Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in All Categories

It's New Year's Eve, the final night of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War, and another poor soul has turned up dead. Ted Eddings, a scuba diver and investigative reporter who was a favorite at the medical examiner's office, is found 30 feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner for the state of Virginia, can't help but wonder why she received a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified.

This laugh-out-loud memoir takes listeners backstage and inside the writers’ room of one of America’s best-loved shows. With more than 17 million viewers and more than 70 Emmy nominations—including two wins for best comedy—Everybody Loves Raymond reigned supreme in television comedy for almost a decade.

Perhaps no other Biblical tale penetrates so deeply into the everyday travails of the common person as The Book of Job. It tells the story of a righteous man beset by torment and misfortune through no fault of his own. This parable of bad things happening to a good person addresses the eternal question of why we are here, and why we suffer. This translation is by Stephen Mitchell.

An eclectic compendium of the finest short fiction of the last 150 years, featuring works by Paul Theroux, Joseph Conrad, James Ellroy, Ambrose Bierce, Charlotte Perkins Gillman, Aldous Huxley, Philip Roth, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

This timeless saga traces the intertwined lives of a group of prosperous Jewish Holocaust survivors in New York City after World War II. A chain of events disrupts the close-knit community as each refugee struggles to reconcile the horrific past with the difficult present and explores both the nature of faith and the nature of love. Marriages and affairs fall apart; age and death take their toll; the wisdom of the scripture and kabbalah and the precepts of the great philosophers and avatars of modern science are passionately debated in extended conversations that seethe with drama.

From basic training to World War II to the Gulf War, America's veterans share their funniest stories in this collection of Reader's Digest's popular "Humor in Uniform" column. Beneath the horror of war lies a rich tradition of comedy and satire, and these anecdotes have entertained fans for decades.

The Governor provides the most comprehensive look to date at the life of a twice-elected public official in the notoriously complicated world of Illinois politics. We take a tour through the segregated neighborhoods of Chicago, a city of great ethnic diversity, and see firsthand how those divides can evolve into cabals that rival anything found on the national political scene.

In a late 19th century London studio, aspiring artist Basil Hallward puts the finishing touches on a portrait of his handsome young friend Dorian Gray. Dorian looks at the painting and wishes that the portrait might grow old while he remains forever young.

Hazardous Duty is a real-life, hard-hitting nonfiction thriller set in the ruins of Bosnia and the sands of Saudi Arabia, the deadly alleys of Mogadishu and the teeming streets of Port-au-Prince. Colonel Hackworth returns from these new American battlefields to report that the Pentagon is wasting hundred of billions of dollars gearing up to fight the wrong kind of wars, and offers a tough-love critique of American military leadership, interpreting the new post-Cold War conflicts.

Mark Kurlansky, winner of the James Beard Award for Excellence in Food Writing, leads us on a mouthwatering culinary tour around the world and through history and culture from the fifth century B.C. to the present day. This wonderful collection contains essays by Plato on the art of cooking, Pablo Neruda on french fries, and many other writers on the passions of cuisine.

In this seventh installment of the Jeeves series, the unflappable butler once again must apply his cleverness to rescue Bertie Wooster—this time from being arrested, lynched, and engaged by mistake! Chaos ensues when Aunt Dahlia demands that Bertie help dupe an antique dealer into selling her an 18th-century cow creamer. Complications grow as Bertie's pal Gussie Fink-Nottle is more interested in studying the effects of a full moon on the love life of newts rather than marrying Madeline Bassett.

One hot Monday morning in 1976, Albert Spaggiari engineered the European crime of the century. A bank president in Nice, France found his vault welded shut—from the inside. Spaggiari and his gang of 20 men had dug a 25-foot tunnel from the city's sewer system into the bank, where they spent a weekend cooking meals, drinking wine, and clearing millions of dollars in gold, jewelry, gems, and cash. Here is the breathtakingly compelling story of Spaggiari, his “sewer gang,” and the most daring, outrageous theft of the 20th century.

Writer, journalist and chronicler of justice as it relates to the rich and famous, Gus Bailey, like the movers and shakers of Los Angeles, is drawn into the vortex of the O. J. Simpson trial. By day, he is a fixture at the lawyers, the journalists, the hangers-on, and even the judge. By night, he is courted by the most celebrated hosts, from Kirk Douglas to Heidi Fleiss, from Elizabeth Taylor to Nancy Reagan, who delight in the hottest news from the corridors of the courtroom.

In this inspiring work, Dominique Lapierre tells stories of extraordinary love and heroism - performed by ordinary people. Deep within one of the poorest sections of Calcutta, Lapierre found that this city, which produced Mother Teresa, had many other selfless inhabitants.

Regan Reilly, is a young PI who has come from L.A. to ski and celebrate with her parents and their rich Aspen friends. It ends up being a busman's holiday for Regan, who gets swept up in art theft intrigue after some multimillion-dollar paintings are stolen from her parent's friends. The thieves continue to elude capture, but Regan is on their trail. She's up agaist time, though, as the clock ticks down to Aspen's biggest party of the season—at which the town's most valuable painting of all will be unveiled.

While sifting through closets of junk in the mansion they have rented, Qwill and Koko uncover a mystery involving the suicide of the former owner and the murder of a potato farmer. By the author of The Cat Who Wasn't There.

During the course of a long summer, it becomes clear to two young, lost, and bored Korean War vets that their future lies outside Indianapolis—amid the gleaming towers of Manhattan, where they will find glory, fame, and lots of women. Set in the 1950s, this novel by acclaimed author Dan Wakefield seethes with pent-up frustration and confusion, and nearly every episode bubbles with hilarity.

Stephen W. Hawking's Cambridge lectures, exploring the most complex theories of physics, both past and present, remain the most important scientific theories known of time, space, and the nature of the cosmos. This 30th Anniversary remastered edition of The Cambridge Lectures offers listeners a unique opportunity to hear the full series of seven famed lectures exactly as Professor Hawking presented them during his tenure as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University.

It is December in the Year of our Lord 1138 when Gervase Bonel dies after eating sauce laced with poison served which had been served with a partridge. The active ingredient found in the sauce was monkshood, poison if ingested and otherwise known as Wolfsbane. Brother Cadfael made the oil. Who used it as poison? Cadfael assesses the motives of Bonel’s Welsh natural son and his stepson, and deals with Bonel’s widow, who at one time long ago was Cadfae's sweetheart. Drawing upon his knowledge of both herbs and the human heart, Cadfael ultimately uncovers a deadly recipe for murder.

Rich with unforgettable characters and history, intricately plotted and utterly absorbing, City of Dreams is a stirring saga of early Manhattan and the beginnings of medical science told by a master storyteller.