The Dawghouse (My Ebooks)

[gratefuldawg77]

Gods of Chicago is an adventure of noir urban fantasy. Hardboiled newshawk, Mitchell Brand, has the scoop on the crime of the century, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. Digging after every lead he can find, Brand wades knee-deep into a world of gangsters and G-men locked in a power struggle for control of the city. The bodies pile up and Brand worries that he's bitten off more than he can chew when his newsboys are added to the stack.

A city magnate connected to the massacre commits suicide, and his daughter, reluctant socialite Emma Farnsworth, isn't willing to let dead men lie. After gunning for the mob, Emma and her lover, jazz player Eddie Collins, have to go underground to hide from the cops. In a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, Emma and Eddie will fight for their freedom and survival. If they're lucky, they might help a few others make it out alive when the Governor sends his army into the city's oldest neighborhoods with a single goal: clean house.

In devastated neighborhoods, citizens fight back and flee. Brand and his last remaining newsboy, Aiden Conroy, have to get the real story out on the airwaves. In scenes that take Brand back to the trenches of the Great War, he and Aiden must get the evidence the city needs to see the Governor for what he is. Through it all ride a corps of tramps on rusty bicycles, the mysterious Bicycle Men, and one of them has a message for Brand.


"[T]he very opening...blossoms with mystery as a slightly altered account of the Valentine Day Massacre unfolds. There is plenty in Gods of Chicago to keep me reading." - David Mark Brown, author of The Austin Job

"Set in a comfortably recognisable prohibition era Chicago with a unique Dieselpunk twist, Sikes serves up a slice of Noir that's completely compelling." - Zoë Markham, author of Game Over: A Zanno Short Story

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11182798

[gratefuldawg77]

Written with complete access to the Durrell family archives and Gerald Durrell's private papers, this affecting biography follows its subject from an eccentric boyhood in Imperial India to the international prominence he gained in print and on television as one of the world's foremost animal conservationists. The younger brother of the famous novelist Lawrence Durrell, Gerald always viewed his own writing - which includes thirty-seven bestsellers, among them enduringly popular classics like My Family and Other Animals and A Zoo in My Luggage - as the means of financing his greatest passion: breeding animals in danger of extinction and returning them to the wild. In the 1980s, with the production of a dozen different television documentary series on zoology, most notably the widely acclaimed Catch Me a Colobus and Ark on the Move, Durrell's conservationist vision reached audiences around the globe, while the zoo he founded on the island of Jersey realized his pioneering mission to breed endangered species in captivity. It stands as a living legacy of the much-admired Gerald Durrell, who died in 1995 at the age of seventy.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11183914

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A spellbinding mystery about the price we pay for keeping secrets for fans of literary whodunits like Marisha Pessl’s Night Film, Carol Goodman’s mysteries, and David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars. The Garden of Dead Dreams explores whether it’s possible to remake our lives when no one can erase the past.

Vincent Buchanan was one of America’s most cherished authors. His 1943 novel The Western Defense is not only considered a work of literary genius; it may have helped the United States triumph against Japan in the Second World War.

Nearly seventy years after its release, twenty-eight-year-old Etta Lawrence is a student at the prestigious creative writing academy the late Buchanan founded in a majestic lodge tucked beneath Oregon’s fog-laced Douglas firs and Western red cedars. She’s intent on rewriting her life by winning the coveted Buchanan Prize, a ticket to literary stardom.

Then a handsome visiting poet arrives at the academy, and Etta’s bubbly roommate Olivia latches onto him and begins acting distant, disturbed, and hysterical. Etta peeks through her roommate’s belongings and stumbles onto a revelation about Buchanan’s personal life that could change the way people think about the famous author.

Etta's convinced the discovery may be connected to the poet's arrival and Olivia's troubling behavior. She enlists two of her smart, quirky classmates to help her investigate. They find clues in the scenes of one of Buchanan’s short stories, the academy’s dusty administration files, and a dilapidated pioneer cemetery on the school grounds.

