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Critically acclaimed for his international bestseller, A Case of Curiosities, Allen Kurzweil has been called one of today's most gifted new voices in fiction. Now he returns with The Grand Complication -- a modern-day tale of literary intrigue, deviant passions, and delicious secrets. Behind the majestic walls of a Manhattan town house, a stylish young reference librarian of arcane interests unravels an 18th-century mystery -- who stole Marie Antoinette's watch. The book is a grand and complicated "timepiece," told with a devilish sense of fun.

An old couple knelt side by side in an otherwise empty small - town church - their heads resting on their hands in a picture of devotion. Both had small, tiny bullet holes in the backs of their skulls. To local police their slaying looks like a one-off act of retribution. At the same time, in Minneapolis, teams of detectives are scrambling to stop a sickeningly inventive serial killer striking again in a city paralysed by fear.

It’s midsummer in Sweden—when the light lingers through dawn and a long, isolating winter finally comes to an end. In this magical time, a brutal killer has chosen to strike. A female priest—who made enemies and acolytes in equal number—has been found hanging in her church. And a big-city lawyer quite acquainted with death enters the scene as police and parishioners try to pick up the pieces....Not long ago, attorney Rebecka Martinsson had to kill three men in order to stop an eerily similar murder spree—one that also involved a priest.

The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective. His tools are the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, the empirical insights of Roger Bacon—all sharpened to a glistening edge by wry humor and a ferocious curiosity.

When a car accident leaves Casey Marshall in a comatose state, unable to see or communicate, she discovers that her friends aren't the people she thought them to be and that her accident might not have been an accident after all.

Police investigating the murder of a middle-aged office worker discover e-mail correspondence on the victim's computer that indicates he had been a regular participant in an Internet chat room, as the "father" in a fantasy "family." Meanwhile, a female detective is assigned to protect the dead man's real-life daughter who complains of being stalked. As the real daughter confronts her father's alternate life, we are pulled into a psychological drama that pits reality and illusion against each other in astonishing ways.