Ill Wind

Some Weather Wardens control fire, others control earth, water, or wind – and the most powerful can control more than one element. Without Wardens, Mother Nature would wipe humanity off the face of the earth... Joanne Baldwin is a Weather Warden. Usually, all it takes is a wave of her hand to tame the most violent weather. But now Joanne is trying to outrun another kind of storm: accusations of corruption and murder. So she’s resorting to the very human tactic of running for her life. Her only hope is Lewis, the most powerful Warden. Unfortunately, he’s also on the run having stolen not one but three bottles of Djinn – making him the most wanted man on earth. Still, Joanne and her classic Mustang are racing hard to find him – because there’s some bad weather closing in fast...

The ruins of Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park provide a place of solace for Anna Pigeon until their beauty is tainted by death.

An oil company's attempt to clean up an oil spill using bacteria turns to disaster as the bacteria spread, eating every petroleum derivative in sight, including all plastics. As modern technology disintegrates, people are thrown back on their own devices for survival.

"From America's leading scholar of democracy, the definitive exploration of today's dangerously rising wave of authoritarianism, from Asia to America--and a personal, passionate call to action that shows us how to restore U.S. democracy and global leadership. Larry Diamond has made it his life's work both to study democracy and to advise dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. But when Donald Trump won the presidency by openly rejecting basic democratic norms, this lifelong scholar of democracy's struggles abroad felt a horrible sense of danger at home. As Diamond has long chronicled, democracy expands and retreats in waves. From the 1970s into the 1990s, the "third wave" saw democracy spread through Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa and attempt to take root in the former Soviet empire. But since 2006, Diamond has tracked a global democratic recession. By 2016, illiberal rulers were eroding democracy in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and more, while China and Russia--the world's leading autocracies--grew increasingly bold and bullying. And with Trump's election, the global retreat from freedom spread from democracy's margins to its heart. Diamond's core argument is stark: The defense and spread of democracy has relied for decades on U.S. global leadership, including its alliances with advanced democracies in Europe and Asia. If America does not reclaim its traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian trend will accelerate into a "third reverse wave" of democratic breakdowns. That wave could become a tsunami. And that could let Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers turn the 21st century into a dark time of surging authoritarianism. But it's an ill wind that brings no good with it. Free governments can defend their values; free citizens can exercise their rights. Diamond explains how we can make the Internet safe for liberal democracy, how we can exploit the soft, kleptocratic underbelly of dictatorships, and how we can revive America's degraded democracy. He offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions for policymakers and citizens alike, including ways to fight polarization, reduce the influence of money, combat partisan gerrymandering, expand voter turnout, and negate the electoral college. We are at a hinge in history, between a new era of tyranny or a new age of democratic renewal, and freedom's last line of defense is still "We the people.""--

John Pearce and his Pelicans are going home - to gain their freedom and, using the evidence they have from Admiral, Lord Hood, to put Captain Ralph Barclay in the dock.

A young hospital doctor with a loving family is engaged to a promising lawyer. She works at a top hospital and has been invited to join the research team of a brilliant scientist who has developed a revolutionary new cure for cancer. Her life seems perfect. Then she discovers appalling secrets that embroil her in a world of extortion, blackmail, murder, political chicanery and pitiless revenge. This nightmare of intrigue culminates in the final horror of her realising that she is unwittingly involved in an authentic and entirely feasible plot that could render London uninhabitable for a thousand years. Although the sinister elements of this tale are chillingly realistic and topical, the redemptive powers of love and honour run through the story in the timeless struggle between good and evil. This wonderful thriller is like no other you have ever read: a heart-stopping and unforgettable read.

Gabriella Berryngton is an unhappy and oppressed fourteen-year-old girl living in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1683. She dreams of escaping her bitter, ambitious stepfather and sailing off into the unknown. Her dreams come true when her stepfather sells her into marriage. Aboard the Freyja, she is hopeful that her new life in the Dutch West Indies will be an improvement - a hope that dies when she is given a slave, Klara, and a whip. She discovers that her soon-to-be father-in-law is a ruthless slave trader in league with pirates, and her fiance is cold, unfriendly and disinterested in Gabriella. She is little more than a vessel to provide the next generation of van Eckens. Largely ignored and desperately unhappy, she and Klara develop a friendship which makes life bearable - at first. Once married, Gabriella's life takes a turn for the worse and she descends into a world of horror and abuse until tensions finally explode. Life will never be the same and she has no choice but to take fate into her own hands.

