Strong Rain Falling

Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling is a tough-as-nails account of being down and out, but never down for good—a Dostoyevskian tale of crime, punishment, and the pursuit of an ever-elusive redemption. The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black runaway and pool hustler extraordinaire. A heist gone wrong gets Jack sent to reform school, from which he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary confinement. In the meantime Billy has joined the middle class—married, fathered a son, acquired a business and a mistress. But neither Jack nor Billy can escape their troubled pasts, and they will meet again in San Quentin before their strange double drama comes to a violent and revelatory end.

"A magnetic, bloody, moving, and worm's-eye view of soldiering in Vietnam, an account that is from the first page to last a wound that can never heal. A searing gift to his country."-Kirkus Reviews The classic Vietnam war memoir, ...and a hard rain fell is the unforgettable story of a veteran's rage and the unflinching portrait of a young soldier's odyssey from the roads of upstate New York to the jungles of Vietnam. Updated for its 20th anniversary with a new afterword on the Iraq War and its parallels to Vietnam, John Ketwig's message is as relevant today as it was twenty years ago. "Solidly effective. He describes with ingenuous energy and authentic language that time and place."-Library Journal "Perhaps as evocative of that awful time in Vietnam as the great fictions...a wild surreal account, at its best as powerful as Celine's darkling writing of World War One."-Washington Post

Jon Land's bestselling series featuring Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong continues in Strong Rain Falling. Mexico, 1919: The birth of the Mexican drug trade begins with opium being smuggled across the U.S. border, igniting an all-out battle with American law enforcement in general and the Texas Rangers in particular. The Present: Fifth Generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong and her lover Cort Wesley Masters both survive terrifying gun battles. But this time, it turns out, the actual targets were not them, but Masters' teenage sons. That sets Caitlin and Cort Wesley off on a trail winding through the past and present with nothing less than the future of the United States hanging in the balance. Along the way they will confront terrible truths dating all the way back to the Mexican Revolution and the dogged battle Caitlin's own grandfather and great-grandfather fought against the first generation of Mexican drug dealers. At the heart of the storm soon to sweep away America as we know it, lies a mastermind whose abundant power is equaled only by her thirst for vengeance. Ana Callas Guajardo, the last surviving member of the family that founded the Mexican drug trade, has dedicated all of her vast resources to a plot aimed at the U.S.'s technological heart. This time out, sabotage proves to be as deadly a weapon as bombs in a battle Caitlin must win in cyberspace as well. Her only chance to prevail is to short-circuit a complex plan based as much on microchips as bullets. Because there's a strong rain coming and only Caitlin and Cort Wesley can stop the fall before it's too late. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Fifteen-year-old Annie needs to get to her basketball match, but the police have cordoned off her road. Is her neighbour, who she grew up with, still alive? What has he done to have the police after him? A murder investigation brings new people to her wild West Coast town, including a dark-haired boy riding the most amazing horse she has ever seen. But Annie is wary of strangers, especially as her world is beginning to crumble around her. In setting out to discover the truth, Annie uncovers secrets that could rip the small community apart.

A delightful picture book about a wonderfully wet walk. Simple text and colourful illustrations introduce the science of rain to very young children. This is a highly illustrated ebook that can only be read on the Kindle Fire or other tablet.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.

This novel delves deeply into issues of family, class, friendship and loyalty, and asks just how far a person should go to protect those they love. On the Caribbean island of Camaho, forensics expert Michael 'Digger' Digson is in deep trouble. Miss Stanislaus, his friend and fellow CID detective, kills a man in self-defence, but their superiors believe it was murder, and he's given just six weeks to prove otherwise - six weeks in which Digger catches a shocking roadside murder and the Justice Minister attempts to break up the unit, and with it bury the pair and their unconventional boss, DS Chilman. As Digger and Miss Stanislaus delve further into the tangled mesh of murders on the island, they discover a thread of crime, cruelty and corruption that suggests a storm is due to break over Camaho at any moment.

"Frightening...Firestorm comes alive when Struzik discusses the work of offbeat scientists." --New York Times Book Review "Comprehensive and compelling." --Booklist "A powerful message." --Kirkus "Should be required reading." --Library Journal In the spring of 2016, the world watched as wildfire ravaged the Canadian town of Fort McMurray. Firefighters named the fire "the Beast." It seemed to be alive with destructive energy, and they hoped never to see anything like it again. Yet it's not a stretch to imagine we will all soon live in a world in which fires like the Beast are commonplace. In Firestorm, Edward Struzik confronts this new reality, offering a deftly woven tale of science, economics, politics, and human determination. It's possible for us to flourish in the coming age of megafires--but it will take a radical new approach that requires acknowledging that fires are no longer avoidable. Living with fire also means, Struzik reveals, that we must better understand how the surprising, far-reaching impacts of these massive fires will linger long after the smoke eventually clears.