They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded

They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded
Author: James Alan Gardner
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2018-11-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 076539877X

Award-winning author James Alan Gardner returns to the superheroic fantasy world of All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault with They Promised Me The Gun Wasn't Loaded. Only days have passed since a freak accident granted four college students superhuman powers. Now Jools and her friends (who haven’t even picked out a name for their superhero team yet) get caught up in the hunt for a Mad Genius’s misplaced super-weapon. But when Jools falls in with a modern-day Robin Hood and his band of super-powered Merry Men, she finds it hard to sort out the Good Guys from the Bad Guys—and to figure out which side she truly belongs on. Especially since nobody knows exactly what the Gun does . . . . At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault

All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault
Author: James Alan Gardner
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2017-11-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0765392631

Monsters versus superheroes, in a quirky mash-up of comic books and classic horror—by an award-winning Canadian SF author.

Bane of All Things

Bane of All Things
Author: Leo Valiquette
Publisher: Inkshares
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2021-12-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1950301281

"A winner!” —Ed Greenwood, internationally-bestselling creator of The Forgotten Realms® In the Four Kingdoms, the Holy Clerisy preaches that the gods are dead, and prayer is the path to Hell. Anyone who defies doctrine is punished for heresy. But blind faith can damn a soul as surely as betrayal. Ryn Ruscroft, once sworn to serve as the Clerisy’s loyal soldier, finds himself torn between conscience and duty one bitter winter’s night. Those slain include his best friend, felled by his own hand. Josalind Aumbrae has been tormented all her life by the Voices and their visions—an affliction that could have her facing a witch’s pyre. If only she could understand what they want. Banished to Dragon’s Claw Abbey at the edge of the world, Ryn and Josalind discover a place built on more than penance and forgetting. What they find at the Claw will turn them into fugitives hunted by hellspawn, heretics, and Ryn’s former commander. But more sinister forces have awoken—ancient things eager to settle old scores and find pawns among the outcast. When they cry for vengeance, the Living Sword must have a hand to wield it. A mortal it can reshape into the Earth Breaker, the Soul Taker, the Bane of All Things.

A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun

A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun
Author: Razor Smith
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 503
Release: 2012-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1613745923

Brutal and violent, this tell-all is a personal account of the life of Razor Smith and the world in which he lived, where ruthlessness, viciousness, and savagery are prized and admired. In prison more than half of his life for assaults and armed robberies, Smith became confined in a peculiar kind of hell from which his only route of escape was to master the art of writing. His book shows us a face of crime not often encountered in run-of-the-mill true-crime books: a face as tender and intimate as a lover's, yet as frightening as a killer's. Powerfully written from beginning to end, this is an extraordinarily vivid account of how a kid from South London became a career criminal, a blistering indictment of a system that brutalized young offenders, and an unsentimental acknowledgment of the adrenaline-fueled thrills of the criminal life. Shocking, fascinating, and horrifying, it also reveals Smith as one of the most talented writers of his generation.

She Left Me the Gun

She Left Me the Gun
Author: Emma Brockes
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2013-03-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0571275834

When Emma Brockes was ten years old, her mother said 'One day I will tell you the story of my life and you will be amazed.' Growing up in a tranquil English village, Emma knew very little of her mother's life before her. She knew Paula had grown up in South Africa and had seven siblings. She had been told stories about deadly snakes and hailstones the size of golf balls. There was mention, once, of a trial. But most of the past was a mystery. When her mother dies of cancer, Emma - by then a successful journalist at the Guardian - is free to investigate the untold story. Her search begins in the Colindale library but then takes her to South Africa, to the extended family she has never met and their accounts of a childhood so different to her own.She encounters versions of the life her mother chose to leave behind - and realises what a gift her mother gave her. Part investigation, part travelogue, part elegy, She Left Me the Gun is a gripping, funny and clear-eyed account of a writer's search for her mother's story.

Promise Not to Tell

Promise Not to Tell
Author: Jennifer McMahon
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2009-03-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0061827487

“McMahon unfurls a whirlwind of suspense...Combining murder mystery and coming-of-age tale with supernatural elements, this taut novel is above all a reflection on the haunting power of memory.” –Entertainment Weekly A woman’s past and present collide in terrifying ways in this explosive debut by New York Times bestselling author Jennifer McMahon. Forty-one-year-old school nurse Kate Cypher has returned home to rural Vermont to care for her mother, who's afflicted with Alzheimer's. On the night she arrives, a young girl is murdered—a horrific crime that eerily mirrors another from Kate's childhood. Three decades earlier, her dirt-poor friend Del—shunned and derided by classmates as "Potato Girl"—was brutally slain. Del's killer was never found, while the victim has since achieved immortality in local legends and ghost stories. Now, as this new murder investigation draws Kate irresistibly in, her past and present collide in terrifying, unexpected ways. Because nothing is quite what it seems . . . and the grim specters of her youth are far from forgotten. More than just a murder mystery, Jennifer McMahon's extraordinary debut novel, Promise Not to Tell, is a story of friendship and family, devotion and betrayal—tautly written, deeply insightful, beautifully evocative, and utterly unforgettable.

