Books about Requiem from Amazon.com

Robert Crais (Free Fall, Monkey's Raincoat) returns with his eighth Elvis Cole mystery, L.A. Requiem, a breakneck caper that leaves the wise-cracking detective second-guessing himself Cole's partner, the tight-lipped, charm-free Joe Pike, gets a call from his friend Frank "Tortilla" Garcia. Not only is Garcia a wealthy businessman, he's a political heavyweight and father of Karen, Joe's ex. Frank sends the gumshoe duo out to find his girl, but the boys are beaten to the punch by the men in blue: Karen is found in a park with a bullet in her brain. The two stay on the case, but when another murder points to Pike as a suspect, things take a turn for the worse. The boys on the force are all too willing to put Pike away--he has a checkered past. When Cole attempts to save Pike, he finds a lot more than he bargained for.

Crais's knack for snappy dialogue and clean-cut scenes bespeak his former days as a writer for the award-winning Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law: "Krantz's mouth split into a reptilian smile, and I wondered what was playing out here. He said, 'I want this man questioned, Lieutenant. If Pike here knows the vic, maybe he knows how she got like this." Pike said, 'It won't happen, pants.' Krantz's face went deep red, and an ugly web of veins pulsed in his forehead. I moved close to Pike. 'Is there something happening here that I should know about?'".
Price: $3.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Arthur Miller's 1949 Death of a Salesman has sold 11 million copies, and Willy Loman didn't make all those sales on a smile and a shoeshine This play is the genuine article--it's got the goods on the human condition, all packed into a day in the life of one self-deluded, self-promoting, self-defeating soul. It's a sturdy bridge between kitchen-sink realism and spectral abstraction, the facts of particular hard times and universal themes. As Christopher Bigsby's mildly interesting afterword in this 50th-anniversary edition points out (as does Miller in his memoir, Timebends), Willy is closely based on the playwright's sad, absurd salesman uncle, Manny. But of course Miller made Manny into Everyman, and gave him the name of the crime commissioner Lohmann in Fritz Lang's angst-ridden 1932 Nazi parable, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.

The tragedy of Loman the all-American dreamer and loser works eternally, on the page as on the stage. A lot of plays made history around 1949, but none have stepped out of history into the classic canon as Salesman has. Great as it was, Tennessee Williams's work can't be revived as vividly as this play still is, all over the world. (This edition has edifying pictures of Lee J. Cobb's 1949 and Brian Dennehy's 1999 performances.) It connects Aristotle, The Great Gatsby, On the Waterfront, David Mamet, and the archetypal American movie antihero. It even transcends its author's tragic flaw of pious preachiness (which undoes his snoozy The Crucible, unfortunately his most-produced play).

No doubt you've seen Willy Loman's story at least once. It's still worth reading. --Tim Appelo.
Price: $4.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Suppose you had to kill three people to save your best friend’s life? For John Rain, it should be easy: three fast hits and disappear But what if you figured your friend is probably going to die anyway? What if you started to think the whole thing was a setup? And what if you were afraid three was just the beginning? John Rain’s going to give it a shot..
Price: $3.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Now published in one paperback volume, these three mysteries are exciting and insightful looks at life inside Nazi Germany -- richer and more readable than most histories of the period. We first meet ex-policeman Bernie Gunther in 1936, in March Violets (a term of derision which original Nazis used to describe late converts.) The Olympic Games are about to start; some of Bernie's Jewish friends are beginning to realize that they should have left while they could; and Gunther himself has been hired to look into two murders that reach high into the Nazi Party. In The Pale Criminal, it's 1938, and Gunther has been blackmailed into rejoining the police by Heydrich himself. And in A German Requiem, the saddest and most disturbing of the three books, it's 1947 as Gunther stumbles across a nightmare landscape that conceals even more death than he imagines. (For a review of Kerr's latest novel, The Grid, see our Thrillers section.).
Price: $9.79 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In the tragicomic mode of his best-selling Louisiana Power & Light, a hilarious and tenderhearted novel about a son's attempts to save his family.

John Dufresne takes us to Requiem, Mass., heart of the Commonwealth, where Johnny's mom, Frances, is driving in the breakdown lane once again. She thinks Johnny and his little sister Audrey have been replaced by aliens; she's sure of it, and she's pretty certain that she herself is already dead, or she wouldn't need to cover the stink of her rotting flesh with Jean Naté Après Bain. Dad, truck driver and pathological liar, is down South somewhere living his secret life. And Audrey, when she's not walking her cat Deluxe in a baby stroller, spends her time locked in a closet telling herself stories. Johnny, meanwhile, is hell-bent on saving the family from itself.

In his "truly original voice" (Miami Herald) and with the "miraculous beauty of his tale-telling" (New York Times Book Review), Dufresne brings his unparalleled eye for the tragic and the absurd to the dysfunctions and joys of family in this powerful new novel..
Price: $12.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

.
Price: $5.40 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Welcome to the Danse Macabre

Since time immemorial, the Kindred -- vampires -- have stalked their prey, unseen by the mortal masses. Their world is a xenophobic nightmare, populated by tyrannical despots, wildeyed heretics, bloodthirsty rogues and scheming manipulators, all unified by the mysterious curse of vampirism. And you would join them? You would live forever? To play the lusts of mortals like a violinist plays the strings? Then beware, the price is steep to enter the neofeudal hell that the Damned have wrought.

Welcome to Undeath

Join the revival of the Storytelling tradition. Vampire: The Requiem invites you to tell your own stories set within the world of the Kindred. This book includes rules for using vampires in World of Darkness® chronicles, covering everything from the five clans to covenants to Disciplines, bloodlines, storytelling advice and a complete spread of game systems governing the undead. Hardcover. Requires the World of Darkness rulebook for play..
Price: $17.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

For untold years Norrin Radd has surfed the galaxy, exploring the darkness between stars, witnessing the rise and fall of vast civilizations. Now his ride is about to come to an end. It starts with a small spot - a blemish that will spread until he is no more. Until then, the Silver Surfer would undertake his final voyage - to the one destination that has always eluded him. His journey starts where it began. Guest-starring the Fantastic Four! Collects Silver Surfer: Requiem #1-4..
Price: $7.92 [Notify me when price goes down.]