Search:

So Close The unmissable Sunday Times bestseller [electronic resource] : by Day, Sylvia.aut; CloudLibrary;
From the author of the Crossfire saga comes the beginning of a twisty tale of obsession and fury, as a trinity of women protect what they covet at any cost. 'Dangerous and sultry . . . domestic suspense at its sexiest' SAMANTHA DOWNING 'A gripping pageturner' GLAMOUR UK 'Absolutely cannot wait for the next one in the series. So many twists and turns . . . I was constantly delighted by each chapter' 5* READER REVIEW 'Powerful . . . I'm obsessed! Why can't the rest of the series be available immediately?' 5* READER REVIEW You can't believe all of them . . . But can you trust any of them? ___________ Widower Kane Black has never got over the death of his wife, Lily. Until he sees a woman with her inimitable beauty on Manhattan's streets, and whisks her up to his towering penthouse. But not everyone is ready to accept Lily's return. Aliyah, Kane's mother, thinks that "Lily" exerts dangerous control, and there is only room in this family for one queen. While Kane's sister-in-law, Amy, has been hurt in the past, and now is out for revenge. Three women, linked by buried secrets, circle the man who so willingly accepts the return of his dead wife. But Kane is happier than he has ever been, and will do anything to keep it that way. ___________ A lushly gothic novel of domestic suspense, So Close is an emotionally intense and addictive story of love, greed and ambition from multimillion-copy international bestseller Sylvia Day. 'You will GOBBLE IT up . . . Take the plunge into the rip current because it is about consume you and leave you gasping till October 2023 for the next instalment' 5***** READER REVIEW 'This instantly had me intrigued. You can't stop reading. That ending!! My goodness, I'm so ready for the next book' 5***** READER REVIEW The Sunday Times bestseller April 2023General adult.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Contemporary; Suspense; Contemporary Women; Psychological;
© 2023., Penguin Books Ltd,
unAPI

The Devil's playbook : big tobacco, Juul, and the addiction of a new generation / by Etter, Lauren,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Big Tobacco meets Silicon Valley in this corporate exposé of what happened when two of the most notorious industries collided-and the vaping epidemic was born. Howard Willard lusted after Juul. As the CEO of tobacco giant Philip Morris's parent company, and a veteran of the industry's long fight to avoid being regulated out of existence, he grew obsessed with a prize he believed could save his company-the e-cigarette, a product with all the addictive upside of the original without the same apparent health risks and bad press. Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, Adam Bowen and James Monsees began work on a device meant to save lives and destroy Big Tobacco, only to end up baking the industry's DNA into their invention's science and marketing. Ultimately, Juul's e-cigarette was so effective, so market-dominating, that it put the company on a collision course with Philip Morris and sparked one of the most explosive public health crises in recent memory. In a deeply reported account, award-winning journalist Lauren Etter tells a riveting story of greed and deception in one of the biggest botched deals in business history. Etter shows how Philip Morris's struggle to innovate left Willard desperate to acquire Juul, even as his own team sounded alarms about the startup's reliance on underage customers. And she shows how Juul's executives negotiated a lavish deal that let them pocket the lion's share of Philip Morris's $12.8 billion investment while government regulators and furious parents mounted a campaign to hold the company's feet to the fire. The Devil's Playbook is the inside story of how Juul's embodiment of Silicon Valley's "move fast and break things" ethos wrought havoc on American health, and how a beleaguered tobacco company was seduced by the promise of a new generationof addicted customers. With both companies' eyes on the financial prize, neither anticipated the sudden outbreak of vaping-linked deaths that would terrorize a nation, crater Juul's value, end Willard's career, and show the costs in human life of the rush to riches-while Juul's founders, investors, and employees walked away with a windfall"--
Subjects: Cigarette industry.; Substance abuse.; Tobacco industry.; Vaping.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Fire and Bones [electronic resource] : by Reichs, Kathy.aut; cloudLibrary;
