International Authors

The Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated 18th-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of "retirement" in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind.

George Mitchell knows how to bring peace to troubled regions. He was the primary architect of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement for peace in Northern Ireland. But when he served as US special envoy for Middle East peace from 2009 to 2011 - working to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - diplomacy did not prevail. Now, for the first time, Mitchell offers his insider account of how the Israelis and the Palestinians have progressed (and regressed) in their negotiations through the years.

A homeland security agent is found dead. Shocking evidence reveals the cause of death is the simultaneous collapse of the man's blood vessels. When a second body sharing the same gruesome symptoms is found, the hunt is on for a frightening new kind of killer. A vicious assault on his leading genetics researcher puts Dr. Ronni Saar, the CEO of Double N, and his friend Gadi, a former military police investigator, on the trail of a sophisticated killer. The deeper Gadi digs, and the more he learns, the more dangerous the terrain becomes.

In the U.N. building in New York City, a US Ambassador contracts an unknown virus after opening a threatening letter. In a slum near Paris, a rogue geneticist is found dead, tortured and defiled. His last message, a desperate plea for help, was sent to an old friend and fellow outcast, the ex-CIA agent and former mercenary named Hawker. Consumed by thoughts of revenge but fighting to see the truth, Hawker teams up with NRI operative Danielle Laidlaw on a quest to find the killers and track down the secrets his dead friend may have lost or sold.

In the heart of the Amazon, NRI operative Danielle Laidlaw makes an incredible discovery: a translucent Mayan stone generating massive waves of energy while counting down toward the infamous apocalyptic date: December 21, 2012. And somewhere, there are three more just like it. What power will be unleashed if all four stones come together? Who created them - and who has them now? Using a cryptic Mayan map and a prophecy that points to the end of the world, Danielle and her team race toward answers. But one staggering question remains: Were these artifacts meant to save - or to destroy?

The process by which nations escape poverty and achieve economic and social progress has been the subject of extensive examination for hundreds of years. The notion of development itself has evolved from an original preoccupation with incomes and economic growth to a much broader understanding of development. In this Very Short Introduction, Ian Goldin considers the contributions that education, health, gender, equity, and other dimensions of human well-being make to development.

Nolan was still alive; his wounds healed and his money was safe - all $800,000 of it. It was Nolan’s birthday, and he was sitting happy. Until Planner was killed. Planner was an eccentric antique dealer; Planner had the $800,000 in his safe. But now he was dead, and the money was gone. Caught up in the sizzling crossfire of double-dealing, danger, and death, Nolan was up against the “Family” again.

Chester Bryers knows a secret. He has kept it for decades but now, as he nears his final days, he is finally telling his tale. A tale of what really happened to the lost Franklin Expedition. A tale of cold vengeance, long planned and of the adventurer George Greener, who discovered a terrible truth. It is a truth that must not be known and by breaking his long silence, Bryers’ life may be coming to a swifter and more violent end than he imagined; because some secrets must be kept, and The Thin man is watching.

Hamelin is overflowing with tourists enjoying the Scottish-themed games - and most of them are donning tartans from Peggy Winn's ScotShop. And her 14th-century ghostly companion, Dirk, has been indispensable, keeping an eye out for shoplifters and matching customers' family names to their clan plaid. Adding to the chaos is Big Willie, a longtime champion of the games, but not everyone is happy to have him in town.

A plane crash in 1976 left a young boy without a father, but 46 years later, when Eddie Rains loses his mother, a letter hidden among her possessions reveals a secret she’d kept to herself all those years. Driven by hope, Eddie sets out to discover the truth about the man he dearly loved yet barely knew. Aided by strangers he meets along the way, his challenging search turns deadly when one thing becomes crystal clear...he’s not the only one looking.

Hiko Shimuzu is not a nice man, but he is ingenious. Ingenious enough to find a lost artifact capable of catalyzing a revolution in China? Maybe. And that's close enough to draw the attention of powerful forces that won't hesitate to kill to keep their secrets safe. Meanwhile, Matthys Rossouw is in hot pursuit, unaware of the full scale of the danger he faces.

He was C. S. Lewis; and his name is synonymous with legendary kindness, intellectual rigour, a love of nature and perhaps his greatest creations, Aslan and the land of Narnia. His writings still bring shivers of wonder to his fans. Controversial genius that he was, his life is a beacon for those who struggle with doubt and faith.

A marine archaeologist standing-up for herself. A psychopath with mother issues. A hitman who hates failure. A soldier with a point to prove. A policeman out on a limb. And a treasure that tests every allegiance. Brett Rivera has spent three years searching for the Drachen. The day she finds it is the day her life changes: there is no sign of its legendary treasure and now a cold-blooded killer is hunting her. What does he know that she doesn’t?

The discovery of her dead mother's diary uncovers a terrible family secret, and Maddie must now play a dangerous game if she is to find her brother and protect the life of her unborn child.

When Samantha Watson walked into the Bank of England and inherited $6 million she had no idea that she would fall in love with the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes. Nor did she have the slightest inkling she would be drawn into a sinister world of vampires and evil.

In the time of mercury poisoning, loving someone enough to let them go is for cowards. An epileptic black ballerina and a whistleblower Powwow dancer meet in the Montreal Airport. They are both scheduled to perform in Berlin, 1973 Cold War Berlin. During the transatlantic crossing, their love evolves. On a long lay over in Zurich, he stuns her by depositing many hundreds of thousands of dollars into his Swiss bank account, to which he adds her name with no true explanation. Is she an accomplice or is this just love in the time of mercury poisoning?

Responding to her uncle's secretary's call, Kimberly Braun leaves her New York apartment to take an awaiting plane at Kennedy Airport to the United Kingdom to be with her dying uncle. Little does she know this trip will not only change her lifestyle and put her in grave danger, it will also uncover a secret life her uncle hid from her all the years he had raised her from the age of three to the present.

The fictional story, relocated to the Vietnam War, opens many years after Lieutenant's death, with the publication of a photograph of the POW Camp Commandant responsible, now a US citizen and successful businessman named Donald Quang. Hershey is commissioned by a fellow Vietnam veteran to carry out a 'routine check' into Quang's background, ostensibly for business reasons. Complications multiply quickly as it emerges that the Lieutenant's senior NCO is already on his way to the US.

An international crisis threatens to plunge the world into war at the dawn of the 20th century, but the British Foreign Office finds itself blinded by the bizarre deaths of crucial agents and informants as it struggles to stave off the coming conflagration. For help, they turn to an unconventional outsider, Inspector Jenkins of Scotland Yard, who soon finds himself on the trail of a mysterious man with a deadly black box and a host of devoted accomplices.

Five young, western women buy souvenirs of their delightful trek…and unknowingly smuggle heroin into Singapore. They are immediately detained and arrested by authorities upon their entrance into the country. There appears to be no escape for the tissue trail women until medical researcher and wild country photographer Edward Thurston takes video footage of a high altitude salt caravan near the tissue trail and is inexplicably detained and interrogated.