But as Etta twists through the murky forest of Buchanan’s past, she has more to lose than just her chances of starting over. Someone at the isolated academy is deadly serious about keeping Buchanan’s personal history private.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11184355

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India is a country with more than one billion people, a fanatical national cricket obsession, and exactly zero talent scouts. There, superstar sports agent J. B. Bernstein knew that he could find the Yao Ming of baseball; someone with a strong arm and enough raw talent to pitch in the major leagues. Almost no one in India is familiar with the game, but Bernstein had heard enough coaches swear that if you gave them a guy who throws a hundred miles an hour, they could teach him how to pitch. So in 2007, Bernstein flew to Mumbai with a radar gun and a plan to find his diamond in the rough. His idea was The Million Dollar Arm, a reality television competition with a huge cash prize and a chance to become the first native of India to sign a contract with an American major-league team.

The result is a humorous and inspiring story about three guys transformed: Bernstein, the consummate bachelor and shrewd businessman, and Dinesh and Rinku, the two young men from small farming villages whom he brought home to California. Million Dollar Arm is a timeless reflection on baseball and the American dream, as well as a tale of victory over incredible odds. But, above all, it's about the limitless possibilities inside every one of us.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11184628

[gratefuldawg77]

In this meticulously researched and masterfully written book, Pulitzer Prize-winner Deborah Blum examines the history of love through the lens of its strangest unsung hero: a brilliant, fearless, alcoholic psychologist named Harry Frederick Harlow. Pursuing the idea that human affection could be understood, studied, even measured, Harlow (1905-1981) arrived at his conclusions by conducting research-sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrible-on the primates in his University of Wisconsin laboratory. Paradoxically, his darkest experiments may have the brightest legacy, for by studying "neglect" and its life-altering consequences, Harlow confirmed love's central role in shaping not only how we feel but also how we think. His work sparked a psychological revolution. The more children experience affection, he discovered, the more curious they become about the world: Love makes people smarter. The biography of both a man and an idea, The Measure of Love is a powerful and at times disturbing narrative that will forever alter our understanding of human relationships.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11189595

[gratefuldawg77]

A tour of the world’s hidden geographies—from disappearing islands to forbidden deserts—and a stunning testament to how mysterious the world remains todayAt a time when Google Maps Street View can take you on a virtual tour of Yosemite’s remotest trails and cell phones double as navigational systems, it’s hard to imagine there’s any uncharted ground left on the planet. In Unruly Places, Alastair Bonnett goes to some of the most unexpected, offbeat places in the world to reinspire our geographical imagination.

Bonnett’s remarkable tour includes moving villages, secret cities, no man’s lands, and floating islands. He explores places as disorienting as Sandy Island, an island included on maps until just two years ago despite the fact that it never existed. Or Sealand, an abandoned gun platform off the English coast that a British citizen claimed as his own sovereign nation, issuing passports and crowning his wife as a princess. Or Baarle, a patchwork of Dutch and Flemish enclaves where walking from the grocery store’s produce section to the meat counter can involve crossing national borders.

An intrepid guide down the road much less traveled, Bonnett reveals that the most extraordinary places on earth might be hidden in plain sight, just around the corner from your apartment or underfoot on a wooded path. Perfect for urban explorers, wilderness ramblers, and armchair travelers struck by wanderlust, Unruly Places will change the way you see the places you inhabit.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11190216

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Felix Francis is back with another edge-of-your-seat thriller, in the classic Dick Francis tradition.

Undercover investigator Jeff Hinkley is assigned by the British Horseracing Authority to look into the activities of a suspicious racehorse trainer, but as he’s tailing his quarry through the Cheltenham Racing Festival, the last thing he expects to witness is a gruesome murder. Could it have something to do with the reason the trainer was banned in the first place—the administration of illegal drugs to his horses?

Then many more horses test positive for prohibited stimulants, and someone starts making demands, threatening to completely destroy the integrity of the racing industry. In order to limit the damage to the sport, it’s critical that Jeff find the perpetrator . . . but he’ll soon learn he’s up against someone who will stop at nothing to prevail.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11190613

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She had the perfect life.
She had the perfect cover.
She was the perfect witness.
Until they found her.


