Pete Cross

"John Lisle reveals the untold story of the OSS Research and Development Branch--The Dirty Tricks Department--and its role in World War II. In the summer of 1942, Stanley Lovell, a renowned industrial chemist, received a mysterious order to report to an unfamiliar building in Washington, D.C. When he arrived, he was led to a barren room where he waited to meet the man who had summoned him. After a disconcerting amount of time, William "Wild Bill"...

Capturing the anxious, self-aware mood of young college grads, the story's four whip-smart narrators, Cory, Will, Henrik, and Linda, are torn between fixing the world and cannibalizing it. In boisterous prose that ricochets between humor and pain, the four estranged friends stagger through the Bay Area, always washing up in each other's lives.

First published in 1926, The Torrents of Spring is a hilarious parody of the Chicago school of literature. Poking fun at that "great race" of writers, it depicts a vogue that Hemingway himself refused to follow. In style and substance, The Torrents of Spring is a burlesque of Sherwood Anderson's Dark Laughter, but in the course of the narrative, other literary tendencies associated with American and British writers akin to Anderson -- such as D. H....

"In the quiet streets of Prague all manner of otherworldly creatures lurk in the shadows. Unbeknownst to its citizens, their only hope against the tide of predators are the dauntless lamplighters - a secret elite of monster hunters whose light staves off the darkness each night. Domek Myska leads a life teeming with fraught encounters with the worst kind of evil: pijavica, bloodthirsty and soulless vampiric creatures. Despite this, Domek find solace...

There is something epic-and almost mythic-about this sparsely beautiful novel by Willa Cather, although the story it tells is that of a single human life, lived simply in the silence of the desert. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour...

"From the moment Ben and June met in a hospital waiting room on New Year's Eve, their love has seemed fated. Looking back at all the tiny, unlikely decisions that brought them together, it was easy to believe their relationship was special. But now, after several years of marriage, June is struggling as a new mom. At times, she wonders about the life she didn't choose -- what might have been if she hadn't given up the lead role in a famous ballet...

"TJ is taking classes at The League, an open-enrollment art school in Manhattan, to become an artist. But when a deadly crime strikes The League's figure drawing class, and famous artist Thomas Benton's corpse is discovered on the floor. But Benton has a long history of angering the art world and his involvement at the school hasn't always led to happy students and faculty... It's soon up to TJ, son of Detective Juanita Diaz and Captain Brian Fitzgerald...

"Greta Russakoff needs some space from her overbearing family. Truman Belvedere needs a place to heal after a devastating heartbreak. The solution is obvious: Truman and Greta decide to swap houses for the month of December. Can a change of scenery be the start of something new?"--

"Lucky Jim is a story about how a young man survived a violent childhood home, found his voice as an incredible writer, established a love that was both so right and so wrong, and ultimately found the strength to be his true self. Jim Hart is a master at building relationships, he is charming, funny, and a great listener with a guru's insight. His success in life and business was based on his ability to connect with others, from people recovering...

"A psychic who isn't sure she believes in herself and a skeptic journalist with one last chance at redemption are brought together by secrets from the past that also threaten to tear them apart. Psychic-medium Sylvie Young starts every show with her origin story, telling the audience how she discovered her abilities. But she leaves out a lot--the plane crash that killed her parents when she was four, the estranged adoptive parents who tend orchards...