The Grove

A gripping and compulsive thriller from the author of The Couple in Room 13 Dexter McCray is a farmer with a dark past that continues to haunt him. As a man struggling with alcoholism, he's used to being looked at with pity and suspicion in his community. So, after waking from a blackout to discover the body of a teenage girl in the nearby cottonwood grove, he can't be entirely sure he's innocent. With no memory of the previous night, he sees no choice but to investigate the crime himself. Fortunately he's not alone. He has some help…in the shape of the dead girl herself. In The Grove, readers are treated to more than a warped and imaginative mystery. With plot twists on every page, Rector breathes life into a story that pits reality against hallucination, truth against improbability. Is Dexter motivated by guilt or insanity, reason or folly? And how will the young victim provide the help he desperately needs? This is a novel about one man haunted by the reality of his failed life. Praise for John Rector: 'A well-crafted, tightly plotted thriller which steadily cranks up the sense of menace page by page. You know something bad's going to happen and just have to keep reading…' Simon Kernick, Sunday Times bestselling author of Die Alone 'Clean, lean writing. Pure story with no padding. The pace was cracking and the tension cranked up with each chapter. I inhaled it! Allie Reynolds, author of Shiver 'Portents of disaster accumulate like wind-driven snow... A sly and very accomplished first novel' Booklist 'Highly rewarding... I just couldn't stop reading... There's no better place to spend a few imaginative hours these days than Rector's snowbound motel' National Review 'Highly suspenseful, highly provocative... has elements of the teen horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer and the classic, groundbreaking Psycho... highly recommended' Gumshoe Review 'One of the most violent, frightening and gripping books I have ever read. The phrase "I could not put it down" fits here -- and the ending stopped me COLD. An outstanding read -- don't miss this one!' Beyond her Book, Publisher's Weekly 'A novel that compels you to read on - even though there are times you are too scared to. Brilliant' Sun 'Rector is the best find I've made all year' Tony Black 'Wonderfully compelling. Could almost see the film racing across my eyes' Maxim Jakubowski 'Tense, taut, throat-grabbing. John Rector is far more accomplished than his years. Reads like a cross between No Country for Old Men and Deliverance. Terrific' Eric Van Lustbader 'One of the best debuts I've read in a very long time' Scott Phillips

*** 'The best gardening book of 2022.' The Telegraph 'A book to make even a quick trip to the corner shop endlessly fascinating. Dark has been dubbed the millennial Monty Don for this beautifully written study of the oft-overlooked nature on our doorsteps...Dark teases the drama, humour and history from even the most commonplace buddleja, box and tulip.' George Hudson, Evening Standard, Favourite Gardening Books of the Year 'This enjoyable read throws a spotlight on the everyday.' Rachel De Thame's 10 Best Gardening Books of 2022, the Sunday Times 'Gardening for a billionaire taught Ben Dark that "plants alone are not enough to make a garden special". Instead he finds "special" in the people and the history, as well as the plants, that fill 191⁄2 London front gardens. A soulful read. Tom Howard, RHS The Garden, Best Books of The Year 'A wonderful book.' Alexandra Shulman, Mail on Sunday 'Meet the millennial Monty Don.' The Sunday Times Style 'Ben Dark's beautifully observed book, The Grove: A Nature Odyssey in 19 1⁄2 Front Gardens, tells the stories of 20 key plants growing in a single London street's front gardens in a way that's as engaging as it is informative.' The Irish Times Any walk is an odyssey when we connect with the plants around us. Each tree or flower tells a tale. Mundane 'suburban' shrubs speak of war and poetry, of money, fashion, love and failure. Every species in this book was seen from one pavement over twelve months and there is little here that could not be found on any road in any town, but they reveal stories of such weirdness, drama, passion and humour that, once discovered, familiar neighbourhoods will be changed forever. There is a renewed interest in the nature on our doorsteps, as can be seen in the work of amateur botanists identifying wildflowers and chalking the names on the pavements. But beyond the garden wall lies a wealth of cultivated plants, each with a unique tale to tell. In The Grove, award-winning writer and head gardener Ben Dark reveals the remarkable secrets of twenty commonly found species - including the rose, wisteria, buddleja, box and the tulip - encountered in the front gardens of one London street over the course of year. As Ben writes, in those small front gardens 'are stories of ambition, envy, hope and failure' and The Grove is about so much more than a single street, or indeed the plants found in its 19 1⁄2 front gardens. It's a beguiling blend of horticultural history and personal narrative and a lyrical exploration of why gardens and gardening matter.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “A must-read, cannot-put-down history.” — Thomas Friedman, New York Times Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in a case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life. In 1949, Florida's orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor with the help of Sheriff Willis V. McCall, who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old girl cried rape, McCall pursued four young black men who dared envision a future for themselves beyond the groves. The Ku Klux Klan joined the hunt, hell-bent on lynching the men who came to be known as "the Groveland Boys." Associates thought it was suicidal for Marshall to wade into the "Florida Terror," but the young lawyer would not shrink from the fight despite continuous death threats against him. Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, including the FBI's unredacted Groveland case files, as well as unprecedented access to the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund files, Gilbert King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader.

