Bøger udgivet af Picador USA

"They'd never kill a reporter...." On the morning of April 29, 1948, a West Side pier hiring boss was shot on his way to work. The murder reminded the New York Sun's city editor of a similar docks killing from the year before, and so he called over his best general assignment man, Malcolm "Mike" Johnson, telling him, "Lots of unrest down there. Maybe you can get a story out of it." Johnson certainly did, discovering the greatest story of his long career, and a "waterfront jungle" with "rich pickings for criminal gangs." His crime series ran on the Sun's front page for twenty-four days in the fall of 1948, raising a national scandal and bringing death threats on him and his family. Johnson alleged the existence of an international crime "syndicate," at a time when J. Edgar Hoover would not admit that such a syndicate, let alone a Mafia, existed. Herein, Nathan Ward tells the original Mob story, "revealing a spiderweb of union corruption and outright gangsterism....His story has everything" (New York Sun), making Dark Harbor a modern true crime classic.

In a corrupt America reeling from an economic collapse, a shadow civil war is gathering. On one side is James Sands, a billionaire and government crony harassed by civil opposition and armed militants. Standing against him is Lando, a twenty-something urban guerrilla, who leads the Army of the Republic on a campaign of bombing.

Chief Inspector Espinosa can't shake thoughts of this latest hapless victim. Who would target a penniless man who posed no physical threat? Focusing his inquiry on a group of wealthy guests who dined at a nearby mansion on the night of the murder, Espinosa carefully interrogates his way into the lives of his suspects.

In December 1875 the steamship Deutschland left Bremen, bound for America. On board were five nuns, exiled by a ban on religious orders, bound to begin their lives anew in Missouri - their journey would end when the Deutschland ran aground at the mouth of the Thames and sank. This title tells their harrowing story.

A lethal strain of virus vanishes from a lab in Washington, DC, unleashing an epidemic - and the world thinks Lucy Clark's dead father is to blame. The plague may be the least of Lucy's problems. There's her mother, Isifrid, a peddler of high-end hat wear who's also a crackhead and pagan theologist.

A New York Times Notable Book of the YearWhat do hurricane Katrina victims, millionaire rappers buying vintage champagne, and Ivy League professors waiting for taxis have in common? All have claimed to be victims of racism. But these days almost no one openly defends bigoted motives, so either a lot of people are lying about their true beliefs, or a lot of people are jumping to unwarranted conclusions--or just playing the race card. Daring, entertaining, and incisive, The Race Card brings sophisticated legal analysis, eye-popping anecdotes, and plain old common sense to this heated topic.

The older Owen siblings - Ellen and Morris - long ago left behind their gracious family home in Alabama in favour of the northeast. But when they learn that their wayward baby sister Bonnie has moved back into the old place with her new husband, a local evangelical preacher, they head home to perform a rescue.

The West Bank Barrier is expected to be completed in 2010. This title presents an examination of the barrier - its purpose, its efficacy, its consequences - and an affecting story about two cultures who have arrived at a devastating endgame, one which may occlude the possibility of peace for generations to come.

From a world-renowned cultural historian, an original look at the hidden commonalities among Fascism, Nazism, and the New DealToday Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal is regarded as the democratic ideal, the positive American response to an economic crisis that propelled Germany and Italy toward Fascism. Yet in the 1930s, shocking as it may seem, these regimes were hardly considered antithetical. Now, Wolfgang Schivelbusch investigates the shared elements of these three "new deals" to offer a striking explanation for the popularity of Europe's totalitarian systems. Returning to the Depression, Schivelbusch traces the emergence of a new type of state: bolstered by mass propaganda, led by a charismatic figure, and projecting stability and power. He uncovers stunning similarities among the three regimes: the symbolic importance of gigantic public works programs like the TVA dams and the German autobahn, which not only put people back to work but embodied the state's authority; the seductive persuasiveness of Roosevelt's fireside chats and Mussolini's radio talks; the vogue for monumental architecture stamped on Washington, as on Berlin; and the omnipresent banners enlisting citizens as loyal followers of the state.Far from equating Roosevelt, Hitler, and Mussolini or minimizing their acute differences, Schivelbusch proposes that the populist and paternalist qualities common to their states hold the key to the puzzling allegiance once granted to Europe's most tyrannical regimes.

A Chicago Tribune Best Book of the YearBy almost all measures, Kansas City's Central High School is just another failing inner-city school--with abysmal test scores, only one in three graduate. Cross-X is the riveting story of Central's championship debate team. As the students and their coach face formidable opponents from elite prep schools, they must also battle bureaucrats who seem maddeningly determined to hold them back, friends and family who are mired in poverty and drug addiction, and--perhaps most daunting--their own self-destructive choices. It is a gripping story about the essential nature of debate in any democratic society, and how through argument, retort, and wit, ideals survive even under the most difficult conditions.

James Tiptree, Jr., burst onto the science fiction scene in the late 1960s with a series of hard-edged, provocative stories. He redefined the genre with such classics as Houston, Houston, Do You Read? and The Women Men Don't See. For nearly ten years he wrote and carried on intimate correspondences with other writers--Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, and Ursula K. Le Guin, though none of them knew his true identity. Then the cover was blown on his alter ego: "he" was actually a sixty-one-year-old woman named Alice Bradley Sheldon. A feminist, she took a male name as a joke--and found the voice to write her stories.Based on extensive research, exclusive interviews, and full access to Alice Sheldon's papers, Julie Phillips has penned a biography of a profoundly original writer and a woman far ahead of her time.

After returning from the Civil War, Cass Wakefield means to live out the rest of his days in his hometown in Mississippi. But when a childhood friend asks him to accompany her to Franklin, Tennessee, to recover the bodies of her father and brother from the battlefield where they died, Cass cannot refuse.

After giving up the thankless life of a do-gooder, Moises Froissard now travels the world, saves lives, and makes more money in a week than he would in a year helping the poor. His search for the most coveted prize will bring him up against the most savage forces of the underground economy, threatening his safety as well as his fragile conscience.

On a cold, rainy night, an aging bachelor named George Ticknor prepares to visit his childhood friend Prescott, a successful man who is now one of the leading intellectual lights of their generation. He sets out for the Prescotts' dinner party - a party at which he'd just as soon never arrive.

"I learned courage from Buddha, Jesus, Lincoln, and Mr. Cary Grant." So said Miss Peggy Lee. Albert Einstein adored her; Duke Ellington dubbed her "the Queen." With her platinum cool and inimitable whisper, Peggy Lee sold twenty million records, made more money than Mickey Mantle, and presided over music's greatest generation alongside pals Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby.Drawing on exclusive interviews and never-before-seen information, Peter Richmond delivers a complex, compelling portrait of an artist that begins with a girl plagued by loss, her father's alcoholism, and her stepmother's abuse. One day she boards a train, following her muse and hoping her music will lead her someplace better. And it does: to the pantheon of great American singers.

Soon after the bombs stopped falling on Kabul, award-winning journalist and women's rights activist Ann Jones set out for the shattered city. This is her report from the city where she spent the next four winters working in humanitarian aid.

A memoir of startling emotion and grace, Burning Fence is the story of the men in Craig Lesley's family: absent father, Rudell, tough stepfather, Vern, adopted son, Wade, and Craig Lesley himself. Their story is one of hardship, violence, and cautious, heartbreaking attempts toward compassion. Lesley's fearless journey through his family history provides a remarkable portrait of hard living in the Western states, and confirms his place as one of the region's very best storytellers.

For Shira Klein, Yonatan Luria and his daughter, Dana, it is winter. Yonatan is a marginal writer, a fifty-year-old widower left to raise his child alone. When he meets Shira, a bestselling author paralyzed by stage fright, the thaw begins as man, woman, and girl enter a halting romance, alternately tender and belligerent, generous and withdrawn.

It is Columbia University, 1968. Ann Drayton and Georgette George meet as roommates on the first night. The two are drawn together intensely by their differences; two years later, after a violent fight, they part ways. When, in 1976, Ann is convicted of killing a cop, Georgette comes back to their shared history in search of an explanation.

In April 1903, Diamante, age twelve, and Vita, age nine, are sent by their poor families in southern Italy to make a life in America. Theirs is an unforgettable love story, a riveting tale of immigrant survival and hope that takes them from the crime-ridden tenements of Little Italy to the brutal rail yards of the Midwest.