When Teresa Casali was young she discovered she had a strange gift: the ability to read people’s memories. But the gift seemed more like a curse as her mob boss father used her to gain the upper hand in his world of corruption and violence. Exposed by her own family to the darkest impulses of mankind, Teresa is alone and unprotected. She realizes that if she is to survive, she has to run.


Out of nowhere, or so she believes, a man by the name of Andre Mandak appears. He kills her pursuers—but that’s not nearly enough for Teresa to trust him. It is his promise to get her into Witness Protection, along with his mind-blowing ability to help her control her gift before it consumes her, that convinces Teresa Casali to become Allie Girard. Living a normal life with a new family, she shuts the door to the past …although Mandak is clear: when the time is right, he too will benefit from her powers.

For years Allie flourishes …until the day her cover is blown and the truth comes tumbling out. Once again she is on the run, with her own life and those of her loved ones at stake. But this time she will not be a pawn. This time she will use her finely honed gift to end the threat that began with her family’s betrayal. From perfect target to perfect witness, Allie Girard is ready to take on the past even if it kills her.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11190645

[gratefuldawg77]

Two best friends document their post-college lives in a hilarious, relatable, and powerfully honest epistolary memoir.

Fast friends since they met at Brown University during their freshman year, Jessica Pan and Rachel Kapelke-Dale vowed to keep in touch after their senior year through in-depth—and brutally honest—weekly e-mails. After graduation, Jess packs up everything she owns and moves to Beijing on a whim, while Rachel heads to New York to work for an art gallery and to figure out her love life. Each spends the next few years tumbling through adulthood and reinventing themselves in various countries, including France, China, and Australia. Through their messages from around the world, they swap tales of teaching classes of military men, running a magazine, and flirting in foreign languages, along with the hard stuff: from harrowing accidents to breakups and breakdowns.

Reminiscent of Sloan Crosley’s essays and Lena Dunham’s Girls, Graduates in Wonderland is an intimate, no-holds-barred portrait of two young women as they embark upon adulthood.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11191038

[gratefuldawg77]

Sharks Are Flying at Your Head at 300 mph.
How Will You Survive?

In the apocalyptic world we live in, Mother Nature is angry. Danger waits at every turn, and catastrophes like the Los Angeles sharknados have taught us that we need to be ready for anything. Too many lives have already been lost.

But fear not. How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters is the first and only comprehensive guide to surviving the very worst that Mother Nature can throw our way. Inside this life-saving reference, you’ll find:

• Vital information about dozens of unnatural disasters and ungodly monsters that can injure, maim, or kill you, from arachnoquakes and ice twisters to piranhacondas and mega pythons;

• Easy-to-understand survival tips for avoiding a bloody demise;

• Inspirational words of wisdom from survivors, including Fin Shepard and April Wexler;

• Useful resources, such as the Shepard Survival Assessment Test (S.S.A.T), and much more.

With this essential book in hand, you too can be a hero who laughs in the face of calamity while saving friends and family. Or you can just avoid getting savagely ripped apart by a sharktopus. Either way, you’ve been warned. Now be prepared.
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11201124

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The landscape of contemporary Paris, the best restaurants, the trendiest bars and clubs, is usually filled with the wealthy, the famous, and le rake or le roué, the charming, educated sophisticate with little or no conscience. Into this cushy world bursts “Dr. Crandall Taylor” —or rather the actor who plays him — the star of a dated American soap opera that is now one of the hottest primetime shows in France. And this newfound fame, as enriching as it is unexpected, is not wasted on Crandall, eager to put his dark and often violent American past behind him and enjoy all the fruits —and the women —that Paris and fame have to offer him.

