Cuckoos Blood

Idiosyncratic and energized versions of Zen poems by the editor of The American Poetry Review.

In the epic fifth installment in this “compulsively readable” (People) series, Galbraith’s “irresistible hero and heroine” (USA Today) take on the decades-old cold case of a missing doctor, one which may be their grisliest yet. Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough—who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974. Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. And Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as battling her own feelings about Strike. As Strike and Robin investigate Margot’s disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly . . .

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of a counterculture classic, and the inspiration for the new Netflix original series Ratched, with a foreword by Chuck Palahniuk One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Now in a new deluxe edition with a foreword by Chuck Palahniuk and cover by Joe Sacco, here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy’s heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them all imprisoned. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Published under a pseudonym, J. K. Rowling's brilliant debut mystery introduces Detective Cormoran Strike as he investigates a supermodel's suicide in "one of the best books of the year" (USA Today), the first novel in the brilliant series that inspired the acclaimed HBO Max series C.B. Strike. After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, creditors are calling, and after a breakup with his longtime girlfriend, he's living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with a shocking story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry -- known to her friends as the Cuckoo -- famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man. You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.

This fascinating study describes the natural histories of these brood parasites and examines many of the exciting questions they raise about the evolution of cheating and the arms race between parasites and their prey. Brood parasites fill their armoury with adaptations including exquisite egg mimicry, rapid laying, ejection of host eggs, murder of host young, chick mimicry and manipulative begging behaviour: ploys shown by recent research to have evolved in response to host defence behaviour or through competition among the parasites themselves. While many host species appear defenceless, accepting parasite eggs quite unlike their own, many are more discriminating against odd-looking eggs and some have evolved the ability to discriminate against odd-looking chicks as well. How is this arms race conducted? Will defenceless hosts develop defences in time, or are there constraints which limit the evolution and perfection of host defences? And why are so few species obliged only to lay eggs in host nests? Have host defences limited the success of brood parasitism, or is it in fact much more common than we suspect, but occurring mainly when birds parasitize the nest of their own kind? All of these puzzles are examined in descriptions of the natural history of each of the groups of parasites in turn. Here is a book with wide appeal, both to amateur naturalists fascinated by this most singular and macabre of behaviours and by ornithologists and ecologists interested in the evolution of ecology and behaviour. The story takes us from the classic field work by pioneer ornithologists such as Edgar Chance, Stuart Baker, Herbert Friedmann and others, through to the experimental field work and molecular techniques of today's leading scientists. We visit brood parasites in Europe, Asia, Japan, Africa, Australasia, and North and South America, to look at some of the world's most interesting birds and some of biology's most interesting questions, many of which still beg answers from ornithologists in the future. Brilliant illustrations by David Quinn illuminate the species discussed, showing many behaviours never before illustrated and conveying the thrill of watching these astonishing birds in the wild.

This book is an autobiography of Ron S King, who lived a very different lifestyle. You will read of 'Gangsters and the 'Low-Life', the dregs of Society... Once a reader picks up this book, there will be difficulty in putting it down.

Award-winning author Amra Pajalić showcases her gritty, poignant and sometimes bruising voice in this eclectic short story book of previously published and prize-winning stories. Featuring powerful and moving stories of family dissolution, deprivation of war, tenderness of family and the heart-rending experiences of mental illness. Thriller stories with a twist of vindictiveness and retribution, and love stories that make the heart sing, this collection will delight and entertain. The Cuckoo’s Song—Francesca is ten when a gypsy fortune-teller told her the day and the hour of her death and she has been waiting since. Fragments—Seka and her brother forage for books in a bombed-out school in Srebrenica during the Balkan war. Friends Forever—Two lifelong friends share a room at a nursing home, as well as a secret or two. School of Hardknocks—Amina is a new high school student after migrating from Bosnia and struggles to acclimate to the Aussie way of life. Woman on Fire—A young girl lives with her mother’s boyfriend when her mentally ill mother is admitted into hospital.

'A Cuckoo's Masterpiece' is an intriguing story about a religious old man spending his last days in an asylum. He starts to go crazy and imagines writing letters to his atheistic nephew, Thomas, a psychiatrist of international repute. He wants an approval for his forthcoming masterpiece. He 'writes' about panaceas for some of the world's ills. However, he cannot fathom a Utopia without religion which is extremely important to him. Although muddled for the most part, his 'letters' at times offer insightful observations about life in general and a purposeful life in particular, but they always fall short of his inner feelings. In the end he becomes delirious and dies of a massive heart attack. Review by Prof. Susannah Robbins, Ph.D. (Eng. Lit.), former Vassar professor