Heartbreaker by Julie Garwood (English) Mass Market Paperback Book

Description: Heartbreaker by Julie Garwood Bless me father, for I will sin....In the still shadows of the confessional, a madman tauntingly reveals his plan for a murder he is going to commit, pulling Father Thomas Madden into a twisted game by disclosing his next intended victim: Tom's sister, Laurant. In a frantic race to protect her, Tom calls upon his best friend, elite FBI agent Nick Buchanan, to track the predator who is closing in on Laurant. Now, as an electrifying attraction grows between Laurant and Nick, so does the danger — and one false move will cost both of them everything that matters.Let New York Times bestselling author Julie Garwood take you on a thrilling excursion into the soaring heights — and the darkest impulses — of the human heart. FORMAT Mass Market Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Bless me father, for I will sin....In the still shadows of the confessional, a madman tauntingly reveals his plan for a murder he is going to commit, pulling Father Thomas Madden into a twisted game by disclosing his next intended victim: Tom's sister, Laurant. In a frantic race to protect her, Tom calls upon his best friend, elite FBI agent Nick Buchanan, to track the predator who is closing in on Laurant. Now, as an electrifying attraction grows between Laurant and Nick, so does the danger — and one false move will cost both of them everything that matters.Let "New York Times" bestselling author Julie Garwood take you on a thrilling excursion into the soaring heights — and the darkest impulses — of the human heart. Author Biography With tens of millions of books in print and numerous"New York Times" bestsellers, Julie Garwood has clearly earned a position among Americas favorite fiction writers. Her reputation as a masterful storyteller is solidly founded in her ability to deliver stories with appealing characters, powerful emotions, and surprising plot twists. Readers claim that its the humor as well as the poignancy of her novels that keep them laughing, crying and thoroughly entertained.? Ms. Garwood lives in Leawood, Kansas and is currently working on her next novel. When her schedule allows time away from family a Review USA Today Heartbreaker dances between suspense and romance. The Kansas City Star Will leave your heart pounding....The suspense builds nonstop. The Kansas City Star Just when it looks like the ride is over, the action ratchets up again and doesnt let up until the final shot has been fired. The Anniston Star (AL) Engrossing....addictive...by turns explosive and unpredictable....You cheer for the good guys and are glad when the bad guys get caught....[Garwood] has found a niche for herself in contemporary romantic fiction. San Antonio Express-News Frightening....keeps you guessing until the end. Publishers Weekly In her first contemporary suspense thriller, Garwood explodes out of the narrative gate.... Port St. Lucie News (Stuart, FL) A heart-stopping romantic suspense story. New York Post Heartbreaker moves along at a racehorse pace, its plot swerving and darting with sudden turns and jolts....Garwoods characters are well drawn. Kirkus Reviews Moves rapidly to a shattering climax....the frank sensuality of the love scenes is sure to please. BookPage Garwood employs all the senses, creating vivid characterizations and unexpected twists and turns. Review Quote USA TodayHeartbreakerdances between suspense and romance. Excerpt from Book Chapter One It was hotter than hell inside the confessional. A thick black curtain, dusty with age and neglect, covered the narrow opening from the ceiling of the box to the scarred hardwood floor, blocking out both the daylight and the air. It was like being inside a coffin someone had absentmindedly left propped up against the wall, and Father Thomas Madden thanked God he wasnt claustrophobic. He was rapidly becoming miserable though. The air was heavy and ripe with mildew, making his breathing as labored as when he was back at Penn State running that last yard to the goalposts with the football tucked neatly in his arm. He hadnt minded the pain in his lungs then, and he certainly didnt mind it now. It was all simply part of the job. The old priests would tell him to offer his discomfort up to God for the poor souls in purgatory. Tom didnt see any harm in doing that, even though he wondered how his own misery was going to relieve anyone elses. He shifted position on the hard oak chair, fidgeting like a choirboy at Sunday practice. He could feel the sweat dripping down the sides of his face and neck into his cassock. The long black robe was soaked through with perspiration, and he sincerely doubted he smelled at all like the hint of Irish Spring soap hed used in the shower this morning. The temperature outside hovered between ninety-four and ninety-five in the shade of the rectory porch where the thermostat was nailed to the whitewashed stone wall. The humidity made the heat so oppressive, those unfortunate souls who were forced to leave their air-conditioned homes and venture outside did so with a slow shuffle and a quick temper. It was a lousy day for the compressor to bite the dust. There were windows in the church, of course, but the ones that could have been opened had been sealed shut long ago in a futile attempt to keep vandals out. The two others were high up in the gold, domed ceiling. They were stained glass depictions of the archangels Gabriel and Michael holding gleaming swords in their fists. Gabriel was looking up toward heaven, a beatified expression on his face, while Michael scowled at the snakes he held pinned down at his bare feet. The colored windows were considered priceless, prayer-inspiring works of art by the congregation, but they were useless in combating the heat. They had been added for decoration, not ventilation. Tom was a big, strapping man with a seventeen-and-a-half-inch neck left over from his glory days, but he was cursed with baby sensitive skin. The heat was giving him a prickly rash. He hiked the cassock up to his thighs, revealing the yellow and black happy-face boxer shorts his sister, Laurant, had given him, kicked off his paint-splattered Wal-Mart rubber thongs, and popped a piece of Dubble Bubble into his mouth. An act of kindness had landed him in the sweatbox. While waiting for the test results that would determine if he needed another round of chemotherapy at Kansas University Medical Center, he was a guest of Monsignor McKindry, pastor of Our Lady of Mercy Church. The parish was located in the forgotten sector of Kansas City, several hundred miles south of Holy Oaks, Iowa, where Tom was stationed. The neighborhood had been officially designated by a former mayors task force as the gang zone. Monsignor always took Saturday afternoon confession, but because of the blistering heat, his advanced