The Venetian Betrayal: A Novel
by Steve Berry
from Ballantine Books
In 323 B.C.E, having conquered Persia, Alexander the Great set his sights on Arabia, then suddenly succumbed to a strange fever. Locating his final resting place–unknown to this day–remains a tantalizing goal for both archaeologists and treasure hunters. Now the quest for this coveted prize is about to heat up. And Cotton Malone–former U.S. Justice Department agent turned rare-book dealer–will be drawn into an intense geopolitical chess game.
After narrowly escaping incineration in a devastating fire that consumes a Danish museum, Cotton learns from his friend, the beguiling adventurer Cassiopeia Vitt, that the blaze was neither an accident nor an isolated incident. As part of campaign of arson intended to mask a far more diabolical design, buildings across Europe are being devoured by infernos of unnatural strength.
And from the ashes of the U.S.S.R., a new nation has arisen: Former Soviet republics have consolidated into the Central Asian Federation. At its helm is Supreme Minister Irina Zovastina, a cunning despot with a talent for politics, a taste for blood sport, and the single-minded desire to surpass Alexander the Great as history’s ultimate conqueror.
Backed by a secret cabal of powerbrokers, the Federation has amassed a harrowing arsenal of biological weapons. Equipped with the hellish power to decimate other nations at will, only one thing keeps Zovastina from setting in motion her death march of domination: a miraculous healing serum, kept secret by an ancient puzzle and buried with the mummified remains of Alexander the Great–in a tomb lost to the ages for more than 1,500 years.
Together, Cotton and Cassiopeia must outrun and outthink the forces allied against them. Their perilous quest will take them to the shores of Denmark, deep into the venerated monuments of Venice, and finally high inside the desolate Pamir mountains of Central Asia to unravel a riddle whose solution could destroy or save millions of people–depending on who finds the lost tomb first.
The Bookseller of Kabul
by Asne Seierstad
from Back Bay Books
For more than twenty years, Sultan Khan has defied the authorities, whether communist or Taliban, to supply books to the people of Kabul. He has been arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned, and has watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. Yet he has persisted in his passion for books, shedding light in one of the world's darkest places. This is the intimate portrait of a man of principle and of his family - two wives, five children, and many relatives sharing a small four-room apartment in this war-ravaged city. As they endure the extraordinary trials and tensions of Afghanistan's upheavals, they also still try to live ordinary lives, with work, relaxation, shopping, cooking, marriages, rivalries, and shared joys. Most of all, this is an intimate portrait of family life under Islam. Even after the Taliban's collapse, the women in Khan's family must submit to arranged marriages, polygamous husbands, and crippling limitations on their ability to travel, learn, and communicate with others. Seierstad lived with Khan's family for months, experiencing first-hand Afghani life as few outsiders have seen it. Stepping back from the page, she allows the Khans to speak for themselves, giving us a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and of a country of great cultural riches and extreme contradictions.
The Home-Based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books on Amazon, eBay or Your Own Web Site
by Steve Weber
from Weber Books
Want to discover the most profitable, lowest-risk idea for your home business? It's selling used books online, which is growing 33 percent annually, according to a new study by U.S. publishers. Learn how to start your business part-time, then expand at your own pace. This step-by-step guide, written by one of the most successful and highly rated sellers on Amazon and eBay, includes everything you need to know:
Mummy Dearest (Claire Malloy Mysteries, No. 17)
by Joan Hess
from St. Martin's Minotaur
After a somewhat long and, at times, strange courtship, Claire Malloy -- a single, widowed mother of a teenage daughter and a bookseller in Farberville, Arkansas - has finally said 'I do' to her swain, Lt. Peter Rosen of the Farberville Police Department. Now they are on their honeymoon in Luxor, Egypt. Well, Claire is on her honeymoon - accompanied by Caron, her teenaged daughter, and Inez, Caron's best friend and frequent partner in adventure. Peter is mostly away on various mysterious consultations with equally mysterious government agencies is his new, completely undiscussed, role in law enforcement.
Staying at the glamorous Winter Palace in Luxor, Claire is intent on a quiet, uneventful honeymoon involving shopping, tourist sites, and, when it can’t avoided, drinks with the local British expatriate contingent. But despite her determined efforts to avoid any involvement in criminous events, the tenor of the trip quickly switches from bucolic to creepy. First, Caron and Inez are chased through darkened deserted alleys by persons unknown. Then a blond college student of their recent acquaintance is kidnapped by two young men on horseback in a scene reminiscent of a Rudolf Valentino film. Something is clearly afoot in this tourist paradise, and now Claire will stop at nothing to find out what.
Death Walked In: A Death on Demand Mystery (Death on Demand Mysteries)
by Carolyn Hart
from William Morrow
Annie Darling discovers the secret of the Franklin house, but Death Walked In . . .
Max Darling hasn't been interested in crime since his brush with a seductive young woman put him in danger of losing his freedom. He even refuses to talk to a woman who calls for help and says she is afraid. The caller leaves word she's hidden something in the antebellum house Max and his wife, Annie, are restoring. When Annie finds out, she hurries to the woman's home, only to discover her shot. Annie hears her final whisper as she holds the dying woman's hand.
Evidence links the dead woman to a nearby home, where a fortune in gold coins has gone missing. The gold coins, rare Double Eagles, were stolen from a house filled with visiting family members, twentysomethings hungry for money and several with secrets they must keep. Is one of them willing to kill for a fortune in coins? Or is it the dead woman's high school dropout son? Max is there when the police arrest the son, but the boy's shock upon learning of his mother's death convinces Max of his innocence. Max and Annie plunge wholeheartedly into the investigation.
