by Gail Tsukiyama (1996)
On the eve of the Second World War, a young Chinese man is sent to his family's summer home in Japan to recover from tuberculosis. He will rest, swim in the salubrious sea, and paint in the brilliant shoreside light. It will be quiet and solitary. But he meets four local residents - a lovely young Japanese girl and three older people. What then ensues is a tale that readers will find at once classical yet utterly unique. Young Stephen has his own adventure, but it is the unfolding story of Matsu, Sachi, and Kenzo that seizes your attention and will stay with you forever. Tsukiyama, with lines as clean, simple, telling, and dazzling as the best of Oriental art, has created an exquisite little masterpiece.
India Grey
Italian tycoon Angelo Emiliani wants to buy Anna's French château, but it seems she'll do anything to stop him. So he'll take Anna captive on his yacht, and show her he's not to be toyed with. But as cabin fever sets in, passions erupt, and Anna realizes the price of stopping Angelo has just gotten higher. Now there's more at stake than saving the château—Anna's at risk of losing her virginity, and more!
Cindy Dees
Because of her uncanny ability to find lost objects, Tessa Marconi has been given the dangerous task of time-jumping back to the Persian Empire and ancient Greece to locate a precious medallion fragment. Trouble finds her in Xerxes' court -- and so does the most beautiful man she's ever seen, Rustam of Halicarnassus. There's only one problem: he's a Centauri spy whose sworn duty it is to stop her. Tessa has never felt such magical strength -- or sexual prowess -- as she feels in Rustam's presence. And as the conflict that grips Persia and Greece explodes, it becomes clear that their auras are strangely intertwined. Separately, they are powerless. But together, they just might save the world<U+2026>and themselves.
Erika Marks
"From the author of It Comes in Waves and The Guest House comes a novel of three lives entangled in the secrets of the sea and the enduring bonds of love. As students with a shared passion for shipwrecks, Liv, Sam, and Whit formed a close bond searching for the mysterious Patriot, a schooner that disappeared off the Carolina Coast in 1812 with Aaron Burr's daughter Theodosia aboard. But as the elusive ship drew them together, love would bring them even closer--and ultimately tear them apart. It's been seven years since Liv left Sam to be with Whit, and the once close-knit trio went their separate ways. Liv has given up her obsession with Theodosia Burr to focus on her career as a salvage diver and her passionate but troubled marriage to the reckless and hedonistic Whit. But when a diary of Theodosia's is discovered in a collector's estate, she is pulled back to the world of the Patriot, this time with startling new clues to what might have really happened. Diving back into the lost history of the Patriot could be just what Liv needs to find closure to a mystery that still haunts her. But when she and Whit reunite with Sam for one last salvage in North Carolina's Outer Banks, buried romantic tensions begin to resurface, and once again Liv must choose between two men with very different hearts"--
Max Frisch
Max Frischs *Homo faber* ist eines der wichtigsten und meistgelesenen Bücher des 20. Jahrhunderts: Der Ingenieur Walter Faber glaubt an sein rationales Weltbild, das durch eine Liebesgeschichte zerbricht. Kein anderer zeitgenössischer Roman stellt derart ehrlich wie hintergründig die Frage nach der Identität des modernen Menschen. »›Homo faber‹ wird der Schweizer Ingenieur Walter Faber beziehungsreich gennant, dem dieser erzählte Bericht in den Mund gelegt ist. Faber ist die vollkommene Verkörperung der technischen Existenz, dir sich vor dem Zufall und dem Schicksal sicher glaubt. Diesen Faber, der das fünfzigste Lebensjahr schon überschritten hat, läßt Frisch systematisch mit der außertechnischen Welt, dem irrationalen zusammenstoßen. Faber bleibt davon zunächst unerschüttert: die Notlandung seines Flugzeugs in der Wüste, der Selbstmord seines ehemaligen Freundes im Dschungel von Mexiko – das bringt sein rational zementiertes Weltbild nicht ins Wanken. Ernsthaft wird es erst bedroht, als Faber durch die Ereignisse zu einem Rechenschaftsbericht über seine eigene Vergangenheit gezwungen wird. Ein junges Mädchen verliebt sich in ihn. Es stellt sich heraus, dass es seine eigene Tochter ist, von deren Existenz er nichts gewußt hat. Hineingezogen in das Stärkste, was das menschliche Leben an irrationalen Einbrüchen zu bieten hat, bricht sein frohgemuter Rationalismus zusammen. Faber sieht sein verfehltes Leben und nimmt den Tod in seine Welt auf.« *Darmstädter Echo* »Nichts ist zufällig an diesem Bericht. Er ist das Ergebnis einer souveränen dichterischen Konzeption, die bei äußerster sachlicher Strenge mit den Mitteln einer schlichten, präzisen, pathoslosen, fast kargen Prosa in die Tiefe der menschlichen Existenz hinablotet. Allies ist Klarheit, alles Substanz.« *Düsseldorfer Nachrichten* Max Frisch, 1911 in Zürich geboren, starb dort 1991.