Charlie Riverson led a mundane life in the nearly abandoned city of Collinswood. Always had. Always would, at least that's what he preferred to believe. It eased his mind far more than the truth of his life as of lately--the reality of the unexplainable crime attempted in his home, just three months after the disappearance of his best friend, and a possible link between the two. The link? The Ducartes, the city's most notorious family of homicidal madmen--and woman--who spent the majority of their time carrying out promises of revenge upon anyone who dared to disobey them. Most dangerous of all were the children, Grant and Naomi, the two who executed their father's plans, no matter how gruesome.Charlie now found himself at the intersection of a terrific and terrible realization. The good news: There was a chance, even if a small one, that Charlie might yet be able to rescue his friend. The bad news: The key to her whereabouts led him straight to the very family he wanted to distance himself from most.

Ferocious and funny, penetrating and exuberant, Theft is two-time Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey’s master class on the things people will do for art, for love . . . and for money. “I don’t know if my story is grand enough to be a tragedy, although a lot of shitty stuff did happen. It is certainly a love story but that did not begin until midway through the shitty stuff, by which time I had not only lost my eight-year-old son, but also my house and studio in Sydney where I had once been famous as a painter could expect in his own backyard. . .” So begins Peter Carey’s highly charged and lewdly funny new novel. Told by the twin voices of the artist, Butcher Bones, and his “damaged two-hundred-and-twenty-pound brother” Hugh, it recounts their adventures and troubles after Butcher’s plummeting prices and spiralling drink problem force them to retreat to New South Wales. Here the formerly famous artist is reduced to being a caretaker for his biggest collector, as well as nurse to his erratic brother. Then the mysterious Marlene turns up in Manolo Blahniks one stormy night. Claiming that the brothers’ friend and neighbour owns an original Jacques Liebovitz, she soon sets in motion a chain of events that could be the making or ruin of them all. Displaying Carey’s extraordinary flare for language, Theft is a love poem of a very different kind. Ranging from the rural wilds of Australia to Manhattan via Tokyo – and exploring themes of art, fraud, responsibility and redemption – this great novel will make you laugh out loud.

"Paul's charmed life is over. He is about to be kicked out of his flat in gentrified east London and his sister has gone missing after an argument about what to do with the house where they grew up. Now that their mother is dead this is the last link they have to the ever-more-diminished town on the north-west coast where they grew up. He meets Emily Nardini, a reclusive and uncompromising writer. Her books are narrated by outcasts, but she receives him in her home in the wealthiest part of west London. Paul discovers Emily is living with Andrew Lancaster, a famous intellectual who is significantly older than her. Andrew has lived a successful life, and Paul has not. But perhaps this situation should be reversed, thinks Paul, who forms an alliance with Andrew's daughter, Sophie, a journalist gaining attention for her hot takes on sex and revolution. Travelling up and down between the town he thought he had escaped and the city that threatens to chew him up, Paul longs to find where he belongs in a divided country."--Publisher description.

“Theft” is a 1910 play in four acts by American writer Jack London. John Griffith London (1876 – 1916), commonly known as Jack London, was an American journalist, social activist, and novelist. He was an early pioneer of commercial magazine fiction, becoming one of the first globally-famous celebrity writers who were able to earn a large amount of money from their writing. London is famous for his contributions to early science fiction and also notably belonged to "The Crowd", a literary group an Francisco known for its radical members and ideas. Other notable works by this author include: “Martin Eden” (1909), “The Kempton-Wace Letters” (1903), and “The Call of the Wild” (1903). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

"A breathless adventure both starry-eyed and cool-blooded, both charming and diabolical." --A.J. FINN, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window "Crackling with full-throttle tension . . . An electrifying novel." --ROBERT CRAIS, author of the bestselling Elvis Cole novels An epic Vegas heist. A high-octane international romance. A charismatic thief forced to orchestrate one final, treacherous job to save his family. When Alex Cassidy and Diane Alison meet at a party in Princeton, New Jersey, the chemistry between them is instant and undeniable. She's a single mother, local fixture, and owner of a successful catering company. He's a single father and weekend homeowner -- and leader of an armed-robbery crew that just pulled off a record-breaking, precision jewel heist in Las Vegas. Neither one realizes that their lives have overlapped before, and that the shared history they uncover will threaten everyone they love. Swept up in their burgeoning relationship, Diane joins Alex at his beach house in Tulum, where Alex decides to leave his life of crime behind. It begins as a postcard-perfect weekend until an entanglement with a powerful cartel forces Alex to mastermind one final and unthinkably dangerous job. What ensues is an explosive, adrenaline-soaked journey through the moneyed landscapes of Mexico and Europe, where ghosts from the past collide with unexpected perils in the present. As Alex and Diane fight for their lives, they discover that they're not the only ones with secrets--and that those closest to us pose the greatest danger of all. Propulsive, deeply suspenseful, and layered with mesmerizing twists, Love and Theft is a sophisticated thriller about the illusion of control and the high price of past transgressions.