Recommendations based on "Dire Straits"

1st UK ed. DJ is fine in Mylar. A fine unread copy.

From its bravura opening onwards, THE CROW ROAD is justly regarded as an outstanding contemporary novel.'It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach.'Prentice McHoan has returned to the bosom of his complex but enduring Scottish family. Full of questions about the McHoan past, present and future, he is also deeply preoccupied: mainly with death, sex, drink, God and illegal substances...

Paul Sheldon, author of a series of historical romances, wakes up in a secluded farmhouse in Colorado with broken legs and Annie Wilkes, a disappointed fan, hovering over him with drugs, ax, and blowtorch and demanding he bring his heroine back to life

The book version of the thrilling and innovative narrative podcast. On a dark and stormy night ... A pair of ghost-hunting journalists arrive at the most haunted house in Britain - the Hollow Hotel. They're here to interview the Dark King of television magic, Romeo Gideon. Instead, they discover the body of a murdered man hanging from the rafters - the work of a killer who wields actual magic as viciously as he does his blade. With the storm closing in, all exit routes cut off, and the killer taking them out one by one, their only hope lies with the two mysterious Irish detectives who seem quite at home with all this bloodshed ...Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain have only hours to figure out who the killer is in a hotel filled with the tortured spirits of the dead, the anguished wails of the dying, and the relentless whines of the living.

Scotland Yard's Murder Squad--and Jack the Ripper--return, in the extraordinary new historical thriller from the author of the acclaimed national bestseller The Yard. In The Devil's Workshop, London discovered that Jack the Ripper was back, sending the city--and Scotland Yard's Murder Squad--into chaos. But now it is even worse. Not only is the Ripper still at large, but so is another killer just as bad. For Inspector Walter Day, it has been a difficult time. His wife has given birth to twins, his hostile in-laws have come to stay, and a leg injury has kept him at his desk. But when the Harvest Man begins killing, carving people's faces off their skulls, the Yard knows they need Day in the field. Not so Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith. Rash actions have cost him his job, but that doesn't stop his obsessive hunt for the Ripper. When the mutilated bodies of prostitutes start turning up again, Hammersmith enlists the help of a criminal network to stop Saucy Jack, his methods carrying him further and further from the ideals of the Yard, so far in fact that he may never be able to find his way back. Of course, the Ripper's been playing a game with him--with Walter Day, as well. He is pushing both of them to their limits, and what happens when they get there . . . no one can say.

In The Atrocity Archive, English hacker and government agent Bob Howard, seconded to field-work with no training, tangles with a Nazi death-cult with access to parallel dimensions. In The Jennifer Morgue, a billionaire businessman, obsessed with a certain series of spy novels and movies, has concocted a fiendish scheme to raise a cyclopean entity from the ocean floor, and only Bob--in an ill-fitting tuxedo and a gimmicked econobox car--can stop him. Also includes the novellas "The Concrete Jungle" (a Hugo winner) and "Pimpf," along with an introduction by Ken MacLeod, afterwords by the author, and an extensive glossary of spy terms.

The author and heroine of "The Red Scream" return in a novel so terrifying, so filled with squirming suspense, it's bound for the bestseller lists. When "Kirkus Reviews" greeted Mary Willis Walker's last book, "The Red Scream," with "welcome to the big time," they weren't kidding. That novel established Walker as an author with "the kind of clout that sets publishers' mouths watering" ("The Philadelphia Inquirer"). And now she has done it again, with an unforgettable tale ripped from the headlines and more terrifying than our worst nightmares. Kidnapped by a cult of religious fanatics, an Austin school bus driver and eleven of his young charges have been held underground at the group's highly fortified compound for forty-six days. While a team of federal negotiators begins to lose all hope of rescuing the hostages, crime reporter Molly Cates sets outto discover everything she can about the cult's iron-willed leader, Samuel Mordecai. And as the clock ticks inexorably, she takes the role of Clarisse Starling opposite Mordecai's Hannibal Lecter, engaging in a psychological confrontation as harrowing as any in "The Silence Of The Lambs," Tough, terrifying, and relentlessly heart-wrenching, this is a novel whose images no reader will ever forget.

