Showing results for title "Before the Fall" in Literature & Fiction

After serving seventy years in prison for the murder of her sister, Eula, Della Lee has finally returned home to the Texas town of Puerto Pesar. She's free from confinement - and ready to tell her secrets before it's too late. She finds a willing audience in journalist Mick Anders, who is reeling after his suspension from a Boston newspaper and in town, reluctantly, to investigate a mysterious portrait of Eula that reportedly sheds tears.

On a foggy summer night, 11 people - 10 privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter - depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: the plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are the painter Scott Burroughs and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul's family. Was it by chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something more sinister at work? A storm of media attention brings Scott fame that quickly morphs into notoriety and accusations, and he scrambles to salvage truth from the wreckage.

In the beginning.... Three brothers - Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer. Royalty. Archangels. United in devotion to their father and all his works. But when Lucifer learns of their father’s latest creation - a new race, fashioned from crude matter and yet made in his image - he is consumed with resentment. Why have he and his angelic kind been overlooked? After a bitter confrontation, Lucifer is cast out, doomed to an eternity of exile and punishment. Unrepentant, he vows he won’t suffer alone. Mankind has made a powerful enemy - one determined to lure it into darkness and torment....

Elizabeth Bennet is horrified when, during a walk in Netherfield’s gardens with her sister Jane, she witnesses Mr. Darcy take a fall from his horse. Rushing to his aid, she is bewildered when he–seeming quite out of his wits–declares himself to her. Deciding the proposal was the product of a confused mind, she decides to disregard it.

On a foggy summer night, 11 people - 10 privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter - depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: The plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are the painter Scott Burroughs and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul's family. Was it by chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something more sinister at work?

When rumors reach Vienna that an attack by the Ottoman army is imminent, Wilhelm von Schor, one of the emperor’s courtiers, prepares to evacuate his family—including his sister, Katja. But Katja’s reluctance to leave the city and the people she loves so well grows the farther the family carriage gets from her childhood home. When she learns that another brother, Xavier, is returning to Vienna with his musketeers, she decides to remain behind and face the shadow of war. But all too soon, the Ottomans encircle the city, blanketing its inhabitants in fear.

The rich are different. But fate is blind. A private jet plunges into the sea. The only survivors are down-on his luck artist Scott Burroughs and JJ Bateman, the four-year-old son of a super-rich TV executive. For saving the boy, Scott is suddenly a hero. And then, as the official investigation is rapidly overtaken by a media frenzy, it seems he may also be a villain. Why was he on the plane in the first place, and why did it crash?

One dark moment was all it took to turn 24-year-old Dominic Kinkaide's world black. On the night of his high school graduation, a single incident changed him forever, and he became a hardened man-famous in the eyes of the world, but tortured inside. Now all he cares about is losing himself in the roles that he plays.

When the thing that birthed her drags Gesa back to the gryphon clan using her sister’s illness as bait, Gesa and her harem find themselves breaking out of an asylum and fleeing assassins - without really knowing who the creeps are even targeting. After all, there are so many options to choose from on the list of people who want Gesa or her lovers dead. But the trouble doesn’t stop when she leaves clan lands. Oisin’s been hiding someone, and Gesa doesn’t like unexpected visitors.

Facing the birth of her child, and single motherhood, Jo Devereux has spent the last six months in Mucknamore, the Irish village she fled 20 years ago. A trunk of letters and diaries left by her grandmother and great-aunt has revealed a heartbreaking legacy of bitter secrets that have haunted the women of her family for four generations. Now she must find out the ultimate truth: What other secrets and lies lie under her mother’s and grandmother’s unshakeable silence? How does it connect with her failed life as a gender-bending agony aunt in San Franciso?

During the renovation of a decrepit old barn by several friends, the chance finding of various old manuscripts lodged between some wall cavities reveals clues to a mystery that goes back over four and a half centuries to the time of Queen Mary I, Queen Elizabeth I, and Lady Jane Grey. Told from several viewpoints, the startling story of Lady Jane Grey finally comes to light as the previously unknown last moments of her life involving mystery, intrigue, politics, and love come to an explosive ending that may even force a revision of the history books.

Rojan Dizon just wants to keep his head down. But his worst nightmare is around the corner. With the destruction of their power source, his city is in crisis: Riots are breaking out, mages are being murdered, and the city is divided. But Rojan's hunt for the killers will make him responsible for all-out anarchy. Either that, or an all-out war. And there's nothing Rojan hates more than being responsible.

They say 'live every day as if it's your last' - but you never actually think it's going to be. At least I didn't. The thing is, you don't get to know when it happens. You don't remember to tell your family that you love them or - in my case - remember to say goodbye to them at all. But what if, like me, you could live your last day over and over again? Could you make it perfect? If your whole life flashed before your eyes, would you have no regrets? Or are there some things you'd want to change?

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe, read by Jenny Agutter. Rosamund lies dying in her remote Shropshire home. But before she does so, she has one last task: to put on tape not just her own story but the story of the young blind girl, her cousin's granddaughter, who turned up mysteriously at her party all those years ago. This is a story of generations, of the relationships within a family - and of what goes to make a child.

The people have spoken. The dragons must die. Will ignorance destroy everything the dragons’ magic has created? Leah, rider of the last queen dragon, Aaliyah, would do anything to open the lines of communication with the people of Heliok. But the time for negotiations have ended and war is edging ever closer. And when the smell of blood reaches her queen, they know it’s time to retreat, but she doesn’t count on the number of people who have turned against them. Troyer will stop at nothing to purge his planet of the leaching dragons. Furious over having to tithe his hard-earned crops ...

1916: Across the channel, the Great War rages and in London's East End with her husband away fighting, Hannah Loxwood battles with the overwhelming burden of 'duty.' She has sacrificed so much for a husband who may never come home. When she meets Daniel who is thoughtful, intelligent and quietly captivating - Hannah finds herself faced with the most dangerous of temptations. Soon Hannah and Daniel will realise just how precarious their happiness is, as their destiny rushes towards them…