#1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs returns with a twisty, surprise-packed thriller featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, who finds herself at the center of an arson investigation, a deepening mystery, and a stunning culmination of violence and deception. It’s never easy working fire scenes, Tempe thinks. Called to Washington, DC to analyze the victims of a building set ablaze amid mysterious circumstances, she sees all of her misgivings justified. The building site is in Foggy Bottom, a neighborhood with a colorful past and present, and the residence’s ownership becomes even more suspicious when Tempe delves into the building's past. The pieces start falling into place strangely and quickly, and, sensing a good story, Tempe teams with a new ally, telejournalist Ivy Doyle. Soon the duo learns that back in the thirties and forties the property belonged to a member a group of bootleggers and racketeers known as the Foggy Bottom Gang. Though interesting, this fact seems irrelevant—until the son of a Foggy Bottom gang member is shot dead at his farm in Fairfax County, Virginia. Coincidence? Targeted attacks? So many questions. As Tempe and Ivy dig deeper, an arrest is finally made. Then another Foggy Bottom Gang-linked property burns to the ground, claiming one more victim. Slowly, Tempe’s instincts begin raising flags. Have too many of her moves while in Washington been anticipated in advance? Long after that first fire is extinguished its flames of consequence spread outward, and eventually Tempe finds herself fighting for her life.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Suspense; Women Sleuths;
© 2024., Simon & Schuster,
unAPI

Robert B. Parker's Kickback / by Atkins, Ace.; Parker, Robert B.,1932-2010.;
"P.I. Spenser, knight-errant of the Back Bay, returns in this stellar addition to the iconic New York Times-bestselling series from author Ace Atkins What started out as a joke landed seventeen-year-old Dillon Yates in a lockdown juvenile facility in Boston Harbor. When he set up a prank Twitter account for his vice principal, he never dreamed he could be brought up on criminal charges, but that's exactly what happened. This is Blackburn, Massachusetts, where zero tolerance for minors is a way of life. Leading the movement is tough-as-nails Judge Joe Scali, who gives speeches about getting tough on today's wild youth. But Dillon's mother, who knows other Blackburn kids who are doing hard time for minor infractions, isn't buying Scali's line. She hires Spenser to find the truth behind the draconian sentencing. From the Harbor Islands to a gated Florida community, Spenser and trusted ally Hawk follow a trail through the Boston underworld with links to a shadowy corporation that runs New England's private prisons. They eventually uncover a culture of corruption and cover-ups in the old mill town, where hundreds of kids are sent off to for-profit juvie jails."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Detective and mystery stories.; Mystery fiction.; Corporations; Corrections; Judicial corruption; Private investigators; Sentences (Criminal procedure); Spenser (Fictitious character);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Code dependent : living in the shadow of AI / by Murgia, Madhumita,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A riveting story of what it means to be human in a world changed by artificial intelligence, revealing the perils and inequities of our growing reliance on automated decision-making. On the surface, a British poet, an UberEats courier in Pittsburgh, an Indian doctor, and a Chinese activist in exile have nothing in common. But they are in fact linked by a profound common experience -- unexpected encounters with artificial intelligence. In Code Dependent, Murgia shows how automated systems are reshaping our lives all over the world, from technology that marks children as future criminals, to an app that is helping to give diagnoses to a remote tribal community. AI has already infiltrated our day-to-day, through language-generating chatbots like ChatGPT and social media. But it's also affecting us in more insidious ways. It touches everything from our interpersonal relationships, to our kids' education, work, finances, public services, and even our human rights. By highlighting the voices of ordinary people in places far removed from the cozy enclave of Silicon Valley, Code Dependent explores the impact of a set of powerful, flawed, and often-exploitative technologies on individuals, communities, and our wider society. Murgia exposes how AI can strip away our collective and individual sense of agency, and shatter our illusion of free will. The ways in which algorithms and their effects are governed over the coming years will profoundly impact us all. Yet we can't agree on a common path forward. We cannot decide what preferences and morals we want to encode in these entities -- or what controls we may want to impose on them. And thus, we are collectively relinquishing our moral authority to machines. In Code Dependent, Murgia not only sheds light on this chilling phenomenon, but also charts a path of resistance. AI is already changing what it means to be human, in ways large and small, and Murgia reveals what could happen if we fail to reclaim our humanity"--
Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Decision making; Human-computer interaction.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Em / by Thúy, Kim,author.; Fischman, Sheila,translator.; translation of:Thúy, Kim.Em.English.;
"Emma-Jade and Louis are born into the havoc of the Vietnam War. Orphaned, saved and cared for by adults coping with the chaos of Saigon in free-fall, they become children of the Vietnamese diaspora. Em is not a romance in any usual sense of the word, but it is a word whose homonym--aimer, to love--resonates on every page, a book powered by love in the larger sense. A portrait of Vietnamese identity emerges that is wholly remarkable, honed in wartime violence that borders on genocide, and then by the ingenuity, sheer grit and intelligence of Vietnamese-Americans, Vietnamese-Canadians and other Vietnamese former refugees who go on to build some of the most powerful small business empires in the world. Em is a poetic story steeped in history, about those most impacted by the violence and their later accomplishments. In many ways, Em is perhaps Kim Thúy's most personal book, the one in which she trusts her readers enough to share with them not only the pervasive love she feels but also the rage and the horror at what she and so many other children of the Vietnam War had to live through. Written in Kim Thúy's trademark style, near to prose poetry, Em reveals her fascination with connection. Through the linked destinies of characters connected by birth and destiny, the novel zigzags between the rubber plantations of Indochina; daily life in Saigon during the war as people find ways to survive and help each other; Operation Babylift, which evacuated thousands of biracial orphans from Saigon in April 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War; and today's global nail polish and nail salon industry, largely driven by former Vietnamese refugees--and everything in between. Here are human lives shaped both by unspeakable trauma and also the beautiful sacrifices of those who made sure at least some of these children survived"--
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Experimental fiction.; Immigrants; Vietnam War, 1961-1975;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
unAPI

Speak of the devil : a novel / by Wilding, Rose,author.;
"Seven women, inextricably linked by one man, must figure out which of them killed him in order to protect each other in this electrifying debut thriller. New Year's Eve, 1999. Seven women are gathered in a hotel room at midnight; a man's head sits in the center of the floor. They all had a motive to kill Jamie Spellman. They all swear they didn't. But in order to protect each other, they have to find out who did. The ex, who drowns out her darkest secret with a hip flask as the woman she loves drifts further away. The wife, living out her fairytale marriage in a house tucked into woods so thick no one can hear a scream. The widow, praying to a past she no longer knows whether she can trust. The teenager, whose wide-eyed crush led her to be trapped in an unrecognizable future. The mother figure, battling nature versus nurture under the weight of her own guilt. The friend, forced to choose sides over and over, until she learned the price of choosing wrong. And the journalist, who brought them all together-but underestimated how far one of them would go to keep believing the story they'd been told. Against the ticking clock of a murder investigation, each woman's secret is brought to light as the connections between them converge to reveal a killer. Marking the debut of an extraordinary new talent, Speak of the Devil explores the roles into which women are cast in the lives of terrible men ... and the fallout when they refuse to play pretend for one moment longer"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Novels.; Murder; Secrecy; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Tripping on utopia : Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the troubled birth of psychedelic science / by Breen, Benjamin,1985-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.""It was not the Baby Boomers who ushered in the first era of widespread drug experimentation. It was their parents." Far from the repressed traditionalists they are often painted as, the generation that survived the second World War emerged with a profoundly ambitious sense of social experimentation. In the '40s and '50s, transformative drugs rapidly entered mainstream culture, where they were not only legal, but openly celebrated. American physician John C. Lilly infamously dosed dolphins (and himself) with LSD in a NASA-funded effort to teach dolphins to talk. A tripping Cary Grant mumbled into a Dictaphone about Hegel as astronaut John Glenn returned to Earth. At the center of this revolution were the pioneering anthropologists-and star-crossed lovers-Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Convinced the world was