John McLain
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In the small Lake Erie township of Benning, someone is at work cultivating a supernatural garden ...
Andy Kemp's young life has been as ravaged as his scarred face. Disfigured by an abusive father, the teenager hides behind his books and an impenetrable wall of cynicism and anger.
As Andy's mother struggles to reconnect with him, his Uncle Rip returns transformed from a stint in prison and wants to be a mentor to the reclusive boy,
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Peter Shandy mysteries volume 10
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English
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When the dullest man in town goes missing, and Professor Peter Shandy must figure out where to look Although he towers over his neighbors, Jim Feldster is otherwise unremarkable, except for his mastery of cow milking and his membership in every lodge, rotary club, and brotherhood that Balaclava County has to offer. And anyone who's met his wife, Mirelle, a vicious gossip with a hysterical streak, can understand why he never misses a meeting. But one...
3) The judge
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"When a brilliant billionaire is diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer, he realizes that all his considerable wealth cannot prepare him to meet his Maker. But he has an idea that might: he will stage the ultimate reality show. With his true agenda hidden, he auditions followers from all the world?s major religions, inviting them to the trial of their lives on a remote island, where they must defend their beliefs against spiritual challenges. Oliver...
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Describes the truth of how the West rose and fell, and how its legacy defines us today.
The open range cattle era lasted barely a quarter-century, but it left America irrevocably changed. These few decades following the Civil War brought America its greatest boom-and-bust cycle until the Depression, the invention of the assembly line, and the dawn of the conservation movement. It inspired legends, such as that icon of rugged individualism, the cowboy....
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A Moscow cop is left out in the cold in this "impressive" Edgar Award winner for Best Mystery Novel (The Washington Post Book World).
When forced to choose between the law and the party line, Police Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has a disturbing tendency to fight for justice, and that has won him no friends at the Kremlin. Now his enemies in the KGB have arranged a transfer to the lowest rungs of Moscow law enforcement, a backwater department...
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On Christmas Day, a University scrooge finds a murdered librarian Each December, the faculty of Balaclava Agricultural College goes wild with Christmas lights. The entire campus glitters with holiday decorations, save for one dark spot: the home of professor Peter Shandy. But after years of resisting the Illumination festival, Shandy snaps, installing a million-watt display of flashing lights and blaring music perfectly calculated to drive his neighbors...
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Peter Shandy mysteries volume 7
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English
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While tracking down rare weather vanes, Helen Shandy stumbles on a case of arson The weather vanes of the famous craftsman Praxiteles Lumpkin are one of the great cultural treasures of rural Massachusetts. Helen Shandy, librarian at Balaclava Agricultural College, is roaming the countryside, camera in hand, capturing images of these lovely copper sculptures, trying to give them the attention they deserve. But each time she takes a picture, the featured...
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Peter Shandy mysteries volume 9
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English
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While vacationing in Maine, Professor Peter Shandy confronts a poisonous potpie Massachusetts horticulturalist Peter Shandy is famous for his rutabagas, but he comes to Maine with a loftier plant in mind. Specifically, he wants to size up the world-renowned lupines of Frances Rondel, a nonagenarian whose legendary flowers are even more beautiful in life than they are in myth. Shandy is bitterly jealous, but finds a major distraction in the dining...
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Peter Shandy mysteries volume 8
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English
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When a nocturnal hike turns deadly, Professor Peter Shandy takes an interest in owl spotting Emory Emmerick comes to Balaclava Agricultural University as a scout for a television station. Although the faculty and students are hardly ready for prime time, Emmerick's interest is in environmental programminga subject that inspires even the driest Balaclava professor to wax poetic. In his search for material, Emmerick joins Peter Shandy and a few of his...
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Peter Shandy mysteries volume 6
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English
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On Groundhog Day, secrets surface alongside a waterlogged corpse The rural town of Balaclava greets Groundhog Day as an excuse for one last cold-weather fling. The students and faculty of the local agricultural college drink cocoa, throw snowballs, and, when the temperature allows, ice skate. Oozak's Pond is not quite frozen this year, though, and as the Groundhog Day celebrations reach their peak, the students see someone bobbing through the ice....
