Reader’s Digest Select Editions, Volume 296, 2008 #2: Bad Blood / The Long Walk Home / The Blue Zone / Iris and Ruby Ex Libris

Reader’s Digest paperback in Very Good (VG) condition. Please see our guide to book conditions for more details.

Includes four books in one convenient paperback! 

Bad Blood by Linda Fairstein:

“Bad Blood” finds Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper deeply involved in a complicated, high-profile homicide case. Defendant Brendan Quillian, a prominent young businessman, is charged with the brutal strangulation of his beautiful young wife, Amanda. His conviction is not a certainty: Quillian was conveniently out of town on the day of the killing, and he has hired a formidable defense attorney who seems one step ahead of Cooper as the trial opens. But with the help of detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, she is confident she can prove Quillian paid a hit man to commit the crime.Halfway through the trial, a major catastrophe alters the course of Alex’s case. A cataclysmic ex-plosion rips through New York City’s Water Tunnel #3, a spectacular feat of modern engineering that will be completed years in the future. Carved through bedrock six hundred feet underground, the tunnel will replace a vital artery in the city’s rapidly deteriorating water supply system. Was the blast caused by terrorism? Political retribution? Or was it merely an accident? Cooper is quickly drawn into the trag-edy when she discovers a strange connection linking Brendan Quillian to the tunnel workers killed in the explosion.

At the same time, Alex meets a mysterious, handsome stranger. Should she get to know him better? Before the answer is clear, she is pulled back into the case, which is becoming more dangerous by the hour. She and Chapman descend deep into the earth to penetrate the subterranean universe of the sandhogs, as the brotherhood of tunnel workers are colorfully known. Their probe soon leads to another murder victim, whose blood may hold the key to Cooper’s mesmerizingly complex case. One closelyheld secret reveals another, and soon Alex discovers that only by unraveling ancient rivalries among sandhog families will she be able to solve the murder of Amanda Quillian — and save her own life as well.

A riveting tale of up-to-the-minute urban intrigue, “Bad Blood” is rich with New York City lore and fascinating legal insights that only Fairstein, Manhattan’s former sex crimes prosecutor, can deliver. Told in her signature authentic style, “Bad Blood” is packed with the same twists and turns that made her last novel, “Death Dance,” a runaway bestseller and that never fail to thrill her legions of devoted readers.

The Long Walk Home by Will North:

When forty-three-year-old Fiona Edwards first sees the lanky backpacker striding up the lane toward her award-winning farmhouse bed-and-breakfast in the remote mountains of North Wales, she’s puzzled. She’s used to unexpected strangers, but few arrive on foot. The man to whom she opens her door is
middle-aged, unshaven, sweat-soaked . . . and arrestingly handsome. What neither of them knows at that moment is that their lives are about to change forever.

American Alec Hudson has carried the ashes—and the memory—of his late ex-wife, Gwynne, all the way from London’s Heathrow Airport, honoring her request that he scatter them atop a mountain they had climbed together years before—the same brooding peak whose jagged cliffs rise to the sky from the back pastures of Fiona’s farm. But the weather doesn’t cooperate, and as Fiona and Alec wait for it to clear, they are drawn together by mutual loss, longing, and the miracle of love at midlife.

On the day he finally reaches the summit, Alec is caught in a vicious hailstorm. As he struggles to descend, he stumbles upon the body of a man he recognizes from a photograph at the farm: it is Fiona’s ailing and reclusive husband, David, and he is close to death.

Will North’s debut novel, The Long Walk Home, is a story about grief and hope, about love and loss, and about two people struggling with the agonizing complexities of fidelity—to a spouse, to a moral code, to each other, and to a passion neither thought would ever appear again. By turns lyrical and gripping, set amid a landscape of breathtaking beauty and unpredictable danger, this is a story you will not soon forget.

The Blue Zone by Andrew Gross:

Kate Raab’s life seems almost perfect: her boyfriend, her job, her family . . . until her father runs into trouble with the law. His only recourse is to testify against his former accomplices in exchange for his family’s placement in the Witness Protection Program. But one of them gets cold feet. In a flash, everything Kate can count on is gone.

Now, a year later, her worst fears have happened: Her father has disappeared—into what the WITSEC agency calls “the blue zone”—and someone close to him is found brutally murdered. With her family under surveillance, the FBI untrustworthy, and her father’s menacing “friends” circling with increasing intensity, Kate sets off to find her father—and uncover the secrets someone will kill to keep buried.

Iris and Ruby by Rosie Thomas:

Stifling, Iris Black’s Cairo house is disturbed by unexpected arrival of troubled, willful granddaughter Ruby from England. Although she hasn’t seen Iris for many years, they form an unlikely bond. Ruby helps Iris document deteriorating memories of glittering, cosmopolitan Cairo. WW2 one true love, enigmatic Captain Xan Molyneux, was lost to war. Iris’ early devastation shaped daughter, granddaughter, and leads them into terrible danger in the Egyptian desert.