Ex-Wall Street trader, ex-con, and devoted father to an autistic son, Jason Stafford first appeared in Black Fridays, “one of the year’s finest crime debuts” (Booklist). Now, in Mortal Bonds, he goes to work for the wealthy family of a financial criminal… William von Becker’s multibillion-dollar fund was limited to only the luckiest investors. Or so they thought. After the house of cards collapses and the disgraced von Becker commits suicide in prison, his family asks Jason Stafford to find out where the money is—and who is targeting them with attempted kidnappings. There are plenty of angry suspects to take a look at. But with roughly three billion of von Becker’s ill-gotten dollars floating around somewhere, there are other interested parties as well. They’re determined. They’re powerful. And they’re not nearly as polite as the Feds…

Hired by the family of a disgraced investment banker who died in prison amid financial scandals, Jason Stafford races against time to find a fortune in missing funds only to see the people he contacts suffer suspicious and deadly accidents.

The trilogy that began with The Emperor's Blades and continued in The Providence of Fire reaches its epic conclusion, as war engulfs the Annurian Empire in Brian Staveley's The Last Mortal Bond The ancient csestriim are back to finish their purge of humanity; armies march against the capital; leaches, solitary beings who draw power from the natural world to fuel their extraordinary abilities, maneuver on all sides to affect the outcome of the war; and capricious gods walk the earth in human guise with agendas of their own. But the three imperial siblings at the heart of it all--Valyn, Adare, and Kaden--come to understand that even if they survive the holocaust unleashed on their world, there may be no reconciling their conflicting visions of the future. Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne The Emperor's Blades The Providence of Fire The Last Mortal Bond Other books in the world of the Unhewn Throne Skullsworn At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Struggling to rebuild his life after a two-year prison term for unscrupulous choices, former Wall Street hotshot Jason Stafford is tapped by an investment firm to investigate the suspicious death of a junior trader.

Only Ann Rule, the #1 "New York Times"-bestselling true-crime author, could lend her sharp insight into these cases of the spouse, lover, family member, or helpful stranger who is totally trusted--but whose lethally violent nature, though masterfully disguised, can kill. Original.

How might we change ourselves without ending our existence? What could we become, if we had access to an advanced form of bioengineering that allowed us dramatically to alter our genome? Could we remain in existence after ceasing to be alive? What is it to be human? Might we still exist after changing ourselves into something that is not human? What is the significance of human extinction? Steven Luper addresses these questions and more in this thought-provoking study. He defends an animalist account, which says that we are organisms, but claims that we are also material objects. His book goes to the heart of the most complex questions about what we are and what we might become. Using case studies from the life sciences as well as thought experiments, Luper develops a new way of thinking about the nature of life and death, and whether and how human extinction matters.

In The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley, the emperor of Annur is dead, slain by enemies unknown. His daughter and two sons, scattered across the world, do what they must to stay alive and unmask the assassins. But each of them also has a life-path on which their father set them, destinies entangled with both ancient enemies and inscrutable gods. Kaden, the heir to the Unhewn Throne, has spent eight years sequestered in a remote mountain monastery, learning the enigmatic discipline of monks devoted to the Blank God. Their rituals hold the key to an ancient power he must master before it's too late. An ocean away, Valyn endures the brutal training of the Kettral, elite soldiers who fly into battle on gigantic black hawks. But before he can set out to save Kaden, Valyn must survive one horrific final test. At the heart of the empire, Minister Adare, elevated to her station by one of the emperor's final acts, is determined to prove herself to her people. But Adare also believes she knows who murdered her father, and she will stop at nothing—and risk everything—to see that justice is meted out. Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne The Emperor's Blades The Providence of Fire The Last Mortal Bond Other books in the world of the Unhewn Throne Skullsworn (forthcoming) At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In the late 1870s, this gifted writer of hilarious, bad verse had a national following. Mark Twain even wrote that he always carried with him a copy of Julia's first book of poems, The Sentimental Song Book (1876). "I find in them the same grace and melody that attracted me when they were first published twenty years ago, and have held me in happy bonds ever since," he explained. Twain attributed the "deep charm" of Julia's poems to her innocent habit of making "an intentionally humorous episode pathetic and an intentionally pathetic one funny." Twain immortalized Julia's style in the writings of Emmeline Grangerford, a character in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. She also influenced the writing--in fact, the career--of the doggerel poet Ogden Nash, who reportedly said that her example convinced him to try to become "a great bad poet" rather than "a bad good poet." The late Walter Blair, a highly respected professor of American literature at the University of Chicago, put it like this in his introduction to the last published collection of Julia's poems in 1928: If these songs [as Julia called her poems] were only a little closer to the conventional modes of meter, rhyme, thought, and expression they would not impress us at all. Touched, however, by the magic wand of genius, the novel works of this great poet cause readers to slump down in their chairs, hold their agitated and aching sides, wipe tears from brimming eyes, and fill the air with the sound of distinctly raucous laughter. Mortal Refrains is the first complete, published collection of Julia Moore's work--poetry, short stories, songs (including sheet music), and newspaper interviews--compiled from the earliest published versions found in various public libraries, rare book collections, museums, and archives.

Two years after saving the Archangel Gabriel, Sam Buckland is feeling the pressure of a world plagued by evil. When the Angels Fall and Heaven is attacked by an ancient Egyptian sorcerer, however, he must put aside his weariness and muster all his powers and those of unlikely allies to turn aside this new threat.

Working as a financial investigator after two years in federal prison, Jason Stafford looks into a biofuel engineer's claims about being set up by dangerous adversaries.