age, the broken air conditioner, and a conflict in his schedule -- the pastor was busy preparing for his reunion with two friends from his seminary days at Assumption Abbey -- Tom had volunteered for the duty. He had assumed hed sit face-to-face with his penitent in a room with a couple of windows open for fresh air. McKindry, however, bowed to the preferences of his faithful parishioners, who stubbornly clung to the old-fashioned way of hearing confessions, a fact Tom learned only after hed offered his services, and Lewis, the parish handyman, had directed him to the oven he would sit in for the next ninety minutes. In appreciation Monsignor had loaned him a thoroughly inadequate, battery-operated fan that one of his flock had put in the collection basket. The thing was no bigger than the size of a mans hand. Tom adjusted the angle of the fan so that the air would blow directly on his face, leaned back against the wall, and began to read the Holy Oaks Gazette hed brought along to Kansas City with him. He turned to the society page on the back first, because he got such a kick out of it. He glanced over the usual club news and the smattering of announcements -- two births, three engagements, and a wedding -- and then he found his favorite column, called "About Town." The headline was always the same: the bingo game. The number of people who attended the community center bingo night was reported along with the names of the winners of the twenty-five-dollar jackpots. Interviews with the lucky recipients followed, telling what each of them planned to do with his or her windfall. And there was always a comment from Rabbi David Spears, who organized the weekly event, about what a good time everyone had. Tom was suspicious that the society editor, Lorna Hamburg, secretly had a crush on Rabbi Dave, a widower, and that was why the bingo game was so prominently featured in the paper. The rabbi said the same thing every week, and Tom invariably ribbed him about that when they played golf together on Wednesday afternoons. Since Dave usually beat the socks off him, he didnt mind the teasing, but he did accuse Tom of trying to divert attention from his appalling game. The rest of the column was dedicated to letting everyone in town know who was entertaining company and what they were feeding them. If the news that week was hard to come by, Lorna filled in the space with popular recipes. There werent any secrets in Holy Oaks. The front page was full of news about the proposed town square development and the upcoming one-hundred-year celebration at Assumption Abbey. And there was a nice mention about his sister helping out at the abbey. The reporter called her a tireless and cheerful volunteer and went into some detail describing all the projects she had taken on. Not only was she going to organize all the clutter in the attic for a garage sale, but she was also going to transfer all the information from the old dusty files onto the newly donated computer, and when she had a few minutes to spare, she would be translating the French journals of Father Henri VanKirk, a priest who had died recently. Tom chuckled to himself as he finished reading the glowing testimonial to his sister. Laurant hadnt actually volunteered for any of the jobs. She just happened to be walking past the abbot at the moment he came up with the ideas, and gracious to a fault, she hadnt refused. By the time Tom finished reading the rest of the Gazette, his soaked collar was sticking to his neck. He put the paper on the seat next to him, mopped his brow again, and contemplated closing shop fifteen minutes early. He gave up the idea almost as soon as it entered his mind. He knew that if he left the confessional early, hed catch hell from Monsignor, and after the hard day of manual labor hed put in, he simply wasnt up to a lecture. On the first Wednesday of every third month -- Ash Wednesday he silently called it -- Tom moved in with Monsignor McKindry, an old, broken-nosed, crackled-skinned Irishman who never missed an opportunity to get as much physical labor as he could possibly squeeze out of his houseguest in seven days. McKindry was crusty and gruff, but he had a heart of gold and a compassionate nature that wasnt compromised by sentimentality. He firmly believed that idle hands were the devils workshop, especially when the rectory was in dire need of a fresh coat of paint. Hard work, he pontificated, would cure anything, even cancer. Some days Tom had a hard time remembering why he liked the monsignor so much or felt a kinship with him. Maybe it was because they both had a bit of Irish in them. Or maybe it was because the old mans philosophy, that only a fool cried over spilled milk, had sustained him through more hardships than Job. Toms battle was childs play compared to McKindrys life. He would do whatever he could to help lighten McKindrys burdens. Monsignor was looking forward to visiting with his old friends again. One of them was Abbot James Rockhill, Toms superior at Assumption Abbey, and the other, Vincent Moreno, was a priest Tom had never met. Neither Rockhill nor Moreno would be staying at Mercy house with McKindry and Tom, for they much preferred the luxuries provided by the staff at Holy Trinity parish, luxuries like hot water that lasted longer than five minutes and central air-conditioning. Trinity was located in the heart of a bedroom community on the other side of the state line separating Missouri from Kansas. McKindry jokingly referred to it as "Our Lady of the Lexus," and from the number of designer cars parked in the churchs lot on Sunday mornings, the label was right on the mark. Most of the parishioners at Mercy didnt own cars. They walked to church. Toms stomach began to rumble. He was hot and sticky and thirsty. He needed another shower, and he wanted a cold Bud Light. There hadnt been a single taker in all the while hed been sitting there roasting like a turkey. He didnt think anyone else was even inside the church now, except maybe Lewis, who liked to hide in the cloakroom behind the vestibule and sneak sips of rot whiskey from the bottle in his toolbox. Tom checked his watch, saw he only had a couple of minutes left, and decided hed had enough. He switched off the light above the conf Details ISBN0671034006 Author Julie Garwood Short Title HEARTBREAKER Pages 544 Publisher Pocket Books Language English ISBN-10 0671034006 ISBN-13 9780671034009 Media Book Format Mass Market Paperback DEWEY FIC Year 2001 Publication Date 2001-09-30 Imprint Simon & Schuster Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States Alternative 9780792723943 Residence Leawood, KS, US Series Buchanan-Renard DOI 10.1604/9780671034009 Audience General/Trade AU Release Date 2001-10-09 UK Release Date 2001-09-01 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:4209979;

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