Sleep With Strangers

Rediscover one of America’s pioneering women crime writers with this classic noir starring a Long Beach private investigator reminiscent of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe “Are you trying to tell me you don't want the job, Mr. Sader?” It started as a missing persons case and grew more puzzling with the discovery of another strangely coincidental disappearance. Private eye Jim Sader finds himself deep in a multilayered intrigue revolving around oil and real estate and the sleazy underpinnings of Long Beach, California, in the 1950s. Taut, suspenseful, and gritty, many consider Sleep with Strangers to be Dolores Hitchens’ best novel.

Drifting from relationship to relationship in his work as a killer for hire, Gideon interacts with a range of con artists, prostitutes, and broken-hearted clients while passing time with three very different women, each of whom wishes to capture his heart. By the author of Chasing Destiny. 150,000 first printing.

In this wholly original work of film criticism, David Thomson, celebrated author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film, probes the many ways in which sexuality has shaped the movies—and the ways in which the movies have shaped sexuality. Exploring the tangled notions of masculinity, femininity, beauty, and sex that characterize our cinematic imagination—and drawing on examples that range from advertising to pornography, Bonnie and Clyde to Call Me by Your Name—Thomson illuminates how film as art, entertainment, and business has historically been a polite cover for a kind of erotic séance. In so doing, he casts the art and the artists we love in a new light, and reveals how film can both expose the fault lines in conventional masculinity and point the way past it, toward a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be a person with desires.

What if for just one year you explored everything you’d wondered about sex but hadn’t tried? The project was simple: An attractive, successful magazine journalist, Robin Rinaldi, would move into a San Francisco apartment, join a dating site, and get laid. Never mind that she already owned a beautiful flat a few blocks away, that she was forty-four, or that she was married to a man she’d been in love with for eighteen years. What followed—a year of sex, heartbreak, and unexpected revelation—is the topic of this riveting memoir, The Wild Oats Project. An open marriage was never one of Rinaldi’s goals—her priority as she approached midlife was to start a family. But when her husband insisted on a vasectomy, she decided that she could remain married only on her own terms. If I can’t have children, she told herself, then I’m going to have lovers. During the week she would live alone, seduce men (and women), attend erotic workshops, and partake in wall-banging sex. On the weekends, she would go home and be a wife. At a time when the bestseller lists are topped by books about eroticism and the shifting roles of women, this brave memoir explores how our sexuality defines us—and it delivers the missing link: an everywoman’s account of sex. Combining the strong literary voice of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild with the adventurousness of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, The Wild Oats Project challenges our sensibilities and evokes the delicate balance between loving others and staying true to oneself.

What happens when the strong, ambitious man you married fades into a stranger with an illness no doctor can diagnose? When Jessica Zimmerman's husband Brian contracted a mysterious illness that left him 60 pounds underweight and a prisoner to their master bathroom, she had no idea the journey of self-discovery on which they were both about to embark. As Jessica and Brian worked to solve the riddle of his illness, they also had a harder question to answer: was their marriage even worth saving? Sleeping with a Stranger is a searing, honest and hilarious memoir about learning how to love even in the darkest of moments, and how to find yourself when the compass is lost. As Jessica's business takes off, and the demands of being the sole provider increase, she begins to discover who she was always meant to be, even if that goes against the Southern culture in which she was raised. Bucking up against old ideas and even older Southern traditions, Jessica's story is also a rallying cry for women coming to terms with their trauma in order to find healing. Sleeping with a Stranger is a testament to the power of healing--how we can heal our bodies, our spirits, our relationships with others, and ultimately, ourselves. As Brian finally recovers, and Jessica recognizes that she can never go back to the old script that so many women follow, they begin to negotiate a new marriage and learn the greatest lesson of all: we can reclaim our true selves at any time.

The Sunday Times bestseller and Richard & Judy Book Club author of Sleep returns with her most gripping book yet. STRANGERS: A TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTELLER ‘Fast-paced and satisfying’ DAILY MAIL ‘I was glued from start to finish!’ SHARI LAPENA

Rediscover this classic twisty tale of mystery and murder from the queen of romantic suspense, New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham. Four years ago, while vacationing at their country estate in Scotland, Jon Stuart watched his wife plummet from the balcony to a horrific death. Although cleared of any involvement, he’s endured years of public suspicion—losing friends and his good standing in the community. But this was no accident, and now he’s determined to prove it was murder. Orchestrating a dangerous plan, Jon has gathered the prime suspects at the scene of the crime. The stage is set as past and present collide, old lovers reunite...and a killer plots another perfect crime. Originally published in 1998

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