The Dream Of The Broken Horses

"One hot summer afternoon a quarter century ago, a wealthy socialite and her young lover, a private-school teacher, were gunned down in a cheap motel room on the outskirts of the Midwestern city of Calista. Now, forensic sketch artist David Weiss has returned to his hometown to cover a routine celebrity murder trial for ABC."--Jacket.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The critically acclaimed singer-songwriter, producer, and six-time Grammy winner opens up about faith, sexuality, parenthood, and a life shaped by music in “one of the great memoirs of our time” (Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed). NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND AUTOSTRADDLE • “The best-written, most engaging rock autobiography since her childhood hero, Elton John, published Me.”—Variety Brandi Carlile was born into a musically gifted, impoverished family on the outskirts of Seattle and grew up in a constant state of change, moving from house to house, trailer to trailer, fourteen times in as many years. Though imperfect in every way, her dysfunctional childhood was as beautiful as it was strange, and as nurturing as it was difficult. At the age of five, Brandi contracted bacterial meningitis, which almost took her life, leaving an indelible mark on her formative years and altering her journey into young adulthood. As an openly gay teenager, Brandi grappled with the tension between her sexuality and her faith when her pastor publicly refused to baptize her on the day of the ceremony. Shockingly, her small town rallied around Brandi in support and set her on a path to salvation where the rest of the misfits and rejects find it: through twisted, joyful, weird, and wonderful music. In Broken Horses, Brandi Carlile takes readers through the events of her life that shaped her very raw art—from her start at a local singing competition where she performed Elton John’s “Honky Cat” in a bedazzled white polyester suit, to her first break opening for Dave Matthews Band, to many sleepless tours over fifteen years and six studio albums, all while raising two children with her wife, Catherine Shepherd. This hard-won success led her to collaborations with personal heroes like Elton John, Dolly Parton, Mavis Staples, Pearl Jam, Tanya Tucker, and Joni Mitchell, as well as her peers in the supergroup The Highwomen, and ultimately to the Grammy stage, where she converted millions of viewers into instant fans. Evocative and piercingly honest, Broken Horses is at once an examination of faith through the eyes of a person rejected by the church’s basic tenets and a meditation on the moments and lyrics that have shaped the life of a creative mind, a brilliant artist, and a genuine empath on a mission to give back.

Circling high over Rockefeller Center is a peregrine falcon, the most awesome of the flying predators. She awaits a signal from her falconer. It is given: the bird attacks, plummeting from the sky at nearly 200 miles an hour, striking a young woman and killing her instantly. So begins Peregrine, a chilling tale of obsession. By chance, newscaster Pamela Barrett witnesses the slaying. Her impassioned account of it on television that evening thrills the falconer, a brilliant madman who identifies with his deadly bird. He becomes fascinated with Pam and enmeshes her in a bizarre and deadly scheme even as she finds herself drawn to him by an erotic need she doesn't understand. As killing follows killing, the police and the media engage in cutthroat competition to find the murderer. Two falcons fight to the death above Central Park. Call girls, rich eccentrics, dealers in the black market for rare birds--all play their roles in this study of secret passion, desire, fulfillment, and ecstasy.

A cloth bag containing nine copies of the title.

"He spent hours drawing sketches of how she might be killed. And the more work he put into them the more exciting the idea became. And then he started following her and then he was caught up. And the more caught up he was the more definitely she was doomed, for once an idea took hold in him he felt compelled to carry it out. It was the Switch that made his crime a work of art... " At first the two killings seem unrelated. The lonely call girl murdered on New York City's West Side had never met the prim schoolteacher slain across town in the far safer preserve of the city's Upper East Side. But someone has decapitated them both and switched their heads: a deed that is apparently its own motive, a crime as pointless as it was perfectly executed. Detective Frank Janek immediately knows that he has entered the realm of a lethal madness. Middle-aged, divorced, a man centered solely on his work, Janek is practiced in piercing the minds of the criminals he pursues. In the absence of clues from the killer, he has only the awful symmetry of the crime to work with, only his own finely honed intuition. "This was a crime conceived in the shadows," he thinks, "There was precision in it, and passion. Concentrated rage and a love of order. A need to beautify. Even some strange, unfathomable, as yet uncatalogued species of love." The challenge—to become as precise, as creative, as cold as his prey-begins to take its toll. The tenuous psychological thread leads Janek back into the unsettled past—not only the killer's but his own. His own passion and rage and unresolved love. The love he bore for the man who trained him-a retired cop whose apparent suicide he has shied from investigating too closely, the passion for justice that has made him a marked man within the police fraternity. The rage he feels at ancient crimes that have finally burst into full and terrifying flower. And most of all, the new love he feels for the mysterious woman in whom all these strands of the past seem to converge. It is Janek's love for Caroline that leads him at last to a blinding vision of the purpose behind the grisly double homicide. Too late, he realizes that the case of "Switched Heads" may only be the bait.... Praise for Switch: I am very impressed. Switch is superior in characterization, movement, tension, the quality of the writing and the a mind of the writer. William Bayer goes right on my "look for list" —John D. MacDonald "The crime is dazzling, the action fast paced, and there are good insights into police techniques and the police mind." —Robert Daley "Switch is a novel in which the grit and madness of New York are palpable. As well as engrossing the reader utterly, it does high honor to the grand tradition of the American psychological thriller, and despite the riveting nature of its central act of horror, it also traces an exhilarating love affair between two bloodied but triumphantly humane survivors of the city's attrition." —Thomas Keneally "Switch has the stunning intensity of The First Deadly Sin, and I can't think of a higher compliment." —Mary Higgins Clark

When she agrees to take on one of the abused horses just rescued by the local SPCA, a new chapter opens in Susan Richards's difficult life. She lost her mother at the age of five and was raised by uncaring relatives; she married unhappily and divorced; and she'd been an alcoholic. Now, at the age of forty-three, she lives with three horses who keep her company: the diva-like Georgia, boyish Tempo and hopelessly romantic Hotshot. While trying to capture another horse assigned to her, Lay Me Down, a skeletal mare, walks into Susan's horse trailer of her own volition. When Susan agrees to take her, she begins to forge a special, healing relationship that alters her life. Poignant and evocative, this is a book for anyone who has ever loved a horse, and for everyone who has ever lost a loved one.

Vols. 8-10 of the 1965-1984 master cumulation constitute a title index.