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Look at the back label of a bottle of wine and you may well see a reference to its terroir, the total local environment of the vineyard that grew the grapes, from its soil to the climate. Winemakers universally accept that where a grape is grown influences its chemistry, which in turn changes the flavor of the wine. A detailed system has codified the idea that place matters to wine. So why don't we feel the same way about whiskey?
In this book, the...
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When Clarence Thomas joined the Supreme Court in 1991, he found with dismay that it was interpreting a very different Constitution from the one the framers had written-the one that had established a federal government manned by the people's own elected representatives, charged with protecting citizens' inborn rights while leaving them free to work out their individual happiness themselves, in their families, communities, and states. He found that...
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Peter Shandy mysteries volume 4
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English
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For Professor Ungley, death isn't half as inconvenient as losing his toupee An unpleasant man in every respect, university professor Herbert Ungley is exceedingly vain. One morning, his landlady catches her cat coming in with Ungley's hairpiece between its teeth. It's clear something has happened to the old grouch, because he would never be caught without his toupee. Ungley is found in the yard behind his social club, with his head bashed in and...
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Radical liberals want to make America a better place, but their utopian social engineering leads, ironically, to greater human suffering. So argues David Horowitz, bestselling author in his newest book Radicals: Portraits of a Destructive Passion.
From Karl Marx to Barack Obama, Horowitz shows how the idealistic impulse to make the world "a better place" gives birth to the twin cultural pathologies of cynicism and nihilism, and is the chief source...
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What's the secret to a life of happiness? "In this delightful book brimming with humorous and poignant passages, radio personality Hugh Hewitt provides the answer. The starting place is generosity, he says, and there are seven gifts that are sure to improve the lives of both giver and receiver: encouragement, energy, enthusiasm, good humor, graciousness, gratitude, and patience. Anyone can give these gifts, but Hewitt shows that some people are particularly...
16) A Hangman's Diary: The Journal of Master Franz Schmidt, Public Executioner of Nuremberg, 1573-1617
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From 1573 to 1617, Master Franz Schmidt was the executioner for the towns of Bamberg and Nuremberg. During that span, he personally executed more than 350 people while keeping a journal throughout his career.
A Hangman's Diary is not only a collection of detailed writings by Schmidt about his work, but also an account of criminal procedure in Germany during the Middle Ages. With analysis and explanation, editor Albrecht Keller and translators C....
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During the Obama years, an asymmetrical media war was waged to control the critical first draft of American history. There is no fair way to record that history without first acknowledging the war. The field of battle shaped up as follows: on the right, the alternative conservative media and the "responsible" right, occasionally working together, often working at odds; on the left, the mainstream media, the social media giants, Hollywood, Broadway,...
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For those who loved Stephen E. Ambrose's Band of Brothers and E.B. Sledge's with the Old Breed. Drawing on toughness and skills forged in hardscrabble Depression-era North Carolina, Bronze Star recipient and expert B.A.R. rifleman Harold Frank invades Normandy, fights Germans, and endures a grueling stint in a German POW camp where he witnesses the fire-bombing of Dresden.
From D-Day to Dresden with a Crack Shot B.A.R. Rifleman
D-Day 1944: twenty-year-old...
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If you think atheists have reason, evidence, and science on their side, think again! Award-winning author Dr. Frank Turek (I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist) will show you how atheists steal reason, evidence, science, and other arguments from God in trying to make their case for atheism. If that sounds contradictory, it's because it is! Atheists can't make their case without appealing to realities only theism can explain. In an engaging and...
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Donald Trump, Statesman?
Critics dismissed the idea out of hand. Even his fans questioned whether President Trump could do what other presidents had considered impossible. But in less than two years, Trump has:
- Put North Korea on the path to de-nuclearization and peace with South Korea.
- Destroyed the "state" of the Islamic State.
- Forged a de facto alliance between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
- Doled out real punishment - not empty threats - for...