Brilliant, brave, and willing to defy conventional wisdom, Andy Grove, the CEO of Intel during its years of explosive growth, is on the shortlist of America's most admired businesspeople. Grove gave Tedlow unprecedented access to his private papers, along with wide-ranging interviews and access to friends and key business associates. The result is not just a life story but a fascinating analysis of how Grove attacks problems. Born a Hungarian Jew in 1936, András István Gróf survived the Nazis only to face the Soviet invasion of his country. He fled to America at age twenty, studied engineering, and arrived in Silicon Valley just in time to become the third employee of Intel. As talented as he was as an engineer, Grove became an even better manager. Tedlow shows us exactly how the penniless immigrant taught himself to lead a major corporation through some of the toughest challenges in the history of business.--From publisher description.

A “treasure trove” of insider accounts of the movie business from its earliest beginnings to the present day—“exceedingly savvy . . . astute and entertaining” (Variety). The Grove Book of Hollywood is a richly entertaining anthology of anecdotes and reminiscences from the people who helped make the City of Angels the storied place we know today. Movie moguls, embittered screenwriters, bemused outsiders such as P. G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh, and others all have their say. Organized chronologically, the pieces form a history of Hollywood as only generations of insiders could tell it. We encounter the first people to move to Hollywood, when it was a dusty village on the outskirts of Los Angeles, as well as the key players during the heyday of the studio system in the 1930s. We hear from victims of the blacklist and from contemporary players in an industry dominated by agents. Coming from a wide variety of sources, the personal recollections range from the affectionate to the scathing, from the cynical to the grandiose. Here is John Huston on his drunken fistfight with Errol Flynn; Cecil B. DeMille on the challenges of filming The Ten Commandments; Frank Capra on working for the great comedic producer Mark Sennett; William Goldman on the strange behavior of Hollywood executives in meetings; and much more. “A masterly, magnificent anthology,” The Grove Book of Hollywood is a must for anyone fascinated by Hollywood and the film industry (Literary Review, London).

You are invited to the rest of your life. Three women, from coast to coast and in between, open their mailboxes to the same intriguing invitation. Although leading entirely different lives, each has found herself at a similar, jarring crossroads. Right when these women thought they’d be comfortably settling into middle age, their carefully curated futures have turned out to be dead ends. The sender of the invitation is Willa Silvester, who is reeling from the untimely death of her beloved husband and the reality that she must say goodbye to the small mountain town they founded together. Yet as Willa mourns her losses, an impossible question keeps staring her in the face: So now what? Struggling to find the answer alone, fiercely independent Willa eventually calls a childhood friend who happens to be in her own world of hurt—and that’s where the idea sparks. They decide to host a weeklong interlude from life, and invite two other friends facing their own quandaries. Soon the four women converge at Willa’s Montana homestead, a place where they can learn from nature and one another as they contemplate their second acts together in the rugged wilderness of big sky country.

THE NEW GUARDIANS OF DESTINY NOVEL Calm the magics caught in thrall: Put your faith in strangers’ pleas, Watcher, Witch, and treasure trove; Ride the wave to calm the trees, Servant saves the sacred grove. At the behest of their leader, the Witches of Darkhana are mobilized. Their mission: gather the most honest, true servants of each deity so that they may respectfully represent their land at the reopening of the Convocation of Gods and Man. For Witch-Priest Aradin Teral, his part in the quest has taken him across the length and breadth of Katan, searching for the best possible representative of an empire bent on preventing that very task. Ever since the destruction of the last Convocation, the magics of the Grove have been warped, endangering pilgrims and residents alike and requiring the guardianship of the strongest mage the priesthood can spare. Priestess Saleria is now the Keeper of the Grove, and Guardian of the Divine Garden. The arrival of a black-robed stranger bearing the faces of two men brings the promise of change, even peace, to the isolated valley. But it also ushers in an irresistible passion and a threat to Saleria’s control of the wildest magics in the woods…

A collection of thoughts and ideas about art spanning thousands of years, from Pliny the Elder to Picasso.

Now available in one volume, the novels which began Tanya Huff's career. Child of the Grove and The Last Wizard form a powerful fantasy duology about the last wizard ever to be born into the world. It is the saga of Crystal, a daughter of Power whose destiny is to put an end to the war between wizards and the mortal world. Now this magical tale is collected in one volume as Wizard of the Grove, featuring new cover art by Yvonne Gilbert.