Books published by Open Road Media

Three dystopian novels by an award-winning author that imagine a world where humankind has suddenly and violently rejected modern technology. Something has gone very wrong in England. In a tunnel beneath Wales one man opens a crack in a mysterious stone wall, and all over the island of Britain people react with horror to perfectly normal machines. Abandoning their cars on the roads and destroying their own factories, many flee the cities for the countryside, where they return to farming and an old-fashioned life. When families are split apart and grown-ups forget how they used to live, young people face unexpected challenges. Nicola Gore survives on her own for nineteen days before she's taken in by a Sikh family that still remembers how to farm and forge steel by hand. Margaret and Jonathan brave the cold and risk terrible punishment in order to save a man's life and lift the fog of fear and hate that's smothering their village. And Geoffrey and his little sister, Sally, escape to France only to be sent back to England on a vital mission: to make their way north to Wales, alone, and find the thing under the stones that shattered civilizationthe source of the Changes. Prolific author Peter Dickinson was known for ';keeping up a page-turning pace,' and these adventure-packed novels are some of his most important contributions to science fiction (The Guardian).This ebook features an illustrated personal history of Peter Dickinson including rare images from the author's collection.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: In this comedic novel, an English professor collides with disaster at the peak of the Cold War Shortly after his plane first grazes the tarmac in the eastern European nation of Slaka, Dr. Angus Petworth is beset by a cavalcade of misadventures. A university lecturer and seasoned international traveler, Petworth is nevertheless unprepared for the oddities of culture and circumstance that await him on the other side of the iron curtain. In two eventful weeks, Petworth gives an incendiary interview, is seduced by a femme fatale, and becomes embroiled in a plot of international intrigue, all of which conspire to give the mild, unassuming professor way more than he bargained for. Satirizing everything from critics and diplomats to Marxism and academia, Malcolm Bradbury's Rates of Exchange is a witty and lighthearted novel of cultural interchange at the height of the Cold War.

A headstrong young journalist goes on the adventure of a lifetime, traveling through Europe to find the world's most enigmatic philosopher Bazlo Criminale is one of Europe's most legendary living men. A mysterious novelist and thinker known for his extreme elusiveness, the beloved Criminale is a cultural icon of the highest order. Seeking to find the man behind the myth, a London television-news station hires Francis Jay, an enterprising young reporter, to find Criminale. From Vienna to Budapest to the picturesque lakeshores of Italy, Jay journeys across the continentand even briefly to Brazilinterviewing the man's biographer, his publisher, and his former lover, all of whom have their own interests at stake. Through literary award dinners and other examples of ';culture as spectacle,' Jay must navigate the chaotic world of postCold War Europe as he chases the specter of a literary legend.

Looking to strike it rich with television gold, an English media tycoon enlists the help of an unassuming novelist to script his small-screen epic, to disastrousand hilariouseffect The year is 1986, and the cuts imposed by Margaret Thatcher's government have trickled down to university life, where departments are being forced to shave their payrolls to account for reduced public funding. Meanwhile, at Eldorado Television, a different kind of cut is about to wreak havoc. Lord Mellow, head of the declining studio, watches as his last-ditch effort to produce a hit series falls to pieces. The show's star, the volatile but vaunted Sir Luke Trimingham, has just declared that he will quit unless the script is entirely rewritten. Desperate to save the project, Eldorado brings university lecturer and author Henry Babbacombe into the fold to write thirteen new episodes of ambitious televisionsomething so grand that the leading man cannot possibly refuse it. But the production is plagued from the start, suffering endless calamities with its unpredictable actors and crew, whose behind-the-scenes drama rivals anything Babbacombe could dream up.

Two characters navigate the post-apartheid South African landscape in this haunting story of the injustice that still simmers below the country's surfaceIn Troy Blacklaws's ambitious novel, the lives of two African men run parallel, exposing the tensions that rumble at South Africa's post-apartheid core. Jerusalem is a young poet and student whose stubborn father will no longer pay for his rambling studies. Half Jewish, half Muslim, Jerusalem is forced from Cape Town to a distant harbor village by his father, who believes a stint selling curios to tourists will right his wandering ways. Meanwhile, Jabulani loses his teaching job in Zimbabwe after mocking President Mugabe and must move south to start a new life. But his life across the border is tainted by the harsh truth that racism isn't gone; it's just taken another form. As the two men's lives merge, their stories reveal the paradoxes of the South African experience.

