Iris Vegan, a young, impoverished graduate student from the Midwest, finds herself entangled with four powerful but threatening characters as she tries to adjust to life in New York City. Mr. Morning, an inscrutable urban recluse, employs Iris to tape-record verbal descriptions of objects that belonged to a murder victim. George, a photographer, takes an eerie portrait of Iris, which then acquires a strange life of its own, appearing and disappearing without warning around the city. After a series of blinding migraines, Iris ends up in a hospital room with Mrs. O., a woman who has lost her mind and memory to a stroke, but who nevertheless retains both the strength and energy to torment her fellow patient. And finally, there is Professor Rose, Iris's teacher and eventually her lover. While working with him on the translation of a German novella called The Brutal Boy, she discovers in its protagonist, Klaus, a vehicle for her own transformation and ventures out into the city again--this time dressed as a man. Siri Hustvedt's The Blindfold is "...a work of dizzying intensity. . .eloquent and vivid." - Don DeLillo.

An award-winning journalist’s extraordinary account of being kidnapped and tortured in Syria by al Qaeda for two years—a revelatory memoir about war, human nature, and endurance that’s “the best of the genre, profound, poetic, and sorrowful” (The Atlantic). In 2012, American journalist Theo Padnos, fluent in Arabic, Russian, German, and French, traveled to a Turkish border town to write and report on the Syrian civil war. One afternoon in October, while walking through an olive grove, he met three young Syrians—who turned out to be al Qaeda operatives—and they captured him and kept him prisoner for nearly two years. On his first day, in the first of many prisons, Padnos was given a blindfold—a grime-stained scrap of fabric—that was his only possession throughout his horrific ordeal. Now, Padnos recounts his time in captivity in Syria, where he was frequently tortured at the hands of the al Qaeda affiliate, Jebhat al Nusra. We learn not only about Padnos’s harrowing experience, but we also get a firsthand account of life in a Syrian village, the nature of Islamic prisons, how captors interrogate someone suspected of being CIA, the ways that Islamic fighters shift identities and drift back and forth through the veil of Western civilization, and much more. No other journalist has lived among terrorists for as long as Theo has—and survived. As a resident of thirteen separate prisons in every part of rebel-occupied Syria, Theo witnessed a society adrift amid a steady stream of bombings, executions, torture, prayer, fasting, and exhibitions, all staged by the terrorists. Living within this tide of violence changed not only his personal identity but also profoundly altered his understanding of how to live. Offering fascinating, unprecedented insight into the state of Syria today, Blindfold is “a triumph of the human spirit” (The New York Times Book Review)—combining the emotional power of a captive’s memoir with a journalist’s account of a culture and a nation in conflict that is as urgent and important as ever.

For centuries, blindfold chess--the art of playing without sight of the board or pieces--has produced some of the greatest feats of human memory, progressing to the extent that the world record in 2009 was 45 [and is now 46] simultaneous blindfold games. This work describes the personalities and achievements of some of blindfold chess's greatest players--including Philidor, Morphy, Blackburne, Zukertort, Pillsbury, Reti, Alekhine, Koltanowski, Najdorf and Fine, as well as present-day grandmasters such as Anand and Kramnik. Including some never before published, 444 games scores are presented, peppered with diagrams and annotations. Hints for playing blindfold, and its practical value, are also included.

This searing memoir of an American nun who was abducted and tortured in Guatemala--and continues to search for healing and justice--shows that the human spirit is a force stronger than violence and fear.

DIVThe old town courthouse holds a buried secret, and someone will kill to protect it/div DIVOnce the home of the most powerful family in Felicity, the old courthouse has become a gloomy wreck, an eyesore in the middle of this small country town. Although her mother leads the charge to restore and preserve this monument to the past, Maggie Keene would much rather it be torn down. Felicity is boring, and replacing the courthouse with something fun, like a new rec center, would go a long way toward making Maggie’s last two years of high school less painful. What she doesn’t know is that excitement is coming to Felicity, and the thrill might just kill her./divDIV /divDIVAfter school one day, Maggie and her friends sneak into the bottom of the courthouse to explore the old jail cells. But their adventure goes wrong: Maggie gets locked inside the basement coal bin. When her friends get her out, the ceiling collapses and they barely escape. The walls of the timeworn building contain evidence of a long-forgotten murder—and to protect his secret, the culprit will have to kill again./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Diane Hoh including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection./div

In Thailand, a bomb destroys a tourist spot while two North Korean terrorists casually walk away from the site to plan the next phase of their plot against the United States. In Washington, CIA analyst Hugh Rincon catches the chatter about something big being planned along the Pacific rim, and his best agent says its linked to the Thailand blast. Now Hugh is beginning to connect the dots between missing radioactive material, a SCUD missile sold on the black market, and a Russian ship sailing toward the Alaskan coast...but the Administration refuses to heed his warning. In the Bering Sea, Coast Guard cutter Sojourner Truth is on routine patrol. On board is Hugh's estranged wife, executive officer Sara Lange. Sara and her ship are Hugh's only hope for stopping the terrorists...if she's willing to believe her ex-husband's story and risk her own career--and her crew's lives--to hunt down a death ship....

In the 1960s, Jeffrey Parker briefly attended an anti-war rally. He wasn't all that interested - just listened to a few speeches and went home, but nothing was ever the same again. In this wildly comic novel, Parker's brief dalliance is the beginning of the end. He never lands a decent job. Women never stick around. He has terrible stretches of bad luck and is the unwitting victim of plain bizarre occurrences. Then Parker discovers that he's been the target of a government plot and the obsession of a rogue FBI agent who just won't give up.