Can a dark dragon, terror of the ancient world, learn to speak the words of men?

Sixteen year-old Kara Nightingale’s ordinary life is suddenly turned upside-down when she dies in a freak accident, and she wakes up in a strange new world with a new career—as a rookie for the Guardian Angel Legion. Kara hurtles towards dangerous missions with the help of her Petty Officer and friend, David. But when she discovers a Mark on her leg, the Legion accuses her of being a spy.

From Booklist

Starred Review As in her previous two novels, Dream of the Blue Room (2003) and the best-selling Year of Fog (2007), Richmond turns a family crisis into heartbreaking and compelling reading. Ellie Enderlin has never recovered from the unsolved murder of her sister, Lila, a Stanford math prodigy, some 20 years earlier. The day her sister went missing has become “the touchstone from which all other events unfurled.” Compounding the tragedy is the fact that her English professor, the person to whom she confided some of her most intimate feelings about her shy, private sister, has turned the tragedy into a best-selling true-crime book. To have those moments turned into fodder for the public’s voyeuristic appetite has felt like another violation. When Ellie, a world traveler and coffee buyer, meets up unexpectedly with the brilliant mathematician implicated in her sister’s murder, she sees it as a way to wrest back control of her own narrative and solve the crime. Richmond gracefully weaves in fascinating background material on the coffee culture and the field of mathematics as she thoughtfully explores family dynamics, the ripple effects of tragedy, and the importance of the stories we tell. Combine all that with perfect pacing and depth of insight, and you have a thoroughly riveting literary thriller. --Joanne Wilkinson

Review

“Michelle Richmond’s encore to The Year of Fog is an equally addictive read.”—*Denver Post

“Richmond sets out to create not a straight-up thriller, but a novel that explores love, family, work, guilt and the responsibility of the writer to his or her subject, all within the framework of a murder mystery.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Michelle Richmond never strikes a false note in No One You Know.... It's an intelligent, emotionally convincing tale about a family tragedy and the process of storytelling.”—Boston Globe*

“As complex and beautiful as a mathematical proof, this gripping, thought-provoking novel will keep you thinking long after the last page has been turned.”—Family Circle

"Beautifully written"—*Seattle Times

“Gripping”—People

"Heartrending and immediately readable"—San Francisco Examiner*

“Another enjoyable blend of mystery and domestic fiction…. Quietly captivating.”—Publishers Weekly

“Richmond has a knack for creating accessible, grippingly authentic characters….No One You Know a tautly drawn tale.”—*East Bay Express

“Richmond turns a family crisis into heartbreaking and compelling reading…. Riveting.” —Booklist*, starred review

“Intelligent, emotionally convincing…Michelle Richmond never strikes a false note in No One You Know.”—*Boston Globe

“Richmond’s fiction is made rich by the relationships between her characters and the carefully researched nuances of their lives.”—Birmingham *magazine

From the Hardcover edition.

"The Spaceman's Lament" concerned a man who wound up where he wasn't going ... but the men on Space Station One knew they weren't going anywhere. Until Confusion set in....

From Publishers Weekly

In this spare page-turner, Richmond (Dream of the Blue Room) draws complex tensions from a the set setup of a child gone missing. Photographer Abby Mason stops on San Francisco's Ocean Beach with her fiancé Jake's six-year-old daughter, Emma, to photograph a seal pup; by the time Abby looks up, Emma has disappeared. Abby, who narrates, flashes back to her growing relationship with high school teacherJake, and sketches its transformation over the course of the search. Emma's mother, Lisbeth (who abandoned the family three years earlier), wants back into Jake's life—even as he is giving up hope on finding Emma. Abby delves into the bereft missing children subculture and into the vagaries of memory. A hypnotist helps Abby unearth promising details of that singular last day with Emma, but the information requires major follow-through from Abby. The book's twist on missing child stories is wholly effective. Richmond develops the principle characters, and Abby's dysfunctional parents make for sharply drawn secondaries, as do local surfers. The book is beautifully paced—one feels Abby's clarity of purpose from the first page. The sure-handed denouement reflects the focus and restraint that Richmond brings to bear throughout. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Richmond's sophomore effort (after Dream of the Blue Room, 2003) traces a traumatic year in the life of photographer Abby Mason after she loses her fiance's six-year-old daughter. The moment Abby stopped to photograph a dead baby seal while walking on a fog-bound beach in San Francisco is one she will replay in her head a thousand times. That's the last time she saw Emma, who was racing ahead, eager to collect sand dollars. Panic and fear soon give way to sheer exhaustion and emotional shutdown as Abby and Emma's dad, Jake, immerse themselves in the desperate search for the missing first-grader. As the months tick by, Jake becomes convinced that Emma drowned, while Abby is sure that Emma was kidnapped. The trauma and the guilt wreak havoc with their relationship and with their struggle to regain a sense of normalcy. Richmond gracefully explores the nature of memory and perception in key passages that never slow the suspense of the search. Closely echoing Jacquelyn Mitchard's best-selling Deep End of the Ocean (1996), this is a page-turner with a philosophical bent. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

"Die Möwe Jonathan": Ein kleines klassisches Buch-Kunstwerk wie einst "Der kleine Prinz" von Saint-Exupéry oder Paul Gallicos "Schneegans". Es erzählt die Geschichte einer Möwe, die anders ist als ihre Artgenossen. Sie glaubt an die Herrlichkeit des Fliegens als Teil der großen Freiheit der Möwen. Jonathan fragt sich immer wieder, warum es zu den schwierigsten Dingen auf der Weit gehört, einen Vogel davon zu überzeugen, daß er frei ist und daß er diese Freiheit auch selbst erproben kann und wird schließlich zum Lehrer und Vorbild für Gleichgesinnte. Die Parallelen zu den Außenseitern der menschlichen Gesellschaft lassen diese Geschichte zu einer Parabel werden. Dieses Buch ist geschrieben für Menschen, die verstehen, daß es mehr gibt als den greifbaren Erfolg-, Menschen, die Befriedigung finden in einer Sache, von der sie überzeugt sind, auch wenn sie sich damit gegen die Welt stellen; Menschen, die frei sind für das Abenteuer der Persönlichkeit. "Zwei Dinge erreicht dies Buch: - Es gibt mir Flügel, es macht mich jung! Für beides bin ich tief dankbar." Ray Bradbury "Die Geschichte von der eigenwilligen Möwe, die nach Vollkommenheit strebt, könnte unter die zehn Bücher fallen, die man bekanntermaßen auf eine einsame Insel mitnehmen möchte."

Die Handlung ist geheimnisvoll und abenteuerlich: Zwei zigeunernde Kunstflieger, die einander in einem Maisfeld im amerikanischen Mittelwesten begegnen, erleben einen Sommer in der Freiheit ihrer Illusionen. Was wäre, hatte sich Richard Bach zuvor gefragt, wenn ich jemandem begegnete, der seiner Zeit weit voraus ist, der über die Illusionen der Welt gebieten könnte, weil er die Wirklichkeit hinter ihnen erkannt hat? Die Antwort findet der Leser in dem faszinierenden Wechselspiel zwischen den beiden Hauptfiguren, dem Ich-Erzähler, einem Mann namens Richard, und einem Messias, den eine aufgebrachte Menge tötet. Das Buch wird vielen Unterschiedliches bedeuten: eine amüsante Fabel, projiziert auf die flimmernde Kinoleinwand dieser Welt, ein tiefgründiges Buch über Wirklichkeiten und Scheinwirklichkeiten, ein Schlaglicht auf das Leben, das viele von uns führen könnten, das manche sogar führen.