The New York Timesbestselling series continues with this pun-tastic epic quest and far-flung fantasy adventure. Lydell, a shy, naive man of twenty-one, and world-weary grandmother Grania could not be more different. But when their paths cross on the way to beseech the Good Magician to add some excitement to their extraordinarily dull lives, the one thing they have in common is about to get them more than they bargained for ... Lydell and Grania's exceptional integrity makes them valuable to the Good Magician. He promises to fulfill their hearts' desires on the condition they pilot a fireboat to its new proprietors, whoeverand whereverthey may be. Along with an obnoxious bird and a robot dogfish as shipmates, they unfurl their sail of flame and cruise through the skies of Xanth, guided by cryptic clues. Picking up a crew of future children along the way, Lydell and Grania must plan a royal wedding, detonate an F-Bomb, evade illusion dragons, rescue Jack and Jill, find a princess for a werewolf prince, and face their greatest fearsall while remaining true to their compulsively honest selves. Fire Sail is the 42nd book in the Xanth series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Professor Nicholas Fenton enters a pact with Satan and goes back in time to bawdy, turbulent Restoration London to prevent a murder that is about to take place. But he falls in love with the intended victim and resolves to alter the course of history. "Breathless pace and ingenious plotting".--New York Times.

Three infant princesses receive the mystically protective Black Trillium at birth and learn to use their strengths and conquer their weaknesses to withstand the dangers that face them.

Reprint. Originally published: London: Simon & Schuster, 2007.

New York Times Bestseller: The definitive biography based on over six hundred interviews with people who knew Marilyn Monroe both professionally and intimately. Marilyn Monroe, born in obscurity and deprivation, became an actress and legend of the twentieth century, romantically linked to famous men from Joe DiMaggio to Arthur Miller to John F. Kennedy. But her tragic death at a young age, under suspicious circumstances, left behind a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Anthony Summers interviewed more than six hundred people, laying bare the truthssometimes funny, often sadabout this brilliant, troubled woman. The first to gain access to the files of Monroe's last psychiatrist, Summers uses the documents to explain her tangled psyche and her dangerous addiction to medications. He establishes, after years of mere rumor, that President Kennedy and his brother Robert were both intimately involved with Monroe in lifeand in covering up the circumstances of her death. Written by a Pulitzer Prize nominee who has authored works on JFK, J. Edgar Hoover, and the 9/11 attacks, this investigation of an iconic star's brief life and early death is ';remarkable. ... The ghost of Marilyn Monroe cries out in these pages' (The New York Times).

The shocking true crime story of a beloved Hollywood star gone too soontold by the captain of theboat on which Natalie Wood spent her last night. Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendour is the long awaited, detailed account of events that led to the mysterious death of Hollywood legend Natalie Wood off the coast of Catalina Island on November 28, 1981. It is a story told by a haunted witness to that fateful evening: Dennis Davern, the young captain of Splendour, the yacht belonging to Wood and husband Robert Wagner. Davern initially backed up Wagner's version of that evening's events through a signed statement prepared by attorneys. But Davern's guilt over failing Natalie tormented him. Davern reached out to his old friend Marti Rulli, and little by little, at his own emotional pace, he revealed the details of his years in Wood's employ, of the fateful weekend that Natalie died, and of the events following her death that prevented him from telling the whole storyuntil now.

Troy Blacklaws's follow-up to his internationally acclaimed Karoo Boy is the bittersweet tale of a South African boy coming of age during apartheidGecko's childhood is one of sheltered, almost magical innocence on a farm in Natal. He spends his days taking barefoot expeditions with his dogs and his nights listening to Springbok Radio, unaware of the cruel force in his life that apartheid will soon become. With the start of high school in the Cape, Gecko is thrust into a political and personal awakening that is both tragic and heartfelt. With conscription into the South African army looming over him, Gecko's future is as uncertain as his country's. Blood Orangeevokes the absurdity, longing, and fear of growing up white in the last decades of apartheid.