But TV fame isn’t enough. Randall wants a feature film. Every actor wants a feature film, and so Crandall uses his charm and intellect to draw into his narcissistic web four different women: an executive at the network that runs his show; an American porn star reaching new heights on the internet; a bookish university student with a slightly nasty bent; and the beautiful would-be actress wife of an arms dealer. Against his better judgment, Crandall accepts both the arms dealer’s cash and his beautiful wife’s advances. Soon, Crandall is on the run through the alleys and streets of Paris, trying not only to fund a film but simply to stay alive. But this is no ordinary chase —and Crandall is no ordinary mouse — and soon his penchant for violence, sex, and megalomania erupts into full blown war.

Rake is the latest noir classic from the author of The Ice Harvest. It features a charming, despicable anti-hero and a funny, satiric take on modern entertainment culture. Phillips turns his gimlet eye on the lush life of an actor who, on his destructive tour through Paris, crosses the line from garden variety narcissism into full-fledged psycopathy.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11201232

[gratefuldawg77]

In this stunning work of historical fiction, Laila Lalami brings us the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America—a Moroccan slave whose testimony was left out of the official record.

In 1527, the conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez sailed from the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda with a crew of six hundred men and nearly a hundred horses. His goal was to claim what is now the Gulf Coast of the United States for the Spanish crown and, in the process, become as wealthy and famous as Hernán Cortés.

But from the moment the Narváez expedition landed in Florida, it faced peril—navigational errors, disease, starvation, as well as resistance from indigenous tribes. Within a year there were only four survivors: the expedition’s treasurer, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; a Spanish nobleman named Alonso del Castillo Maldonado; a young explorer named Andrés Dorantes de Carranza; and Dorantes’s Moroccan slave, Mustafa al-Zamori, whom the three Spaniards called Estebanico. These four survivors would go on to make a journey across America that would transform them from proud conquis-tadores to humble servants, from fearful outcasts to faith healers.

The Moor’s Account brilliantly captures Estebanico’s voice and vision, giving us an alternate narrative for this famed expedition. As the dramatic chronicle unfolds, we come to understand that, contrary to popular belief, black men played a significant part in New World exploration and Native American men and women were not merely silent witnesses to it. In Laila Lalami’s deft hands, Estebanico’s memoir illuminates the ways in which stories can transmigrate into history, even as storytelling can offer a chance for redemption and survival.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11209799

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Until his inspiring life was tragically cut short, John F. Kennedy commanded the world's attentiontoday, his legacy is still very much alive. This rich visual biography tells an unusual personal story by collecting rare memorabilia, everything from doodles and diary entries to drafts of major addresses. Hundreds of photographs and a compelling narrative by presidential scholar Chuck Wills uncover the remarkable tale of an intensely private man, from his rivalry with his older brother and his persistent courtship of Jackie to the inner workings of a historical presidency. Dozens of removable facsimiles and a 60-minute audio CD featuring some of Kennedy's most famous speeches, including hisinaugural address and his speech at the Berlin wall, capture an intimate look at one of the most revered figures in American history.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11210069

[gratefuldawg77]

What could be a more fun and delicious way to celebrate American culture than through the lore of our favorite foods? That's what John T. Edge does in his smart, witty, and compulsively readable new series on the dishes everyone thinks their mom made best. If these are the best-loved American foods-ones so popular they've come to represent us-what does that tell us about ourselves? And what do the history of the dish and the regional variations reveal?

There are few aspects of life that carry more emotional weight and symbolism than food, and in writing about our food icons, Edge gives us a warm and wonderful portrait of America -by way of our taste buds. After all, "What is patriotism, but nostalgia for the foods of our youth?" as a Chinese philosopher once asked.

In Fried Chicken, Edge tells an immensely entertaining tale of a beloved dish with a rich history. Freed slaves cooked it to sell through the windows of train cars from railroad platforms in whistle-stop towns. Children carried it in shoe boxes on long journeys. A picnic basket isn't complete without it. It is a dish that is deeply Southern, and yet it is cooked passionately across the country. And what about the variations? John T. Edge weaves a beguiling tapestry of food and culture as he takes us from a Jersey Shore hotel to a Kansas City roadhouse, from the original Buffalo wings to KFC, from Nashville Hot Chicken to haute fried chicken at a genteel Southern inn. And, best of all, he gives us fifteen of the ultimate recipes along the way

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11210648

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This collection of thirty-five terrifying tales of serial killers at large, written by the great masters of the genre, plumbs the horrifying depths of a deranged mind and the forces of evil that compel a human being to murder, gruesomely and methodically, over and over again.

From Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs) to Patrick Bateman (American Psycho), stories of serial killers and psychos loom large and menacing in our collective psyche. Tales of their grisly conquests have kept us cowering under the covers, but still turning the pages.

Psychos is the first book to collect in a single volume the scariest and most well-crafted fictional works about these deranged killers. Some of the stories are classics, the best that the genre has to offer, by renowned writers such as Neil Gaiman, Jack Ketchum, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Bloch, and Thomas Harris. Other selections are from the latest and most promising crop of new authors.

John Skipp, who is also the editor of Zombies, Demons and Werewolves and Shapeshifters, provides fascinating insight, through two nonfiction essays, into our insatiable obsession with serial killers and how these madmen are portrayed in popular culture. Resources at the end of the book includes lists of the genre's best long-form fiction, movies, websites, and writers.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11210692

[gratefuldawg77]

It first surfaced in the gripes of GIs during World War II and was captured early on by the typewriter of a young Norman Mailer. Within a generation it had become a basic notion of our everyday moral life, replacing older reproaches like lout and heel with a single inclusive category––a staple of country outlaw songs, Neil Simon plays, and Woody Allen movies. Feminists made it their stock rebuke for male insensitivity, the est movement used it for those who didn’t “get it,” and Dirty Harry applied it evenhandedly to both his officious superiors and the punks he manhandled.


The asshole has become a focus of collective fascination for us, just as the phony was for Holden Caulfield and the cad was for Anthony Trollope. From Donald Trump to Ann Coulter, from Mel Gibson to Anthony Weiner, from the reality TV prima donnas to the internet trolls and flamers, assholism has become the characteristic form of modern incivility, which implicitly expresses our deepest values about class, relationships, authenticity, and fairness. We have conflicting attitudes about the A-word––when a presidential candidate unwittingly uttered it on a live mic in 2000, it confirmed to some that he was a man of the people and to others that he was a boor. But considering how much the word does for us, and to us, it hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves––at least until now.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11214310

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When a mysterious blogger reveals renowned pro-war journalist Arthur Hunt’s long-ago incestuous affair with his smart but impressionable younger sister, Emily, Arthur writes a memoir in defense of his life, coming to terms with his shattered sense of self, his skewed political ideals, and the crumbling American empire he has been struggling to uphold. An angry but eloquent narrator in the tradition of Philip Roth and Thomas Bernhard, Arthur recounts his relationship with Emily, weaving in his claustrophobic WASP childhood, his '60s student radical days at Yale, and his vociferous support for America’s war in Iraq and its continuing drone campaign.

Capturing the tumult of recent American history, Short Century is filled with supporting characters as memorable as Arthur— including Miranda, his mercurial college girlfriend; Jersey Rothstein, the charismatic free-love guru for whom Miranda leaves Arthur; their son Jason, who signs up to serve in Iraq, where he is killed; their daughter Sydney, who follows Arthur into pro-war punditry; and their daughter Daisy, who chooses to wear a burqa. With a broad historical scope but an intimate personal focus, this is a novel about America, family, and how the desire for freedom is often entangled with darker impulses.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11214691

[gratefuldawg77]

A sly, cheeky and blackly comic telling of mothering, heartache, heartbreak, desire, love and death.

In the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm, Rapunzel’s mother trades her firstborn child for a handful of leafy greens, and
Hansel’s step-mother abandons him in a clearing in the forest. In ‘The Goose Girl’, the queen sends her daughter away
to her fate with a bloodied handkerchief tucked in her bosom, and in ‘Sleeping Beauty’, Mama’s best efforts cannot
prevent one little prick from having disastrous consequences for the heroine. Danielle Wood’s Mothers Grimm brings characters from these stories into the modern world in a collection of four long stories that interrogate contemporary
womanhood and motherhood. Happy endings not guaranteed.

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/11215163