Dark Hour

Kilmainham Jail is perhaps the most important building in modern Irish history. A place of incarceration since its construction in the late eighteenth century, it housed a succession of petty criminals, including sheep rustlers and, during the Famine, people who committed crimes with the sole aim of being imprisoned there: even the meager rations offered at the jail were better than what was available in other parts of the country. It was a powerful symbol of British rule on the island of Ireland; its residents over the years included the bold Robert Emmet and, of course, it was also the place where the 1916 rebels were taken and executed. Every Dark Hour is a colourful and entertaining telling of the history of the jail and its colourful cast of residents over the years - as well as vivid accounts of the heroic men and women who gave freely of their time and energies to restore the jail to its former grandeur when it was on the verge of being reclaimed by the elements.

At a mere four hours’ notice, at 8.00 p.m., on March 24th 2020, the Indian Prime Minister Modi announced a lockdown to contain the spread of virus in order to jumpstart an already-crumbling healthcare system for one of the most devastating pandemics soon to envelop India. People stormed out to panic-buy ration stocks; India’s migrant working classes started walking back to the villages, left hungry and desolate without homes, work and wages - a scene not very short of an apocalypse. Over two summers, India woke up to similar headlines: a shortage of hospital beds, oxygen, medicines; a languishing economy; cases rising and falling; governments greenlighting Hindu religious, superspreader that compounded the second wave; misled unlocking schools, business and the social sphere, and reversed lockdowns when cases went up; underreporting of cases and deaths; lakhs dead to the virus and crores of people infected, and still counting. While the pandemic continues to rage on, notwithstanding its ebbs and flows, its real impact on society may start to be visible only much later. Over a year of tracking how the pandemic ravaged India’s society, economy, politics and culture, nine of finest India’s writers try and make sense of this difficult reality. The Dark Hour is a publisher’s anthology of specially commissioned long-form essays that unpack two dreadful summers of the pandemic that wreaked havoc on the many Indias within India.

A FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BEST CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR A CrimeReads Best Crime Novel Notable selection Harry Bosch and LAPD Detective Renée Ballard come together again on the murder case that obsessed Bosch's mentor, the man who trained him---new from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly Back when Harry Bosch was just a rookie homicide detective, he had an inspiring mentor who taught him to take the work personally and light the fire of relentlessness for every case. Now that mentor, John Jack Thompson, is dead, and his widow gives Bosch a murder book, one that Thompson took with him when he left the LAPD twenty years before -- the unsolved killing of a troubled young man. Bosch takes the murder book to Detective Renée Ballard and asks her to help him discover what about this crime lit Thompson's fire all those years ago. As she begins her inqueries -- while still working her own cases on the midnight shift -- Ballad finds aspects of the initial investigation that just don't add up. The bond between Bosch and Ballard tightens as they become a formidable investigation team. And they soon arrive at a disturbing question: Did Thompson steal the murder book to work the case in retirement, or to make sure it never got solved? Written with the intense pacing and masterful suspense that have made Michael Connelly "the hard-boiled fiction master of our time" (NPR), The Night Fire continues the unofficial partnership of two fierce detectives determined not to let the fire with burn out.

A grandmother tells her granddaughter the story of how she spent her sixteenth birthday trapped in a bathroom with her younger siblings after an air-raid attack on Germany during the end of World War II.

Inspired by the childhood of real-life astronaut Chris Hadfield and brought to life by Terry and Eric Fan's lush, evocative illustrations, The Darkest Dark will encourage readers to dream the impossible. Chris loves rockets and planets and pretending he's a brave astronaut, exploring the universe. Only one problem--at night, Chris doesn't feel so brave. He's afraid of the dark. But when he watches the groundbreaking moon landing on TV, he realizes that space is the darkest dark there is--and the dark is beautiful and exciting, especially when you have big dreams to keep you company.

A young Polish girl becomes involved with anti-German underground activities during World War II.

When Nole Darlen kills his father—the man who has built the largest house anyone in these East Tennessee hills has ever seen—the single resounding gunshot sets up a dark patchwork of memory and expectation that gathers-up townspeople, hill-folks, lovers and outlaws. Here is a tangled tale involving the dead man’s wife, neighbor Burlton Hobbes, desperado Jem Craishot, and a grizzled muskrat-trapper named Hogeye. Central to the story is a pistol that Nole Darlen has taken from a card game the night before the murder. The pistol becomes a totem to Nole, an embodiment of the frustrations and failures that have dogged his life. He envies and fears the outlaw, Jem Craishot, wishing he, too, could be “fearsome,” but descends, instead, into cowardice and betrayal. Eventually, the gun becomes a central element of the novel’s twisted story, a talisman of murder, and a key to the book’s shocking ending. Richard Hood brings to bear his deep roots in rural East Tennessee. The plots and subplots of Regret the Dark Hour are based on true stories. The house still exists, the patricide really happened, the outlaw—Jem Craishot—is based upon the legendary Kinny Wagner, whose exploits derive from this time and region. The novel’s social and cultural backgrounds are accurate, and call-up the rich heritage of East Tennessee. The novel has been called “Southern Gothic Noir,” and Hood describes it as an “anti-mystery.” There is never any doubt about who killed Carl Darlen, but the story turns and weaves through the day of the murder and ends with a startling, dark, surprise. Here is a story of family violence—its simmering causes and smoldering consequences—set against the clashing tensions of old-and-new, fiddle-tunes and factories, among the hills and coves of prohibition-era East Tennessee. Praise for REGRET THE DARK HOUR: “Richard Hood’s Regret the Dark Hour is a search for Regional Truth and the ways memory, representation, and history intertwine to produce stories, interpretation, and character. This novel is a triumph—giving us the sound and flavor of prohibition-era East Tennessee, in a mix of voice, perception, and blindness embedded within the darkly tangled story of a family murder.” —Shelby Stephenson, Poet Laureate of North Carolina and author of Paul’s Hill: Homage to Whitman; Our World and Nin’s Poem “Regret the Dark Hour calls up a story of betrayal, forbidden love, and familial violence in prohibition-era Appalachia. Hood’s stunning and lyrical writing vividly captures the world of this forgotten time period. A beautiful debut and wonderful addition to southern noir.” —Jen Conley, author of Seven Ways to Get Rid of Harry

Pull up a chair, ya bastiches-it’s time for Uncle Lobo’s Infinite Hour! It’s your chance to let the Main Man Lobo-tomize you with familiar yet freaky stories of the DC Universe, exactly as he remembers them: with blood and guts and exxxtreme gratuitous violence! Tell yer comics guy to put you down for alllll the copies!