But are the coins hidden in Annie and Max's Franklin house? The intruder who shoots at Max seems to think so. And who walks in when Annie discovers the secret of that house?
Tall, Dark & Dead (Garnet Lacey, Book 1)
by Tate Hallaway
from Berkley Trade
A delightful new comedy about witches, vampires, and the search for the perfect man.
Recovering witch Garnet Lacey manages Wisconsin's premier occult bookstore. And a fringe benefit of the job is getting customers like Sebastian Von Traum-piercing brown eyes, a sexy accent, and a killer body. The only thing missing is an aura. Which means he's dead. And that means trouble.
So what's a girl to do if she's hot for a dead man walking? Run like hell-and take full advantage of the nights
Selling Used Books Online: The Complete Guide to Bookselling at Amazon's Marketplace and Other Online Sites
by Stephen Windwalker
from Harvard Perspective Pr
Book Description
Selling Used Books Online is a comprehensive how-to bible for America's newest and fastest growing group of entrepreneurs, the sellers on Amazon Marketplace and other online venues. Author Stephen Windwalker, a successful online seller himself who has also operated a brick-and-mortar bookshop, provides a treasure trove of up-to-date information with verve, clarity, and wit.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has reported that the number of third-party sellers on his company's website grew from over 100,000 in the fourth quarter of 2001 to over 150,000 in the first quarter of 2002, and roughly one-third of these appear to be entrepreneurial sellers who are operating full- or part-time businesses in competition with each other, with Amazon, and with very large Amazon Marketplace sellers such as Powell's, the Strand bookstore, and Alibris. For these 50,000 entrepreneurs, Selling Used Books Online will be a powerful business resource that will help them level the playing field, stay in business, and prosper.
Selling Used Books Online meets the needs of booksellers and business readers who want to stay current on market changes, best sources, insider's tips and tactics, and best practices, and is also a essential addition for public libraries, the small business and entrepreneurship market and related agency and educational markets, and publishing industry and bibliophile readers. Back matter includes several useful appendices that online booksellers will use on a daily basis: a glossary, a list of standard bookseller abbreviations, a casual bibliography of resources on bookselling and collecting, and an online bookseller's "Rolodex."
The Most Up-To-Date Book In Its Field, Covering:
· THE BOOKSELLING BUSINESS· SUPPLIERS AND SOURCES
· WHERE TO GET YOUR BOOKS
· WHAT BOOKS TO GET
· WHERE TO SELL YOUR BOOKS
· GRADING AND DESCRIBING YOUR BOOKS
· POSTING AND PRICING YOUR BOOKS
· ORGANIZING YOUR BUSINESS AND HANDLING TAX ISSUES
· FULFILLMENT AND CUSTOMER SERVICE
· EXPANSION ISSUES AND FUTURE PLANS
· HANDY REFERENCE TOOLS YOU WILL USE EVERY DAY
Online Bookselling: A Practical Guide with Detailed Explanations and Insightful Tips
by Michael E. Mould
from Aardvark Publishing Company L.L.C.
This book has everything you need to start your own home-based online bookstore and more. It covers: where to buy the books worth reselling, the various available online marketplaces and the advantages/disadvantages of each, how to price and grade your books, how to safely store your books with ease of locating them in mind, how to plan your business, the legal structures of online bookselling businesses, in-state retail sales tax and Schedule C tax issues, how to pack your books to minimize "escapees," thrid-party wireless lookup service, inventory management software providers, re-pricing tools, online postage services, websites & advertising, shipping methods & trade-offs, how much to pay for books, shipping material suppliers, an exhaustive list of wholesale & remainder book distributors, and much more. The author has included graphs to demonstrate how long you might expect to wait to sell a book with a given Amazon sales rank, histograms of profit distributions you might expect, tables of Roman Numerals, photographs of packing procedures & bookseller terminology, etc. With this book as your guide you are well on your way to being a successful online bookseller. Printed in Times New Roman 9 pt font.
Bookstore Cat (Step into Reading, Step 1, paper)
by Cindy Wheeler
from Random House Books for Young Readers
Illus. in full color. Mulligan is a proud bookstore cat who takes his job very seriously.  He keeps an eye on the store, greets the customers, even helps them pick out books. But when two unexpected, intruding birds cross his way, Mulligan cannot resist his feline instincts. Â
Sophia House (Children of the Last Days)
by Michael D. O'Brien
from Ignatius Press
Sophia House is set in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. Pawel Tarnowski, a bookseller, gives refuge to David Schäfer, a Jewish youth who has escaped from the ghetto, and hides him in the attic of the book shop. Throughout the winter of 1942-43, haunted by the looming threat of discovery, they discuss good and evil, sin and redemption, literature and philosophy, and their respective religious views of reality. Decades later, David becomes a convert to Catholicism, is the Carmelite priest Fr. Elijah Schäfer called by the Pope to confront the Anti-christ in Michael O'Brien's best-selling novel, Father Elijah: an Apocalypse.
In this "prequel", the author explores the meaning of love, religious identity, and sacrifice viewed from two distinct perspectives. The cast of characters also includes the notorious Count Smokrev, a literate Nazi Major, a French novelist, a terrifying Polish bear, the Russian icon painter Andrei Rublev, and Pawel's beloved Kahlia, the elusive figure who moves through the story as an unseen presence. As the story unfolds, the loss of spiritual fatherhood in late Western society is revealed as a problem of language in the heart and soul, and as one of the gravest crises of our times. As the author points the way to rediscovery of our Father in heaven, he also shows us the path to renewal of human fatherhood. This is a novel about small choices that shift the balance of the world.
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