Like the rhapsodists, the storytellers of ancient Greece, A Pretty Sight shapes voices of the past and present into a stitched song lifted and sounded toward the next century. Haunted by "time's frame / that dark shape near the edge of the canvass," O’Meara's new book explores aspects of culture, art, war, rebellion and technology, offering defiance amid decay.

DIVWhen his ex-fiancée is murdered, Gunner vows to take vengeance on Los Angeles/divDIV/divDIVFor more than a decade, private detective Aaron Gunner has regretted letting Nina Hillman go. They met on a city bus while he was on his way to the Los Angeles Coliseum for a football game, and by the time they were through talking he had long since missed kickoff. He proposed to her quickly, only to get cold feet and cancel the wedding. After less than a year, she married another man. Eleven years later, Gunner is still alone, and Nina’s house is a crime scene./divDIV /divDIVThe homicide detectives tell Gunner that Nina’s husband has been abusing her for years. They assume that today he simply went too far. As he seeks justice for his long-lost love, Gunner uncovers a citywide chain of domestic abuse that he could have saved Nina from, had he been man enough to marry her. It’s too late to protect her now. Revenge will have to do./div

THE STORY: The home of the Blackwoods near a Vermont village is a lonely, ominous abode, and Constance, the young mistress of the place, can't go out of the house without being insulted and stoned by the villagers. They have also composed a nasty s

When rogue junk collides with a television satellite 22 000 miles into space, blind cosmologist Harry Stones approaches film director Nathalie Thompson to make an investigative documentary.Undeterred by Harry's lack of sight, their quest leads them from the peaks of Arizona to a mile-deep mine in Yorkshire, and finally to a launch pad in Kazakhstan. As more and more satellites keep falling out of the sky, their curiosity turns to fear. Forewarned of the possible outbreak of WWIII, can Harry and Nathalie prevent the most catastrophic space collision of all time?