Magic and mayhem

A fantasy war, a fictional apocalypse and murder most foul, both real and imagined.

IN the final volume of the epic Riftwar cycle, the dragons are calling out for the world to be saved. The imminent civil war has finally happened and the Kingdom of Isles is being torn apart. With an empty throne, the enemies are converging and Hal, who is now Duke of Crydee, must fight them off until a king can be anointed by the Congress of Lords.

Alliances need to be formed so that all lives can be saved. Elves, men, ancient heroes and dragons must work together and be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. KARINA meets many men in the course of her job waiting tables at a bar in New York. The moment she sets eyes on James, though, she knows he’s different. He might be a wealthy businessman like the others, but he’s far from typical.

Soon, Karina finds herself pushed to the boundaries of pleasure and she is beginning to discover a wild side that she never knew she had. Will she be willing to break all rules to satisfy the craving James has awoken within her? FIRST, deafening static envelopes the world; then the words, “My children, do not be afraid”, heard by many on the planet; followed by inexplicable illness, death, despair and destruction on a global scale. Is the apocalypse at hand? What would you do? Amidst confusion and fear, some turn to God. Others recoil in response to what they believe can only be an act of terrorism.

James Smythe feeds the reader the accounts of 26 individuals in this world turned upside down. In a single hour, the world is divided into those who heard the message and those who hadn’t. BRITISH hypnotist Paul McKenna offers yet another self-help book, this time on a surgery-free weight loss system. While the gastric band procedure surgically reduces the stomach’s available space, McKenna claims that he can teach readers how to create a “hypnotic gastric band”. Through hypnosis, the book aims to teach the body how to behave as if stomach space has actually been reduced, thereby allowing people to eat less. The book comes with a hypnosis CD and instructional DVD. THESE are the memoirs of young American Amanda Knox whose 2007 study trip to Italy turned into a four-year nightmare when she was accused of murdering fellow English student Meredith Kercher. Drawing from journals she kept and letters she wrote at the time, Knox, now 26, recounts her experiences of Italian prisons and court rooms and being at the centre of an international media circus. Knox was convicted in 2009, served four years in jail before her sentence was overturned in 2011 and she returned to the United States; however, the case was re-opened in Italy in September and is currently ongoing. ORDAINED priest and member of the Muslim Catholic Alliance of New York George Dardess teams up with Marvin Mich, a director of social policy at the US Catholic Family Center, to provide a timely interpretation of the common ground shared by Christians and Muslims in today’s multi-cultural world. The book finds inspiration in St Francis’ peaceful encounter with the Sultan of Egypt during the Fifth Crusade in the 13th century, sowing clarity and understanding in place of the suspicion and prejudice so often found in public debate. The book also provides practical suggestions on how to move believers from different faiths from merely talking to each other to working together for the common good. TRUTH is stranger than fiction they say, and this is something Detective Inspector Logan McRae learns when a body is discovered, chained to a stake and burned to a crisp. Then another body turns up, also killed bizarrely – and the strangest thing is that these murders seem to have been plucked straight from the plot of a bestselling novel about witches. And then, there are the little knots of bones Logan keeps finding outside his home, a crime boss making life awkward for him, and a missing teenager to boot. Is any or all of this connected to the murders? THE latest book starring Lincoln Rhymes has the quadriplegic forensic expert travelling in his high-tech wheelchair to the Bahamas to solve what appears to be a classic contract killing done by a sniper shot from a near-impossible distance. Lincoln and his team not only get no help from the local Bahamian police, but also have to deal with thugs out to kill them.

But with evidence that the order for the murder may have come from the highest levels of the US government, Lincoln and his partner, the redoubtable Amelia Sachs, are not about to give up on this case. – Complied by Natalie Heng and Dinesh Kumar Maganathan