This Xanth villain is full of hot air. “Anthony’s unflagging sparkle, verve and wordplay spin everyday trials of Mundane life into storytelling gold” (Publishers Weekly). A fickle flux in the fabric of space has allowed a horrendous hurricane to blast into Xanth, stirring up mischief and madness wherever she goes. Trapped in a preposterous form by a cosmic wager, the Demon X(A/N)th must join forces with a vexatious vixen named Chlorine to save Xanth from this terrifying and tempestuous threat. Their companions on this haphazard quest are a hapless human family—Jim and Karen Baldwin and their two teenage sons, David and Sean—gusted into Xanth from the mundane world beyond. Together they encounter a host of turbulent misadventures as they struggle to keep Xanth from being blown off the map forever. “Just the thing for pun-happy funsters.” —Kirkus Reviews

The heat is rising in Indonesia in this action-packed adventure by “the John D. MacDonald of espionage fiction” (Larry McMurtry, The New York Times). When Joe Gall heads to Indonesia on an assignment to acquire a fortune in precious metals, he finds himself in the midst of an attempted coup and a civil war, a bloody battle fought by the military and the Communists. Now he has to guard something even more valuable than gold and silver—his own life—in this gripping thriller by the Edgar Award finalist. “I admire Philip Atlee’s writing tremendously.” —Raymond Chandler

Kevin J. Anderson & Doug Beason A supertanker crashes into the Golden Gate Bridge, spilling oil. Desperate to avert environmental & PR disaster, the oil company uses an oil-eating microbe to break up the spill. But the microbe, becomes airborne . . . and mutates to consume petrocarbons: oil, gas, synthetic fabrics, plastics. When all plastic begins to dissolve, it's too late. . .

To find a dangerous grimoire, they'll have to break a few rules...and maybe their hearts. When warlock Tony Castillo picks up Cassandra Sandoval at the airport, the copper-haired witch brings his restless, aimless life into razor-sharp focus...and triggers a wince-inducing case of foot-in-mouth disease. Luckily, her cool, hazel-green gaze betrays not a flicker of answering attraction. Nope, Cassandra is all business. Which Tony can understand, given the magnitude of her task. Cassandra has one job: retrieve the de la Paz grimoires from the heavily warded hiding place at Tony's family home, conceal them with her unique shielding power, and immediately return them to her clan's territory. Easy. Quick. No time for anything to go wrong, to give in to the temptation of a too-handsome warlock. They find Tony's mother unconscious and the grimoires missing, the only clue a slimy residue reeking of Escobar magic. As they race to get the dangerous books out of the wrong hands, Cassandra and Tony cross a few boundaries, break a few more rules, and find something neither expected - love. But if they fail, nothing will shield them, or the world as they know it, from unrelenting evil. Note: An Ill Wind is a standalone, no-cliffhangers romance in the Witches of Canyon Road series. It takes place approximately four months after the events of book 5, Demon Born.

Dana Point Cooks!!! A cook book of recipes from the author and local restaurants with highlights of the historical areas of Dana Point.

Internationally celebrated author Almudena Grandes has produced her finest work yet with The Wind from the East, a blend of two narratives set alternately in Madrid and an Andalusian town by the sea. Sara Gómes Morales,given up at birth to be raised by her wealthy godmother,is betrayed on her sixteenth birthday when she is forced to leave her godmother’s home and return to live in poverty with her estranged parents. Tortured by resentment and the loneliness of belonging to neither place,she finds solace as an adult only when she moves to the coastal town. Parallel to Sara’s story is the story of Juan and Damian Olmedo, brothers in love with the same woman. One night an argument incited by jealousy leads Damian to stumble down a flight ofstairs and fall to his death. Suspected ofmurdering his younger brother, Juan flees to the same village that served as Sara’s escape. Deftly engaging, The Wind from the Eastis an epic tale of love and redemption. Almudena Grandes' writing has been compared to the work of classic and contemporary voices such as the Brontë sisters and Isabel Allende.

After a freak storm, a long buried body is discovered in the grounds of a Jacobean mansion run by the National Trust. Detective Inspector Hambley needs to find out the identity of the deceased as well as the manner of his death. Progress in the case is not helped by the un-cooperative attitude of the aristocratic family who once owned Chelford Manor. It is only when a murder takes place in a London flat that links another member of the family, a world famous violinist, to this case, that Hambley begins to unravel the first mystery. He puts his career on the line by involving himself in the second case even though it is not in his area. He is greatly assisted by a fiercely feminist, ambitious, and astute female detective constable whose intuitions lead to the linking of the two cases and an eventual solution.