Supernatural forces and desires come alive in these thirteen vampire tales. Like love, the adventures are never safe and hungers never die. And chances are taken. If you are seduced by the mystery of the heart, beating for a destiny unknown, you will helplessly follow the characters' in this collection — longing for one to call their own. Featuring several New York Times Bestsellers, connect with the pulse of the talented Eternal Kiss authors

A recently discovered novel written by Pearl S. Buck at the end of her life in 1973, The Eternal Wonder tells the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax (Rann for short), an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to New York, England, Paris, on a mission patrolling the DMZ in Korea that will change his life forever—and, ultimately, to love. Rann falls for the beautiful and equally brilliant Stephanie Kung, who lives in Paris with her Chinese father and has not seen her American mother since she abandoned the family when Stephanie was six years old. Both Rann and Stephanie yearn for a sense of genuine identity. Rann feels plagued by his voracious intellectual curiosity and strives to integrate his life of the mind with his experience in the world. Stephanie struggles to reconcile the Chinese part of herself with her American and French selves. Separated for long periods of time, their final reunion leads to a conclusion that even Rann, in all his hard-earned wisdom, could never have imagined. A moving and mesmerizing fictional exploration of the themes that meant so much to Pearl S. Buck in her life, this final work is perhaps her most personal and passionate, and will no doubt appeal to the millions of readers who have treasured her novels for generations

Your grandfather was a coward. That is the angry recollection with which a former Zero fighter pilot greets two Japanese siblings who, typically, despite being educated, know next to nothing about a defining war in the Pacific that took place within living memory. The testimony rattles and confuses aspiring lawyer Kentaro and newly minted journalist Keiko since virtually the only fact they’ve grown up hearing about Kyuzo Miyabe is that he died a kamikaze. When the young pair digs deeper into the man’s past, other surviving comrades only seem to confirm the verdict, but its very import begins to shift in surprising ways. In addition to providing a window into the experiences of the losing side’s flyboys and a frank look at contemporary Japan’s amnesia regarding the war, this novel also undertakes a blistering critique of the folly and inhumanity of the Imperial Navy and Army and a nuanced exploration of the differences between kamikaze pilots and today’s suicide bombers. At its core, however, it is a mystery of sorts about a long-dead man’s actions and intentions and a reconfiguration of the meaning of wartime loyalty and sacrifice. A debut novel that was published when the author was fifty, The Eternal Zero has become Japan’s all-time top-selling mass-market paperback and the basis of a blockbuster film of the same name

No one is more surprised than Lem Altick when it turns out he's actually good at peddling encyclopedias door to door. He hates the predatory world of sales, but he needs the money to pay for college. Then things go horribly wrong. In a sweltering trailer in rural Florida, a couple Lem has spent hours pitching to is shot dead before his eyes, and the unassuming young man is suddenly pulled into the dark world of conspiracy and murder. Not just murder: assassination – or so claims the killer, the mysterious and strangely charismatic Melford Kean, who has struck without remorse and with remarkable good cheer. But the self-styled ethical assassin hadn't planned on a witness, and so he makes Lem a deal: Stay quiet and there will be no problems. Go to the police and take the fall. Before Lem can decide, he is drawn against his will into the realm of the assassin, a post-Marxist intellectual with whom he forms an unlikely (and perhaps unwise) friendship. The ethical assassin could be a charming sociopath, eco-activist, or vigilante for social justice. Lem isn't sure what is motivating Melford, but Lem realizes that to save himself, he must unravel the mystery of why the assassinations have occurred. To do so, he descends deeper into a bizarre world he never knew existed, where a group of desperate schemers are involved in a plot that could keep Lem from leaving town alive

That mores is strictly a matter of local custom cannot be denied. But that ethics is pure opinion also…? Maybe there are times for murder, and theft and slavery…

Murray Leinster, who has been writing science fiction for more than a generation, has been fascinated by the problem of "first contact" between voyagers from different worlds. How will intelligent beings behave when confronted with so momentous an event? One answer is provided in this story of a young junior lieutenant in a future Space Patrol

Do you know why... ...a mortgage is literally a death pledge? ...why guns have girls' names? ...why salt is related to soldier? You're about to find out... The Etymologicon (e-t?-'ma-la-ji-kan) is: *Witty (wi-te\): Full of clever humor*Erudite (er-?-dit): Showing knowledge*Ribald (ri-b?ld): Crude, offensive "The Etymologicon" is a completely unauthorized guide to the strange underpinnings of the English language. It explains: how you get from "gruntled" to "disgruntled"; why you are absolutely right to believe that your meager salary barely covers "money for salt"; how the biggest chain of coffee shops in the world (hint: Seattle) connects to whaling in Nantucket; and what precisely the Rolling Stones have to do with gardening