Set in eighteenth-century Brooklyn, this is the story of a woman with a vision: a gargantuan construction of timber and masonry she devises to cross the East River in a single magnificent span. She fires the imaginations of the people of Brooklyn and New York by promising them easy passage between their two worlds.

One of the Best Books for Reading Groups, Kirkus ReviewsYears after the tragic death of her first husband, Nance Able remarries and begins a new life in the West with Ned, a school principal whose quiet charm lulls her to contentment. A scientist tracking rattlesnakes in the wilderness of Hells Canyon, Idaho, Nance courts natural dangers, believing that conquering such risks will protect her from further grief. But at home, she is unaware that her husband's secret proclivities are emerging. When Nance's younger, errant sister Meredith moves to town, Ned can no longer suppress the terrifying mysteries of his past, and the sisters must find together the strength to survive his love.

Bright, witty, and covered in homemade playdough, Jennifer Bradley has traded her fabulous job at a New York auction house for the life of a stay at home mum. For Jennifer, sanity itself is a treasure among the playground set, given the pitfalls. This is a story of love, lust, and the joys of modern motherhood.

One semitropical Fourth of July, Joe Queenan's English wife suggested that the family might like a chicken vindaloo in lieu of the customary barbecue. It was this pitiless act of gastronomic cultural oppression, coupled with dread of the fearsome Christmas pudding that awaited him for dessert, that inspired the author to make a solitary pilgrimage to Great Britain.Freed from the obligation to visit his wife's relations, as he had done for the first twenty-six years of their marriage, Queenan decided that he would not come back from Albion until he had finally penetrated the limey heart of darkness.The result is a very funny, picaresque adventure that will appeal to anglophile and anglophobe alike.

A ground-level picture of the Islamic world as it is being changed by America's war on terror is painted in an examination of the pitfalls of trying to revamp a misunderstood civilization that often sees the worst in America's intentions. Reprint.

Argues that while political and athletic role models have let us down, rock and roll has provided enduring role models for men and women. From Elvis Presley to Tina Turner to Bruce Springsteen and Courtney Love, this book makes a case that rock and roll has been a positive influence in people's lives, laying out gender-defying role models.

In his unique, funny, and haunting reports from "Elsewhere," Hank Stuever records the odd and touching realities of modern life in everyday places. Elsewhere might be revealed in the tract-house adventures of a home-décor reality show, at a discount funeral home in a strip mall, or in the story of an armed man named Honey Bear in the hunt for his beloved but now missing sleeper sofa which he left in a store unit. Off Ramp shows us America through the humorous gaze of Hank Stuever, who finds beauty in the midst of the most unlikely and invisible lives and places.

Stephen Elliott does not know what to think of American voters, this year's desperate and heated run for presidency, or the legitimacy of the political system. He doesn't know whether to love John Kerry or try to love Howard Dean or try, simply, to get excited about Politics. But what he does know is that most Americans are as confused, taxed and broken-hearted as he is. Looking Forward To It is the chronicle of one ordinary fellow's skeptical -- and hilarious -- journey through the election process. It is on the campaign trail that he will meet washed-out campaign managers, idealistic publicists, corrupt journalists, world-weary auditorium janitors, recovering drug addicts, and, of course, politicians. His report documents a journey into the center of "the thing", our country, where Americans high and low come together to participate in the most profound gesture of democracy: the election.

"I grew up on a farm,"--the year is l974, the place Sweetriver College, and Beatrice Wolfe is telling the story of her life to the glamorous young professor Philippa Sayres. So begins the achingly funny, often heartbreaking story of Beatrice's quest to escape the gothic eccentricity of her family and find an authentic identity of her own.Married in a misbegotten passion, her parents are totally unsuited to farming or to any kind of business. When they finally lose their "farm," Bea's family spirals out of control. Still under Philippa's spell, Bea moves to the city of Hartford and joins a lesbian community, and becomes so committed to her new gay identity that she barely notices she's falling in love with a man--a man just risen from the ashes of addiction, whose re-creation of himself she threatens to undo.