Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau is taking a vacation, in part because he is annoyed at his boss, the Party Secretary, but also because he has been made an offer he can't refuse by a triad-connected businessman. For what seems to be a fortune-with no apparent strings attached-he is to translate into English a business proposal for the New World, a complex of shops and restaurants to be built in Central Shanghai evoking nostalgia for the "glitter and glamour" of the '30s. So Detective Yu, Chen's partner, is forced to take charge of a new investigation. A novelist has been murdered in her room. At first it seems that only a neighbor could have committed the crime, but when one confesses, Detective Yu cannot believe that he is really the murderer. As the policeman looks further, ample motives begin to surface, even on the part of Internal Security. But it is only when Inspector Chen steps back into the investigation that the real culprit is apprehended. And then Chen discovers how the triad has played him.

If you saw me on the street, you would immediately know me due to my high profile life of being the Governor. I am a Politician. I'm seated in church on Sundays. I am a man with an impeccable reputation. But you and I both know that we all have vices. My vice is, and always will be, Talia. She is an addiction that got into my system and that addiction will go to the grave with me. I own her now. I pursued her with a vengeance and I now have a contract that states for the next year of her life she is my property. Talia: My name is Talia and I am what some people term a hooker, whore, prostitute, or lady of the evening. I do fine on my own. I don't need a knight in shining armor-until now. He is: Dark, demanding, in control, dangerous, and powerful. He is the Governor and he is my knight in shining armor, or so he says... He now owns me. From the moment that he laid eyes on me he coveted me. He pursued me until he convinced me to sign a contract giving him ownership of me for a year. He can do anything that he chooses to me. I am his property, to do with as he sees fit and he is one sexually deviant, twisted individual.

Scott Warden is a man haunted by the past — and soon to be haunted by the future. In early twenty-first-century Thailand, Scott is an expatriate slacker. Then, one day, he inadvertently witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar in the forested interior. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base, freezing ice out of the air and emitting a burst of ionizing radiation. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter. And the inscription chiseled into it commemorates a military victory — sixteen years in the future. Shortly afterwards, another, larger pillar arrives in the center of Bangkok-obliterating the city and killing thousands. Over the next several years, human society is transformed by these mysterious arrivals from, seemingly, our own near future. Who is the warlord “Kuin” whose victories they note? Scott wants only to rebuild his life. But some strange loop of causality keeps drawing him in, to the central mystery and a final battle with the future.

Can she save her family's horse stud and reputation?When India Kilhampton is caught up in the heart-stopping excitement of the first Melbourne Cup her mind is made up. She will breed a horse to win the coveted trophy and reunite her fractured family. Determined to make her dream a reality she advertises for a horse breeder. Jim Mawgan arrives at Helligen Stud in the Hunter Valley to take up the position. Jim however, has a mission: he must fulfil his father's dying wish to right past wrongs and prove his ownership of the prized stallion Jefferson. Jim and India discover they share a common goal but as the secrets of the past unravel old enmities surface. Although betrayed, will India save Jim before he is branded a horse thief and sentenced to death?

Once upon a time, I was Fallon Dunbar.Rock and roll, drugs, and bad decisions were the life I lived.I’d fallen so deep into the dark rabbit hole that I was certain I would never make it out alive. People like me didn’t get second chances. People like me didn’t get lifted from the darkness. So when the opportunity showed up, I had to take it.I walked away from everything I loved, everything that was killing me, and I became Fae Dunham. After that, I hid behind makeup, long sleeves, and a closed-off heart.All was well until I met Dane Pearson. He wasn’t convinced of the new me, and whenever he was near, I felt like the old me, the real me, filled with passion and a love for music. Every day was a struggle of self-discovery. Every day was a fight to not fall back down the rabbit hole. And every day, somehow, someway, I slowly began to discover what it meant to find myself.It was a hysteric ride, but it was ours. And I wouldn’t change a thing.​

Two and a half years after her ordeal at the hands of the 'Stiletto Murderer', Ed Brown, Makedde Vanderwall must face her demons once again as she flies into Sydney for Brown's trial - and faces her one-time lover, the jaded Sydney detective Andy Flynn. But days before the trial is set to commence, the unthinkable happens - Ed Brown makes a daring escape, aided and abetted by one of his warders.

After another near-death experience, Cage is taught in the ancient ways by those ancient enough to remember. Blood and Battle are what is needed and Daku won't give Cage much rest till his power finally awakens. It is all Cage can do to not enjoy the rush of combat. But not everyone is comfortable and will try to take him out. Still, a new surprise awaits him when he goes home, one that rocks.

Romance/Classic Literature. 80955 words long.

A spurned husband confronts the family of the girl who threw him out The walk from the mental hospital takes Harold Page three days. After two years inside, he cannot start his new life until he confronts the family who put him away. He was poor when he married Wendy Whitman, and their wealth still terrifies him. When their first child was born deaf, the Whitmans tricked Harold into a divorce, saying that he assaulted Wendy. She got the baby; he got a straitjacket. Now that he's out he has come to say goodbye, but the Whitmans are not through with him yet.   The night before he arrives, Wendy's mother is attacked by a man who she swears is Harold. Wendy's brother vows to kill him, but Harold does not run. It is time to put the Whitmans in their place.

This book was given to Lys Den (12507864)

When LCDR Pete Brauer, former U.S. Navy SEAL (retired), dies in Florida, he dies clutching in his hands the portrait of a beautiful French-Vietnamese girl that has hung on his wall for more than twenty years.“I will never forgive myself, Pollack,” Brauer told his neighbor and friend, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jack Kazmarek (retired). “I don’t think God will either.”“We’ve all done things,” Kazmarek replied. “Especially in Vietnam.”“We haven’t all done what I done.”After Pete’s death, Kazmarek sets out on a quest to discover the relationship between Pete and the Eurasian girl in the photograph, Mhai, and to lay to rest the demons which haunted his friend throughout his life. The quest leads him back to Vietnam, a return that many combat veterans of Vietnam are making to old battlefields and old memories.In the process of uncovering details of the romance between a Navy SEAL fighting in the Mekong Delta and the beautiful enemy he wounds and captures, Kazmarek must confront personal demons that he has also attempted to suppress since TET 1968 and the fighting that erupted around the VC village of Vain Tho. Although their paths had not crossed in Vietnam, the Navy SEAL Brauer and the army infantry platoon leader Kazmarek had fought in the same area of operations, against the same warlord of the Delta, the mysterious Commander Minh.Kazmarek finds himself re-living old nightmares of the horrors of war in Vietnam. Drawn inexorably back to Vain Tho and to what occurred there over three decades previously, he finds that his path and Pete’s must have crossed after all--in Vain Tho during a battle in which both men had “done things.” He finds himself not only confronting the past, but also reenacting it when Commander Minh, now also an old man, emerges to even the score.