headed toward certain disaster, Mead and Bateson made it their life's mission to reshape humanity through a new science of consciousness expansion, but soon found themselves at odds with the government bodies who funded their work, whose intentions were less than pure. Mead and Bateson's partnership unlocks an untold chapter in the history of the twentieth century, linking drug researchers with CIA agents, outsider sexologists, and the founders of the Information Age. As we follow Mead and Bateson's fractured love affair from the malarial jungles of New Guinea to the temples of Bali, from the espionage of WWII to the scientific revolutions of the Cold War, a new origin story for psychedelic science emerges"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Bateson, Gregory, 1904-1980.; Mead, Margaret, 1901-1978.; Anthropology; Cold War.; Hallucinogenic drugs;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The tragedy of Eva Mott : a novel / by Richards, David Adams,author.;
"The Raskin brothers were once proud to be producers of a much sought-after material of great benefit to society--asbestos. But now their mine is under close scientific scrutiny, with reports of serious illness linked to the place. The world is changing, no doubt for the better ... But in the shadow of the mine, the values of a whole community are transforming, in more sinister ways. The Raskins' nephew Byron, a war hero and man of wealth, urges the brothers to look for other, less toxic minerals to extract. But meanwhile his own world is unravelling in ways that are unlikely ever to be fixed. His wife Carmel, whom he vaingloriously believed he was rescuing with his marriage proposal, has become an intellectual and political poseur. She and her son Albert are contemptuous of the values of Byron and his kind, while still finding use for his wealth and property. Carmel and Albert, it seems, are heralds of a new world addicted to mimicry and empty self-promotion, to delusions and temptations. Its victims are growing in number: a college professor in town is falsely accused of sexual harassment; a young woman is slipped an hallucinogen at a party with appalling consequences for her and two boys. And what of poor, naive Eva Mott, the captivating beauty who wished to be like her talented cousin Clara? Her story and the book that bears her name will haunt you. The Tragedy of Eva Mott has all the power and brilliance--and many flashes of wry humour--of David Adams Richards at the very top of his form. It will attract controversy but its fierce authenticity cannot be denied"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Historical fiction.; Novels.; Asbestos mines and mining; Brothers; Businessmen; Families;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
unAPI

Back to the garden : a novel / by King, Laurie R.,author.;
"A fifty-year-old cold case involving California royalty comes back to life-with potentially fatal consequences--in this gripping standalone novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series. The Gardener Estate is one of the most storied and beloved places on the West Coast: a magnificent house in vast formal grounds, home to a family that shaped California-and fought hard to conceal the turmoil and eccentricities within their walls. And now, just as the turmoil seems buried and the Estate prepares to move into a new future, construction work unearths a grim relic of the estate's history: a skull, hidden away some fifty years ago. Inspector Raquel Laing of the SFPD Cold Case Unit has her work cut out for her. Back in the '70s, the Estate was a commune, when its young heir, Rob Gardener, turned the palatial setting into a counterculture Eden of peace, love, and equality. But the '70s were also a time when serial killers preyed on such innocents-monsters like The Highwayman, whose case has just assumed a whole new urgency. Could these bones belong to one of his victims? For Raquel Laing-a woman who knows all about hidden turmoil and eccentricities-the Gardener bones seem clearly linked to The Highwayman. But as she dives into the Estate's archives for evidence of his presence, what she finds there begins to take on a dark reality of its own. Everything brings her back to Rob Gardener himself-now a gray-haired recluse, then a troubled young Vietnam vet whose girlfriend vanished after a midsummer festival at the Estate, fifty years ago. But a lot of people seem to have disappeared from the Gardener Estate that summer, when the commune fell apart and its residents scattered: a young woman, her child, Rob's brother Fort. The pressure is on, and Raquel needs to solve this case--before The Highwayman slips away, or another Gardener vanishes"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Novels.; Cold cases (Criminal investigation); Communal living; Counterculture; Missing persons; Murder; Policewomen; Serial murder investigation;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
unAPI