B King, B:Blues All Around Me: B.B.King - The Autobiography
- Taschenbuch 1998, ISBN: 9780340674789
Gebundene Ausgabe
Orion. Good. 4.53 x 1.34 x 7.09 inches. Paperback. 1998. 464 pages. Cover worn.<br>In this thrilling novel of suspense by #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag, the deepes… Mehr…
Orion. Good. 4.53 x 1.34 x 7.09 inches. Paperback. 1998. 464 pages. Cover worn.<br>In this thrilling novel of suspense by #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag, the deepest water s hide the darkest secrets. When Elizabeth Stuart and her teenag e son arrive in Still Creek, Minnesota, she believes that this sm all town will offer them a fresh start--and distance from a troub led past. Instead Elizabeth finds herself unwelcome and treated w ith suspicion. But a bigger shock is yet to come: The body of a d ead man literally falls at Elizabeth's feet. Though she can wash away the blood, the terror remains. And this seemingly idyllic ha mlet, nestled in the heart of lush Amish farmlands, is suddenly r evealed to hold secrets dangerous enough to inspire murder. Noth ing and no one will stop Elizabeth from digging beneath the town' s placid surface for the truth . . . not even local sheriff Dane Jantzen, with his broad shoulders and cool blue eyes. Though not obvious at first, the attraction between them intensifies. But sh e will risk everything to save herself and her son, to unmask a k iller--before the current of evil flowing through Still Creek dra gs her under. Editorial Reviews From the Back Cover When the bo dy of a murdered man literally falls at Elizabeth Stuart's feet, she's able to wash away the blood -- but not the terror. Unwelcom e newcomers to Still Creek, Minnesota, she and her troubled teena ge son are treated with suspicion by the locals, including the sh eriff. Yet nothing will stop her from digging beneath the town's placid surface for the truth -- except the killer. Running from a messy divorce, Elizabeth believed buying a small-town newspaper offered a fresh start for herself and her son. But idyllic Still Creek, nestled in the heart of lush Amish farmlands, hides secre ts dangerous enough to push someone to commit murder. Now Elizabe th must risk everything to save herself and her son, and to unmas k the killer...before the current of evil flowing through Still C reek drags her under. --This text refers to the preloaded_digital _audio_player edition. From Publishers Weekly After a messy and very public divorce from her magnate husband, Elizabeth Stuart is persuaded by her old college chum to move from Atlanta to Still Creek, Minn. When car trouble strikes, Elizabeth hoofs it to a co nstruction site--and finds the developer, Jarrold Jarvis, in his car with his throat cut. Sheriff Dane Jantzen figures the deed wa s done by a transient: Jarrold's wallet was stolen and his glove compartment rifled. Elizabeth, who now owns the local newspaper, suspects most everyone in town: Jarvis had kept a secret list of names of people who owed him money. Dane and Elizabeth start off their eventual romance by treating each other like dirt--exchangi ng what passes for snappy repartee. Dane insists on escorting Eli zabeth to a press conference because I want to know where your mo uth is. She retorts, it won't be kissing your ass. The characters are no more agreeable than the plot is focused on finding the mu rderer. Perhaps that's why the effect of Hoag's ( Lucky's Lady ) story is less still than static. Copyright 1992 Reed Business In formation, Inc. --This text refers to the preloaded_digital_audio _player edition. From the Inside Flap The deepest waters hide th e darkest secrets.... When the body of a murdered man literally falls at Elizabeth Stuart's feet, she's able to wash away the blo od--but not the terror. Unwelcome newcomers to Still Creek, Minne sota, she and her troubled teenage son are treated with suspicion by the locals, including the sheriff. Yet nothing will stop her from digging beneath the town's placid surface for the truth--exc ept the killer. Running from a messy divorce, Elizabeth believed buying a small-town newspaper offered a fresh start for herself and her son. But idyllic Still Creek, nestled in the heart of lus h Amish farmlands, hides secrets dangerous enough to push someone to commit murder. Now Elizabeth must risk everything to save her self and her son, and to unmask the killer...before the current o f evil flowing through Still Creek drags her under. When Elizab eth Stuart searched for a quiet, peaceful home for herself and he r son, Still Creek seemed perfect. Nestled in the heart of lush A mish farmlands, this small, idyllic Minnesota town would allow he r to put a shattering divorce behind her. But the locals were not iceably cool to the newcomer--who was rumored to be a gold-digger --especially when she started stirring up controversy with her ne wspaper. And now when a murdered body literally falls at her feet , she has a slight credibility problem...particularly with the ar rogant sheriff whose blue eyes seem to know her darkest secrets. An ex-pro athlete who had returned to Still Creek a hero, Sherif f Dane Jantzen doesn't have much use for the media--especially no t in the form of this glamorous, gutsy outsider who spells troubl e with every word she prints. So when she becomes hissuspect in a vicious crime, the last thing Dane expects is the jolt of attrac tion at their every encounter. Elizabeth would soon challenge Da ne's every assumption, including the one that he's better off wit hout love. But as they risk everything to uncover the truth, the current of evil that contaminates Still Creek threatens to pull t hem both under... --> --This text refers to the preloaded_digital _audio_player edition. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All r ights reserved. Life's a bitch and then you die. The words had n o sooner slipped from Elizabeth Stuart's lips than the slim stile tto heel of her Italian sandal glanced off an especially large ch unk of rock. She stumbled, swore with the fluency of one raised o n a cattle ranch in West Texas, and gamely pressed on, limping. S he had endured too much in her life to let a little thing like th is break her, bodily or otherwise--two broken marriages, countles s broken hearts, broken dreams that lay scattered in her wake lik e the wreckage of a plane crash. This was nothing by comparison. Still, she couldn't seem to keep a sheen of tears from glossing over her eyes. It was life's little insults heaped one on top of another that tended to get to her. The odd major catastrophe--lik e getting dumped and dragged through the mud by the man she had p ledged to love until death? Shoot, she could buck up and take tha t. She was a trooper. She was a fighter. Get her sixteen-year-old gas-guzzling boat of a car hung up on the side of a country road on the way to the tumbledown hovel she was currently calling hom e? That was just plain too much. She sniffed and swiped a hand b eneath her nose, gritting her teeth against the urge to cry. Lord have mercy, if she started crying over this, if she let the dam crack and the tears start to flow, she'd likely drown. And she wo uld ruin her Elizabeth Arden mascara, which she was nearly out of and couldn't afford to replace. Life would go on, she told herse lf grimly, beating back the tears with her lashes. Life would go on, for better or worse, whether Brock Stuart divorced her or her Eldorado was stuck or whatever other shit was flung merrily into her path by that bastard Fate. All she had to do was keep puttin g one foot in front of the other. What she stepped in along the w ay couldn't matter. She either had to keep moving on or curl up i n a big ball of misery and die. The Eldorado was a good half mil e behind her, hanging off the edge of the road like a drunken cow boy sliding off his horse. Elizabeth glanced back at it, scowling , then set her sights forward again. If she could get past the fa ct that she was madder than a wet cat, she'd note that the view w as lovely. The rolling countryside of southeastern Minnesota was beautiful. Not in a spectacular, breathtaking way. Not in the wil d, desolate way of West Texas, but in a gentle way, a peaceful wa y. Like Vermont without the mountains. The rippling hills were ba thed in a palette of springtime greens--young corn and oats, alfa lfa and wild grass, all swaying in the early evening breeze. Occa sional islands of trees broke the monotony of farm fields. Maples , cottonwoods, oaks. Their leaves turned inward, undersides flash ing silver as the wind shook them. To the south, the pastureland sloped down to Still Creek, the meandering puddle of water the n earest town had been named for. The banks were steep, the creek i tself shallow and muddy, probably twenty feet across. Dragonflies skimmed above the surface and weeping willows bowed across it, t heir slender, pendulous branches fluttering like ribbons. In the part of Texas Elizabeth was from, Still Creek would have been cal led a river and it would have been coveted by all who lived near it and guarded jealously by the ranchers who owned land along its banks. Here, where water was plentiful, Still Creek was insignif icant, just another facet of the pretty landscape. Above the pas toral beauty of Still Creek and its environs, the sky hung like a curtain of lead, threatening an evening shower. Elizabeth mutter ed a curse under her breath and tried to limp a little faster. Sh e was at least a mile from home. The nearest farm belonged to one of the Amish families the area was famous for. She doubted she w ould get much in the way of help there. They would have no phone to call a tow truck, no tractor to pull her car out of the ditch. They wouldn't even have a cold beer to console her with. In shor t, they would be about as much good to her as a bunch of eunuchs at an orgy. Look on the bright side, sugar, she said, hiking the strap of her Gucci handbag up on her shoulder. If this was West Texas and you were stranded in the