Pre-numbered label used for registration.

hardback
575pp
published, 1999

Coast Road
Barbara Delinsky
FROM THE PUBLISHER
COAST ROAD
Rachel Keats and Jack McGill were artists, deeply in love when they married, until the rush of life took its toll and they divorced. Six years later, Jack puts aside his career as a leading architect to hold a bedside vigil at his ex-wife's hospital bed. Jack begins to see Rachel, his daughters, and the story of his marriage with new eyes. Coast Road celebrates those things in life that matter most — the companionship of friends and the irreplaceable time spent with children and family.

FROM THE CRITICS
Mineapolis Star Tribune
A heartwarming story.

Library Journal
Jack McGill's feelings for his artist ex-wife, Rachel, are put to the acid test when he receives news that she is lying comatose in a hospital after an automobile accident. Jack, a rising San Francisco architect and workaholic, still does not understand why Rachel left him and took their two daughters to live in Big Sur country, but he assumes the parental role for the teenage girls and moves into Rachel's house. Jack's second chance at being a real father is fraught with confrontations. He has deadlines and major clients to impress, and his daughters are leery of trusting him to care for them. Ultimately, Jack is challenged to make some life-altering career choices and to decide whether he should try to win Rachel back. Delinsky's (Three Wishes) latest love story is filled with heartache, self-discovery, and renewal. --Mary Ellen Elsbernd

Mineapolis Star Tribune
A heartwarming story.

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"N" is for Noose
Sue Grafton
FROM OUR EDITORS
"When I first wrote Alibi, Grafton is quoted as saying, "I was just trying to get it done. I certainly wasn't thinking about a series." With that profound statement hovering somewhere in her past, Sue Grafton now offers her fourteenth novel in the popular Alphabet Mystery series. "N" Is for Noose finds Kinsey investigating the mysterious death of Nota Lake sheriff Tom Newquist. But when it becomes clear that the strange town has some very dark secrets, Kinsey realizes that if she's not careful, she could be the victim of the town's next crime. Limited Quantity Available.

FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
The noose of the title implies a tight knot, but the twists and turns of Grafton's latest plot are pretty loose. Not that the fans of self-reliant PI Kinsey Millhone's 13 previous alphabet appearances (from 1982's A Is for Alibi through 1996's M Is for Malice) are likely to object. This story takes Kinsey away from her Southern California coastal town of Santa Teresa to the small mountain community of Nota Lake in the Sierras. There, Selma Newquist hires Kinsey to ferret out the problem that had been seriously bothering her cop husband, Tom, before his recent death from a heart attack. Kinsey's efforts are soon stonewalled as the residents of Nota Lake unite, suggesting that the widow is being troublesome while the good-guy cop should be left to rest in peace. Kinsey wonders whether the townspeople might be right until she is seriously beaten up in her Nota Lake motel room. Focusing on finding the dead man's missing notebook, she follows his trail to a seedy hotel not far from Santa Teresa that he visited a few weeks before his death. While keeping a suspicious eye on the dead man's police partner and a few other local figures, Kinsey determines that Tom Newquist had been investigating an old murder near Nota Lake, which may have had ties to a similar, recent murder. Lots of coincidences, some over-the top characters, including a hyper-raunchy older woman, and some unprepared-for elements contribute to the rather chaotic climax. But Grafton's easy-reading, intelligent prose and her heroine's sharp humor, served up dark and wry, make up for a slew of plot weaknesses. Mystery Guild main selection; Literary Guild selection.

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The Eleventh Commandment
Jeffrey Archer
SYNOPSIS
Jeffrey Archer is one of our top writers of international espionage. His writing style is fluid, easy on the eyes, and never gets in the way of his larger-than-life heroes and villains. In Archer's latest suspense tale, The Eleventh Commandment , which is just out in paperback, Vietnam vet Connor Fitzgerald learns that, even in matters of international espionage, home is where the real dangers lie.

FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
From the first line, former British M.P. Archer (The Fourth Estate, etc.) navigates a nonstop, rocketing ride. Middle-aged Connor Fitzgerald is a happily married man, decorated veteran and devoted father; he's also aN "NOC," a "non-official cover officer" for the CIA specializing in assassinations. The killing of a Colombian drug lord leaves Connor out of sync with the Democratic president's policy, so the director of the CIA, a woman, sets Connor up to take the fall in a fake assassination of the leading candidate for the Russian presidency, an unreconstructed Stalinist. Connor (aided by an ex-CIA deputy director whose life he once saved) gets out of a St. Petersburg jail and falls into the hands of the Russian Mafia. Wheels spin within wheels until the slam-bang climax during the new Russian president's visit to Washington. Some plot details, including the final twist, are a tad hokey, and Connor keeps his much-touted charisma under wraps, yet Archer sweeps us along (and even finds time to write himself into the plot as London's mayor, a position he's seeking in real life). The only boo-boo here is Archer's unwitting revivification of flamboyant Redskins owner and Northern Virginia tycoon Jack Kent Cooke (though he was a character). In any case, readers won't mind the occasional giddiness: this isn't Tolstoy, it's fun.

Kirkus Reviews
"This was the real world," CIA assassin Connor Fitzgerald reminds himself as he escapes from his latest messy job without a single "Rambo-type helicopter" for help. Fortunately, he couldn't be more wrong: He's got both feet firmly planted in Archerland Deluxe. After getting out of Colombia just in time for what would be the opening credits if this were a James Bond movie, beloved hit-man Connor, a decorated Vietnam vet and devoted family man who's only a wink and a smile from reassignment to a cushy desk job, gets the bad news: His hard-nosed boss, CIA director Helen Dexter, gives him a choice between heading the agency office in Cleveland (Cleveland!) and taking early retirement. Seems that Connor knows secrets that would help the exasperated President bury Dexter deep, and Dexter, rabidly opposed to a CIA-gutting arms reduction bill the Chief Executive's negotiating (and, at any rate, not one to go gently into that good night), has arranged a spectacular bit of treachery to make sure Connor never gets a chance to spill the beans. He's sent packing off to Moscow for one last job—to eliminate Victor Zerimski, the warmongering Communist candidate for the Russian presidency. It's just like Connor's other jobs, except for two differences: It hasn't been authorized by the White House (despite a tricky bit of techno-wizardry that fools Connor into thinking it has), and it's not supposed to be successful. Instead, Dexter's minions will tip the Russians off just in time to send Connor on a one-way ticket to St. Petersburg's fearsome Crucifix prison. Once Connor's locked away, the verdict and sentence are a foregone conclusion, and no one's escaped from Crucifix sincebest-selling Archer (Twelve Red Herrings, 1994, etc.) was a gleam in his ancestors' eyes. There's much, much more—roping in the Russian Mafia, the Washington Redskins, a dozen double-crosses, and two returns from the grave—all of it the most rousing moonshine.

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The Loop
Nicholas Evans
FROM THE PUBLISHER
A pack of wolves makes a sudden savage return to the Rocky Mountain ranching town of Hope, Montana, where a century earlier they were slaughtered by the thousands. Now shielded by law as an endangered species, they reawaken an ancient hatred that will tear a family, and ultimately the town, apart. At the center of the storm is Helen Ross, a twenty-nine-year-old wolf biologist sent alone into this remote and hostile place to protect the wolves from those who seek to destroy them. The Loop charts her struggle, and her dangerous love affair with the son of her most powerful opponent, the brutal and charismatic rancher Buck Calder.

FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
In his second novel, Evans returns to Montana, the scene of his best-selling The Horse Whisperer), with a tale of conflict and love. The government's decision to introduce Canadian wolves back into the western United States disgusts powerful rancher Buck Calder, but his anger knows no bounds when a wolf wanders onto his daughter's farm and kills the family's dog. This incident, plus a series of cattle killings that Calder attributes to roving bands of wolves, leads him and his fellow ranchers to bring in a wolf killer -- a man who uses the loop (a particularly inhumane method of eradicating the wolf population). Meanwhile, the government sends Helen, a beautiful young biologist, to Montana to monitor the wolves. She comes into direct conflict with Calder but wins the admiration and love of his son, Luke. This overwritten novel is about 150 pages too long. Do we really need to know that Helen's mother has a dynamite sex life with her second husband, or that her father is marrying a woman younger than Helen? For all that, this is a good story that will not disappoint Evans's many fans. Recommended for popular fiction collections everywhere. -- Nancy Pearl, Washington Center for the Book, Seattle

Alexandra Jacobs
It's filled with pretty scenery, but its characterizations. . .collapse. . .in one big, exhausted heap of wolf. -- Entertainment Weekly

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