It’s 1990 and the Cold War is coming to an end, but the game of espionage continues on as America and the West prepares for the First Gulf War with Iraq. The career of longtime CIA officer, William Wythe, is also coming to a sad end at his final posting in Lisbon, Portugal. His last ten years have been spent mostly in an alcoholic blur since his wife died in a terrorist attack meant for him. The Chief of Station wants to be rid of him, a special counterintelligence section of the CIA suspects he may be a Russian mole and the high point of his dark weeks is anonymously playing piano at a local dive in the city two nights a week. But as is often the case in the “wilderness of mirrors” of espionage, all the facts and the people may not be as they seem. An unhappily married Brazilian woman is frequenting this jazz club and growing fonder of William, raising some hope that he may yet have a future worth living. She joins him on a private search for missing Hungarian royal jewels, which may have been hidden in Portugal towards the end of WWII. A modern neo-Nazi group is also on the hunt for those same jewels. All the players cross paths at the Clube de Jazz, which is run by an elderly Italian-American who’d been in America’s wartime O.S.S., the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Sometimes your customer is a galactic mega-corporation Sometimes your customer is a Galactic Commonwealth politician And sometimes, your customer is a guy who approaches you in a bar. Life is never boring for the crew of the Ghost. Space Opera, space opera adult, space opera series, space opera military science fiction, scifi adventure, space opera book, science fiction adventure, space western, science fiction, scifi, galactic empire, first contact, alien contact, space adventure, scifi series, scifi fun

“One of [the] best” (Orlando Sentinel) Lucas Davenport Novels—now with a New Introduction by the Author. Clara Rinker is twenty-eight, beautiful, charmingly southern—and the best hit woman in the business. She just goes about her business, collects her money, and goes home. Her latest hit sounds simple: a defense attorney wants a rival eliminated. No problem—until a witness survives. Clara usually knows how to deal with loose ends: cut them off, one by one, until they're all gone. This time, there’s one loose end that’s hard to shake. Lucas Davenport has no idea of the toll this case is about to take on him. Clara knows his weak spots. She knows how to penetrate them, and how to use them. And when a woman like Clara has the advantage, no one is safe.

A comprehensive study of ephemera in twentieth-century literature—and its relevance to the twenty-first century “Nothing ever really disappears from the internet” has become a common warning of the digital age. But the twentieth century was filled with ephemera—items that were designed to disappear forever—and these objects played crucial roles in some of that century’s greatest works of literature. In The Death of Things, author Sarah Wasserman delivers the first comprehensive study addressing the role ephemera played in twentieth-century fiction and its relevance to contemporary digital culture. Representing the experience of perpetual change and loss, ephemera was central to great works by major novelists like Don DeLillo, Ralph Ellison, and Marilynne Robinson. Following the lives and deaths of objects, Wasserman imagines new uses of urban space, new forms of visibility for marginalized groups, and new conceptions of the marginal itself. She also inquires into present-day conundrums: our fascination with the durable, our concerns with the digital, and our curiosity about what new fictional narratives have to say about deletion and preservation. The Death of Things offers readers fascinating, original angles on how objects shape our world. Creating an alternate literary history of the twentieth century, Wasserman delivers an insightful and idiosyncratic journey through objects that were once vital but are now forgotten.

From the concert stage to the dressing room, from the recording studio to the digital realm, SPIN surveys the modern musical landscape and the culture around it with authoritative reporting, provocative interviews, and a discerning critical ear. With dynamic photography, bold graphic design, and informed irreverence, the pages of SPIN pulsate with the energy of today's most innovative sounds. Whether covering what's new or what's next, SPIN is your monthly VIP pass to all that rocks.