middle of nowhere, it'd take y ou the better part of a week to walk home. God, Brock would have loved seeing her reduced to this, she thought, casting another d ubious look at the swelling clouds. Limping down the road from a little jerkwater town toward a house he wouldn't deem fit for dog s, rain pouring down over her, ruining her favorite Armani silk b louse. She could picture him, perfect and gorgeous, handsome enou gh to make Mel Gibson look homely, snickering at her in that mean , superior way of his, like a spoiled little rich kid who'd taken up all his toys and kicked the poor neighbor girl out in the str eet. For a man so filthy rich, he could be a petty bastard. But there was no point in reviewing that fact now. She snagged back a handful of wind-tossed black hair with her free hand and tucked it behind her ear as she hefted her Kmart vinyl briefcase, and ke pt on walking, gravel biting into the bottoms of her feet through the thin soles of her sandals. There was a message in that, she reckoned. People who had to walk through life wore sensible shoe s with thick rubber soles, and fat white cotton socks. Rich peopl e wore red kid Ferragamo sandals with pencil-slim heels and had c hauffeurs take them where they needed to go. Rich people had no n eed for sensible shoes or raincoats. She was no longer a rich per son. That in itself wasn't as devastating as it might have been had she been rich all her life. She had been rich for only a few short years, the five years she'd been married to Brock, who had taken a modest family fortune and parlayed it into a disgusting a mount of money in the media business. His knack for turning faili ng newspapers, television, and radio stations into blue-chip busi nesses had put him on a financial par with the likes of Ted Turne r. Brock Stuart had more money than most third world countries. It had been easy enough to get used to that life-style, Elizabeth reflected, brushing a speck of lint off the lapel of her red sil k blouse. She had a taste for champagne and a natural love of Fre nch lingerie. She'd been a whiz at picking out trinkets from Tiff any's and designer gowns. But she still knew how to wear faded je ans. She could still dance the two-step and belt down Lone Star b eer. She still knew how to wear boots. Unfortunately, hers were a mile down the road lying on the back porch with a heap of batter ed sneakers. Just ahead, on the north side of the road, stood th e tidy Amish farm she had already disregarded as a source of help . The yard was empty. The house was dark, its curtainless multipa ned windows giving it an air of abandonment. Long, plain wooden b enches were stacked like cordwood on the front porch. The only si gn of life was a fat ginger cat sitting on the top bench, licking its paw. On the south side of the road a freshly laid gravel dr ive led across the field to the construction site of what was bei ng touted as the finest resort south of the Twin Cities. The para dox was not lost on Elizabeth. The tourists who came to see the A mish and their simple, rustic way of life would be staying just a cross the road in twentieth-century splendor. In addition to the hotel itself, there would be tennis courts, a golf course. There was even a rumor going around that Still Creek would be dammed an d swollen into a small man-made lake that would be stocked with f ish and lined up with paddleboats. The resort was in a stage of construction that made it look like nothing more than a big, ugly skeleton, but Elizabeth had seen the sketches of the finished pr oduct in a back issue of the Clarion. She could say with certaint y that the Still Waters resort was going to be big and vulgar, no t unlike the man who was building it--Jarrold Jarvis. She labeled the style Early French Brothel, an incongruous blend of French P rovincial, English Tudor, and Moorish monstrosity. It would look as out of place here as a Las Vegas casino. She groaned as she c aught sight of Jarvis's powder-yellow Lincoln Town Car parked nea r the rusting white trailer that served as office for the constru ction site. When it came to overbearing swine, Jarrold Jarvis was king pig around Still Creek. He'd made his money in highway cons truction, scratching his way up from the bottom rung of the ladde r to a position where he could afford to dabble in the tourist tr ade with a little venture like Still Waters. His journey from pov erty to prosperity had left him with a survival-of-the-fittest me ntality that, in his opinion, allowed him to lord it over anyone he thought inferior to him, genetically or financially--which mea nt most everyone in Still Creek. Elizabeth knew a lot of men aro und town had come to the erroneous conclusion that because she ha d suffered the great misfortune of having been married twice, she was an easy lay. Jarrold Jarvis was the only one who'd actually had the gall to come right out and say so to her face. He had ins ulted her in one rancid breath and proposi, Orion, 1998, 2.5, Hardback. Good., 2.5<
