.Then Roy gets some news of the grimmest kind. It's the kind of news that forces thoughts in unexpected directions, such as the contents of one's obituary. Roy and his lawyer, a close friend, find themselves wondering whether Roy's obituary will mention a big goal he scored in college hockey. Roy's friend suggests that they could probably find out. With some help, they hack into the morgue files of the New York Times. There's no mention of the goal, but something else about his obituary bothers Roy. According to the New York Times, his wife was working for the United Nations when she died—not the think tank.At first, Roy thinks it's a simple mistake, but when a conversation with the writer of his obituary fails to clear things up, he suspects something more. The deeper he digs, the more confusing his wife's past becomes. Delia's former colleagues deny ever knowing her, the building that housed the think tank has supposedly served as the offices for another organization for decades, and Roy can't find any records of its existence. Who was Delia? Who did she work for? How did she really die? Did she really die? With time running out, a desperate Roy won't stop until he knows the truth about the woman he can't stop loving.

Enter a wonderland of mesmerizing tales. It's a place that's neither here nor there, where things are never quite as they seem. Inspired by Lewis Carroll's whimsical masterpiece, ranging from the impossible to the mad to the curiouser, these stories will have you absolutely off your head.

Roy Hill married the girl of his dreams, dotes on his eleven-year-old son, and is next in line for a big promotion in the Atlanta office of a global corporation. Then, almost imperceptibly at first, everything starts to unravel. He losing control of his life.When his best friend joins a Civil War reenactment group, spending his weekends in camps where the year is forever 1863, Roy finds the idea laughable . . . even though he is the descendent and namesake of a Confederate Civil War hero. But when he visits the regiment just to be polite, something unexpected happens, gradually opening Roy's eyes to the secret of a distant conflict that never ended--and leading him down a path that grows more menacing at every turn.With his job disappearing in a way he could never have foreseen, his whole life slipping out of control, Roy falls deeper and deeper into the Rebel past. A strange and powerful idea takes hold: that his life went wrong long before he was born, in the fateful campaigns that preceded the burning of Atlanta. Among the men, a hard-core splinter group is formed--with Roy at its center. On an ancient battlefield, the once-clear lines between reenactment and reality begin to disappear. When his son is taken hostage is it real? When the old muskets fire will they still fire blanks? Or will a bloody history come stunningly to life?An extraordinary novel about the fate of men and women no longer in step with the rhythms of the modern world, marching back into Southern history to make things right, Last of the Dixie Heroes is Peter Abrahams's most dazzlingly original work yet.From the Hardcover edition.

Master of psychological suspense Peter Abrahams returns with an ingenious tale of an ordinary family that unknowingly invites the agent of their destruction into their own home.When Scott and Linda Gardner hire Julian Sawyer to tutor their troubled teenage son Brandon, he seems like the answer to a prayer. Capable and brilliant, Julian connects with Brandon in a way neither of his parents can. He also effortlessly helps Linda to salvage a troubled business deal and gives Scott expert advice on his tennis game. Only eleven-year old Ruby--funny, curious, devoted to Sherlock Holmes--has doubts about the stranger in their midst who has so quickly become like a member of the family. But even the observant Ruby is far from understanding Julian's true designs on the Gardners.For Julian, the Gardners are like specimens in jars, creatures to be studied-- and manipulated. Scott is a gambler with no notion of odds, festering in the shadow of his more successful brother. Linda is ambitious, hungry for the cultured stimulation Julian easily provides. Brandon is risking his future late at night in the town woods. And Ruby--well, she's just a silly little girl. And in that miscalculation lies the Gardner family's only possible salvation.In The Tutor, Peter Abrahams creates a living, breathing portrait of an American family, their town, their secrets, their dreams--and a portrait just as compelling of the menace they welcome into their home. It is his most chilling, suspenseful novel to date.From the Hardcover edition.

For Nat and his new friends, Grace and Izzie Zorn, twin sisters as seductive as they are elusive, it was the perfect plan for some quick cash. A bold scheme with an admirable motive: to save the bright future of a deserving young man. And the victim, too, was deserving--an arrogant billionaire who would hardly notice a financial loss. All the plotters needed was a believable story, desperate and frightening, but false. Nothing bad was supposed to happen. They were only crying wolf. But what if the wolf were real? For someone in the shadows is listening, someone who thinks he deserves an even brighter future. Now a risky but basically innocent game will take a horrifying turn. . . .

296 pages ; 22 cm.630L Lexile

A novel which tells the passionate story of the Great Trek from the point of view of both the South African Boers and the native Matabeles.

At bedtime, a young girl enjoys looking out her window and then creates a puppet show with shadows on the wall.

A deeply damaged female soldier home from the war in Afghanistan becomes obsessed with finding a missing girl, gains an unlikely ally in a stray dog, and encounters new perils beyond the combat zone. LeAnne Hogan went to Afghanistan and came back missing an eye and with half her face badly scarred. She can barely remember the disastrous desert operation that almost killed her, and suspects the fault is hers. Shattered by the sudden death of her hospital roommate, Marci, LeAnne's native land is now unfamiliar, recast in shadow by her one good eye, her damaged psyche, her weakened body. Arriving in the rain-soaked small town in Washington State that Marci had called home, she learns her eight-year-old daughter has vanished. When a dark, unreadable dog seems to adopt LeAnne, a surprising connection is formed and something shifts inside her. Obsessed with finding Marci's daughter, LeAnne and her canine companion are drawn into danger.

After setting things right in a case that took them all the way to the Louisiana bayou, P.I. Bernie LIttle and his faithful canine companion Chet decide to take the long way home and pay a visit to Bernie's girlfriend, Suzie Sanchez, an up-and-coming journalist now living in Washington D.C. Suzie is working on a big story she can't talk about, and when her source, a mysterious Brit with possible intelligence connections, runs into trouble of the worst kind, Bernie suddenly finds himself under arrest. Soon Chet, Bernie and Suzie are pulled into a shadowy international conspiracy.

After getting a strange charm bracelet from a homeless woman, thirteen-year-old Robyn Forester and new friends join together to fight injustice in their Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood.