One Night Of Madness

The year was 1950. Mary Ella Harris, works hard sharecropping alongside her husband, a man with a penchant for gambling, drinking, and associating with unsavory white people. When she is cornered in her home by Leon Turner, a white man who refuses to take no for an answer, Mary Ella narrowly avoids an attempted rape. After his arrest, Leon escapes jail and enacts a bloody revenge with two accomplices. With the eyes of the nation watching, the state itself is on trial. The jury's controversial decision ultimately serves as a catalyst for change.

In 1938, two rival expeditions descend on an ancient temple recently discovered in the jungles of Honduras, one intending to shoot a huge Hollywood production on location there, the other to disassemble the temple and ship it back to New York. A seemingly endless stalemate ensues. Twenty years later, a rogue CIA agent sets out to exploit the temple for his own ends, unaware that it is a locus of conspiracies far grander than anyone could ever have guessed. Shot through with intrigue, ingenuity, and adventure, and showcasing Beauman’s riotous humor, spectacular imagination, and riveting prose, Madness Is Better Than Defeat is a novel without parallel: inventive, anarchic, and delightfully insane.

The untold story of King Nebuchadnezzar’s daughter For seven years the Babylonian princess Tiamat has waited for the mad king Nebuchadnezzar to return to his family and to his kingdom. Driven from his throne to live as a beast, he prowls his luxurious Hanging Gardens, secreted away from the world. Since her treaty marriage at a young age, Tia has lived an opulent yet oppressive life in the palace. But her husband has since died and she relishes her newfound independence. When a nobleman is found murdered in the palace, Tia must discover who is responsible for the macabre death, even if her own freedom is threatened. As the queen plans to wed Tia to yet another prince, the powerful mage Shadir plots to expose the family’s secret and set his own man on the throne. Tia enlists the help of a reluctant Jewish captive, her late husband’s brother Pedaiah, who challenges her notions of the gods even as he opens her heart to both truth and love. In a time when few gave their hearts to Yahweh, Tia must decide if she is willing to risk everything—her possessions, her gods, and her very life—for the Israelites’ one God. Madness, sorcery, and sinister plots mingle like an alchemist’s deadly potion as Tia chooses whether to risk all to save the kingdom—and her family. “The biblical story of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar’s seven years as a madman, found in the Old Testament Book of Daniel, deepens and broadens thanks to veteran author Higley’s historical research and vivid imagination . . . Readers will find much to enjoy here: fine writing, suspense, mystery, faith, love, and a new look at an old story.” —Publishers Weekly “Higley gives readers a dose of biblical history set in King Nebuchadnezzar’s palatial gardens and a character like no other in Tiamat, devoted daughter of a king gone mad. The author’s insights into a woman’s inner strength as she searches for the one true God will leave readers rejoicing.”—Romantic Times TOP PICK "Her story will appeal not just to readers of historical fiction but also to those with an interest in biblical history." —Booklist

Richard Pyves tells the incredible story of his father, Ron Pyves, a teenage tail-gunner who fought over the skies of Europe during the last months of World War II and fought a personal battle on the homefront.

Independence for India, in 1947, came with a price: division on the basis of religion. In the communal riots that followed, hundreds of thousands were killed and millions rendered homeless. And the tragic legacy of Partition haunts the subcontinent even today. Memories of Madness brings together works by three leading writers who witnessed the insanity of those months. Train to Pakistan, Khushwant Singh’s debut novel, tells the story of a village in Punjab, Mano Majra, where Muslims and Sikhs have co-existed peacefully, till one night in 1947, when a ghost train arrives from across the new border, bearing corpses of butchered refugees. As mistrust grows into hate and the people of Mano Majra lose their humanity, it is left to an outcast, a Sikh dacoit in love with a Muslim girl, to avert another carnage. Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas is a harrowing portrait of a small frontier town in the grip of communal frenzy. Based on the author’s own experience of riots in Rawalpindi, this celebrated novel describes the murder and mayhem triggered off by the discovery of a pig’s carcass outside a mosque. The matchless stories of Saadat Hasan Manto, the greatest short story writer in the Urdu language, round off this collection. In addition to his most famous story, ‘Toba Tek Singh’, the selection includes ten other sketches and stories in which Manto turns his unflinching gaze on history's criminals, victims and unlikely heroes. As moving as they are disturbing, the stories in this volume are of immense relevance in these times, for they constitute a chilling reminder of the consequences of communal politics.

The night that changes everything… Life for Victoria Lacey should be perfect. And it is—perfectly boring. Agree to marry a lord who has yet to inspire a single, solitary tingle? Why, of course. Smile as though this is not the thousandth time he’s mentioned hounds and hunting? It’s all in a day’s work for the oh-so-proper sister of the Duke of Blackmore. Surely no one would suspect her secret longing for heart-racing, head-spinning passion. Except, perhaps, a dark stranger … on a terrace … at a ball where she should definitely not be kissing a man she has only just met. The obsession that leads to ruin… Hatred, not love, drives Lucien Wyatt, Viscount Atherbourne, to tempt the “Flower of Blackmore” into sin. Her brother has done unthinkable damage to Lucien’s family, and he intends to exact revenge in the only way left to him: Ruining his enemy’s sister, then stealing her from Blackmore by making her his own. The woman who will set fire to her husband’s heart As Lucien carries out his ruthless plan, tutoring his new bride in the finer points of pleasure, her surrender leaves him breathless … and soon a new obsession awakens—a scandalous fascination with his irresistible wife.

Lawrence Watt-Evans's tales of the magical land of Ethshar of the Spices had a large and devoted following in the late eighties and early nineties. Now, after nearly ten years, he brings us a new tale of mystery, magic, and madness. Warlockry has been rare in Ethshar . . . until The Night of Madness, when a mysterious object falls from the heavens, sending out a wave of magic in the form of a dream. All who have the dream awaken in panic. But some of them also awaken to the power or Warlockry. Throughout the land these newly made warlocks wreak havoc; looting and rioting, petty personal revenge, and uncontrollable madness run rampant. Worse, people are hearing a mysterious, irresistible call from which they never return. Into this chaos steps the power-hungry Lord Faran, who seeks to use his new warlock powers to overthrow the government and take possession of the throne. Who will dare to oppose him? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Brain on Fire meets High Achiever in this “page-turner memoir chronicling a woman’s accidental descent into prescription benzodiazepine dependence—and the life-threatening impacts of long-term use—that chills to the bone” (Nylon). As Melissa Bond raises her infant daughter and a special-needs one-year-old son, she suffers from unbearable insomnia, sleeping an hour or less each night. She loses her job as a journalist (a casualty of the 2008 recession), and her relationship with her husband grows distant. Her doctor casually prescribes benzodiazepines—a family of drugs that includes Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan—and increases her dosage regularly. Following her doctor’s orders, Melissa takes the pills night after night until her body begins to shut down. Only when she collapses while holding her daughter does Melissa learn that her doctor—like so many others—has over-prescribed the medication and quitting cold turkey could lead to psychosis or fatal seizures. Benzodiazepine addiction is not well studied, and few experts know how to help Melissa as she begins the months-long process of tapering off the pills without suffering debilitating, potentially deadly consequences. Each page thrums with the heartbeat of Melissa’s struggle—how many hours has she slept? How many weeks old are her babies? How many milligrams has she taken? Her propulsive writing crescendos to a fever pitch as she fights for her health and her ability to care for her children. “Propulsive, poetic” (Shelf Awareness), and immersive, this “vivid chronicle of suffering” (Kirkus Reviews) and redemption shines a light on the prescription benzodiazepine epidemic as it reaches a crisis point in this country.

"Originally published by Ballantine Books, New York, in 1959."

A romantic, historical retelling of classic Gothic horror featuring Edgar Allan Poe and his character Annabel Lee, from a New York Times best-selling author. Annabel Lee is summoned from Siam to live with her father in 1820's Philadelphia shortly after her mother's death, but an unconventional upbringing makes her repugnant to her angry, secretive father. Annabel becomes infatuated with her father's assistant Allan, who dabbles in writing when he's not helping with medical advancements. But in darker hours, when she's not to be roaming the house, she encounters the devilish assistant Edgar, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Allan, and who others insist doesn't exist. A rash of murders across Philadelphia, coupled with her father's strange behavior, leads Annabel to satisfy her curiosity and uncover a terrible truth: Edgar and Allan are two halves of the same person - and they are about to make the crimes detailed in Allan's stories come to life. Unless Annabel stops them.