Expendable

Expendable
Author: James Alan Gardner
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1497625246

In a world where the marginalized of society are sent into space on suicide missions, one woman decides to fight back: “Riveting” (David Feintuch). In Expendable, the first volume of the League of Peoples, Festina Ramos is assigned to escort an unstable admiral to planet Melaquin. Little is known about Melaquin, for every explorer who’s landed there has disappeared. It’s come to be known as the “planet of no return,” and the High Council has made a habit of sending troublesome admirals there in an attempt to get rid of them. It’s clear that this is intended to be Ramos’s last mission, but she doesn’t plan on dying, no matter how expendable she may be.

The Night of the Gun

The Night of the Gun
Author: David Carr
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2012-12-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1471108422

David Carr was an addict for more than twenty years -- first dope, then coke, then finally crack -- before the prospect of losing his newborn twins made him sober up in a bid to win custody from their crack-dealer mother. Once recovered, he found that his recollection of his 'lost' years differed -- sometimes radically -- from that of his family and friends. The night, for example, his best friend pulled a gun on him. 'No,' said the friend (to David's horror, as a lifelong pacifist), 'It was you that had the gun.' Using all his skills as an investigative reporter, he set out to research his own life, interviewing everyone from his parents and his ex-partners to the policemen who arrested him, the doctors who treated him and the lawyers who fought to prove he was fit to have custody of his kids. Unflinchingly honest and beautifully written, the result is both a shocking account of the depths of addiction and a fascinating examination of how -- and why -- our memories deceive us. As David says, we remember the stories we can live with, not the ones that happened.

This Is Where It Ends

This Is Where It Ends
Author: Marieke Nijkamp
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2016-01-05
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1492622486

The reviews are in! This Is Where It Ends, the #1 New York Times bestseller and one of the Best Books of the Decade (Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, BookRiot), "could break you." "I am speechless." "The saddest book I have ever read." "Literally tore my heart out." Go inside a heartbreaking fictional school shooting, minute-by-terrifying-minute. Everyone has a reason to fear the boy with the gun... 10:00 a.m.: The principal of Opportunity, Alabama's high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve. 10:02 a.m.: The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class. 10:03 a.m.: The auditorium doors won't open. 10:05 a.m.: Someone starts shooting. Over the course of 54 minutes, four students must confront their greatest hopes, and darkest fears, as they come face-to-face with the boy with the gun. In a world where violence in schools is at an all-time high and school shootings are a horrifyingly common reality for teenagers, This Is Where It Ends is a rallying cry to end the gun violence epidemic for good. Praise for This Is Where It Ends: A Buzzfeed Best Young Adult Book of the Decade A Paste Magazine Best Teen Book of the Decade A Book Riot Biggest YA Book of the Decade A Professional Book Nerds Best Book of the Decade A Bustle.com Most-Anticipated YA Novel A Goodreads YA Best Books Pick A Goodreads Choice Award Finalist for Young Adult Fiction Kids Indie Next List Pick "Marieke Nijkamp's brutal, powerful fictional account of a school shooting is important in its timeliness." —Bustle.com "A gritty, emotional, and suspenseful read and although fictionalized, it reflects on a problematic and harrowing issue across the nation." —Buzzfeed "A compelling, brutal story of an unfortunately all-too familiar situation: a school shooting. Nijkamp portrays the events thoughtfully, recounting fifty-four intense minutes of bravery, love, and loss." —BookRiot

Cruel Beautiful World

Cruel Beautiful World
Author: Caroline Leavitt
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2017-08-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 161620737X

“A seductive page-turner that ripples with an undercurrent of suspense.” —The Boston Globe “A seamless triumph of storytelling.” —Gail Godwin, author of Flora It’s 1969, and sixteen-year-old Lucy is about to run away with a much older man to live off the grid in rural Pennsylvania, a rash act that will have frightening repercussions for both her and her older sister, Charlotte. As Lucy’s default caretaker for most of their lives, Charlotte has always been burdened by having to be the responsible one, but never more so than when Lucy’s dream of a rural paradise turns into a nightmare. With precise, haunting prose and indelible characters, Cruel Beautiful World examines the infinitesimal distance between seduction and love, loyalty and duty, and most of all, tells a universal story of sisterhood and the complicated legacy of family. “Absorbing.” —The New York Times Book Review “Captivating.”—Los Angeles Times “Engrossing.” —People “Page-turning suspense.” —New York Journal of Books “Riveting.” —Marie Claire “Marvelous.”—The National Book Review “Hauntingly brilliant.” —Coastal Living “Gripping and suspenseful.” —BookPage “Moving.” —The Washington Post