A series of child abductions near the Andes Mountains lands a Peruvian archaeologist and an American FBI agent deep in an ancient Incan mystery. At the foot of a crumbling sacrificial altar on an Andes mountaintop, Nina Ramirez, an archaeology professor at Cuzco University in Peru, makes two stunning discoveries. One is the mummified body of an Inca girl buried five centuries ago. The other is the corpse of a young boy, recently reported missing, now unearthed in a freshly dug graveand dressed in the same distinctive ritual shawl as the ancient victim. It's a clue Nina's ex-lover, FBI agent Adam Palma, never wanted to find. A hostage retrieval specialist, Adam has been enlisted to find the son of a State Department official kidnapped in Limajust one in a series of child abductions reported throughout the South American country. But as his path converges with Nina's, he must contend with a new fear: Someone is reviving the ancient Inca tradition of human sacrifice. With the help of a mysterious young boy, Nina and Adam's investigation will lead them into the endless unknown of the Amazon jungle to follow the shadow of a legendary conquistador. But to solve a twenty-first-century mystery, they will first have to face one in Adam's own savage and distant past: his link to the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro.

Winner of the Edgar Award: The gripping account of a gruesome mass murder in gritty 1980s New York and the relentless hunt for a coldblooded killer. On a warm spring evening in 1982, thirty-seven-year-old accountant Margaret Barbera left work in New York City and walked to the West Side parking lot where she kept her BMW. Finding the lock on the driver's side door jammed, she went to the passenger's side and inserted her key. A man leaned through the open window of a van parked in the next spot, pressed a silenced pistol to the back of Margaret's head, and fired. She was dead before she hit the pavement. It was a professional hit, meticulously plannedbut the killer didn't expect three employees of the nearby CBS television studios to stumble onto the scene of the crime. ';You didn't see nothin', did you?' he demanded, before shooting the first eyewitness in the head. After chasing down and executing the other two men, the murderer sped out of the parking lot with Margaret's lifeless body in the back of his van. Thirty minutes later, the first detectives arrived on the scene. Veterans of Midtown North, a sprawling precinct stretching from the exclusive shops of Fifth Avenue to the flophouses of Hell's Kitchen, they thought they'd seen it all. But a bloodbath in the heart of Manhattan was a shocking new level of depravity, and the investigation would unfold under intense media coverage. Setting out on the trail of an assassin, the NYPD uncovered one of the most diabolical criminal conspiracies in the city's history. Richard Hammer's blow-by-blow account of ';the CBS Murders' is a thrilling tale of greed, violence, and betrayal, and a fascinating portrait of how a big-city police department solved the toughest of cases.

A CIA agent fights a sinister plot by escaped Nazi Martin Bormann in this thriller from the New York Timesbestselling author of Enemy at the Gates. In the chaos of defeat, while Germany's roads teemed with desperate refugees and jumbled armies, Hitler's inner circle tried to disappear. Heinrich Himmler donned an eye patch and posed as a farmer. Captured by British troops, he bit into a cyanide capsule concealed in a tooth cavity. Rudolph Hoess, former commandant of Auschwitz, was discovered working as a farmhand near Bremen. But many of the most notorious Nazis escaped, including Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann. Martin Bormann, the Fuehrer's private secretary, was rumored to be living everywhere from the Soviet Union to South America. Almost three decades later, CIA agent Matt Corcoran is sent to Bad Nauheim to investigate possible Soviet involvement in the theft of US Army munitions. He hears whispers of German Reds blowing up NATO ammo dumps, neo-Nazis aiding the Arab cause against Israel, and a plot to assassinate the German chancellor. Corcoran soon begins to suspect that behind the turmoil is an organization as diabolical as it is improbable: a cadre of loyal Nazi officers, under the command of Bormann, who are bent on bringing about the Fourth Reich. As action-packed as The Odessa File and The Boys from Brazil, The Strasbourg Legacy is first-class suspense from an acclaimed historian of World War II, the New York Timesbestselling author of The Fall of Japan.