High atop a Los Angeles skyscraper, an office Christmas party turns into a deadly cage-match between a lone New York City cop and a gang of international terrorists. Every action fan knows it could only be the explosive big-screen blockbuster Die Hard. But before Bruce Willis blew away audiences as unstoppable hero John McClane, author Roderick Thorp knocked out thriller readers with the bestseller that started it all. A dozen heavily armed terrorists have taken hostages, issued demands, and promised bloodshed — all according to plan. But they haven’t counted on a death-defying, one-man cavalry with no shoes, no backup, and no intention of going down easily. As hot-headed cops swarm outside, and cold-blooded killers wield machine guns and rocket launchers inside, the stage is set for the ultimate showdown between anti-hero and uber-villains. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good fight... to the death. Ho ho ho!

Cartoonist SINA GRACE returns with another chapter in his growing library of reflective memoirs, producing his strongest and most compelling tale to date. Chronicling a year of heartbreaks, writerês block, career highs, emotional lows, and the emergence of a mystery illness, NOTHING LASTS FOREVER is Graceês unflinching exploration of how to pick up the pieces and find hope when absolutely everything falls apart. If lifeês a show, GRACE makes certain that itês worth every pay-per-view

Racing from the life-and-death decisions of a big San Francisco hospital to the tension-packed fireworks of a murder trial, this story lays bare the ambitions and fears of healers and killers, lovers and betrayers. As the book surges toward its unpredictable climax, Sidney Sheldon proves once again that no reader can outguess the master of the unexpected.

Nothing Lasts Foreveris a delicate story of love, loss and endurance. It is an epic love story and intimate depiction of post-World War II life to the present. A story that crosses fantasy and reality and addresses a truth each person must face during his or her lifetime. It is a story of dreams gone awry, truths forsaken and is heart-wrenchingly honest.

“I have seen yesterday. I know tomorrow.” This inscription in Tutankhamun’s tomb summarizes The Fifth Beginning. Here, archaeologist Robert L. Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity. In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author examines the long-term processes that resulted in a definitive, no-turning-back change for the organization of society. Kelly then looks ahead, giving us evidence for what he calls a fifth beginning, one that started about AD 1500. Some might call it “globalization,” but the author places it in its larger context: a five-thousand-year arms race, capitalism’s global reach, and the cultural effects of a worldwide communication network. Kelly predicts that the emergent phenomena of this fifth beginning will include the end of war as a viable way to resolve disputes, the end of capitalism as we know it, the widespread shift toward world citizenship, and the rise of forms of cooperation that will end the near-sacred status of nation-states. It’s the end of life as we have known it. However, the author is cautiously optimistic: he dwells not on the coming chaos, but on humanity’s great potential.

Vish Dhamija was born and raised in Ajmer, Rajasthan, but his nomadic inclinations have made him encamp in Jaipur, New Delhi, Chennai, Jamnagar, Mumbai, Dubai, Tel-Aviv, Manchester and London, where he currently lives with his wife Nidhi. He is an alumnus of St. Anselm’s, Ajmer and Manchester Business School, UK and holds dual citizenship – British and Overseas Indian.

These three novellas each shimmer with exactitudes of falling out of love and falling into death, as existence at critical moments renounces normal life for moments of absolute desire. These are narratives of obsession and calamity. Lovers and wives are at the edge of themselves, saying the unsayable, doing the undoable, challenging us to keep our eyes open to the disintegration and pain. At the core of each tale is an erotic intensity. The prose is urgent. The stories are unforgettable. Into the Green Ocean Deep sees a man's last days with a dying lover as they engage in a final burst of transgressive eroticism. Negative Space recites the anguished thoughts of a man whose wife of twenty years has confessed her love for someone else as she packs to leave. In Inviolate, a wife suffers the imminent death of her husband from a fall that has left him comatose. "Once coma defined the limit of her husband's existence for the rest of it he was as well as he would ever be and so his wife at the foot of the bed observed that this was as good as he was going to look."