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Book First Chapters

Because we couldn't show you the endings, we're bringing you the beginnings. Check back each week for new first chapters.

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Excerpt: 'Fire in the Hole'

In Leonard's first original e-book, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (featured in "Pronto" and "Riding the Rap") returns to the Eastern Kentucky coal-mining country of his youth. When Boyd Crowder, a mail-order-ordained minister who doesn't believe in paying his income taxes, decides to blow up the IRS building in Cincinnati, Givens is asked by the local marshal to intervene. This sets up an inevitable confrontation between two men on opposite sides of the law who still have a lingering respect for each other.

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Excerpt: 'A Painted House'

Excerpt: 'A Painted House'

John Grisham's new novel is a story inspired by his own childhood in rural Arkansas. The narrator is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents in a little house that's never been painted. The Chandlers farm eighty acres that they rent, not own, and when the cotton is ready they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it.

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Excerpt: 'Kingdom of Shadows'

Excerpt: 'Kingdom of Shadows'

In spymaster Alan Furst's thriller, Hungarian aristocrat Nicholas Morath -- a hugely charismatic hero -- becomes embroiled in a daring and perilous effort to halt the Nazi war machine in eastern Europe.

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Excerpt: 'Why Not Me?'

By Al Franken Delacorte Press Fiction 289 pages

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Excerpt: 'A Question of Intent'

Excerpt: 'A Question of Intent'

In this book, David Kessler tells for the first time the thrilling detective story of how the underdog FDA -- while safeguarding the nation's food, drugs, and blood supply -- finally decided to take on the tobacco industry and how it won.

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Excerpt: 'Bump and Run'

Excerpt: 'Bump and Run'

As the go-to guy in Las Vegas, Jack Molloy thought he knew it all, but that was before he inherited half of the New York Hawks and found out that, next to the denizens of the country of Football, he was just a babe in the woods.

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Excerpt: 'A Blessing Over Ashes'

Excerpt: 'A Blessing Over Ashes'

Adam Fifield recaptures the snowy night when he, at the age of eleven, along with his mother, father, and younger brother, waited to welcome 15-year-old Soeuth into the family. The boy shuffled in, short and scrawny, a baseball cap shading his downcast eyes. He spoke not a word, yet a silent terror hovered around him.

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Excerpt: 'Flint'

Excerpt: 'Flint'

An exceptionally talented undercover policewoman, Grace Flint nearly dies in a botched sting operation. Months later, physically healed but psychologically scarred, she gets an unexpected clue about her attacker, and disappears on a mission of revenge -- unaware that she is about to pull the first string that will unravel a vastly complex web of international treachery, extortion, and murder.

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Excerpt: 'Singing My Him Song'

Excerpt: 'Singing My Him Song'

In "Singing My Him Song," Malachy McCourt tells us how he went from living the headlong and heedless life of a world-class drunk to becoming a sober, loving father and grandfather, still happily married after thirty-five years. We meet the woman who stood by his side all those years, watch as they build a family together, and listen to McCourt pursues a career of surprising successes and comic missteps.

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