Performance by Keith Szarabajka10 cassettes: 0-553-47901-612 HoursMoonlight Bay, California. A safe, secluded small town that is at its most picturesque in the gentle nighttimes that inspired its name. Now, somewhere in the night, children are disappearing. The police cannot be trusted since they were long ago corrupted by a greater authority, hidden behind the supposedly shuttered walls of the adjacent military base, Fort Wyvern.Christopher Snow, victim of a rare genetic disorder that leaves him dangerously vulnerable to light, believes the lost children are still alive and is convinced the disappearances have everything to do with the catastrophic effects of secret research conducted deep within Fort Wyvern. Forced to live in the shadows, he knows the night world better than anyone, and sets out to find the missing five-year-old sonof a former sweetheart.Never before in Dean Koontz's phenomenal writing career has he created a character quite like Christopher Snow--a creation so complex, so fascinating that the author has felt compelled to return to him. Listeners of Fear Nothing already know why. Those who meet him for the first time in Seize the Night will soon join leagues of others whose imaginations have been touched by this unique character and the extraordinarily eerie world of Moonlight Bay.

Teenager Lewis Hoxworthy discovers a disturbing painting in a medieval barn; a discovery which excites archaeologist Neil Watson who is excavating an ancient manor house nearby. But when former rock star Jonny Shellmer is found shot through the head in Lewis's father's field and Lewis himself goes missing after contacting a man on the internet, Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson and his boss, Gerry Heffernan face one of their most intriguing cases yet. It seems that the Devon village of Derenham is not only full of resident celebrities seeking the rural idyll, but full of secrets, ancient and modern. Lewis's distraught parents seem to have something to hide. Then the mysterious owner of a new age shop is silenced before she can reveal what she knows about Jonny Shellmer. Is Jonny's death linked to Lewis's disappearance? And does Jonny's best known song, 'Angel' contain a clue? As Neil Watson uncovers the story of Derenham's medieval past, it becomes clear that the Derenham Doom - a painted portrayal of hell and judgement more than half a millennium old - holds the key to the mystery. And as events reach a terrifying climax, Wesley Peterson has to act swiftly if he is to save a young life.

The discreet little bar that Jake Stonebender established a few blocks below Duval Street was named simply The Place. There, Fast Eddie Costigan learned to curse back at parrots as he played the house piano; the Reverend Tom Hauptman learned to tend bar bare-chested (without blushing), Long-Drink McGonnigle discovered the margarita and several señoritas, and all the other regulars settled into comfortable subtropical niches of their own. Nobody even noticed them save the universe.Over time, the twice-transplanted patrons of Callahan’s Place attracted a collection of local zanies so quintessentially Key West pixilated that they made the New York originals seem, well, almost normal. The elfin little Key deer, for instance--with a stevedore’s mouth; or the merman with eczema; or Robert Heinlein’s teleporting cat.For ten slow, merry years, life was good. The sun shone, the coffee dripped, the breeze blew just strongly enough to dissipate the smell of the puns, and little supergenius Erin grew to the verge of adolescence. Then disaster struck. Through the gate one sunny day came a malevolent, moronic, mastodon of a Mafioso named Tony Donuts Jr., or Little Nuts (don’t ask). He’d decided to resurrect the classic protection racket in Key West--and guess which tavern he picked to hit first? Then, thanks to very poor accessorizing (she chose the wrong belt--and no, we’re not going to explain that one), Jake’s wife, Zoey, suddenly found herself in a place with no light, no heat, and no air. And no way home. The urgent question was where--precisely where--but that turned out to be a problem so complex that even the entire gang, equipped with teleportation, time travel, and telepathic syntony (you can look it up) might not be able to crack it in time.And while all this was going on, Death himself walked into The Place. But this time he would not leave alone. . . .